Scollace_Queen

And I just have to ask...why? Why do people want her to stay so badly? 

Here’s the thing. If Nina could join the team permanently without disrupting it, I would be fine with this idea. But she can’t. We know for a fact that Missy will return from maternity leave sometime in season 5, and since we have no reason to believe that any of the other actors are leaving, when Maggie is back with the team, that would put us at five field agents if Nina were to stay as well. No matter how you switched up the partnerships, with five agents, someone would always be the odd one out. Since we have no reason to believe that they plan on adding another new cast member in addition to Shantel (and quite frankly, doing so would be an even worse decision), that means that in order for Nina to become a permanent member of the team, Maggie, OA, Scola, or Tiff would have to go. 

Of course, people are entitled to their own opinions, and I’ll freely admit that Nina is not the worst recurring character we’ve ever had. I’ll gladly take her over Nestor or Rina any day. But at the same time, at the risk of sounding mean, I genuinely do not see what about her makes it worth keeping her over anyone else on the team. Her entire characterization so far has been that she’s a badass agent with a good heart, which describes literally everyone else on the team. There’s nothing that sets her apart from anyone else that would make getting rid of another character in favor of her make sense. Even the fact that she slept with Scola once doesn’t make her unique because we just had practically the exact same storyline with Rina and Jubal. 

I’m going to be perfectly honest, it feels like the only reason people are going to such lengths to beg for Nina to stay forever is that she’s played by an attractive white woman. Before anyone dismisses this idea, let it be known that when Tiff, who is portrayed by an attractive black woman, arrived to replace Kristen, people on Twitter were trashing her character within five minutes of her first episode and saying that the writers needed to get rid of her. And Emily Ryder/Catherine Haena Kim didn’t exactly receive the warmest of welcomes either. 

The hypocrisy from Nina’s fans is really what turned me against her character. Ever since she showed up, her fans have been going to bat for her over every single little thing. Supposedly, people were hating on her character after 4x20. While I didn’t find any of this “hate” anywhere (I saw people saying that they wanted Maggie back instead of Nina, but there was nothing that seemed especially over the top), I did see several threads talking about how we shouldn’t be nasty about Nina because Shantel reads our tweets. 

Okay, sure, that’s great and all, but where was all this when Tiff was getting hated on for months after she joined the team? Where were all the threads about how we shouldn’t be nasty about her character because Katherine Renee Turner might be reading our tweets? Why is it that when someone bashes Tiff, it’s “to each their own”, but the second anyone says something even remotely negative about Nina, there are a whole bunch of people ready to jump down that person’s throat? Tiff had her share of fans even at the start, true, but there was nobody going to bat for her the way there is for Nina. Or at least if there was, it was only being done by small accounts and not by anyone with some actual influence within the fandom. 

Let’s be honest, we all know why this was. A lot of people won’t admit it or acknowledge it, but there’s a huge tendency within the fandom to criticize black characters or characters of color more so than white characters. Consider the fact that Scola was called a hero after he dragged an innocent kid into a basement and nearly got them both blown up, but when Tiff was a little mean to Nina in “Kayla” (and mind you, this is extremely out of character for her), fans were immediately ready to jump down her throat. And when Nina spent all of 4x17 being nasty to Scola (even after he saved her life, she practically made him grovel at her feet for her attention), these same fans treated her as if she’d done nothing wrong. 

I’ll admit that I’m pretty bitter about what they did to Tiff in “Kayla”, as anyone who follows me on Twitter will know. Tiff is my favorite character, and I hate that the writers essentially made her act out of character just so they could make Nina look good. 

Here’s the thing. Tiff’s behavior in that episode, as jarring as it was to see from her, made sense. She’d just found out that her close friend/mentor was murdered, she was grieving, and out of everyone on the team, she had to work with someone who was essentially a stranger to her. It isn’t anyone’s fault, but Tiff simply doesn’t have the same bond of trust with Nina that she has with Scola, OA, or anyone else. You can’t expect anyone to behave completely normally when they’re in pain. And I do believe that if Tiff had been partnered with anyone else, they would have seen that she wasn’t handling the case well and talked to her about stepping aside. The episode should have focused on her and her grief, but instead, the writers decided to give Nina this sad backstory, which only further encouraged people to bash Tiff.

And no offense or anything, but giving Nina a backstory when we know she’s only a temporary replacement and there are other permanent characters we know nothing about seems counterintuitive.

Last season, in the episode “Liar’s Poker”, we were treated to one of Scola’s best episodes. When two of Vargas’ men attempted to use Elise as leverage to get him released via collar bomb, he sat with her for nearly the entire time it was around her neck (save for when everyone was ordered to evacuate the building), comforting her and telling her embarrassing stories about himself to calm her down. This episode was also the beginning of the Scola x Elise (or Scolise, as I’ve seen it referred to before) ship, particularly when Scola offered to take her out for a drink once she was freed. 

In terms of setting up the foundation for a ship, “Liar’s Poker” did everything right. Scola and Elise developed a genuine personal connection, we saw just how much he was willing to risk just to make her feel comfortable, and the door was opened for them to continue pursuing a relationship (i.e. his offer to take her out for drinks). As viewers, we were left with the impression that the show intended to put them together somehow. 

Unfortunately, that’s more or less where the good work they did ends. After “Liar’s Poker”, Scola and Elise didn’t share a genuine personal moment again. The closest we got to seeing more of Scolise was when he brought her coffee in “Checks and Balances” and when they exchanged a look at the press conference in “Straight Flush”. However, those moments lose some of their significance when you look at the bigger picture. When Scola brought Elise coffee, it was when he and Tiff bought breakfast for the team and not something special he decided to do just for Elise. And when they exchanged a look at the press conference, Elise also exchanged the exact same look with Maggie. Unless we’re also shipping Maggie and Elise, that moment doesn’t really work as any sort of indication of romantic feelings between Elise and Scola. On top of all that, it was Maggie and Jubal, not Scola, who took care of Elise and made sure she got the help she needed when she was having trouble dealing with her PTSD. 

Of course, the door was initially left open for the writers to pursue a Scolise relationship when she returned to the JOC in the beginning of season four. Instead, the opposite has happened. So far, Elise and Scola have yet to have an actual conversation this season. The closest thing we’ve gotten to a Scolise crumb was when he sat next to her in “Trauma”, but in the grand scheme of things, and especially considering the complete lack of development otherwise, that barely even counts as a crumb. It isn’t even certain as to whether they actually went out for those drinks or not. We can infer that he probably took her out, but as it was never mentioned again after “Liar’s Poker”, there’s no way to know for sure. 

It should be obvious by my username that I’m a Scollace shipper. However, Scolise used to be my favorite ship, especially in the early days of season three. But when it became apparent that the writers were giving up on them, and when they started exploring the friendship between Tiff and Scola more, I gave up on Scolise becoming canon. 

The sad truth of the matter is that the writers took what could have been a beautiful pairing and neglected them to the point where they lost the majority of their potential. 

To be clear, I’m not saying that the writers should give us a deep, romantic Scolise scene in every single episode or anything like that. Personally, I don’t like it when relationships are constantly pushed in the audience’s faces, especially since romance shouldn’t be the forefront of a crime drama show. However, it’s one thing to be stingy with how much development you give a ship, but it’s quite another to neglect that development entirely. And as it stands now, the writers have definitely gone the second route so far. A ship can only survive off of one meaningful moment or episode for so long.