Olivia Tricks Papa Pope and Jake !!!                 

THIS THURSDAY…we get the JAKE BALLARD BACKSTORY

April 16, 2016 Critictoo   Carole

This article contains spoilers, specifically one on the end of episode 17 of season 5. You have been warned!

There was a time when it was difficult to conceive that Scandal could be accused of "  Jump the Shark  " . The team of Shonda Rhimes was able to swallow any snake.

The excess was an essential component in the formula of the series. Plus it was huge, it was better.It was his trademark tape for the sofa and even after all this time, we can not take early Scandal clean energy who operated almost all its twists.

Between the shenanigans in the White House and concealment of corpses to save the client's image at OPA, everything was going very fast; it was enough to be carried away by the flood of turnarounds that took us to other more massive than previous events.

We are now in season 5. Olivia Pope put his white hat in the closet (see burned at this level) and took a chair to kill a man . After this stage the question arises: how did we get here?

It's not so much the act that is the problem. After all, over half of the characters in Scandal suppressed someone at one time or another. The President of the United States killed Verna Thorne - while she was in the hospital dying of cancer. Huck sowed the corpses of all throughout the series, but we just stop on the fact that he removed a busload of jury. Also a member of B613, no doubt that Jake has ended many lives, including that of the husband of Cyrus. Olivia's father has become a great Machiavellian who, among others, caused the death of the son of Mellie and Fitz.

Murderers, Scandal owns lots. Olivia did not belong there shortly. Despite all these horrible things she had experienced all these questionable things she had done (and there are a pack), it still managed to wear during his famous white hat. It's over now.

Faced with this event, it was enough to remain speechless and wondering when the creative team of Scandal chose to take this direction. Can we really define in a show that is built on moments shock the moment he " jumped the shark  "?

Season 5 of Scandal is a kind of long descent into hell where the writers lead us to believe that we will finally see the light, but ... no. An episode takes us in the right direction by focusing on the characters which account for all the work to be demolished next week. Scandal is then both series one and it does not work.

The writing team continues to destroy what it built, to move to better back off. Nobody better not Eli Pope illustrates this idea, the father of Olivia is indestructible despite the fact that he could be removed repeatedly. If there was hope that the end (which was long in coming) of B613 would turn the page on Papa Pope, it was not counting on the slope of Scandal to keep the worst parts of his best plots.

Years pass in Scandal and traumatic experiences are multiplying. Some were managed but wounds refuse to heal. The writers no longer know how to leave this heavy baggage behind them for everyone beforehand.

Where one could imagine Marcus Integrated takeover as an opportunity to reconnect with what made the series in its infancy, the new guy has become a symbol of what the writers do not know more. Huck and Quinn have the best reasons in the world to keep the rule, and it illustrates exactly what's wrong. Nobody wants to give it a place in the cruel world of Scandal , and it is just placed on the same side so that the series needs to have the figures may result in unprecedented directions.

Wear face the many twists was what was supposed to become the biggest problem of Scandal. In a way, we can say that it did happen, with a big boost from writers who are mired in their story. They tried to create surprising crises that did not work, they lost their ability to amaze by always using the same rules and allowed themselves to be consumed by their political message sometimes to the detriment of their plot.

Jump The Shark? Scandal has indeed done. When? It is more difficult to define, but it is about detail. The question now is whether the series can achieve recover.

Gayle Fee Monday, April 04, 2016

Credit: ABC

In happier days: Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope and Tony Goldwyn as President Fitzgerald Grant in ‘Scandal.’

A coalition of “Scandal” fans has organized a boycott of theABC TGIT drama after showrunner Shonda Rhimes decided to split up savvy crisis management whiz 
Olivia 
Pope, played by Kerry Washington, and President Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn). And if that weren’t bad enough, the show featured a plot twist where Pope had an abortion.

Calling themselves the Scandal Warriors, the unhappy viewers want Liv and Fitz back together — like, yesterday — and they want Rhimes to stop portraying Pope “like a slut.”

“This show has a great significance to all women, particularly African-American women, and the way Olivia Pope is being portrayed is insulting,” said Janis Pryor, a Boston broadcast journalist and political operative for more than 30 years, who is heading up the Scandal Warriors squad in the Northeast. “She is falling into the same stereotypically demeaning aspects that have often been attributed to black women.”

Now in case you’re not a fan, “Scandal” follows the misadventures of Pope, a gorgeous, couture-clad African-American D.C. fixer who has an affair with the president of the United States. Pryor, a fan of the show for five seasons, said she and many other fans were appalled by the winter finale that aired last fall. In the cliffhanger, Olivia and Fitz break up and she has an abortion.

“Episode 9, Season 5. The debacle,” Pryor said. “The splitting with Fitz scene was bad, but what really put people off was the way the abortion scene was portrayed. This is a serious decision, it’s not like someone going off for a manicure.”

Pryor noticed that social media was “blowing up” after the episode. The protest evolved into a boycott and a treatise the Scandal Warriors posted online, hoping to catch Rhimes’ attention. The show has suffered in the ratings since the episode. It was down by 3 million viewers from the year before after it returned from its winter break in March. Pryor and the Scandal Warriors think the plot direction is directly responsible.

“Our message to Shonda is to respect your fan base and pay closer attention to the craft of storytelling,” she said.

All of which might sound like a lot of sturm und drang over a TV show, but the Warriors contend “Scandal” is much more.

“‘Scandal’ was a gift to viewers. But it was a special gift to women, especially women of color and specifically, black women,” says their treatise, which was written by Pryor. “The show was magic. For the first time since the show, ‘Julia,’ featuring Diahann Carroll, America had a gorgeous, intelligent, powerful black woman in the lead.

“Scandal was no longer just a TV show. Almost from the beginning, it became a cultural, social and political statement.”

And besides, the chemistry 
between Washington and Goldwyn was hot ...

The love story, the treatise says, “was told with passion, dignity and relevance, acknowledging the racial component.”

The Warriors are hoping to spread the word about the boycott until they get an audience with Rhimes. (We reached out to ABC, but it didn’t respond.)