This one hurts to write. I'm about to mildly trash two shows that I once loved. In fact, I came across a post I wrote a year ago (but never posted) that praised these same shows for being edgy and constantly surprising viewers. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case and I've had to let one of these shows go. Life is hard.
As a film nerd, I tend to over-scrutinize nearly every movie or TV show or even music video that I watch. I have to really be grabbed by a show in order to become a loyal viewer and one of the things that keeps me in the fold is the presence of at least a couple of characters with redeeming qualities. I was turned on to "Scandal" by a friend who became addicted to the first season and soon found myself enthralled in all of its outrageous drama. For those not in the know, "Scandal" can best be described as a telenovela in English, set in Washington D.C. The writing is meh, the storyline is full of things that could never actually happen, and the characters are all over the top. Being that it's set in the heart of politics, you'd think it'd be hard to find someone with redeeming qualities on the show, but that wasn't the case in the first few seasons. There were some characters who you wanted to root for, and even when the story was ridiculously unrealistic, you just rolled your eyes and chuckled at the absurdity and waited for the next week's episode. Part of the reason for this is that the show itself was in on the joke. They weren't trying to become the next great thought-provoking drama and they were aware at how insane a lot of the narrative was. Plus, the acting was usually pretty solid and sometimes outstanding. Kerry Washington should've won an Emmy for her role years ago. But sadly, I don't think she'll be boarding the awards season train again anytime soon. Season 4 of "Scandal" straight up sucked. If ever there were a season of a show to define, "gurl, it was a hot mess", this last season was it. The storylines were not only absurd, but completely outlandish and none of them actually had a conclusion. It was like the writers either ran out of steam or painted themselves into a corner and just abandoned one story and started a new one, or threw the eternal will-they-or-won't-they drama that is Olivia and Fitz at us. And I just found it tiresome. You can only go back to the well so many times and I feel like they have beaten the dead horse that is Olivia and Fitz to death. I don't even care if either of them or happy anymore, or if they end up together. Marry them off or permanently split them and quit playin' games with my heart already, "Scandal". My biggest problem with this season was how they managed to suck the redeeming quality out of every single character. Huck used to be your not-so-friendly neighborhood assassin who wanted to go straight-ish, but now he's just a damn psycho who makes even more terrible decisions than he did when the government owned him. Fitz is the king of the hypocrites and his First Lady, once reliable for some hilarity, has gone MIA. And Olivia was almost completely re-written to be this pathetic chick who can't handle a damn thing. The thing that was always intriguing about her was that she could handle everyone else's business with ease, but not her own personal life. Now she's barely even a part of her own P.R. firm. And enough with her father being behind every door in D.C. - she has daddy issues, we get it. There's no need to have every man she ever beds and every case she ever handles lead back to dad. Sadly, it's because of all this that "Scandal" and I have called it quits. I was done halfway through the season but Y convinced me to finish the race and I can't say I would've missed anything had I not. Maybe the show rebounds next year, maybe not. But I don't really care either way.
"Scandal" and I were in one of those 'I wish I could quit you' kind of relationships. You know the type; you keep hooking up cuz the sex is just too damn good, but you hate yourself in the morning. "Scandal" and I were a fling. But "The Good Wife" and I...we were a legit couple, ya'll. I remember seeing the first promo for the show and immediately wanting to watch it, and the first season did not disappoint. It was so well written and the cases were quite clever, different from any other procedural on television, which is a tough feat to accomplish. Subsequent seasons were mostly good, but season 5 was just disgustingly perfect in its execution. It managed to pull off one of the most shocking plot twists in TV history, another near-impossible feat in today's social media, spoiler alert world. Given that the show is widely believed to only be scheduled to last for 7 seasons, you would think season 6 would be the set-up man and get us ready for the big farewell. Instead, we got what felt like a wasted season. One of the things I adore about "The Good Wife" is how it began by telling us one story, about a disgraced politician's wife who chooses to stand by him during a sex scandal, but has since evolved into so many other things. It hasn't done this by throwing that-could-never-happen-in-real-life stories at us, but by weaving together real world legal cases with the intricacies of the lives of its main characters. And there had been few missteps to this master storytelling prior to season 6. But then, well, then came season 6. I'm behind on a lot of my shows, but had seen some of the reaction to this past season of the show when it actually aired. Having finished binge watching it, I now realize why there was such an uproar within the fandom. It just didn't work. All season long, you saw so many storylines that you thought would end up in one place or another and at the end of it all, they all just fizzled. Much like "Scandal", it was as if the writers even bored themselves with the plot and decided to move on to another one. Alicia ran for office and we spent half the damn season on it, only to find out it was all for nothing. Her law firm went through yet another transformation, with more in-fighting amongst the partners, and for the second time in three seasons, we're led to believe Alicia is starting over yet again. I'm no lawyer, but I would have to think that any big money client worth...their big money isn't going to stay put at a law firm that can't decide who's in and who's out. No one with that kinda dough is going to risk putting their life or their business in the hands of a firm that changes hands almost every six months. And the constant shuffle is wearing on me. I'm tired of seeing the same handful of lawyers bicker over the same issues, then patch things up and be all Kumbaya again. Plus, we got no rhyme or reason this year as to why Alicia ran for office in the first place, and the fact that her ego grew ten sizes during her campaign did not endear her to anyone. Eli's smartass daughter was a welcome addition to the fold, but that's about the only good thing that happened all season. I'm also bitter at how they wrote Kalinda out of the show. She deserved a better role to play in her final seasons, but especially in the last episodes where she was very un-Kalinda-like. Though this year disappointed, I have no plans to break free of "The Good Wife". It's still one of my favorite shows and I feel like they'll get their ish together next year, especially if it's the last one. But it is a shame that both "Scandal" and "The Good Wife" wasted entire seasons on pointless plot lines.
