Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Back in 2013, the federal government of the United States of America shut down from Oct. 1 to Oct. 17. While government shutdowns seem like this ominous thing, as an employee of the government, I really just wanted Congress to make a decision so I knew if I needed to come into work or not — I wasn’t stressed about it at all. As it turns out, for almost two-and-a-half weeks, I did not. So I did what anybody who was on a day-to-day wait-and-see mission to see if I needed to go into the office — I binged television shows.
By the time I started watching “Scandal,” it was already a phenomenon. I hadn’t watched a single episode of the show, which debuted in April 2012, but I knew who Olivia Pope was and lots of my friends kept talking about “gladiators.” I wasn’t interested in the slightest and I had no idea. I think the rumblings I heard about the storyline between Olivia Pope (played fantastically by Kerry Washington) and Fitzgerald Grant III (Tony Goldwyn) turned me off without me giving it a chance. But I was on a federal-sanctioned vacation so I figured why not. I fired up “Scandal,” which by that point, had concluded its second season.
I was all in. What a ridiculous show. But what an entertaining show. Like, everybody on this show was like a really good bad person. Secrets, murders, spies, backroom dealings — in my soul, I imagined that show creator Shonda Rhimes was watching “Suits” one day — “Suits” is another absolutely ridiculous but riveting show — and was like, “I’ll bet lawyers love this fantasy legal show! Egads, I should make a White House rom-com, murder mystery, spy drama, television show for the folks in the White House and in D.C. to watch!” (In reality, the show was inspired by Judy Smith, a former White House deputy press secretary who went into private…
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