Farewell, Gladiators! #Scandal #ScandalFinale #seriesfinale #ABC #Shondaland

Farewell, Gladiators! #Scandal #ScandalFinale #seriesfinale #ABC #Shondaland

All pictures courtesy of ABC and Shondaland Productions 

It's rare that I get to write one of these. I think the last time I wrote one was for the short-lived, but twisty-good (in my opinion) series Revenge, another ABC show about backstabbery, betrayal, lying, cheating and rich people problems. In the TV-landscape it is quite rare to encounter. A TV show is very akin to a new restaurant or business, in that over 90% of them fail their first or second year out, and often close up shop without warning. For years, fans have lamented about their favorite new shows suddenly being canceled or put on long, indeterminate hiatuses often without proper conclusions. I think the most flagrant example and probably the one that started the cancellation trend of unsatisfying ends was that of Alf, the 1980's sitcom about a bizarre-looking alien that comes to live with a family in suburban America. It is now not only known in pop culture as one of the strangest shows with a cuddle-ugly alien thing to possibly ever exist, but is infamous for its final episode's final shot showing Alf gazing into the sky while a spaceship, presumably from his home planet, is beaming light down on him. Does he ever get back home like E.T.? What happens to the family who cared for him for four seasons? And what about the government agencies that have chased after him? Fans will never know because the show ended on a huge cliffhanger in hopes of the network keeping them on another season, only to be axed a week or two after the finale aired. All of that long opening paragraph and out-of-the-blue Alf reference simply to say this: It's a big deal when a beloved, long-running scripted series gets a series finale.

President Mellie Hardly Factored Into This Episode If You Ask Me

B
ut did we deserve this finale? Eh! Let's first recap for any of those people who just like reading my words or like to experience things over again. With Olivia having told her clan that the only way to get out of their current predicament—on the cusp of being taken down and Mellie's presidency being de-legitimized due to charges of treason—was to go over the cliff and actually... tell the truth (gasp!). The truth about everything, but mainly about B6-13. Our finale, aptly titled “Over The Cliff” opened with them readying to testify about their involvement in and/or knowledge of this organization. Everyone from sitting president Mellie, to Fitz, to Olivia, to Huck and down the line were going to testify. They'd do this all to prevent Cyrus from taking over the white house. But first, in order to even get the clout and grand hearing that they wanted, the guy that was looking into Mellie's supposed treasonous attempt to bring down Air Force 2 had to do something drastic. See, he was threatened by Jake and saw no way to prosecute B6-13 without also incriminating himself and bringing everything down. He was a true white hat who only ever wanted to be in a position of power to push strongly for gun control. He asked one thing of Olivia: that she make Mellie act on gun control as one of her first agendas after they got their hearing. The promise made, he then shot himself, which triggered a shift of power back to David Rosen.

David, the long-suffering white-hat lawyer who saw himself stripped of his position a few seasons ago, only to come back and claim the seat as the USADA, was now taking over the investigation into B6-13, which held a higher priority than the treason against Mellie, from which he had to recuse himself. Cyrus' plan to take the oval has gone awry. So while David briefs Olivia's brood on what to expect during their testimony, telling them to give as much of the truth as possible, Cyrus goes to Jake and tells him that they need to get rid of David. Frankly, he wants a hit out on almost all of them at this point. Jake doesn't actively agree, but does go to find Rosen and tries to intimidate him out of continuing the investigation and bringing charges. He reminds him that he shot Cyrus' husband in the back on the street right in front of Rosen, and even raises his gun to him. But David, in his own glorious impersonation of the old Olivia Pope, gives Jake a serious talking to about being good and decent, and actually believing in something for himself and no longer being the puppet of everyone around him. It saves him and Jake disappears.

Jake goes back to Cyrus and tells him that he didn't do as “ordered” because he didn't want to, and that Cyrus can't say a single word to him about it because he isn't strong enough to do the killing himself. At this point, I got a little confused because I could have sworn that we did see Cyrus kill at least one person before through some means. I digress. Cyrus takes the criticism to heart and calls Rosen in in the middle of the night, while Rosen was cuddled up with Abby, so that he can sign a confession and make a deal that will absolve him of any future charges.

David (L) is the stupidest, most trusting lamb on the show. Why meet Cyrus at night? 

It's a trap that tries (and fails) to be rather Shakespearean in nature when he offers Rosen a drink of poisoned wine. Rosen falls to the floor as he is choking but is still alive. It takes too long for Cyrus, and he grabs a pillow and suffocates the man, but only after showing us the many faces of horror that we are to believe have changed him. He can't believe he's killed someone for the first time. After all of those orders to kill, all that bad-wolf bloviating he's done through the years, agony is writ upon his face as he must kill the most honest, upstanding, white hat probably on the entire show.

Meanwhile, as the group awaits a final decision about each of their testimonies to come in, and they all know that they will go to jail based on what they've said, Quinn and the group go to prison to visit Charlie, and perform a solo-visitation-room wedding officiated by Huck. It could be their last chance at tying the knot and Quinn wants to commit even if she'll never see Charlie again. Redhead Abby struggles not to cry and break down now that David is dead because they need to see this over-the-cliff thing all the way through to the fiery crash at the bottom, and if she starts mourning now, she'll never stop. Olivia goes to her father and asks him to stand in the sun with the rest of the group and also testify, to which he says that he is retired. They argue back and forth about the kind of woman he always wanted her to be and her fulfilling that destiny only for him to still say no and say that he is escaping the country. Olivia then hops over to Fitz and challenges him either to fight with her about their past bad decisions or make love to her on their potential last night of freedom. He chooses the latter, but Shonda then fails to give us one last great love scene.

And then they get the call. The call comes in that the decision has been delayed because of a new witness with new testimony. Yes, it is Papa Pope, Eli or Rowan as was his kill name, come to testify before the slew of white men looking at the facts concerning B6-13. In one last great speech for Joe Morton, he pulls out an epic white male privilege speech that sees him gloat about how he, a black man, quietly ran the country for 30 years, deciding presidencies, what laws would and wouldn't get enforced, who lived and who died, and basically every decision and every freedom that most US citizens take for granted, especially the white male ones. He was the true ruler, and he was the architect of such an organization that became bigger than the US Federal government itself. He was command, and you can't take command... But you can give it away. He appeals to their racist/racial bias bones and tells them that while he is command, the author and finisher of the American fate, they don't have to give the US public him. He doesn't have to be the face of this organization which surely must be dismantled and prosecuted. Instead of giving the public a black face in charge of everything, he (and they) sacrifices Jake, the current command. Jake is arrested and thrown in jail (I guess we were supposed to assume that the trial already went down) and everything is then pinned to him and his secret organization. The treason charges against Mellie quietly go away and Olivia tells her that she, too, is going to go away and let Mellie rule how she wants to, instead of being in her ear the whole time. Mellie respects that.

From An Earlier Season. Also This Finale Episode Felt Like Morton's Time To Shine Most

Olivia then goes to Jake in jail and talks to him one last time before he is set to be shipped off to Federal Super-max prison in Indiana (it might have actually been Illinois, but I watched the Cavs-Pacers game right after and my fury at its outcome may have soaked my memory). She asks who he might've been had she left him on that island a few seasons back, left him to stand in the sun and not dragged him back to DC. Like how many licks it takes, the world may never know.

Finally, Olivia calls Cyrus into the oval before officially packing it in and hands Cyrus his resignation papers. He starts talking about how he was never charged with anything and how he is clear and free. But then he shifts and asks Olivia if she can still enjoy a drink. Not a reference to David per se, he insists that after having finally crossed that mad line by killing David, he can no longer get the insanity and brutality of what all they've done over the years out of his blood system no matter what he tries. He can't even enjoy a good drink without thinking of the blood shed. Maybe it is time for him to finally go. He signs the papers and does just that.

We end with Charlie getting out of prison, Huck standing around with no real meaningful ending, Abby finally breaking down into tears because not only are they all not going to jail after their testimony was all redacted in order to charge Jake but Rosen is still super-dead, Mellie signing gun control as one of her first new measures and Olivia meeting Fitz on the sidewalk and doing the old romantic “Hi” thing that every writer has written at least once if they've ever done anything about romance (their, “You had me at hello,” moment). But the final shot is the most curious because it features two little black girls walking through the hall of presidential portraits and seeing Fitz's portrait which is of him behind a window (almost as weird as Obama bushes, but that one had some seriously hilarious symbolism). But then they turn a corner, walk a little farther only to stop and see a portrait of Olivia Pope in a dress that looks very similar to one that Shonda herself has worn before. Some fans have wondered about this ending and Shonda refuses to give the answer, but I think it's quite clear judging from Papa Pope's speech about power and her serving at the pleasure of white people, not to mention her having put two presidents into office and her own love affair with the oval, that this is a shot from far into the future, and she was, at one point, president.

You're A Villain

OK, so now that we're caught up with the recap, I have to say that I absolutely hated this ending. It wasn't satisfying in the least and fell into the trap-trend that I saw possibly developing years ago. First, to talk about the potential trend, I have to mention the wave of reboots. If you look back through some of my posts, I completely called the trend of reboots slowly drifting back into TV now that movies were inundated with them. For certain, if you aren't a cinema/entertainment history buff, you should know that TV often follows the trends set by film, lagging behind by about eight years give or take. Had we seen a few reboots of old shows in the 90s? Sure. But not like what we have seen in the last 15 years with everything from Roseanne to 90210 to Dynasty and Dallas returning to our airwaves in some form or fashion. We are getting reboots and remakes at an alarming rate in a medium that must feed on new ideas in order to thrive. We're also realizing that the actors and actresses we absolutely loved on past series have found hard times after such big success earlier in their careers, leading many of them to be open to come back and retread familiar characters even after saying adieu to them so long ago. And no, hard times doesn't necessarily mean monetary-wise but can be just getting good roles again. So with this, I predicted about two years ago (unfortunately, I don't think it made it on to this blog, so if this is the first time you're reading it, remember where you heard it from) that some popular series of today would start writing series finales that leave a wide berth of story lines and characters to play with for possible reboot or “sequel series” considerations. This series finale completely smacks of that potential future nostalgia-pandering on both ABC and Shonda's behalf.

For starters, for the last two years I have maintained that Olivia was, in fact, the actual villain of the show. Thankfully, she said as much on the penultimate episode. I called that she was a villain after seeing the abortion episode. But note that it was not the act of having the abortion that made her a villain, rather the actions leading up to and beyond it and the way she went about everything in her life at that time that made her the villain. This also marked the show's long-gestating but finally completed transformation into something almost wholly different from what it started as. No, the show did not start as a political spy thriller, which it became in later seasons, but more as a romance/law show. It's crazy to think that while the political theater was always there, Olivia did more lawyering than politics: she helped people escape bad situations, defended the innocent, advocated for proper law and due process, and could try a case in the court of public opinion which would lead to their never being a trial. She and her group found evidence on people that no one else bothered to find, they helped stop terrorist plots and made good on promises to clients who they saw as good and decent people in a bad situation. The White House's role was more as a tool by which Pope could wield clout and get things done for her clients, rather than something she desired so that she could shape the world.

Remember This? Back When We Were All Shipping Olitz and Thinking Side-Chickdom Might Not Be That Bad?

But as the show grew more political in story-line (not in tone. In tone, it was always addressing the social justice issues of today and kicking butt doing it), it shifted away from romance and went full steam with plots focused solely on the white house, even dropping the weekly cases of innocent people in need of help—I think they only had two of those this entire season, if I'm counting correctly and that's even after Quinn took over at OPA.

I said all of that to say that the shift in tone is what allowed the writers to be so lax in writing the finale and have it be perfectly setup for a reboot. See, now they can reboot the show either as the political drama it ended as or as the romance it started as, using the “hi” moment as a jumping-off point for future storytelling involving Liv and Fitz. But I also mentioned the change in the show to highlight the change in Olivia's character from good guy to bad guy, and suggest that the show should have concluded the way I have been suggesting for the last two years: either Olivia Pope dies or she falls on her sword for everyone and is imprisoned for life. We usually demand villains be punished in some way to make a satisfying ending for we viewers. Either that or everything goes back to happy-go-lucky times to give the viewers a happy ending. But I'd contend that Scandal askew-ed both in favor of an ambiguous ending that, again, allows for future stories to go anywhere.

On a show that was not shy about killing off its guest, main and recurring characters, none of the main players died in the finale after doing the most dirt through the seven-season run. Huck, Jake and Eli (as well as the gay secret service dude who killed the president's son) were all known killers throughout the duration of the show over its 11-year span of time, yet they all lived at the end. We also had Charlie and Quinn live happily ever after. Cyrus, the mastermind and right-hand to two presidents, who often communicated with his B6-13 cohorts openly and honestly about whom to kill, got to walk away without a single scratch to tarnish his legacy. The only important person who died was David Rosen, a good guy but someone whose death was, strangely, not felt as much as it probably should have been. Essentially, everybody who did crime and who did the most dirt got away, lived to see another day and lived through the BS. “We all did a bunch of bad stuff and nothing happened.”

The show started as a lovesick woman trying to atone for her past sins (rigging the election) by doing as much good for people that she could while using her White House influence to the people's advantage. But the worst thing is that the series and its finale never fully make this atonement. Yes, B6-13, the long-tentacled Hydra that controlled the government, is gone, but what of the rest of the crimes committed outside of their purview?

Even more troubling than the fact that everyone lived was that we still didn't get that great of an end to the romance. Some can argue that Liv's speech about making love to Fitz answered that question, but did it? Because to me that seemed like an everyday speech they'd make to each other. It wasn't memorable and wasn't a declaration of some higher level of feeling, it was just in the moment. It was far from Fitz's “Slave to you” speech in season 3(?), far from the stand in the sun speech, far from him begging to go to Vermont with her. And as far as it being a “You had me at Hello,” moment, even that Jerry Maguire speech was preceded by Jerry's/Tom Cruise's brilliant commitment plea to her. He had finally decided after all the back and forth that he was in. Here, I feel like they could probably break up the next week.

We Shoulda Known This Was A Different Show When She Went From White Coat to Dominatrix Carmen San Diego

If I'm thinking about it, the same goes for the entire OPA family. Olivia's relationship with the others didn't feel restored to what it once was or even to what it was midway through the season. She still very much seemed lost and without a home at the end of the season, similar to how she found Quinn at the beginning of the series. It would have been great if that was the poetic note to be gotten from the show, but their switch in roles wasn't stressed enough for me throughout the series because Quinn never became white-hat good and strong. Just a few weeks ago she was going to kill Liv. And though we know where Quinn and Charlie are destined, what of everyone else? Will Mellie have her Olivia Pope-esque affair with her own younger black confidante in the one guy (you know, what's his name) or is that done? What about Abby? Where does she go from here after David's death? And why did Huck have that none-ending ending where all he did was basically stand in the background while everyone else got to emote about love, loss, doing the right thing or entering into a new chapter in their lives?

Ultimately, a good series finale is supposed to try to tie up loose ends about the fans' favorite characters. Yes, we know that the characters will probably continue on in their lives in the fictional worlds created by the show's creators, writers and producers, but finales are supposed to feel like the ending chapter in a very long but enjoyable book. But with the amount of loose ends left untied, this felt more like a run-of-the-mill season finale rather than a series finale. And it seemed quite clear from the ending that Shonda is open to revisiting it probably within the next 8-12 years, if only because of how I originally thought the series could end after viewing that electrifying first season way back in 2012: Olivia Pope becomes president. Fitz would be the first man, OPA would still be around and so would Mellie. And Cyrus, after maybe growing used to killing, would decide to resurrect B6-13 out of seeing a need for the organization in the country. And frankly, if this current trend of rebooting TV continues, and Kerry Washington is exposed to the world of so-so roles for actresses (though, the industry is changing and I think she won't have problems finding work, especially now that she's partnering to produce a TV adaptation of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere), she might be glad to come back and do a 13-episode-a-year season for a few seasons. Most certainly everyone else will want to, maybe with the exception of Cyrus. Outside of him, these are the best roles that any of these actors and actresses have ever played.

As a season finale of a show that will go on an “extended hiatus” for maybe a full three presidential terms, it's fine. But as a series finale like what it purports to be, it, without conflation or exaggeration, is literally in my top five shows that had the worst series finale ever. I should mention that I, unlike most people (apparently) think that Seinfeld still holds the place as the greatest series finale ever when you consider the entirety of the show and the rich silliness of the characters. Them going to prison for not helping a citizen being robbed was the most ironic (and thus, fitting) end to a group of people who lived their lives by trying to slip, cheat and obfuscate the system, and unintentionally doing some of the most infuriating things ever. They were regular people but also terrible regular people which is what made it so great for them to be imprisoned for being the regular people they were. They rarely ever tried to be good people, they just didn't want to be bad. I still contend that it was genius, and that it was able to bring back all of our favorite characters in the series in one of the least contrived or overly done (so many wedding finales) that we, to date, have ever seen. The end to Scandal should be considered a partial scandal in itself, because it definitely needed some fixing.

Either She Was President Or They Credit Her As A Founding Mother Of The New B6-13-less Republic

What do you think? Did you watch the Scandal finale? Did you like it? If you did, why? What were your favorite parts? Where do you think the characters will go? What do you think of the meaning behind the last shot? And would you be down to see Scandal get rebooted a few years down the line? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming summer. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “Well, well, lovers of liberty. You've hung in there for six years and seven twisty, good, OMG seasons. Now, maybe it's time for you—”

'Wait, did we not kill Sally Langston either? And after she got away with killing her husband?'

“We should call somebody about this.”

'Command?'

“That'll work. Wait, what's his number?”

'Don't worry. It's been handled.'

P.S. Wow! Everybody got to live. This is literally the reverse of Hamlet. I have to hand it to Shonda, she said she'd only have the show run for seven seasons, and she kept her word, even though it didn't quite satisfy all the cravings. Even though I didn't like the last two and a half seasons, I stuck it out (I usually do once I commit to a show. Can't wait to finally break up with Grey's and Once Upon a Time some day), and you tried your best to deliver. And sometimes your best is all that someone can ask for. Well done!

Amazon
Goodreads Author Page
Goodreads Books Similar to TV Shows
Twitter@filmbooksbball