TV Review: Scandal, season 6

TV #15 of 2022:

Scandal, season 6

This penultimate outing starts with a bang, and winds up structuring its entire year a bit like a whodunnit mystery. For a while, the show is almost hypnotically-recursive, returning Rashomon-like to Election Night again and again, each time filling in yet another person’s perspective along with some additional context of what happened between the nominating conventions of the previous finale and now. Even after leaving that framework behind, the season hums with a tension that Scandal doesn’t often manage, perhaps helped by its airing during the early months of the Trump administration when our own America seemed likewise upside-down.

Of course, this series can only stray so far from its inherent soapiness, and so we still end up with new plot twists and secret character motivations that don’t hold up under the lightest scrutiny. We’re introduced to what I believe is our fourth all-powerful conspiracy in the heart of Washington — whose leaders brag that they cannot be stopped and can easily be replaced from their ranks despite the fact that it really seems like there’s just the two of them and a few flunkies — with Liv herself taking moves to form a fifth shadow organization in the final hour of this run.

It’s more ridiculous than scandalous, as ever. But the effect remains fun so long as you don’t let yourself think too hard about any of these developments or their implications, especially when punctuated with nice moments of personal growth for much of the main cast. And if the upcoming last eighteen episodes represent a showdown between a newly-ruthless Olivia and her former friends back at the old firm, as appears to be suggested? That might be the most satisfying ending that showrunner Shonda Rhimes could deliver at this point.

[Content warning for gun violence, torture, suicide, sexual assault, claustrophobia, drowning, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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