With the fall TV season starting up again, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what I’ll be seeing on my screen in the upcoming months — both what I expect to see and what I would like to see — and one of those shows I keep coming back to is Scandal.
Let me start by saying that almost everyone I know loves Scandal. My friends, my sorority sisters, my boyfriend, even my dad — they’re all addicted to the wonderfully melodramatic, breathlessly action-packed show. Everyone always wants to talk about it, has something to say, but the one thing that always manages to divide a room is the hotly debated topic of Fitzlivia.
If you’re not familiar with fandom couple names, Fitzlivia is the name bestowed to the love story between President Fitzgerald Grant and Campaign Manager/Fixer/Gladiator Olivia Pope. In the show, the two met while working on Fitz’s presidential campaign, and it wasn’t long before they quickly fell for each other, despite Fitz’s political aspirations and, oh yeah, his wife.
While it’s clear that the two do genuinely love each other, in a day and age where little girls are still taught that a little boy pulling their pigtails means that he likes her, that it’s okay for a little boy to pull a little girl’s pigtails because he likes her, Scandal has the opportunity to change the message and, once and for all, pull the plug on this desperately unhealthy relationship.
While it’s clear that Scandal doesn’t see Fitz and Olivia’s relationship as a shining ideal, the perfect model of respectful, considerate love, Scandal doesn’t take the toxic nature of the couple seriously enough. Sure, the show doesn’t shy away from pitting them against each other, whether it’s about a rigged election or a missing intern or a shot-down flight with 329 people on it, but the show also clearly frames the two as “star-crossed lovers” who will, no matter what, always manage to find their way back to each other.
By continuing to show Fitz and Olivia as a couple, as two people who may not be able to be together now but who are destined for each other once the time is right, Scandal glorifies each interaction they have. Every time Fitz physically restrains Olivia from leaving a room or sends his secret service agents to (essentially) abduct her, it’s written off as passionate.
We as viewers know that it’s not good, not healthy, but Fitz loves Olivia. He loves Olivia, so he refuses to let her go, despite her repeated statements that she wants to leave or quit or whatever it is that episode, and somehow this is supposed to be romantic.
Every time Olivia gets in Fitz’s face and then turns to goo as soon as he brushes his knuckles across her cheekbone (or touches her, however tenderly, in any other way without her permission), it’s written off as romantic, sexy. And while it is sexy to see someone so clearly affected by another person’s touch, what Scandal tells us in these moments is that Olivia’s unwavering sexual attraction to Fitz holds just as much weight as her moral disgust, her conscious decisions to distance herself.
The relationship between the two characters is understandable to a degree. They love each other and sometimes hate each other and sometimes can’t bear to look at each other, and every now and then they tell each other’s parents how they taste (don’t even get me started on that scene), but by painting Fitz and Olivia as destined, as sexy, as desirable, the show overshadows whatever negative light it occasionally shows the couple in.
Scandal is a smart show with a smart audience, and because of that, the show is able to let its viewers decide how they feel about a lot (whether it’s Quinn’s new allegiances, Huck’s favorite past times, or Cyrus’s blatant moral depravity – nearly every character is plenty morally grey). By not taking a stand on the Fitzlivia debate, however, Scandal is allowing viewers everywhere to believe that forcibly grabbing your partner (amongst plenty other off-putting moments) is not just justifiable, but can even be desirable.
By not taking a stand, Scandal encourages audiences to root for an emotionally manipulative, extremely unhealthy couple who hate each other about as often as they love each other, and leans into the belief that passion and desire are more important for a healthy relationship than respect and honesty.
And I’m not even going to get into the Mellie thing.
