Scandal Serves Up A Presidential Love Triangle

As a married/ethical person, I often have a hard time when pop cultural products try to make me empathize with adulterous couples. I wouldn't go so far as to say that infidelity is unforgivable in all cases, but I think that at least we can all agree that it's not cool and that AshleyMadison.com is gross. In its first season, Scandal became a rare exception by giving us the doomed love affair between crisis manager Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and and Sitting U.S. President Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn) and making it so hot. Oh my God, do you remember the episode in that first season where they flashed back to Olivia and Fitz getting it on when they were both on the campaign trail? Not only did it get me onboard with their relationship; it revived my interest in the show as a whole, which to that point had been iffy at best. But since then, Scandal has pulled off something even trickier: it's made me like the lady who's standing between Liv and Fitz.

In that first season, before we knew where things were going, the casting of Bellamy Young as Fitz's wife, First Lady Mellie Grant, was a stroke of genius. Prior to that, Young's best-known role was probably Cox's foil/maybe love interest Dr. Miller on Scrubs, and the two characters had a lot in common: both were polished, fast-talking Type As whose talent for projecting invulnerability made them, to greater and less degrees, detestable. But who is more determinedly unflappable than a First Lady? That's basically the entire description for the "job" -- stand up straight, look pretty, don't display any human emotion other than sunny complacency.

At first, Mellie seemed like a nice lady, if a bit dull; as a matter of general principle, it wasn't okay for Fitz to cheat on her, but given that Olivia is the show's protagonist, we were on her side by default, and spending more time with her let us see all her admirable attributes: intelligence, resourcefulness, and...well, it's not usually "admirable" for someone to seem crafty, but given Olivia's job, one can appreciate it. But the Mellie/Olivia balance shifted when we learned that she knew about Fitz and Olivia's affair: at least it meant Mellie's not dumb.

Then, Mellie confronted Fitz about the affair, making sure he knew she knew and that she wouldn't let him weasel out of their marriage. This changes the balance again: she's keeping Fitz and Olivia from being happy together, while also putting her access to power above her own dignity -- a pragmatic calculation that makes her...well, loathsome.

But then! You guys! Mellie did something amazing! Just when it seemed like Fitz was going to lose the approval of the American people and put his Presidency in jeopardy, she saved his ass: she confessed to a fake miscarriage she'd supposedly suffered, and announced a fake pregnancy on which Fitz then had to make good. And that's when Mellie got me on her side forever: that kind of scheming has to be admired, and makes Olivia look like kind of a simp by comparison. Olivia may be a Machiavellian genius for her clients, I thought, but she can't possibly compete with that brand of cartoonish supervillainy.

But then! Mellie and Olivia were involved, maybe since before Olivia and Fitz got together, in a voter fraud conspiracy that got Fitz elected and about which he apparently knows nothing?! MAN.

So now that Fitz has been shot, Olivia and Mellie are in an uneasy alliance once again, joining forces to keep Vice President Langston (Kate Burton) from undoing all their nefarious work. Since Fitz may die (but probably won't), it could turn out that neither woman ends up with him, but even if he does come through this, it might be right for him to lose them both. The more we learn about Mellie's and Olivia's capacity, separately and together, to achieve their ends, the more it seems that Fitz isn't man enough for either of them.