Perils of power: Game Of Thrones and Scandal

(With Game Of Thrones between seasons, I asked a few critics if they wanted to talk about the shows they’re using to fill the King’s Landing-shaped hole in their lives. Next up, my colleague from The A.V. Club, Les Chappell, discussing ABC’s Scandal.)

Of all the showrunners that you’d expect to be able to satisfy Game Of Thrones-related appetites, Shonda Rhimes might be the last you’d expect. As the creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice, Rhimes has more of a reputation for delivering primetime soap operas and medical dramas, shows where conflict comes from patient-of-the-week rather than a great black dragon looming over the horizon.

However, when it comes to telling the stories about the ugliness of politics and the intangibility of alliances, few shows are better at depicting it than Rhimes’ Scandal, which returned recently for its fourth season. While a broadcast drama about crisis management in Washington D.C. might seem far removed from the violence and intrigue of Westeros, Scandal has proven itself time and again it can be every bit as twisted and compulsively watchable. The reason for that is, like Game Of Thrones, it’s a series that knows full well the storytelling power of people jockeying for power, and the entertainment value of yanking that power away from them….

Scandal focuses on Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington), a former White House communications director turned political fixer. She heads up a team of operatives (Guillermo Diaz, Darby Stanchfield, Katie Lowes) who specialize in resolving problems for the rich and powerful of Washington D.C., ranging from illegitimate children to election fraud to attempted murder. Her professional and personal lives are frequently complicated by the sitting president, Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant (Tony Goldwyn), with whom she has a relationship that only gets more torrid as the show goes along.

Both shows take a similar approach to the politics of their universe, in that virtually everyone jockeying for power in this world is a terrible person. The first season had a lot of talk about how Olivia and her team were the “white hats” and how Fitz genuinely wanted to be a good man in the Oval Office, but since then, the level of amorality and ambiguity has tripled—to the show’s benefit. Those who strive to do good may get to keep their heads, but like poor Ned Stark they find themselves outnumbered, overwhelmed, and eventually stripped of every last bit of their power.

In that sense, Scandal is a show all about the game of politics rather than the ideal—if you added D.C.’s smart phones and press conferences to King’s Landing, you’d see that there’s not much divide between the day-to-day politics of both. While Olivia and her team deal with a broad selection of cases, everything eventually revolves around Fitz’s presidency and the fight to strengthen or topple it. Republicans and Democrats take the place of Lannisters, Tyrells and Martells, alliance are regularly made between people who barely conceal their contempt for each other. Much like any Game Of Thrones season, by the middle of the run it becomes a dizzying task to see who’s betraying whom and who’s secretly allied with whom.

And while the world of Scandal has a pretense of being more civilized than Westeros, that doesn’t mean that the rule “You win or you die” doesn’t apply here too. Plenty of people have died in the pursuit of higher offices, either as part of a carefully constructed scheme, cover-up or collateral damages to said scheme, or at random because emotions simply ran too high in the moment. Even the president isn’t safe in this world, as part of the second season revolved around an assassination attempt on Fitz and the desperate attempts to either fill the void or postpone its creation.

Small wonder the architects who organize these events remain Scandal’s most engaging characters. The clear standout is Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry), the president’s chief of staff, who knows this role is the closest he can get to the high office and will defend it to the death. He’s every bit as ruthless and ambitious as a Varys or Littlefinger—although rather than being a calm operator he prefers machine-gun monologues so intense you can see him forcing back heart attacks every time he pauses for breath. Similarly, Olivia’s father Eli (Joe Morton) is the head of the black-on-black ops organization B6-13, an organization so powerful that he thinks nothing of speaking to Fitz in the sort of patronizing tones Tywin Lannister uses on the kings and queens who share his bloodline.

The men of Scandal are ruthless, but as in Westeros those who underestimate the cunning of the women do so at their peril. Washington’s Olivia is the consummate fixer, ruthlessly efficient in a crisis situation and holding the firmest of facades even when everything else is falling apart. Kate Burton’s Sally Langston is as devout as a follower of the Lord of Light, but also too canny a political player to be dismissed outright. The belle of the ball though is First Lady Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young), very much a modern-day Margaery Tyrell in her single-minded pursuit to be the wife of the most powerful man in the world. She’s sacrificed her career and body to keep Fitz in the Oval Office, and ruthlessly cuts down anyone in a position to threaten that all behind the widest smile possible. Plus, she can tie one on as well as Cersei, as evidenced by a tragicomic bender in Season 3.

That bender is a fascinating moment for the show, not only for the amusement of Young playing drunk but for the sheer resignation she displays. Virtually everyone in the Scandal universe is a terrible person, but they’re still people, and there’s always a human face to the turmoil. Be it Cersei and Tyrion admitting they’ve got no control over Joffrey or Diaz’s Huck breaking down at an AA meeting as he admits his addiction to killing (which he dubs “whiskey”), both shows find the quieter moments and do a fine job of letting those moments breathe.

Because it knows that nothing hurts more than family, it heaps heavy helpings of dysfunction on everyone even tangentially involved with Pope and Associates. Not only is the mysterious Eli also Olivia’s father, her mother Maya (Khandi Alexander) is an international terrorist with a hand in everything from assassination attempts to bringing down commercial airlines. Fitz isn’t much better off, as his father (Barry Bostwick) was a tyrannical asshole who oppressed his son to a degree that Tywin would nod approvingly at. Marriage exists as a convenience more often than not—Mellie and Fitz were entirely an arranged marriage—significant others are discarded if it helps their spouse climb up a ladder, and on several occasions contracts are taken out on blood relations. And yet through it all? Rituals like Sunday dinner persist, because even the most ruthless schemers need to enjoy a neutral glass of wine with their family now and again.

And if all of that isn’t enough, Scandal also has the distinction of being one of the most explicit shows on broadcast television. While Scandal has to play by broadcast rules of what they can show, they clearly revel in figuring out what they can get away with within those boundaries. Like Game Of Thrones, sex is regularly used as a means to an end or a weapon, carnal acts more loaded with contempt and unwilling lust than any real sense of connection. And in terms of violence? This is a show that once featured a woman chewing open her own wrists as part of an escape attempt, and you can see far more blood and tendons than you’d expect. True, no one’s been suffered a fate as dire as Theon Greyjoy, but given the show’s love for ramping up the stakes, flaying and castration might not be off the table. Regardless of era, politics is an ugly business, and neither Game Of Thrones nor Scandal shy away from letting you know just how bad things can get.

Les Chappell is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon, and a contributor to The A.V. Club and Sound On Sight. He spends a lot of time live-tweeting his television viewing and whiskey drinking at @lesismore9o9, and thinks that the one thing Game Of Thrones is missing is stylish hats for every character

• Published on 10/23/2014 at 6:32 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/23/2014 at 6:32 PM CDT