ABC’s Scandal is the reason why networks need to give shows time to find its voice and Audience. Season Two took off like a rocket and became one of the most talked about shows on television. Now you can relive every delicious moment with first lady Mellie Grant ( Bellamy Young) as Scandal: The Complete Second Season comes to DVD. Forgive the vagueness of this review, but I’m trying to avoid spoilers here.
I tried watching the pilot episode of Scandal a couple of times and thought it was so bad that I never finished it. I’m just not a fan of fake “fast talking” characters. It smacks of a writer screaming hey “Look at me, see how cool and witty my dialogue is?” I was in the mood to get hooked on something else so I decided to give the show another chance it was a slow build up but the final episode made the journey worthwhile.
Season two kicks it into high gear as David (Joshua Malina) starts to unravel the mystery of the President’s vote rigging Scandal and we find out that Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) isn’t the saint that everyone makes her out to be. We also find out early in the season, the mystery behind Quinn (Katie Lowes) and Olivia’s involvement. A lot of the dangling plot threads and questions get answered in the first few episodes of the season. Then Fitz () gets shot and things get taken to a whole new level.
This is the season we watch Olivia’s team really come together to solve the mystery of the President’s Assassination attempt, but their values and ideals get compromised and tested along the way at some point the show suffers a bit from having too many filler episodes centered around some weird plot with everyone trying to find some mysterious mole. The mole reveal was one of the most anti-climatic and comical moments in TV History. Everyone running around, shocked and outraged, all I could think of was “Huh?” Show writers did a lousy job setting that reveal up.
Watching David become a Gladiator was great, loved the development of Quinn and Huck’s relationship (Guillermo Díaz) especially his reaction to Quinn becoming a monster for a few minutes. There will, or should, be repercussions to this in Season Three. The thing I did not like about the season was Olivia and Fitz. It is really hard to have any kind of sympathy for people as self-involved as they are. I also hated the fact that somehow Mellie – the wife being cheated on is made out to be the bad guy, while Olivia is portrayed as a saint.
White House Chief of staff Cyrus Bean (Jeff Perry) was amazing in Season Two. It will be criminal if he doesn’t get an emmy nomination for his performance. He chewed scenery like a champ, watching him run around the White House was always good for a few laughs and I wanted to start a “Shit Cyrus Says….” meme.
I was really surprised at how much I really loved 2 3rds of Scandal last season, the show is really starting to click and could have been an easy A if not for the mid portion of the season where it gets completely bogged down into the ridiculously bad “mole” storyline. It also hurt the show where they moved completely away from the case of the week to full on serialized storytelling. I just don’t think most network episodes are capable of sustaining interest for a full 22 or 24 episodes. They needed to break it up into manageable chunks and just have a single thread running throughout.
Audio/Video/Presentation
Again, I don’t understand why ABC Home Video has a thing against TV on Blu-ray! Scandal is another beautiful show that is kind of ruined by forcing me to watch it in drab, bland standard definition. It is not helped by the fact that the Presentation layer is about as lazy as it comes. Just a static image for the screen saver, boring menu navigation and only one English audio track. Subtitles are in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Extras
Wow, just wow, if you are going to give us the bare minimum, why even bother?
- A Closer Look: President Grant’s Assassination Attempt (5 Min) – A five minute look at one of the most shocking moments on Scandal with the Cast and Crew
- Being Huck (8 Mins) – One of the show’s most intriguing characters Huck gets the spotlight
- Deleted Scenes – There are a ton (at least 35) of deleted scenes.
Conclusion
This featureless DVD release is fairly mediocre and one of ABC’s best shows deserved better treatment, this is a rare instance where I would probably rather have just the Digital HD download.
Grades
- Season Two – B
- Video – B-
- Audio – B
- Extras – F
Final Overall Grade – B