‘Scandal’ season 6 spoilers: Shonda Rhimes reveals impact that election had on writing
The sixth season of “Scandal” is going to be arriving on ABC in just two weeks with new episodes, and while that may be a cause of celebration, at the same time it looks as though there are going to be a few elements of it that are also rather destabilizing. For example, it does seem as though art may be imitating life in some of these upcoming episodes a little bit more than anyone ever predicted. After all, much of the theme of the first part of this season is going to be around the election and the aftermath, and there is an argument now that the real election results have put people into a mood where they may not be all that interested in hearing about this.
In discussing this particular matter further to Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Shonda Rhimes had the following to say about the correlation between the show and the news cycle, and how Donald Trump winning the Presidency threw many of the writers for a loop:
“It’s not just that we didn’t want to be bold and big in a show like this. That wasn’t necessarily our problem as much as, how dark do you want to be at a time when people aren’t feeling so happy? I think there are things that hit very close to home that I certainly never anticipated. I just don’t think that I thought that we would be in this mood. So there are definitely a lot of things that hit very close to home that we hadn’t anticipated, things that I thought would be so far from what was gonna happen that felt like fantasy or felt like I could revel in them because they weren’t gonna be true. And they turned out to be a little bit too true.
“We literally had a storyline where the Russian government was trying to destabilize the United States government by messing with the election. We were building that into the storyline. The writer’s room was full of people staring at the board going, ‘Oh, my God.’ It comes from the fact that we all read all the papers, we’re all paying attention to the news. We try to stay up with everything both conservative and liberal and then try to extrapolate it to its most crazy degree. Unfortunately, reality is extrapolating itself to its most crazy degree right now.”
Will there be times when the show’s closeness to reality and its tone start to trip up some viewers moving forward this season? That is one of many interesting things that we’re going to be able to follow here over the course of the season. This is not the first show to really have to think about some of these issues, given that others are contemplating how they are going to be moving forward tonally. If you consider events in the real world depressing, you often want to watch a show that is a little more hopeful. If you are happy with life on the outside, meanwhile, you may be fine for entertainment that is a little bit darker.
What do you think: Could the news happening in the real world potentially impact your enjoyment of the show? Be sure to share in the comments, and head over here if you are interested in gathering up some further news on “Scandal” right now. (Photo: ABC.)