Scandal: The Complete First Season

Created by Shonda Rhimes (Grey's Anatomy) and starring Kerry Washington as the well-connected head of a crisis management firm, this is a rare network drama with a strong African-American female lead. Washington is Olivia Pope, one-time campaign consultant turned head of a crack team of fixers for hire in Washington, D.C., the nation's center of scandal and public relations crises. Pope's gang of self-named “gladiators in suits” includes litigator and womanizer Stephen (Henry Ian Cusick), investigator Abby (Darby Stanchfield), computer hacker Huck (Guillermo Diaz), and wide-eyed newbie Quinn (Katie Lowes). The team is all about protecting clients from legal troubles and media attention by any means necessary—and there is no shortage of takers, including an Iraq war hero accused of killing his fiancée. The first few episodes are aggressively provocative, with a storyline turning on an illicit love affair involving the president, but things become more nuanced and complicated as the short debut season explores White House machinations, while also hinting at secrets within the firm. Rhimes offers a tangle of moral quandaries and personal conflicts stirred in with conspiracies and melodramatic twists, resulting in an interesting mix of political drama, legal show, and nighttime soap opera in the world of high-powered politicos. Compiling all seven episodes from 2012, extras include behind-the-scenes featurettes. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)