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" The Cosmopolitan.com office loves Scandal. It&amp;#039;s talked about almost as much as Sex and the City, which is testament to it&amp;#039;s popularity. (Nothing is brought up as much as Sex and the City). But despite constant references to events and characters on the show, I&amp;#039;ve managed to avoid actually learning what Scandal is even about. I didn&amp;#039;t even know the principle actors. Based on the name alone, I thought it was basically Pretty Little Liars, but with grown-ups. I have no idea what Pretty Little Liars is about. So I decided to binge-watch a bunch of Scandal to see what everyone was talking about (read: I was assigned to watch it by the editors). I grabbed a case of beer (shout out to Magic Hat&amp;#039;s Heart of Darkness stout, thank you for helping me through this) and fired up Netflix. When I was first introduced to Olivia Pope and her cohorts at Pope &amp;amp;amp; Associates, I hated them. The pilot features a quirky team of eccentric lawyers who manage to beat the odds and save their client, a staunchly conservative Republican war hero, from false murder charges. Then they convince him to come out as gay. Also, yo, the main character is in love with the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. The characters are all either trite stereotypes, and the main character, Olivia (Kerry Washington), is so super-powered and omniscient she&amp;#039;s boring. Washington&amp;#039;s face is the most interesting part of her character. How does her mouth move like that? The writers laid the melodrama and suspense on pretty thick in the first few episodes. If melodrama and suspense was icing, and this show was a cake, it&amp;#039;d be one of those cakes you wouldn&amp;#039;t want to eat because there&amp;#039;s so much icing your mouth gets dry and it&amp;#039;s just overwhelmingly sweet. What I learned to appreciate about Scandal, though, is that they really commit to laying it on thick. Forever. The writers are devoted to making this the most indulgent melodrama cake of all time.  But back to Olivia being super-powered. More than any other show, Scandal completely revolves around its main character. Men, this is what separates this show from soap operas that have 900 main characters and that all suck. Guess who is behind this conspiracy? It&amp;#039;s Olivia Pope. Olivia Pope orchestrated Quinn&amp;#039;s kidnapping and new life. She fixed the vote to put the President in office. She had a hand in Huck being thrown into a literal hole for a year and then also saving his life. Olivia Pope built a time machine and she went back in time and she&amp;#039;s her own mom. Olivia Pope is your mom. This show is like, &amp;quot;Do you want to see how deep this rabbit hole goes?&amp;quot; and then the moment you&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;Yeah, show, let&amp;#039;s do this.&amp;quot; Then Scandal punches you in the face and is like, &amp;quot;Just kidding. There is no rabbit hole. Olivia Pope IS the rabbit hole.&amp;quot; In each season, there&amp;#039;s one through-line mystery. In season 1, the question was, &amp;quot;Who kidnapped Quinn?&amp;quot; In season 2, it was, &amp;quot;Who is behind this White House conspiracy?&amp;quot; In both cases, it was Olivia mother effin&amp;#039; Pope. All you have to do to love this show is love bad-ass face-actress Kerry Washington, and that&amp;#039;s not hard at all. And then there&amp;#039;s the fact that whenever two characters are alone in a room together, someone is either getting boned or stabbed. In the last episode before the winter hiatus, &amp;quot;A Door Marked Exit,&amp;quot; the Vice President of the United States finds out her husband is having an affair with the White House Chief of Staff&amp;#039;s husband. The second she finds out, she decides to stab her husband, because that&amp;#039;s how characters on this show solve problems. If you&amp;#039;re not having sex with someone, they&amp;#039;re going to stab you. There&amp;#039;s probably a metaphor for sexual repression in there somewhere (yada yada yada penetration yada yada) but there is literally no one on this show who hasn&amp;#039;t had sex or stabbed someone. No man can resist. All that is pretty soap-opera-y, but the soapiest part of Scandal \u2014 the sheer number of characters \u2014 was admittedly a concern before I started my binge-watch. This show makes Lost and True Blood look like Friends. I&amp;#039;d make a character web for you, but every character is connected to every other character on at least three different levels. Olivia is Huck&amp;#039;s partner, Olivia&amp;#039;s dad took Huck away from his family. Quinn is super into Charlie, they both stabbed some dude with a drill, Jake and the President both like Olivia, and Jake is now the head of B-613, a super secret government organization that is apparently in charge of spying on everyone, killing people, and throwing people in holes. It&amp;#039;s the same organization Olivia&amp;#039;s dad used to be in charge of. The only people not part of a conspiracy (yet) are Huck&amp;#039;s wife and son, and I think that&amp;#039;s only because they&amp;#039;ve been given five minutes of screen time. I won&amp;#039;t be surprised if we find out this season that Huck&amp;#039;s infant son is the head of the Illuminati. By the end of 48 hours, my brain shorted out just thinking about all of the betrayals and triple-backstabs. I still don&amp;#039;t know if I really love Scandal. I do know that I yelled &amp;quot;damnnnnnn&amp;quot; at my computer screen a bunch. I&amp;#039;ll probably tune in for the mid-season finale, assuming I&amp;#039;ve got room for it on my DVR. I&amp;#039;ll give the &amp;quot;dude&amp;quot; seal of approval. If your girlfriend is trying to get you to watch it, it&amp;#039;s OK to give in. If you&amp;#039;re trying to get your guy to watch it, tell him it&amp;#039;s like Game of Thrones meets House. If he doesn&amp;#039;t watch at least one of those shows, find a new guy. Photo Credit: Getty Want more from Frank? Follow him on Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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