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" The growing cult of guys watching ABC&amp;#039;s Scandal (airing Thursday nights) are likely the first to arrive on the network&amp;#039;s shores since it shuttered Lost, which just so happened to arrive in the same freshman class of &amp;#039;05 as Desperate Housewives and Grey&amp;#039;s Anatomy. Those other two have arguably spawned the Alphabet&amp;#039;s entire angle as a drama network: slightly altered tales of high-strung women caught in the mundane struggles of suburban life, silently weeping to Coldplay over their own paltry existence.  But the middle-aged babes of Scandal are wired a different way \u2014 as manic D.C. power players weaved into the webs of virtuous and villainous men: murderous politicians, assassins, ex-assassins, dirty dads, and the President of the United States as one of the biggest manwhores on television. It&amp;#039;s a show complicated by men but led by women (it&amp;#039;s ABC, after all), with the most gunplay you&amp;#039;ve seen on primetime since Lost combined with some of the speediest monologues this side of Aaron Sorkin&amp;#039;s Sports Night. So gents, here&amp;#039;s a cross-examination of the four leading Scandal dames \u2014 including Kerry Washington&amp;#039;s Olivia Pope, natch \u2014 how show creator Shonda Rhimes has damaged them beyond repair, and their crazed ways of coping with the men who&amp;#039;ve ruined their lives. [Note: spoilers below.] Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington)\u2028  Occupation: Lawyer/fixer; classy drunk What&amp;#039;s her damage? Her friend is an ex-spy/ex-subway hobo who occasionally relapses into his Dexter-esque addiction to killing, and nearly killed her dad, the CIA leader responsible for the friend and an entire army of super-assassins. She&amp;#039;s secretly in love with the President of the United States, a sexy tryst which gets called off every time they lie/cheat/get caught banging in the presidential broom closets. Also, the president and her dad might have been responsible for the plane crash that killed her mother, and she&amp;#039;s still not sure if her rebound hunk Jake \u2014 also one of her dad&amp;#039;s super-assassins \u2014 is trying to protect her or kill her. It always seems like both. Coping mechanisms: Putting all of her energy into getting her men off (yeah, we said it), downing a dozen goblets of red wine any time she finds herself alone, ruling over her employees/peasants with an iron fist of secrets, begging everyone around her for answers to #dark questions that only make everything worse. Melody &amp;quot;Mellie&amp;quot; Grant (Bellamy Young)  Occupation: First Lady of the United States; Side-Chick of the Free World\u2028 What&amp;#039;s her damage? Her husband, POTUS, is in love with the woman who managed his campaign and helped win him the presidency (actually, an entire team of people including Mellie and Olivia conspired to rig the entire election but that&amp;#039;s neither here nor there). That can get really annoying when your only job in the world is to pretend you&amp;#039;re in the picture-perfect definition of a loving relationship, yet your man&amp;#039;s banging all different kinds while the harlot&amp;#039;s got your political career by the balls. \u2028 Coping mechanisms: Having a baby just for the attention, using the other two children (who we&amp;#039;ve never seen and probably don&amp;#039;t exist) to tell her husband what an awful person he is, being a manipulative political ninja whenever necessary in order to keep her man in office just so they can glare at each other in the Oval Office and seethe with disdain/gratitude/faint lust.  Abby Whelan (Darby Stanchfield)  \u2028Occupation: Attorney/detective; sexual deviant\u2028 What&amp;#039;s her damage? Was in a four-year arranged political marriage that turned violent, and had to be rescued by Olivia. Completely in love with U.S. Attorney and moral do-gooder David Rosen, but couldn&amp;#039;t get over her past long enough to make a real commitment, so instead she stole evidence from him that caused him to lose his job. She&amp;#039;s strangely aroused by her clients&amp;#039; cases, most of whom are men with extramarital affairs whose bimbo hookups wind up dead. Abby&amp;#039;s kind of weird.\u2028 Coping mechanisms: Hate-sex with David Rosen, makeup sex with David Rosen, very freaky floor sex with David Rosen, baking cupcakes, watching sex tapes of her clients while at work, almost definitely using Photoshop to place her own face on the women&amp;#039;s bodies, staring thoughtfully into her co-worker Harrison&amp;#039;s eyes while considering all the possibilities and wonders of &amp;quot;going black.&amp;quot;  Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes)  Occupation: Associate; killer-in-training What&amp;#039;s her damage? Her boyfriend was killed in a planned building explosion for helping to rig the presidential election (in the plan that Mellie and Olivia orchestrated) and Quinn \u2014 then known as Lindsey Dwyer \u2014 was considered to be the culprit until Olivia gave her a new identity. Her other boyfriend was murdered for knowing too much about one of POTUS&amp;#039;s many affairs. She&amp;#039;s well on her way to becoming a bloodthirsty serial killer because if you&amp;#039;re going to be accused of being a murderer then you can&amp;#039;t knock it until you&amp;#039;ve tried it, I guess. She would also like more boyfriends, but her boyfriends keep ending up dead. Coping mechanisms: Hackathons, unwinding by firing off a few rounds at the gun range, becoming a junior assassin in order to find herself, turning her co-worker Huck&amp;#039;s murder-addiction problems into her own, using screwdrivers to drill holes through men (not a metaphor). Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a25950/scandal-women-sexy/>