The Problem with Oliva Pope by Senam SistaTV Amegashie.

What if I told you I was sleeping with my married ex-boss? What if I told you that I knew his wife and his kids well enough have told them and believe that I love them like family?

What if I said, “Yea but the wife is a total psycho biznitch”? What if I told you despite that I told him to get her pregnant solely to help boost his political career?

What if I told you that one day he was trying to put the moves on me while drunk and I told him, NO! Because even though I’m typically down for some adultery, infidel-licious goodness, this time his being drunk and belligerent had turned me off? What if I told you as I was fighting to get his non No accepting ass up off me, his bitch of a wife walked in the room? What if I told you that she almost cried, apologizing to me, FOR HIM? What if I told you her apology was probably BS because she is selfish and only in it for herself at every turn?

What if I told you that for this man, I had risked being disbarred, losing my business, my good name, my ethics, and took a SEVERAL completely ridiculous risks that could land me in Jail for three lifetimes?

Would you slut shame me? Is it slut shaming if the person is behaving like an “unethical” slut? Or making decisions that could impact my life forever and ever for some married dude? What if I told you I did it all for capital L-O-V-E love? Would you swoon and applaud me for finding the love of my life? Or would you shout BISHH is you crazy and tell me to go have a stadium of seats?

But what if I told you that I was Olivia Pope?

A few months ago, I was perusing completely, legal watch tv and movies for free sites – Don’t you dare sideeye me for going to gettvandmoviesforfree99.com. They totally could be legal. YOU DON’T KNOW MY LIFE!!

Anyway, Sir Judge-A-Lot, I was looking for something to watch when this beautiful picture of a black woman with the word SCANDAL emblazoned across her chest,  popped up in the most watched today list… So I clicked watch now, closed down the slew of pop up ads, and was shocked to find It was amazing!  When fast talking fine as ever, Columbus Short aka Harrison, asked Quinn -aka Lindsey aka no more spoiler alerts you need to just WATCH IT- if she wanted to be a Gladiator in a suit? I shouted YES, YES, a thousand times YES. It was ten minutes into the first episode and I was HOOKED.

And then there was the star of the show…. KERRY MOTHER F**KING WASHINGTON…And she was BLACK!! That should totally be no big deal but this was the first time in 38 years that a black actress had the lead role in a television drama… WAHHH???  I know I couldn’t believe it had been that long either but it had.  And there she was Leading this team of brilliant, funny, flawed, diverse, outrageously good at doing their jobs crime solving gum-shoes.

And she did all of this All with her fucking hair laid like blankets of onyx, tailor suited up for the gawds in the baddest wardrobe of any BAD BISH  I have ever seen on anybody’s TV, and she was doing it , and Doing It  and DOING IT well!

Look at her just dripping  in fierceness, fabulousness…I know what you are thinking… She and I are totally TWINZEES! ( Sigh…I’ll wait while you laugh) Lack of twinzeeness aside, her Character, Olivia Pope was EVERYTHING…  She wore the white hat ya’ll !

She was a good guy. She helped make sure that the good guys go free and made for damn sure that bad guys go to hell.  She never made a single solitary decision without trusting her gut. Cause she trusted herself above all others and only had to follow that gut to guide her to flawless victory… I live, Dahhling… I LIVE.

And Liv I did… I planned Scandal parties, got the husband hooked on it as well, told the children I would mommy dearest them if they had the audacity to even flush the toilet too loudly between 9 and 10pm central standard time every Thursday night.  And I  was overexcited.org.net.com as all of the world  started catching on and going wild for Scandal. Even my Mama O was watching it… Happy, Happy. Joy, Joy.

Seriously when I searched one of my favorite women’s websites, XOJane, and only found ONE article scraped from another website  about ABC’s Scandal I was personally offended. Ya’ll have correspondents for Downtown Abbey and Girls, but not Scandal… Scandal is making actual HERSTORY, filled with juicy gossip, and ratchet ridiculous… The lack of mainstream media and viewing attention was so crazy to me. Everyone should love this show!

You know, what  I loved most was that Olivia was a real actualized human being. This is such a major thing for African-Americans in film, television, hell in real life. She’s was not all puppy and rainbows or all fucked up and cracked out… Sometimes Black women in film are solely “you is kind, you is smart, you is important” or Monster Ball buck naked begging our Beloved Billy Bob Thornton “to make us feel good on our inside parts”….

LMAO PIC from meme generator

And those experiences have their place (I guess. Side Eye.) But Liv was a whole lot of everything and at the core she was on the right side of real womanhood. I mean, she did do some low down dirty scoundrel type shit to make it work sometimes but hey… It’s all for the greater good, Right?

She made mistakes but she knew how to swiftly handle all kinds of scandal and intricately sticky situations… I liked that she was the key figure in probably the biggest secret “Fred Sandford would have really had the big one, Elizabeth”  Scandal of them all – SPOILER ALERT Olivia Pope had an affair with the President of These United States and had found herself representing his new pregnant mistress in her case against him.

It was messy, it was so deliciously ratchet but she was handling it.  It was like a very bad episode of “I’m a 1000% sho he the daddy, Maury” but somehow Liv infinitely classed the whole  thing up.

And I liked that although she was handling it she had really conflicting moments. She was not always just some amazing, no feeling, Sapphire/Magical Negro/ angryblackwoman, super independent stereotype… How refreshing!

But It was impossible for Olivia Pope to be that anyway cause a  real black woman was writing her and had based her on a real black woman who was and still is an actual  fixer in DC.  Shonda Rhimes and Judy Smith were the puppeteers of Olivia Pope and they were working all her strings in so many beautifully tortured, completely perfect, directions and I was eating that shit up with a black power encrusted silver spoon. What could go wrong??

For colored girls who win at life cause they know they are enuf…

I loved Scandal and black women, were starring, writing for, and are the real live inspiration for it… THIS is what Baby Jesus came to die on the cross for…

BUTTTT…… Sigh… Why does there always have to be a big ass but when talking about black women… Sarcasm… Its what’s for dinner…

Anyhoo, when I started seeing other Scandal fans commenting on how dreamy her relationship with Fitz was. How badly they wanted their relationship to work..”I can’t wait to find me a guy exactly like Fitz”…. Say what now? Were we watching the same show??

When we were finally shown, Olivia and Fitz making love   fucking for the first time the people  on my social media timelines were over the moon… “thats real love”, “I bet you Mellie (the Bitch Wife) aint never got it like that” and  “ Does he love this woman or what? #trueloveconquersall ”  and all manner of cray cray mess!

I’m not sure how its going to end up and don’t want to give too much away but it looks like they are both back to being in love and going to be knocking boots on the oval office floor, in no time flat.  Some people have started calling them OLITZ in the Brangelina, Kimye, etc. tradition…  All them folks were still allegedly married to other folks when they “fell in love”  so I guess it makes sense but the real reason they do it is because some of them are convinced that Fitz and Olivia are ruled by some undeniable force to be together against all odds. And  for some reason they are calling that force true love. Some of ya’ll are twitter fighting over the show…  or even better Twitter or Tumblr search OLITZ and be amazed at the fanfics and posts about how badly people want these two crazy kids in love to make it… It is amazing to me how invested us Scandalites  are in this thing…

Well Played, Shonda… Well Played…

Picture Credit: Roni Reports

But this thing  between Fitz and Oliva is not love. This is some obsessive,  controlling, crazy, what the hell are you throwing your life away for? HOE SHIT…

Sorry ya’ll… I gotta a PhD in keepitrealology… I’m going to tell the truth and shame the devil…

TRUTH: Real love doesn’t require you to commit treason, be kidnapped by secret service agents for illicit rendezvous, and lie to the world, his wife, and yourself, to persevere.

Now,  I am not saying it is not possible to find real  love under those kind of fucked up circumstances… I’m just saying that a woman or man who truly loves and respects themselves for real…   A woman who believes and trusts her gut like Olivia and wears the white hat would have no way in hell continued this relationshit…

Naw son… Olivia would not have done all this for little more than a side piece Sally Hemmings-ish #1 mistress status. Even though almost every other character on the show is doing all kinds of crazy things for the benefit of FItz,  ultimately all them fools are taking these crazy risk for the benefit of themselves… The only thing Olivia truly has to gain and wants to gain from all of this is the joy of watching “her man” get what he wants and whatever “no one must ever find out” scraps of love she can get from Fitz.

That reeks of the Jezebel, (ie Joseline from Love and Hip Hop) woman of color so driven by sexual desire she will debase herself, deny all truths, and do anything to sexually satisfy that urge for a man stereotype.

Ain’t no way…

GTFOH with that mess… This real black girl just can’t go…

And I get it… “ I’ll do anything for any love from this amazing man”, sounds all swoony and romantic but  girlfriend, a little bit of love for a whole lot of you is NOT enough. It’s just not enough for any real  woman or who I believe Olivia Pope would be… The Olivia Pope that I’ve grown to love,  would walk ,that bad ass walk she walks when she walks, right up to Fitz and say,

“ Yes, I love you. Yes, I want to do it like they do on the discovery channel with your fine ass everyday but I love myself more. I’m not going to commit ridiculous convoluted ass crimes, risk my life and livelihood, and dishonor my gut to keep on loving you like this.  Until you completely extricate yourself from your current situations that keep you from loving me freely anywhere but under the cloak of darkness and secrecy. Until you honor me with the truth, This bullshit lovesickness is over. Right Here, Right now, we are done.”

You betta walk!!!! Liv… You betta WALK!!!

Dear Shonda Rhimes… Hire SISTATV! That was pretty good…

In writing this piece, a thought popped into my mind and try as I might, I just can’t shake it…Cover your heads, darlings…. I’m about to light a powder keg and throw it all up in your living room…. #jesusbeshotsfired

Its an actual shame and race should have nothing to do with it but let’s not post racially fool ourselves  here…  Race has something to do with everything. Anyway, you ready?  Here we go…

What if  Olivia Pope was white?

What if Mr. and Mrs Fitzgerald T. Grant were black?

Every single solitary detail of the show exactly identical except that one flip in the racial make up of the three points of this tortured “love” triangle….

Sit with that thought for a moment… Envision scenes of them giggling and making love while the crazy but at one point clueless black wife decorated the White House and invited her husbands white mistress to state dinners. Would you think that was love?

Would me and all my girlfriends be posted up in front of this show every night? Would we be calling each other to breathlessly recount the details of every episode the minute after it ended? Would #teamolivia #teamolitiz be all over my timeline?

Keep it real… I can only speak for myself and its very hard for “i love everybody”  and “love has no color” me to say this but…

HELL TO THE NAW!

If that was the case, I am certain there would be signature-filled petitions, sternly worded letters, 1000 comment blog posts, and straight up angry diatribes popping up everywhere decrying Shonda for letting this ruthless slore of white woman break up a black family like this!!! Et Tu, SHONDA?

Can you IMAGINE how we would be talking about Fitz? Can you imagine the rage at him disrespecting his horribly, bitchy black wife to chase after the white wimmenz? Would we be finally be offended at the sleazy manipulative way he is abusing, yet, somehow risking his position as the most powerful man in the world for “love”? What would we think of Oliva committing fraud, treason, and adultery to be with the married man she “loves”?

And I get why its different…. I’m completely clear about why the black men chasing after white women image is so dangerous, so much more pervasive and therefore so much more upsetting than what we are used to being shown… But I think at the very core of it we have to keep it real and begrudgingly admit that although we love her and want her happy and want love to conquer all.

But, This mess between Fitz and Olivia is unacceptable on all levels.

And you can miss me with the its just a TV show. I know these are fictional characters. And can I just let them (fictionally) LIVE  Live… blah, blah, blah… I know it’s not real and I am completely clear that ultimately, It does not matter in the very least.

But don’t you lie to me or yourself and tell me you don’t know of several folks who watch that show faithfully every Thursday because they think that they are Olivia Pope and that He is Fitzgerald T.  Grant and they will do anything to believe him when he tells her his wife is exactly like that  Bitchy, crazy, lunatic ass Mellie.

You’re not.

He DEFINITELY ain’t.

And it does not make a lick of difference if she is or is not Mellie….

This is the wrong thing to do.

There are women and men all over the world secretly dipping into back rooms,  office closets, and five-star or no star hotels  to “make love” to somebody else’s husband or wife. There are people sadly, pining away for their one true love while eating testy, regret filled dinners with the person they actually married. And there are children, on every continent, crying cause their mommy or daddy finally found out, or has finally had enough and now they will all have to learn the real meanings of new words like messy divorce, custodial visits, and sad.

So I don’t think its love… And I don’t think its real.

But I do think I’ll be watching every Thursday hoping that Shonda will use her remarkable gift for screenwriting, to make Olivia Pope woman up and walk away soon.

Because I don’t want to keep saying prayers for every hurt black, brown, white, or rainbow colored girl who is sacrificing too much for too little…  and fooling herself by calling it love…