I have been listening to this song more or less non-stop the last few days. That makes sense because about a year ago, I started binge watching Scandal. This piece is used for the Fitz/Olivia alone scenes, which when you are watching back to back to back episodes, means that you are listening to this song pretty much non-stop. It is The Light by The Album Leaf. (https://youtube/watch?v=j5m-5jP_R_0) Its a beautiful piece, especially when played in the context of the flashbulb pops and swirling sounds of the rest of the shows score. Its a moment of peace and intimacy - its Vermont, and a snowy evening between a school principal and his professor wife. Its who Fitz and Olivia could be, but cant.Of course, if Fitz had married Olivia, you would have an interracial marriage at the head of the Republican Party. Scandal is a soap opera filled with fiction, but still. That may be a bridge too far - a truly reasonable for cynical obstacle, self-made, self-powered, and yet strong enough to stop the soap opera from becoming a happy story. I get that. You meet someone and they are perfect for you. Tailor-made seemingly, and yet, it doesnt work. They make different choices, or you do - and though we are all the sum of our choices, different choices somehow dont make you different enough to stop loving each other, stop wanting to be each other. Or maybe they change one, but not the other. All you are left with is the longing, and the wishing, and then the return to reality where there is no house in Vermont. Just awkward phone calls and emails where one or both of you imagine a better world...and try to do their best with the world they have. And maybe it makes you happy, and maybe it doesnt, but it never stops being the way you wish things could be. This is an image that the show uses, and underneath it lies a subtext the show dares not mention, but I think is constantly there - What would President Fitz and First Lady Olivia be like? Olivia is good enough for Vermont, but shes also clearly better at being First Lady. As Mellie (smelly mellie) cratered into paranoia and grief, and Jake and Olivia got creepy cynical, the subtext becomes clearer - It would be a better world, a better President, a better party if Fitz had married Olivia and not Mellie. The opera part, to me, means that epic issues are writ within the scope of a family or unit. Scandal is about a lot of things, but its all interwoven into the Pope family and their relationships with others. And so, those scenes between Fitz and Olivia, where the issues of the world seem secondary to their love, lust, desire and passion for each other - pretty much define the show, and define why it means so much to us (and to me.) Its the idea that the circumstances dont matter - and that two people could be made for each other...and yet never actually get to move to Vermont.
Posted on: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 16:38:46 +0000
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