ABC’s In-House Scandal Recaps Are A Small Miracle
Granted, belatedly getting into Scandal isn’t necessarily something worth talking about in a public forum. No one’s dying to hear anyone else’s months-late thoughts on a much-discussed, wildly popular network TV show. What is still worth talking about though, is ABC’s insane series of episode recaps that they keep tucked away on an unimportant corner of the show’s website (season three spoilers ahead, obviously).
Alternately opaque and hyper-specific (and mostly just a series of rapid-fire sentence fragments), these bare bones summaries are, in their own way, sort of slaying the overwrought internet recapping game. Take this one, from episode seven of the current season:
RING! It’s the Fitz Phone! Olivia tries to ignore it, but she can’t. She answers the call only to tell the president that she’s surrounded by murderers. Fitz says he loves her. Olivia replies, “So what?” She’s incredibly hurt. Fitz wants her to stop digging into Remington. He wants her to stay away from Jake. That’s not going to happen. Olivia rallies the troops. She says they have a new client. Abby says the picture on the big board looks familiar. That’s probably because the woman in the photo is Olivia’s deceased mother.
Probably! There’s also this revelation, from episode six:
“There are likely only two people who know for sure whether or not her mother’s plane was intentionally brought down in a crash that killed hundreds. One of those people is her father, who tends to kill people once too many questions start being asked. The other is a former Navy pilot. “
Helpful if you haven’t seen an episode and want to catch up, sure, and also, an exercise in extreme brevity from which almost every internet writer could learn.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.