As many of you know, Scandal is a Shonda Rhimes-penned TV obsession of mine. Though she has a tendency to deliberately dance up and down on her audience's emotions and nerves, I find her writing style to be brilliant and she always peppers her episode with one or two "morals to the story" if one only cares to look beyond the dramatical to see them.
Watching last Thursday's Scandal "Top of the Hour" episode was one such show. In addition to the over the top drama (wait - girlie had an affair with her professor that went on for years and whose child is that?!), underneath the spectacularism was a prevailing truth.
My Aunt Violet used to say in her whispery, West Indian voice: "Gurl, the truth will always out. You can't run from the truth or death, they always catch up to you." The truth will out? Yes, the adults would nod sagely and one would always tack on, "Things done in the dark always come to light."
The thing of it is, everyone has a skeleton (or ten) in their closet. Whether one of those bones will come flying out today, tomorrow or after you're gone is the question. With few exceptions (Jimmy Hoffa not withstanding), the little things we don't want found out invariably do come out and always (ALWAYS) at the wrong darn time.
The question is, what to tell and what to take to the grave? In this case, when the wife and mother became CEO of a publicly-traded company and her former lover was nominated for a Supreme Court position - it might've served her well to pull husband to the side and do some preventative damage control. Instead, her secrets eeked out one at a time so that each blow cut deeper than the last. No bueno, chica. No bueno.
In Olivia's case, she kept secret from Fitz that she agreed to rig the election to win him the presidency. When was a good time to share that dirty little secret? I have to say, the 33rd of Neveruary would have been a fine time. Verna's deathbed confession scotched that all up. But once Olivia found out that he knew, she should have done immediate damage control. Now he's double-fisting scotch at midday and she's swigging $300 wine straight from the bottle. No bueno, chica. No bueno.
Lessons learned in this episode? The easy one is simply not to sleep with people you ain't supposed to be sleeping with but let's keep it real, shall we? Other lessons: There's always a paper (digital) trail. If you're doing dirty, don't do it digital. A phone call log can be explained. A skanky email? Not so much. There are cameras everywhere. Even when you think they're aren't? There probably are. If one other person knows your secret - it's not a secret. Point blank. Folks crack for all sorts of reasons. And last but not least - it's always a better idea to out yourself than to be outed. Please stop and read that again. If you've got skeletons, it's ALWAYS better to drag them out and display them in your own way than to have someone do it for you. You can dress them up, add musical accompaniment and make the skeleton seem not to darned scary. Everyone else is going to Stephen King/Tim Burton your ish.
What do you think, BougieLand? In the cases where you can't take it to the grave, better to self-snitch or no? Thoughts, comments, insights on the Scandal of it all?