Scandal

Not many people could balance efforts to destroy an ultra-dangerous, super-secret government organization with running the re-election campaign for the President of the United States. But Olivia Pope is no ordinary crisis manager. As written by Scandal’s creator and chief mastermind, Shonda Rhimes, Pope is a smart, principled, accomplished and passionate professional woman, who just happens to be in love with the married President. Star Kerry Washington plays Pope as a wonderful paradox: a cynical power player in the nation’s capital who often wears her heart on her sleeve, especially when regarding Tony Goldwyn’s earnest-yet-calculating President Fitzgerald “Fitz” Thomas Grant III. The series, based on the exploits of real-life crisis manager Judy Smith, also features the first starring role for a black actress in a primetime network TV drama series since the 1970s. The show’s cast is similarly diverse and groundbreaking, with Pope’s crew of “gladiator” aides including Guillermo Diaz as hacker expert Huck and Columbus Short as dapper lawyer Harrison Wright. For breaking ground in the casting and writing of a nighttime melodrama that regularly pushes storylines to operatic heights, a Peabody Award goes to Scandal.