Early Saturday morning I watched the ‘very special episode’ of Scandal where they did their own take on the situation in Ferguson. Like many shows that attempt ‘ripped from the headlines’ episodes, the strokes are broad, the speeches preachy and the resolution clean cut and decisive. For me, the impact of this particular episode happened in the small details where reality seeped in, such as when it seemed like other than Olivia Pope, the rest of the characters, especially her White House contacts, were too busy being politically cautious or callous to intervene in a situation that literally was unfolding in their backyard.

Honestly, I didn’t like the episode for a number of reasons, but in general I’m not a fan ripped from the headline stories in serialized dramas. They always feel stuck into the narrative so as to make a statement as opposed to being an organic part of the story. In my opinion, if you went back to a famous Scandal scene, where Papa Pope is in jail and gives the ‘Boy’ speech to the President, you have in that one speech all of the raw emotion and understanding of race relations you would need to feel that wasn’t conveyed as well in the Ferguson episode. In fact, reading between the lines of a number of Papa Pope’s speeches, like the one he gives to Olivia where he reminds her she has to be twice as good as ‘they’ are, you get the emotions this episode was working for.

I went to a number of online review sites to see what the temperature was on this episode. A lot of the reviews I saw had mixed feelings about the episode. It was like they knew it was a special episode about a sensitive subject, so they wanted to be PC about it, but they didn’t like how heavy handed and out of character the narrative went. What I was surprised about, and honestly by now I shouldn’t be, were the comments. I get so tired of people trying to pretend racial issues aren’t a serious issue in this country yet when race is brought up it is plain to see the ugliness of misunderstanding and ignorance still clouds our racial discussions.

The scene that got the most attention in the episode is when the police officer who shot the black teenager lets loose with a speech where he lays bare all the issues he faces being a white cop in a black neighborhood. It wasn’t as raw as it could have been (the N word isn’t uttered) but it was a speech on par with a Papa Pope speech. From many comments from a number of sites I visited, people felt the scene and the dialog was too cartoony, in the sense that they felt the officer was too racist. In the same vein, I saw a number of people who felt the episode in general was badly timed because the official Ferguson report from the Justice Department was released days earlier.

Let me address the release date first, because it’s very easy to correct. There is no way on God’s green Earth the producers of the show decided to create and release this episode to coincide with the publication of the report. The justice department and the producers of Scandal, I would assume, don’t have a hotline to one another to coordinate such things. I would say the episode might have been timed to be released near the time of the 50th anniversary of the March to Selma. However, there is a bit of irony on the episode’s broadcast you might want to put into a conspiracy theory. A day after the episode aired there was another officer involved shooting of a young black man that occurred in Wisconsin that garnered national attention. The sad fact is no matter when the episode aired, you can bet dollars to doughnuts a black youth would be killed by a police officer within a week.

For those people who felt the officer’s sentiments in the speech were over the top, you may want to look at the comments left by your fellow citizens. Some of the exact same example brought up by the officer were in comments of many people. It was strange to me that a show that pushes the boundaries would get such a hostile reaction from fans. I would suggest, just as a one stop check, to go to the Fox News website and look at the comments section. You will see the same sentiment the cop voiced in countless comment from the viewers there. I would then suggest going to a local newspaper of television site. Find any story about a crime committed by a minority and look at the comments left there. Again, the same nasty, ignorant, insensitive and vile comments uttered by the police officer in the episode will be found. The writers didn’t have to make up a vile climate for the officer to utter the words he did; the conditions exist already.

So as an episode, I didn’t like it that much. I wish the ending wouldn’t have tied everything in a nice bow (the police officer getting arrested, the boy’s father meeting the President) but in trying to portray the continuing racial divide in America, I’ll give them an A in execution on the subtler moments.