SCANDAL S3 Finale - Tonight (Thurs., Apr.17th) @ 10 PM ET - ABC

While The Gladiators are gearing up and buckling down for the season three finale of Scandal at 10 PM ET tonight, April 17th on ABC, here are a few provocative and humourous items to tide us over for the next few hours.

Call it a case of from the sublime to the ridiculous. Someone asked last week why several days had passed without a Scandal thread. I must admit that for years, I banned phone calls from family and friends on Thursdays from 10-11 PM unless it was a matter of life and death. Scandal consumed my total attention. I didn't quickly put in a load of laundry, make a batch of popcorn or even play backgammon and Word Twister on my tablet while Scandal was on. There was always so much happening, I didn't want to miss a minute of it. Some posters even pointed out that they recorded it to review later. Others said that because of the rapid fire dialogue, they resorted to Closed Captioning in order to understand what was being said.

About two weeks ago, it hit me: what the heck had happened to Scandal? I felt as if I'd fallen out of love with the show that I'd been fanatical about for years.

Scandal was compelling and provocative at the outset when the high-powered Washington, D.C. crisis management team took on seemingly insurmountable odds to extricate a politician or corporate executive enmeshed in career-killing or marriage-ending turmoil, usually that s/he had created.

I believe the turning point came when I realized that Olivia Pope Associates in general - and Olivia in particular - instead of serving as "fixers," were suddenly cast in the role of instigators and obstructionists. Instead of being the solution, they became part of the problem. Their actions suddenly transitioned from merely questionable to absolutely unethical to outright illegal. What happened to that pledge from the S2 finale, "White Hats Back On"? No shades of grey, here. It seems that everyone has gone over to The Dark Side.

Unlike The West Wing, where Aaron Sorkin's brilliant dialogue, riveting plots and fully fleshed characters gave us a hopeful view of American politics, Shonda Rhimes' Scandal has now chosen to give us cartoonish characters and plots, with villains ripped right from a James Bond movie.

Previously when I said Scandal was "incredible," I meant that in a good way. Now when I say that Scandal is "incredible," I mean that it's implausible, impossible and beyond belief.

If The West Wing had me at "hello," then Scandal lost me with the violence, bloodshed and needless deaths. We've followed former good girl Quinn's obsessive fascination with Black Ops and her slow downward spiral, transitioning from Huck's Mini-Me into a master (or is that more accurately, "mistress"?) of torture, who relished her job. I don't know whether this crazy terrorist plot with Mama Maya or stalwart, upstanding, seemingly incorruptible Jake, the new B-613 Command, murdering James was the final straw pushed me over the edge, but I was ready to say "sayonara" to Scandal a few weeks ago, but then decided to see if the show redeemed itself with a radical course correction in the final episodes of the season.

Also it dawned on me that all three of Scandal's presidential candidates (Fitz, Sally and Gov. Reston) are adulterers or murderers or both. (And who knows what other skeletons may be lurking in their closets?) Not exactly paragons of virtue or the epitome of high moral character. These are the best - the ONLY - choices for Commander-In-Chief and Leader of the Free World? Most certainly we can do better than this. Murdering serial philanderers do little to engender trust, instill confidence and inspire a great nation to a moral imperative of excellence.

Worse yet, there are no consequences for these vile actions. Characters commit murder with impunity and there's never an investigation, arrest or trial. No questions are ever asked by the elite Washington Press Corps or Congress. There were no hearings after the attempted Presidential assassination. The White House Chief of Staff and the Medical Examiner were complicit in the cover-up, merely take the grieving widow's word that the Daniel Douglas Langston, the Vice President's husband died of "a massive heart attack," despite multiple stab wounds inflicted by his own wife wielding a letter opener. How is that even possible? Suspension of disbelief goes only so far.

Sure, it's fiction - and a soap opera, at that - but what an unrealistically dark and cynical view of our political system. Winston Churchill said, "Democracy is a very bad form of government. Unfortunately, the others are so much worse."

Scandal gives us no redemption, no hope. All we're getting is the blistering, bleak underbelly of politics. If we wanted that, all we'd need do is watch the news.

This afternoon, I happened to find an online article written in February, that articulates a similar point-of-view about Scandal. It's good to know that I'm not alone. I wondered if anyone else felt the same.

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What the H~e~l~l Happened to Scandal?

Feb 19, 2014 06:25 PM ET
by Sadie Gennis

Scandal, I have some questions for you. Namely, what the h~e~l~l happened?

The ABC drama used to be believable. Not plausible, but at least somewhat believable. For any show to pull off the over-the-top melodrama Scandal does without becoming completely unhinged, it needs to be grounded by some semblance of reason. Even cartoons exist within a set of limitations. For example, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote can both run in midair unless Coyote looks down and realizes he's about to fall. Then, by the rules of cartoon physics, he plummets. Recently though, it's felt like Scandal's been running full-speed ahead with no ground beneath it, but when they look down and see they're about to fall, they say, 'F--- it, I'm going higher."

How much longer can they keep it up? How many more SHOCKING TWISTS can they throw at us before we become numb? How many more characters can they assassinate before the show loses all its relatability?

6 reasons why I'm giving up on Grey's Anatomy

I'm not talking literal assassination (though the show has dabbled in more than a few of those). I'm talking about shooting a bullet straight through the heart of every character's core beliefs for no reason other than to shock and startle.

Does anyone actually believe Sally Langston (Kate Burton) would murder her husband in a crime of passion? Is Sally Langston even capable of that kind of passion? Why was Mellie's (Bellamy Young) strength reframed as the result of a sexual assault? Couldn't she have just naturally been the bada-- b---- we always thought she was? Is there a brand of bleach that will remove the image of Huck (Guillermo Diaz) licking Quinn's (Katie Lowes) face from my brain? Is Olivia's (Kerry Washington) gut ever right anymore? Is there anything she won't compromise?

The answer to that last one — as Season 3 has made abundantly clear — is no. So if there's nothing Olivia won't do, where are the stakes? Probably in whatever B-613 hole the writers stashed David Rosen (Josh Malina) in.

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Just to demonstrate that I'm not a totally cranky spoil-sport, here's something hilarious:

20 Ridiculous Ways Scandal Has Hidden Washington's Pregnancy

Giant lamps, purses — we've added even more! See our favorites as we head into the finale

http://www.tvguide.com/news/scandal-ridiculous-ways-hide-kerry-washington-pregnancy-1080017.aspx