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Rowan? Check. Eli? Check. Command? Check. Papa Pope (Joe Morton) has answered to many names over the years on Scandal, but one thing that has never changed is when this character has something to say, we listen! Whether he's calling the president a boy or reminding the world that there would be no Olivia Pope without him, here are 7 times Papa Pope sent chills down our spines. Ready to see the best of the best Papa Pope quotes? Watch the video below!

"I am the hell and the high water." ( Season 3, Episode 1: It's Handled)

In one of the most epic Papa Pope moments ever, Rowan lets his daughter know exactly who is boss.

"We are not at a party, and I am not laughing." ( Season 2, Episode 22: White Hat's Back On)

You know that old saying, "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you" that people say at parties? Well, meet the man who means it.

"You can't take Command." ( Season 4, Episode 6: An Innocent Man)

Oh, Jake. Must you really be reminded? You can't take Command. Command takes you.

"You are simply looking in the mirror." ( Season 4, Episode 9: Where the Sun Don't Shine)

When Olivia calls her father out on all of his misdeeds and shortcomings, he quickly reminds her that she doesn't have any room to talk. After all, she is his flesh.

"You are a boy. I'm a man." ( Season 3, Episode 10: A Door Marked Exit)

Most people would show the President of the United States a little respect. Papa Pope is not most people.

"You have to be...twice as good as them to get half of what they have." ( Season 3, Episode 1: It's Handled)

Olivia is reminded by her father she has no margin of error when calculating her next move as the odds are already stacked against her.

"Get yourself some power!" ( Season 5, Episode 10: It's Hard Out Here for a General)

Though he may go about it in questionable ways, Papa Pope has stated many times he only wants the best for his children. And that means power, real power.

"There would be no Olivia Pope if not for me." ( Season 4, Episode 9: Where the Sun Don't Shine)

Need he say more?

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7 most memorable papa pope quotes on scandal

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7 Most Memorable Papa Pope Quotes on Scandal | Scandal

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Rowan? Check. Eli? Check. Command? Check. Papa Pope (Joe Morton) has answered to many names over the years on Scandal , but one thing that has never changed is when this character has something to say, we listen!

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Remember when Papa Pope channeled what every black parent across the U.S. has said since, well, the beginning of our history in this country in the Scandal episode: "It's Handled?"

Rowan: Did I not raise you for better? How many times have I told you? You have to be what?

Olivia: Twice as good.

Rowan: You have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have.

It turns out Rowan (and all of our parents), weren't so far off target. According to a study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research , white workers are hired and retained indefinitely without monitoring, while black workers are monitored and fired if a negative signal is received. These fired black workers are thrown back into the large pool of unemployment, and on average they subsequently continue the cycle of lower wages and discriminatory monitoring. According to the model, discrimination can persist even if blacks are more productive than whites in the workplace. To the average black worker or student, none of this is surprising. We spent our childhood days being told, "now don't act up in front of those white people," or were excessively chastised when our grades fell below an acceptable area, because our parents knew the struggle. They knew that whether your dreams were to climb a corporate ladder, become a respected athlete or run your own business, the time and dedication to such goals would take a lot more than meeting the minimum standards. But when the Atlantic ran a piece on blacks workers needing to be twice as good , addressing workplace stereotypes and the effects of cyclical unemployment, it was very clear that many non-black Americans were obliviously, and unsurprisingly, skeptical of the findings.

RandomCriticalAnalysis said: The article completely mischaracterizes what it actually "found". It was nothing more than a mathematical model to attempt to explain why blacks have persistently higher unemployment, longer unemployment durations, and shorter employment durations. No new empirical evidence was brought to light. They also ignore a lot of evidence that argues against their assumptions and fail to meaningfully test their model.

Another reader was even more frustrated with finding out the truth.

Urbanologist said: In my work experience the exact opposite is true. White supervisors treat blacks workers with kid gloves because they're scared of being called racist and don't want accusations of discrimination against them and the company.

As per usual, the evidence is laid out for our nation to see, and white Americans still have issues owning up to systematic injustice. The Atlantic pointed out that discrimination in the workplace is a reality that's persisted for years. Historically, blacks have an unemployment rate about two points higher than their white counterparts. Currently, the gap is even higher, with white Americans being unemployed at 4.5 percent, just below the national average of a little over 5 percent. Unemployment amongst blacks is at a startling 9.4 percent, which is a slight but almost nill improvement from the 10 percent average at the beginning of 2015. So although some readers might be disgruntled that the rigged system is finally being called out, the reality is that black unemployment is an unsolved issue and too many employers have no intent the break the cycle.

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Your mom was right: Black people have to work twice as hard to be successful

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Remember when Papa Pope channeled what every black parent across the U.S. has said since, well, the beginning of our history in this country in the Scandal episode: "It's Handled?" Rowan: Did I not raise you for better? How many times have I told you? You have to be what?

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"Scandal," Shonda Rhimes's high-octane Washington drama about a mopey, mediocre president (Tony Goldwyn), the crisis fixer he loves (Kerry Washington) and the woman to whom he is actually married (Bellamy Young) has always been two shows. At first, it was a political procedural with a long-arc story about Olivia Pope's affair with President Fitzgerald Grant grafted onto it. Then, during its second and third seasons, "Scandal" stayed about the affair, but junked the clients of Olivia's firm in favor of a focus on an unaccountable national security organization, B-613, run by Olivia's father, Rowan Pope (Joe Morton).

After a season finale that featured a whole passel of crazy, I tend to agree with Vulture critic Margaret Lyons that: "I used to think of 'Scandal' as a very tense show. Now I wonder if maybe it's more of a miserable one." But even as "Scandal" has piled bombings on top of meningitis poisonings on top of murder-inspired sex to the point of exhaustion, I keep watching because of what Shonda Rhimes and her characters have to say about blackness and power in the moments between the crazy.

"Scandal" has been consistently concerned with race. When we first learned that Olivia and Fitz were seeing each other, "Scandal" played with her fear that she was Sally Hemings to his Thomas Jefferson. Olivia is free, rather than enslaved, and a prominent businesswoman and political operator, but Fitz occupies an office with vastly expanded authority. Race is not the only source of the power differential in their relationship, but the racial difference between Fitz and Olivia inflects that profound imbalance.

But this season has turned its focus away from the power Olivia lacks, and towards what she has done with the authority and reach she does have. When "Scandal" kicked off this season, it was with a lecture from father to daughter about her lack of ambition. Rowan's familiar injunction to Olivia that "You have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have," has been the line from that monologue with the most staying power. But I was struck by Rowan's injunction to Olivia about the reach of what power she earned. "For God's sakes. You know to aim higher," Rowan, who has commandeered an intelligence bureaucracy that is not answerable even to the president, told Olivia. "At the very least you could have aimed for chief of staff. Secretary of State. First Lady - do you have to be so mediocre?"

If Rowan's concern is that Olivia has worked twice as hard and gotten so little, Olivia's mother, Marie Wallace (Khandi Alexander) - who happens to be an impeccably dressed international terrorist - is concerned with what Olivia is doing with what power she has accrued. "I'd rather be a traitor than what you are, Livy," Marie told Olivia toward the end of this season. "Cleaning up those people's messes, fixing up their lives. You think you're family. But you're nothing but the help, and you don't even know it. If that's all you want out of your life, baby, I guess it's none of my business." The way Olivia responds to those two conversations was the most interesting arc of the season.

"What else do you need? What service can I render for you today? Am I here to stroke your ego? Am I your cheerleader? Am I hear to wipe your tears? Am I your nanny?" Olivia demands of Fitz after talking to her mother. "Maybe I'm here to make you feel hot and manly and ready so you're not jealous of your wife's boyfriend." The vice president declares Olivia's job is "carrying out these little emotional assassinations." When Fitz's rival for the presidency starts peeling off interest groups, Olivia uses her pigmentation to reassure him that the NAACP will not defect. After a bombing, Olivia curses a network producer who cuts away from Fitz's statement and towards his rival on the scene.

Her denial starts to crack. "How did we get like this? When did we stop being people?" Olivia asked Cyrus Beene, the White House chief of staff. "Were we ever people?" Cyrus throws back at her. "Or did serving at the pleasure of the president just help us to shed our pesky skins and unmask us as the monsters we really are?" By the end of last night's season finale, Olivia has come to a decision. "Now it's time for me to stand in my truth," Olivia explained. "It's me. I'm the thing that needs to be fixed. I'm the thing that needs to be handled. I'm the scandal."

Initially, Olivia was the scandal because she was sleeping with the president of the United States. But in the seasons (and years) since, her sins have accumulated. She stole an election. She has enabled a man who killed a Supreme Court justice. She harbors a semi-reformed torturer. She has helped her mother, a terrorist, escape justice. She has kept Fitz, a decidedly mediocre man, in office to gratify her own ego.

The question that lingers over "Scandal" now, drawing closer than it ever has, is how Olivia Pope came to do these things. Was she lead astray by her heart, rather than following the counsel of her head? Was Olivia so tempted by the opportunity to burnish her own reputation by electing a president that she put aside all other considerations? Has her guilt over her continuing affair with Fitz made it easy to ask her to do unaskable things, including repairing the relationship between her lover and his wife? Or does her blackness and femaleness mean that Olivia can be given the kind of power no one really wants to have, the authority to scream at segment producers and rent herself out to provide cover, the ability to take the blame but not enough power that she needs to be protected?

Olivia's parents are liberated from the burden of Fitzgerald Grant, each in profoundly different ways. Rowan Pope is so powerful that he can laugh at the president of the United States, at a white president of the United States, even when he is in captivity. And Marie Wallace is freed by her indifference and contempt. Rowan has captured the system. Marie prefers to dismantle it. But they spent much of the lead up to the season finale neither breaking the world, nor saving it, but tormenting each other. After Marie stabbed Rowan, he imprisoned her in a black site. Her response was just to smile.

The parents who have preached that Olivia should be twice as good, that she should refuse to be a maid, either literally or intellectually, are making even bigger wastes of their power than she is. "Scandal" is a huge hit, and even though it ended with Olivia Pope on a plane away from Rowan, Marie, and Fitz, I know she will be back in Washington next season. When she returns, I hope Rhimes makes time for Olivia to continue working out the big questions "Scandal" posed this season: If you are going to be twice as good for half as much, what should that half look like? And what does Olivia want it for?

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Black power, black responsibility and the big question for Olivia Pope from 'Scandal'

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"Scandal," Shonda Rhimes's high-octane Washington drama about a mopey, mediocre president (Tony Goldwyn), the crisis fixer he loves (Kerry Washington) and the woman to whom he is actually married (Bellamy Young) has always been two shows. At first, it was a political procedural with a long-arc story about Olivia Pope's affair with President Fitzgerald Grant grafted onto it.

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So, what was old Joe Morton so pissed about, anyway? The show kind of plays it for a subtle laugh: Rowan hates that his daughter whom he raised so well is willing to sleep with the most powerful man in the world only to settle for the position of first lady. "At the very least, you aim for Chief of Staff, Secretary of State," he screams at her. (Later on, we see photos of Olivia Pope on horseback in full riding gear and are informed that she attended only the best schools her entire life.)

But, seriously, I think plenty of black parents would be as incensed as Rowan if not more -- and not simply because her choice of lover is white. It's because, at every turn in the history of the show, she seems to be willing to throw away everything, her career, her reputation -- I might argue, her dignity -- for this man. And for what? Viewers are frequently reminded through dialogue that Fitzgerald Thomas Grant was to be a great president, that he deserved to win the election that Olivia Pope helped rig for him. But, as far as I can tell, President Fitz's in-office agenda mostly includes ordering the occasional anti-terrorist strike, treating his actual wife like absolute shit, and banging his side chick in any available room in the White House. Oh, and there's the aforementioned murder.

From "Grey's Anatomy" to "Private Practice" to a host of TV projects in development, we know that creator Shonda Rhimes works at least twice as hard as any of her peers in Hollywood. And, certainly, she strives to make "Scandal" multiple times more insane than any escapist drama on the small screen without vampires. Maybe someday soon, she'll re-orient her main character with a bit more of her own drive and focus. Who'd like to see Olivia Pope run against Vice President Sally Langston in the next election? Now that would be crazy.

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"Scandal's" racially charged motto: "You have to be twice as good as them"

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So, what was old Joe Morton so pissed about, anyway? The show kind of plays it for a subtle laugh: Rowan hates that his daughter whom he raised so well is willing to sleep with the most powerful man in the world only to settle for the position of first lady.

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By Lauren Bogacz and Payal Shukla

If you work in public relations and haven't been hiding under a rock for the past few years, you've undoubtedly heard of the ABC hit show "Scandal," inspired by a real-life crisis communications professional navigating the media and political landscapes of Washington D.C. While it's no secret that large portions of the show have dramatized what it actually means to work in PR, the main character's struggles with wearing the "white hat" are rooted in real practices seen across agencies of all practices and industries.

The "white hat" signifies when a person is playing the role of a good guy. The concept dates back to the good ole days of black and white Western movies, where the hero always wore a white cowboy hat and the villain a black one. In public relations, most of us are the good guys and wear the white hat on behalf of our clients. This also carries over to our interactions with our client's clients, the media and each other. Kerry Washington plays Scandal's main character, Olivia Pope, who references on multiple occasions when she's taking her white hat on and off. Situations arise frequently that challenge us to keep them on.

With the new season of Scandal premiering Thursday, we take a look at some prominent, real-world examples of when PR professionals must put on their "white hats" - both consciously and subconsciously.
Media Relations
Early in the series, Olivia claims she can always tell when a client is being truthful and most reporters can say the same for PR pros. We all know journalism is bound by a code of ethics that values accuracy, objectivity and self-regulation. These same principles, among others, apply to media relations. Respecting a reporter's deadlines, honoring exclusives and being truthful are just a few opportunities for us as public relations professionals to prove to reporters that we (and our clients) are good guys.

On the show, Olivia wins big for her clients thanks to her expertise in media relations. As the former White House Communications Director, she understands the importance of building a strong relationship and respected reputation with the press. She always positions her clients in a positive light while getting the media the material they need. Olivia is willing to honor exclusives to the press if they in turn allow her to sort things out with her clients first. She always takes time to focus on the "big picture" perspective from both sides of every story, allowing her to expertly frame the story she wants printed while still being honorable.
Client Relations
Beyond the basic principles of client relations - trust, honesty, professionalism and dedication to delivering results - PR pros often serve as a moral compass for clients navigating a challenging media or customer landscape. This is when we wear the white hat for our clients. Whether helping them through a crisis comms situation, shaping their key messages or launching them in a new market, we are extensions of our clients and their partners.

On "Scandal," Olivia's clients constantly put her white hat to the test. She often finds herself saddled with cases where the lines blur between her personal and professional life and right and wrong. Many clients who arrive in Olivia's office are accused of heinous crimes and unjust behavior. As their public relations representative, it's her responsibility to help them properly navigate both the law and media. She must tip her white hat in favor of her clients, while still respecting the justice system and journalism landscape.
Office Culture
In the cutthroat world of agency life, paying it forward with our peers can be an ethical expression of support within the industry. PR associates wear the white hat when they share resources, pass on leads and offer their time and help to other team members. PR managers can be seen wearing the white hat when they foster collaboration, knowledge sharing and positive reinforcement.

Olivia's office is portrayed as a dysfunctional family. Each member of the Pope and Associates team comes with a history of dirty little secrets and emotional baggage, yet they always manage to come together to perform well for their clients. Colorful histories and questionable decision making aside, Olivia prioritizes loyalty and will do whatever it takes to maintain the dream team she's created, understanding the talent each of them bring to the table.

"Scandal" may be dramatized, but the foundation it stems from of trying to produce ethical work has real-world applications. Despite popular conception of the industry, long-term success can't be built on unethical behavior. Without this code of conduct, the media and our industry would be filled with mishaps, similar to what we see on the show. Public relations is all about your word. Be it literal word choice or reputation, it's important to complete work that can stand alone in representing both clients and agencies well.

Payal Shukla is a senior account executive at Walker Sands, specializing in the wearable technology, electronics ..read more

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Dust Off Your White Hat: The Olivia Pope Skills Every PR Gladiator Needs

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By Lauren Bogacz and Payal Shukla If you work in public relations and haven't been hiding under a rock for the past few years, you've undoubtedly heard of the ABC hit show "Scandal," inspired by a real-life crisis communications professional navigating the media and political landscapes of Washington D.C.

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Toward the end of Mike Nichols's adaptation of "Primary Colors," Henry Burton (Adrian Lester), a top political strategist for Jack and Susan Stanton (John Travolta and Emma Thompson), is devastated when he finds out how they intend to smear a rival politician who poses a challenge to Jack's campaign for the presidency. "They can't get away with this," he says in dismay. "This cannot be a world that lets them get away with it." His fellow staffer Libby Holden (Kathy Bates), who has known the Stantons for decades, is amused and a little sad at Henry's naivete. "Imagine a black boy saying that," she tells him. "What a privileged life you've had."

That line always reminds me of Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington), the crisis-fixer at the center of Shonda Rhimes's fevered Washington drama "Scandal." Olivia is a power fantasy, a woman who grew up riding horses, who has the president at her beck and call, who never, ever spills red wine on her impeccable cream and gray outfits. Her power is real off-screen, too: "Scandal" gave broadcast television its first black female main character since 1974, and the show's success helped make possible similar fevered shows with powerful black women at their centers, like "How To Get Away With Murder" and this spring's smash hit, "Empire."

For all that "Scandal" both delights and shocks, capable of communicating truths about torture and a metastasizing intelligence bureaucracy that a more sober show couldn't carry off, the very things that make Olivia appealing also limit what "Scandal" can say about race. If Olivia were bowed under the weight of constant slights, she wouldn't be nearly so swashbuckling or so enviable a figure. And in sending her gladiatorial skills up against institutional racism, as "Scandal" did last week in "The Lawn Chair," an episode that echoed the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, the show risks making racism seem like an easier foe than it actually is.

There's some reason for Olivia to be optimistic about the extent to which racism inflects her life. She doesn't live in our world. She resides in a fantasy-land where black men run major government agencies without getting tangled up in Fast and Furious-style investigations, where people of color are well represented in Congress, where Republicans can get their act together on immigration policy, where she and her white lover can actually imagine that coming out as a public couple will shake up American racial attitudes.

"Scandal" does break from this almost-post-racial fantasy from time to time. When the show talks about structural inequality, though, both Olivia's establishment father and her terrorist mother tend to argue that it is their daughter's responsibility to transcend any barriers that might block her path.

When her father, Rowan (Joe Morton), who runs a totally unaccountable intelligence agency that can command even the presidency, lectures Olivia in the show's third season about the need for her to be twice as good as white people to get half as much, his real disgust is reserved for her choices, which seems to be leading her, at best, to be first lady rather than secretary of state. The implication - and the premise of "Scandal" - is that Olivia is more than capable of being not just twice as good, but four or eight times as good, in a way that lets her be the girl with the most cake, no matter her color. Olivia's mother, Maya (Khandi Alexander), has an analysis essentially identical to Rowan's, calling Olivia "nothing but the help, and you don't even know it."

"The Lawn Chair" is one of "Scandal's" - and Olivia's - first confrontations with the idea that she can't transcend everything.

The episode began with what seems like a setup for another Olivia Pope superheroine operation. She's so gifted that she decides to take an impossible job: helping the District of Columbia police department manage its response to an officer's killing of an unarmed black man. For a substantial part of the episode, Olivia seems to believe that her talent can transcend even this dreadful situation, that she alone can get more by working with the police than the crowds who gather around the crime scene, led in chants by an activist named Marcus Walker (Cornelius Smith Jr.).

"You know why you're here, right? You know why they chose you?" Marcus asks Olivia, telling her that she's giving the department cover less with anything she does than with the color of her skin.

"This isn't a platform. You're not auditioning to become America's Next Great Black Activist," Olivia snaps back, dismissing Marcus as a race hustler. "You have no idea what I'm about."

But Marcus has a response at the ready, one that acknowledges that President Fitzgerald Grant's (Tony Goldwyn) record - which we don't see much of on-screen - might be something less than a delightful fantasy. "You're about getting a white Republican president elected," he reminds her. "Twice."

There's something fascinating about how utterly naive Olivia appears in "The Lawn Chair." She seems to believe that the police department genuinely wants to do right by the dead boy and his father, Clarence (Courtney B. Vance), who guards his son's body with a shotgun, insisting to talk to the officer who killed his boy. She's surprised when the police chief cordons off the press so they can't see crowd-clearing efforts up close. And she's shocked when David Rosen (Joshua Malina), the attorney general, doesn't just show up to the scene of the shooting when she demands that he come.

"I can't just go marching into every sensitive situation trying to rush the justice process. There are laws, okay? Ones I'm paid to uphold," David tells her, exasperated.

"To protect people who look like you," Olivia tells him, raw from the shock of a situation she can't handle, from a scene where no one wants the sort of slick comfort she's used to selling. "You talk about fairness and justice like it's available to everyone. It's not. ... I can't fix this, David. There's nothing left. There are no more tricks in my bag." At the moment, maybe it seems that way.

But this is "Scandal." Olivia gets her groove back, telling the cops to give Clarence space when he gets upset and it looks like the result might be gunfire. When she goes to the police station, her presence prompts the cop who tried to cover up a bad shooting not only to confess but to confess in terms that are so blatantly racist that his fellow cops (a number of whom are black) turn against him. Once again, she's a superheroine who can keep fingers off triggers, who can shoulder through the thin blue line. This is a fantasy less of just and timely government intervention to punish racist violence than of a world where respectability politics actually works.

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The racial education of 'Scandal's' Olivia Pope

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Toward the end of Mike Nichols's adaptation of "Primary Colors," Henry Burton (Adrian Lester), a top political strategist for Jack and Susan Stanton (John Travolta and Emma Thompson), is devastated when he finds out how they intend to smear a rival politician who poses a challenge to Jack's campaign for the presidency.

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"There's an audience of African-Americans who just want to see themselves in a good story, not necessarily a race-specific show," said Joan Morgan, a fan of the series and the author of "When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost," a book about black women and feminism today. "It's not about this being a black show," Ms. Morgan said. "It's about seeing the show where black women and other women are represented less about race and more about who they are."

"Scandal" follows the twists and turns of Olivia Pope, a political fixer played by Ms. Washington, and her team of lawyers, hackers and political insiders. The character is loosely based on the real Washington operative Judy Smith, a former member of the George H. W. Bush White House and well-known crisis manager who has represented, among others, Monica Lewinsky and Michael Vick. (Ms. Smith is a co-executive producer on the show). Olivia is also having an affair with the president of the United States, Fitzgerald Thomas Grant III, played by Tony Goldwyn.

Asked whether she felt any pressure being in this unusual position, Ms. Washington said the pressure was on the audience more than on the cast and crew. She said in an e-mail: "The question was: Are audiences ready to have the stories that we tell on television to be more inclusive? Are we ready for our protagonists to represent people of all different genders and ethnicities?"

"I think the success of the show speaks to how we have become more inclusive as a society because the fans of the show span all different races and ages and genders," she wrote. "It's very exciting." For Dr. Brittney Cooper, co-founder of Crunk Feminist Collective and assistant professor of women's studies at Rutgers University, the subtleties of Ms. Washington's character, Olivia Pope, make her most attractive.

"The few black women we've seen in prime-time roles in scripted shows, they have to be morally above scrutiny, and she's not," Dr. Cooper said. In addition to her relationship with the president, Ms. Washington's character has defended the reputations of dictators, executives and politicians.

"She's the most complex black female lead we've ever seen in prime time," Dr. Cooper said. "You're not getting an archetype, you're not getting a stereotype, you're getting a fully fledged human being," she said.

Shonda Rhimes, the executive producer and creator of the show declined repeated requests for an interview, and representatives for the show seem less interested in talking about the subject of race and "Scandal." While excited about the show's success among African-American audiences, they were eager to point out the show's success among all audiences.

Ms. Rhimes also created "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice," shows that have also prominently featured ethnically diverse casts and interracial relationships. One of the few instances in which race was directly addressed by the characters in "Scandal" was an exchange between Olivia and Fitz, as the president is known. Olivia, discussing their relationship, tells him, "I'm feeling a little Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson about all this." Later Fitz confronts Olivia and tells her that the comment was "below the belt."

"You're playing the race card on the fact that I'm in love with you," he says.

Twitter and Facebook lit up with reaction. "Rhimes is so smart." said Dr. Kaila Story, who holds the Audre Lorde chair in race, class, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Louisville. She said the producer wanted to make clear this was a very different kind of relationship. "The whole institution of enslavement in and of itself does not engender a romantic relationship," Dr. Story said.

Social media was part of the show's strategy from the beginning. During broadcasts cast members live-tweet about each episode. "The fans look forward to joining the cast each week so they can 'watch together' and talk about the show while it's on," Marla Provencio, the executive vice president for marketing and the chief marketing officer at the ABC Entertainment Group, wrote in an e-mail.

The network's efforts seem to have paid off. The show has a healthy number of people tweeting during the broadcast, and virtual "Scandal" parties have sprung up on Facebook so friends can watch and comment together. The last episode of the show before its hiatus in December generated 2,838 tweets per minute and a total of 157,601 tweets.

"I can connect with my sister in Houston, my friends who are living across the country, everybody who is watching the show," said Diane Johnson a vice president in Washington for Ketchum, a public relations company, and an avid fan of the show who was invited to a virtual Facebook party. "It enhances the entertainment factor for me."

Correction: February 12, 2013

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"There's an audience of African-Americans who just want to see themselves in a good story, not necessarily a race-specific show," said Joan Morgan, a fan of the series and the author of "When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost," a book about black women and feminism today.

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Mama Pope delivers on Strong Black Woman expectations

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Mama Pope delivers on Strong Black Woman expectations

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Mama Pope Speaks Her Mind - Scandal Season 6 Finale

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Maya Pope (Khandi Alexander) delivers a captivating speech after being arrested. Scandal - Subscribe: http://goo.gl/mo7HqT

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In real life, the hair is more tousled and less workplace-professional, with ribbony streaks of punkish orange mixed in with the natural black. The speaking voice is more singsong and girlish, half an octave up in register. The face, freer to smile, unburdened by crises personal or constitutional, is more beautiful still.

Than? Given that it's Kerry Washington being described, and that it's the middle of 2013, we're clearly not talking about any of the characters she has played in major motion pictures over the last decade: Django's wife in Django Unchained, say, or Idi Amin's wife in The Last King of Scotland, or Ray Charles's wife in Ray. We're talking, obviously, about Olivia Pope.

For the uninitiated, Olivia Pope is the central figure in ABC's Thursday-night drama Scandal: the most powerful fixer in Washington, D.C., a woman whose firm, Olivia Pope and Associates, runs interference for high-profile clients in tight spots, be it a wifeless G.O.P. gubernatorial candidate with gay-rumor issues or a female C.E.O. whose long-ago affair with a current Supreme Court nominee is driving the news cycle. That's the procedural part of the show, anyway. There is also the matter of Olivia's being the on-again, off-again extramarital lover of the president of the United States, for whom she used to work. This circumstance, combined with the fact that she is privy to and complicit in some whopping state secrets-for instance, that ballot fixing played a role in getting the president, Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn), elected-gives the show its long arc and its hummingbird pulse.

Scandal is paced like a Spanish-language telenovela, plotted with the intricacy of a Tolkien fantasy, produced with the values of premium cable, and set in an alternate-universe D.C. where everyone is uncommonly attractive and uncommonly checkered of past-a combination of devices that has made the show not only a delirious, addictive viewing experience but also a breakout hit in its second season, which drew to its conclusion in May.

K-ssss! F-t-t-t, K-ssss!

Even in this era of D.V.R.-ing and Netflixing, Scandal still warrants its "Thursday-night" designation, for its narrative momentum has engendered a loyal viewership that eagerly tunes in the moment a new episode airs and, what's more, passionately tweets about plot developments as they unfold. Observing all this social-media activity without having watched the show, Lena Dunham, who knows a thing or two about event television, took to Twitter on the day of Scandal 's Season Two finale to announce, "Not leaving house this weekend until I'm caught up on Scandal. I feel left behind and left out like the last girl to get my period."

More typical of the rampant Scandal chat on Twitter are the febrile posts of the all-in, punctuation-crazy fan who, while watching an episode last spring, tweeted such sentiments as "SCANDAL SCANDAL SCANDAL!!!!! This show is incredible!!!!" and "Wow! Scandal just got even more SCANDALOUS!!!"

The 77-year-old author of these tweets, one Marion S. Barry Jr., used to be the mayor of the District of Columbia, is currently a city councilman there, and has a certain fluency in matters of scandal and politics. Barry explained to me via e-mail that he had heard members of his staff talking enthusiastically about the show and decided to give it a try one night. He was instantly hooked. "Olivia Pope is the ultimate fixer," Barry wrote. "I can recall watching an episode of Scandal, and Olivia was running down her strategy to a client. I actually played her idea out in my head and thought to myself, 'That actually could work.' " The key to Scandal's success, Barry said, is the casting of Washington, of whom he's been a fan since her performance in Ray. "Kerry Washington is a magnificent actress," he wrote. "I can't imagine anyone else playing Olivia Pope. She IS Olivia Pope."

And yet, Kerry Washington, in person, will tell you, disarmingly, that she is not Olivia Pope-that she is not as smart as the character she plays, "that I have to learn things to be her all the time." Her actor's prep, she told me, includes some student-like cramming-for example, reading Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine to better understand Supreme Court machinations-and regular phone conferences with Judy Smith, the real-life D.C. crisis-management expert upon whom Olivia is loosely based. (Her firm, Smith & Company, has steered such clients as Monica Lewinsky and former U.S. senator Larry Craig through their public ordeals.)

I met Washington for lunch in New York City in the interregnum between Scandal's second and third seasons (the latter begins filming this month and will start airing in September) and found her to be, in some ways, credibly un-Olivia-like. She wore not one of Olivia's white pantsuits but a black, rather short Giambattista Valli jacquard dress with a teardrop neckline and, over it, a Valli jacket of blue cashmere with contrasting black sleeves. She stuck to tea, explaining that, unlike Olivia, who pours herself giant balloon glasses of red wine (or swigs straight from the bottle), she partakes of alcohol no more than two or three times a year. She was quick to self-deprecate, confessing that she felt a little sheepish about the honor of delivering this year's commencement speech at her alma mater, George Washington University, because, surely, they could have done better than "the blind girl who fell in love with the Thing in Fantastic Four. "

But c'mon: this is a smart, formidable woman. Like Law & Order before it, which introduced new scenes with a gavel-like ch-CHUNK, Scandal announces scene shifts with a trademark sound effect-in this case, a digitized camera-shutter whir ( K-ssss! F-t-t-t, k-ssss, k-ssss!). At times, listening to Washington speak is like hearing that sound-synapses firing urgently, thoughts being thoroughly microprocessed. It is not every TV star who will carefully parse the semiotic significance of her character's overcoats, down to the "feminine peplums," or will enumerate, in PowerPoint detail, the three pillars of Scandal 's social-media strategy. Kerry Washington may not be Olivia Pope, but Olivia Pope has more than a little Kerry Washington in her DNA.

"Gladiators in Suits"

Washington is a native New Yorker, born in 1977 to two Bronx-based professionals, Earl Washington, a real-estate agent, and Valerie Washington, a professor of early elementary education at Lehman College. Hers was a socially conscious upbringing. At 13, Kerry, an only child, was taken to Yankee Stadium to see the newly freed Nelson Mandela speak, and upon turning 18, she recalled, "my becoming a voting citizen was celebrated the way other people would celebrate a Sweet 16. My parents took me out to dinner, and we talked about who I was going to vote for."

From her pre-teen years through 12th grade, Washington attended the Spence School, an elite all-girls academy on Manhattan's Upper East Side. One of her best friends then was Allison Peters, like Washington an African-American girl who commuted to school from the Bronx. Peters, now a digital-strategy consultant who advises clients (Washington among them) on how to harness the power of social media, recalls a " Cosby-like atmosphere" prevailing in the Washington household-"a sense," Peters told me, "of really caring about education, but with warmth and a family environment rather than pressure."

Still, Kerry was a rather driven youngster, the kind of girl who took up swimming because her parents told her it was the one sport in which proficiency might mean the ability to save a life. And, being a teen at the height of the red-ribbon era of AIDS awareness, she became a safe-sex advocate, participating, via Mount Sinai Hospital's Adolescent Health Center, in an educational troupe that performed self-written sex-ed sketches in schools and community centers. In one sketch, she played a girl who helped her brother come to terms with the fact that their father, infected with H.I.V., was gay. In another, she advised a pal, pre-prom, on how to put on a condom, using a banana as a prop.

"It was some of the best actor training I've ever had," Washington said. "We would stay in character after the show, and the audience would interact with us. It taught me the importance of really understanding everything about who you're playing, because you never knew what question was going to come." Though she harbored thoughts of becoming a teacher or a psychologist, Washington continued to act through high school and college, and, at the age of 23, landed her first significant film role: as the teen-mom confidante of Julia Stiles's character in Save the Last Dance, a tale of urban inter-racial romance whose hard lessons were not unlike those enacted in her troupe's safe-sex sketches. Washington has not lacked for work since and has also established herself as a progressive political activist, serving on President Obama's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and delivering a speech in support of the president at last year's Democratic National Convention.

Scandal's creator, Shonda Rhimes, and her producing partner, Betsy Beers, cast a wide net in seeking out their Olivia Pope, auditioning a large number of African-American actresses in 2011. (Olivia was conceived as a black woman because her inspiration, Judy Smith, is black.) Washington knew she was one of many in competition for the role-the actress Gabrielle Union has said in interviews that she, too, read for the part-and recalled that, in her initial meeting with Rhimes and Beers, "there was a feeling like a Western combined with a first date: sort of checking each other out from across the main street. We didn't know each other." Within a few minutes, though, said Washington, "that all went out the window." Rhimes and Washington proved eminently simpatico (sharing, for example, a proclivity for mainlining popcorn, a trait they would impute to Olivia), and Scandal had its star.

Scandal, in a sense, upholds Washington's tradition of righteousness through theater, though it has a funny way of doing so. It seems to be set slightly in the future, in a wondrous time when it is unremarkable that the White House chief of staff is an openly gay man, the vice president is a woman, the white Republican president is in love with an African-American woman, and this woman happens to run a crackerjack consulting firm with a racially mixed, gender-balanced staff. The hitch is the show's characters don't inhabit a Utopian peace-and-harmony futureworld like the one in the original Star Trek TV series, where diversity was an indicator of how enlightened civilization had become. Rather, Scandal is rife with slimeballs, cover-ups, and double, triple, and quadruple crosses. Its measure of equality is that everyone is empowered to be ruthless and cynical.

The White House chief of staff, Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry), views politics as literal blood sport-he secretly keeps a hit man on his payroll-and treats even his marriage as an exercise in manipulative horse trading, promising his reporter husband that they'll adopt a baby if the husband backs off from sniffing around the Oval Office for stories. The vice president, Sally Langston (Kate Burton), is a Tea Party extremist who barely goes through the motions of solemnity and well-wishing when the president, a moderate, is critically wounded in an assassination attempt. An ailing, hard-bitten Supreme Court justice named Verna Thornton (Debra Mooney) is more Damon Runyon than Sandra Day O'Connor, croaking terrible Washington truths to Olivia and President Grant from her hospital bed like a female Bill Casey. And Olivia's own crew is a band of head cases and reclamation projects, among them an ex-C.I.A. assassin named Huck (Guillermo Díaz), who attends A.A. meetings to expiate the rush he gets from killing people, and a nervous-Nellie young lawyer named Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes), who, it is revealed as Season One progresses into Season Two, is a fugitive from the law. (I am purposefully not going into further detail about plot points from Scandal 's first two seasons for the sake of those who haven't yet seen the show and plan on catching up.)

All that said, Olivia Pope, though she crosses some ethical lines, remains the good guy; she and her lieutenants call themselves "gladiators in suits," a mantle that the show's Twitter faithful have taken up themselves (e.g., "I'm a gladiator in a suit too! LOL!"-@marionbarryjr, May 2). And Olivia has turned out to be an inspirational figure to viewers.

"One of the most profound things for me about the show is the number of white women of all ages who come up to me and say, 'I want to be Olivia Pope,' " Washington said. "It's especially profound in a place like South Africa. It's called The Fixer over there, and it just started its second season. The fact that white women can see this woman of color as an aspirational character is revolutionary, I think, in the medium of television. I don't think white women would feel that way about Olivia if her identity as a woman, period, wasn't first in their mind."

I had happened to see Washington's most recent movie, the romantic comedy Peeples, co-starring The Office's Craig Robinson, before meeting with her. I noted to Washington how striking it was that the previews programmed to run before Peeples in the theater were almost all for films niche-marketed to black audiences: a concert film by the comedian Kevin Hart, the Paula Patton movie Baggage Claim, the bro-com sequel The Best Man Holiday. The de facto message was We are not expecting any white people to be interested in Peeples, or, for that matter, in any of this other stuff.

"See, that's what's really sad," Washington said. "It's an unfortunate part of how the industry is sort of catching up to the material. But that's one of the things I think is so great about Scandal. "

Welcome to ShondaLand

That Olivia has transcended her racial identity, and that Scandal has transcended pigeonholing as "a black person's show" (and, for that matter, as a women's show), is a tribute to Scandal's creator, Rhimes. We as a nation have not yet fulfilled the promise of being a post-racial society, of which Barack Obama's election was supposed to be an augury, but in ShondaLand (which is literally the name of Rhimes's production company), race is almost an afterthought. Rhimes, herself an African-American woman, commands an empire within ABC that includes her long-running hit Grey's Anatomy, its spin-off, Private Practice (whose six-season run just came to an end), and, now, Scandal. All three shows are nonchalantly populated with smart, able people of both sexes and various races-more notable for the sheer fact of their diversity than for any explicit discussion of race within their episodes.

Rhimes is personally way past any rah-rah celebration of how far she's gotten as a black person in the entertainment industry. When I mentioned to her how powerful I found the optics, to use the political-handler term, of an appearance she made last December on Oprah Winfrey's interview program Oprah's Next Chapter -she, Washington, Winfrey, and Judy Smith all gathered in a room conversing, four African-American women at the peak of their professions-she replied, "To me, that felt like my dinner table, with my parents, you know what I mean? Four African-American women sitting in a room and being powerful isn't surprising to me, I guess."

But Winfrey was palpably moved by the experience-declaring that Scandal represents "a new moment for our culture"-and Rhimes appreciates the significance her show has taken on. While Olivia's blackness hardly ever figures in Scandal 's story lines, Rhimes said, "it's a lovely weapon in our arsenal to use, in the sense that if people are going to be stupid enough to reduce it to nothing but that, then why not use it as a weapon to get what Olivia needs?"

To wit, there was a much-discussed moment last season in which Olivia confronted the president about his capricious behavior toward her by saying, "I'm feeling a little, I don't know, Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson about all this." Such on-the-nose allusions to Olivia's color are rare in Scandal, and Rhimes says that this scene was more about emotion than race-Olivia wanted to wound Fitz Grant, and therefore resorted to the sharpest rhetorical arrow in her quiver.

Washington enjoys examining Scandal's racial dynamics more than Rhimes does, especially vis-à-vis viewer reaction. In a moment far subtler than the Sally Hemings one, Olivia and her team swooped in to handle the media siege of the female executive whose old fling with President Grant's Supreme Court nominee had come to light. As the executive (played by Lisa Edelstein) greeted the team at her door, she turned to one of Olivia's associates, Abby Whelan (played by the pale, auburn-haired Darby Stanchfield), and said, "You must be Olivia Pope." This compelled Olivia to step forward and say, " I'm Olivia Pope."

"Twitter went nuts when that happened," Washington said. "Both women and men of color: 'Oh my gosh, people do that to me all the time!' Being underestimated in the workplace, being assumed not to be. "

"Olivia Pope Style"

Perhaps because it is a melodrama, and is not without its moments of proverbial bodice ripping, Scandal has not really figured into the resurgent discussion of feminism in the United States-the one furthered by Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In, Dunham's Girls, and the success of Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling as network-sitcom auteurs. But it deserves to. Washington and Rhimes readily identify themselves as feminists, and the latter acknowledges that, without calling too much attention to the fact, she and her writers "have created a world in which the women have the power."

As with the issue of African-American achievement, female power is not an issue on Scandal but a fait accompli. This applies not only to Washington's Olivia but also to the Harvard- and Yale Law-educated First Lady, Mellie Grant, magnificently played by Bellamy Young, who relishes the opportunity to wield her character's knowledge of her husband's philandering as a political weapon, toggling between photo-op wholesomeness and scorched-earth Machiavellianism. "For a woman actor, there has never been a better time to be alive," Young told me. "Men have always had Shakespeare; now we've got Shonda." Goldwyn, for his part, points out that the show's men are also strong, and that Scandal's gender politics are not a zero-sum game in which the dudes must of necessity be timorous and squishy, "like back in the 90s, when guys were pounding drums and reading Iron John in an attempt to recover their masculinity."

For Washington, the role of fixer is, in her interpretation, inherently feminine-a long way from the days when the crusty Caucasian face of fixerdom in D.C. was the ultra-connected lawyer and presidential adviser Clark Clifford (who, oddly enough, was played by Goldwyn in HBO's 1995 movie adaptation of David McCullough's book Truman). "What I think is cool about Olivia is that she fully owns being a woman," Washington said. "There's a very nurturing sense of 'I'm going to take care of you-don't worry about it. I'm gonna be your mom in this situation. You come stay in my office, have a cup of tea, and let my gladiators take care of you.' There's something very maternal about it. But there's also something very executive about her, and I mean 'executive' in a presidential way."

Olivia's fashion choices are carefully calibrated to reflect Washington's conception of the character. We must take a moment to address Olivia's clothes, because people are obsessed with them. Pinterest boards and lookbook blogs are alive with photos and analysis of "Olivia Pope style," which is slim-cut and womanly without being revealing. Washington and Scandal 's costume designer, Lyn Paolo, have carte blanche to devise Olivia's wardrobe, because Rhimes can't really be bothered with fashion. ("I would wear pajamas to work every day if it were up to me," she said.) I asked Washington about all the white that Olivia wears-the very first time we see her in the series, she is in a white Tory Burch trench, and, in subsequent episodes, we find her swimming laps in a white swimsuit, wearing ivory blouses and pantsuits to work, and white dresses to functions. Is this white as overtly symbolic as it seems, meaning: good guys, white hats?

Washington replied that the answer is yes, but that there's much more to it than that. First of all, Olivia is someone who used to work for the Establishment as a campaign and White House aide to Fitzgerald Grant, but she has broken from the Establishment to work for herself. Therefore, she does not adhere to the received D.C. dress code of corporate grays and navys and Nancy Reagan red. "The way you go against that," she said, "is a palette that's more pastels, white, cream, pale pink, and blue."

The other point is that the soft colors and whites work in concert with Paolo's tailoring to put forth a reassuringly feminine yet unvampy image. "I felt that, the way Olivia is written, so much of what comes out of my mouth is stuff that people don't want to hear," Washington said. "People come to Pope and Associates on the worst day of their lives. I'm giving them the hard truth. Olivia is a person who is really smart about the performance of identity-she tells people how to dress for court, or for a press conference. So she, herself, would make a similar decision about her aesthetic. And if I were somebody who spent the majority of my time saying things that were harsh and difficult to hear, I would want my visual aesthetic to be something soft and feminine, warm and easy to be around. So that's where that comes from."

You get the feeling that, somehow, none of this ever occurred to Clark Clifford.

"A Very Rare Breed"

But enough about Olivia's messaging and the show's social significance. Scandal is a hoot-to watch, and to act in. "I love the wonderful, crazy, fearless alchemy that is the tonal range of this show," said Jeff Perry, so good as Cyrus Beene, the paroxysmal White House chief of staff. Perry spends much of his screen time in nose-to-nose confrontation with Washington and Goldwyn, "and it feels like an old comfort zone," he told me. In the 1970s, he founded the Steppenwolf Theatre Company (in Chicago) with Terry Kinney and Gary Sinise, and he says that Scandal, in its sparkiness and reckless abandon, evokes his days onstage with those guys.

The show's adrenalized pace is exhausting-Perry likens it to the up-tempo offense of the Oregon Ducks college football team, and Goldwyn to the sped-up screwball comedies of Howard Hawks-but the common theme among its participants is how indefatigable Washington is. The irreplaceable center of her show-a show that, unlike its critically revered brethren on cable, must fulfill a standard 22-episode network order-she has naturally assumed a role of team leadership not unlike Olivia's at Pope and Associates. (Washington literally cheerleads the cast and crew every time they begin work on filming a new episode, gathering everyone to shout in unison, "Ladies and gentlemen, Episode 30!"-or whatever episode is being made-followed, she said, by "much screaming, jumping up and down, and banging on furniture.")

"She knows every single person's name," Rhimes said. "She gave out the prizes in our little weight-loss competition that we had on set. And, more importantly-and this is a thing I am really trying to learn from her-I have never heard Kerry Washington complain. That sounds like a casual thing to toss off, but think about the fact that she works more hours than anybody. I literally never hear her complain. That is a very rare breed of person."

Among Washington's leadership initiatives is Scandal's Twitter blitz, now the envy of the TV business. Each new Thursday-night episode generates nearly 200,000 fan tweets over the course of its broadcast, in addition to attracting eight million viewers, a terrific number by 2013 standards. Washington and Rhimes already had robust Twitter presences before the show, but when Scandal made its debut, in the spring of 2012, it was as a midseason replacement with an abbreviated, seven-episode season-far from a sure thing, renewal-wise. Washington, with the input of Allison Peters, her friend and social-media consultant, decided it would be a good idea to get the entire cast to live-tweet each episode. But, she realized, "if I ask everybody to go on Twitter, I am now the controlling lead actor who's really annoying and making some cast members do something that's going to make them feel uncomfortable." So she asked Rhimes, the boss, to issue the edict, and the cast complied.

"In the beginning, Jeff Perry used to make me write his tweets because he was like, 'I don't know what this thing is and I don't know what to do!,' " Washington said. "So I would sit with him in the makeup trailer and say, 'Tell me some things you would want to say to the fans.' I crafted the tweets for him, sort of using his voice. Put them in his 'Saved' box. And then, during the episode, he could just press 'Send.' " The 57-year-old Perry now has more than 40,000 followers and has evolved, Washington said, into a "tweeting machine." By late last season, Perry was benevolently advising his West Coast followers, "More than ever: Western #gladiators should stay away from twitter for a few hrs to avoid spoilers!!," while Goldwyn, another initial Twitter skeptic-"I was snobby about the whole 140-character thing," he said-was buttering up his 70,000-plus followers with such sentiments as "Love me some GLADIATORS!!!;)."

As for what Season Three holds, Rhimes reports that we will at last learn some of Olivia's backstory, about which we know virtually nothing except that she swam in high school-a lift from Washington's bio file that was incorporated into a script. Season Two ended with a gasp-inducing cliff-hanger in which Olivia's connection to a shadowy black-ops figure played by the actor Joe Morton was revealed. We will definitely see more of Morton's character, whose name in the show's scripts is Rowan, although, Rhimes cautioned, "whether or not that's actually his name is debatable."

Washington is as in the dark as anyone on where Scandal 's Season Three arc will take Olivia. The cast receives each new script the way we viewers receive each new episode-with eagerness and raised eyebrows. "We in the cast keep joking that, in honor of the D.C. element of the show, we're going to stage a Watergate break-in," she said. "Steal some files from the office so that we know what the story lines are." Mobilize, #Gladiators!
SEE Sketch to Still: Kerry Washington's Django Unchained SEE PHOTOS: Kerry Washington's Fashion Evolution READ: Shonda Rhimes on Scandal's Insane Pacing

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Ms. Kerry Goes to Washington: The First Lady of Scandal Speaks

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In real life, the hair is more tousled and less workplace-professional, with ribbony streaks of punkish orange mixed in with the natural black. The speaking voice is more singsong and girlish, half an octave up in register. The face, freer to smile, unburdened by crises personal or constitutional, is more beautiful still.

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Exchange between Olivia's father Elijah Pope and Olivia

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Olivia & Rowan: "You have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have!"

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Olivia and her white coat

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Scandal is a political drama series focused on the leading female character, Olivia Pope played by the award winning Kerry Washington. Olivia Pope is the most powerful fixer in Washington D.C., Olivia Pope and Associates is a crisis handling firm for high profile clients involved in scandal.