Thanks
@Willie Oleson for your thoughtful post. A previous video of mine did mention the soaps from 21st Century (see video below). "Yellowstone" does appear there and at first sight it doesn´t look like they tried to avoid the soap clichés, though as you explain they did get grittier and grittier. Nowadays "gritty" is a good thing for a soap, and TNT´s "Dallas" proved it (up to a point, though they eventually failed and made it too dark).
I wanted to use in this new video only shows I have watched in their entirety, with E.R. being the exception (I´m starting to watch season 7 now). All of them were labeled as "something else":
- the gay-friendly shows were "something nobody dared to do before",
- the Shondaland shows have the word "inclusivity" tagged to them (much less aggressively and more effectively than the wake movement today),
- "The Affair" seemed to be all about sex and "clever narrative" and more sex,
- "Smallville" obviously was a SciFi coming-of-age drama that featured "the Superman years we hadn´t seen before" (forgetting the Superboy series),
- "Glee" was the template for a musical series (few had or have succeeded on TV),
- "Brothers & Sisters" was elitist in a good way and casting Sally Field was the top of the cake (the original premise was much more chaotic and muddled),
- "Dowton" wanted to be "the best period piece ever. Period" (I think my opinion transpires from the texts in those clips...), and
- "Desperate Housewives" was the equivalent of the old "woman´s pictures" updated, sexed up and very, very black. Besides, DH sort of popularized the term "dramedy", which had been existing for decades.
If someone wonders why "Grey´s Anatomy" isn´t here, it´s because I have never gone beyond the Pilot, which didn´t impress me, and its longevity has turned it into a "monster" within its genre of hospital dramas, surpassing "E.R." itself.
About "Scandal", they were totally in love with episode cliffhangers and suspense, which made it a favorite of mine...though not immediately. As many times happened to me, the Pilot was ok, but the show was a procedural (sorry for the mistake in the subtitles...) by then and it didn´t seem to be appealing enough to me. Just like "How to Get Away with Murder" with Viola Davis, it´s built around the talent of Kerry Washington. None of those two series could have succeeded with another lead.
Though it has ups and downs, and a lot of unlikely twists, "Scandal" is a lot of fun. The main characters are not sympathetic (probably on purpose), but the regulars and recurring are much worse, and that created the drama. The acting is solid as a rock, and the ensemble has true chemistry. Then there is the underneath message of the political subplots: everyone is equally corrupted, no matter from what party they belong to. I also love to see so many familiar faces in a few episodes (including Steven-bot, who goes gay again!), and the list is long and the casting people are very good at it.
To be honest, the love story between Olivia and the Senator ends up being the weakest part, as does the procedural subplots that are almost lost at the end. There are technical findings here: many scenes are filmed with the camera moving behind glass walls thus deforming the images, and the sound effects are also good (those clicks at the end of the episodes), which remember us that "nothing is what it seems", "the Olivia team is specialized in changing your image", and "you think you have been watching this series but... click, click, maybe is someone watching you too?"
There are more things but it´s mainly all this. Most of the cast is quite pretty to look at, and that doesn´t hurt (but Tony Goldwyn is such a bore though). There´s a lot of sex (even gay!) but no nudes at all, and black humor is present but not like in DH. Heavy situations are played for real and you can find a lot of "Dallas-style" clichés (thanks the Soap Gods nobody was recast). And villains, oh yeah, there are a few but always multi-layered. Worth to give it a try.
