Scandal Season Two

Finished the second season of Scandal today.  Not at all sure if I'm going to keep watching it.  Yes, Tony Goldwyn and Kerry Washington have some insane chemistry.  Yes, it makes me gasp at times.  There was one heck of an end-of-season cliffhanger that might make it hard not to tune in.  However...

...This show takes place in an ugly, ugly world.  This really hit me in a second season episode where we learn Huck's (Guillermo Diaz's) backstory, which is this: as a young Marine, Huck is told that he can avoid a second tour of duty by accepting an assignment from the CIA.  He is told that he is uniquely qualified for this assignment because he has no attachments; he was raised in foster care, is not married, and does not have children.  He accepts the assignment, which involves torturing people in extremely nasty ways.  Along the way, his girlfriend gets pregnant and he proposes.  Following his marriage and the birth of his child, co-CIA worker Charlie (George Newbern) shows up at his house and threatens him: he was told no attachments.  He needs to take care of this.  Huck makes a plan to run away with his wife and son; however, before he has a chance to, he is captured by the CIA, thrown in a hole, and tortured for months and months until he no longer remembers that he has a wife and son.  When he is finally let out, he is given the opportunity to go back to work, only he can't bring himself to complete his next assignment.  Charlie is supposed to kill him, but instead just points a gun at him and says, "Bang.  You're dead.  Don't contact anyone you know ever again."  He is left with no identity and no money to live as a homeless person.

Ugly story, right?  Do I believe that the U.S. government would do this to their own agents?  I would like to think not, and I have a hard time believing they would do it under these particular circumstances.  While I can deal with some unbelievable shit on TV shows, though (my favorite show of all time is Alias, for God's sake), the question is whether I want to routinely visit a world where *this particular* unbelievable shit can happen.  I'm not sure that I do. 

Add to this the fact that the only character I particularly like is Olivia Pope.  Fitz is okay, sometimes.  Joshua Malina's character, David Rosen, is okay.  The President's wife, Mellie (Bellamy Young) is so over-the-top evil that she's practically a cartoon. (Side note: you know who would have been good for the role of Mellie? Kate Walsh.  I'm pretty sure she was still busy with Private Practice until recently, but I think she could have played that character in such a way that we would have at least loved to hate her instead of just flat-out hated her.)  And for all of the times that the show has made me gasp out loud...I went like two weeks without watching an episode just recently.  It has cliffhanger-y storylines, but you don't necessarily care about the resolution of those storylines because you don't care about many of the characters.

So, bottom line, I was pretty disappointed.  I may or may not tune in for Season Three.