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This weekend’s blockbuster deal that saw Netflix poach the talents of Shonda Rhimes — one of TV’s most prolific and successful creators, away from ABC, where she’s built some of the show’s sturdiest hits over recent years, with shows like Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, and especially the venerable Grey’s Anatomy — needs no real clarification for why it’s huge news Rhimes is perhaps the best-known creator on network TV, not just creating hits but creating a brand (“Shondaland,” her in-house production company, will be moving from ABC to Netflix with her) and taking active steps to significantly diversify the face of American television. It’s no hyperbole to say that Rhimes has been one of the most important figures in television in the last 25 years.
And now she’s headed to Netflix.
In these kinds of marriages between two media giants, you immediately start wondering who’s getting the better end of the deal. Did Netflix need Rhimes’s name value and hitmaking prowess more than Rhimes needed to level up and take the next step in her career? In other words, will Netflix help Shonda more than Shonda will help Netflix, or vice versa?
In this particular case, however, an argument can be made that Netflix and Shonda Rhimes are each exactly what the other needs at this exact time. Here are but five of the reasons:
Netflix Could Use a 'Scandal'
It’s not like Netflix hasn’t had any hits on the drama side in the past two years. Stranger Things, The Crown, 13 Reasons Why, all hits. But besides Dear White People, which debuted earlier this year, there are no other shows on the platform with a black female lead.* Rhimes famously used her clout to help diversify ABC — and did so with big stars like Scandal‘s Kerry Washington and How to Get Away with Murder‘s Viola Davis. Given the deep pockets of Netflix, there’s no telling the kind of talent she could put into a leading role. Might we humbly suggest Angela Bassett, who was so dynamic in her Emmy-nominated episode on Netflix’s Master of None?
*It should be noted that Orange Is the New Black, while nominally top-lined by Taylor Schilling, is in truth an ensemble featuring several black actresses.
Shonda Rhimes Could Use Shorter Seasons
God bless Shonda, but on all three of her current ABC shows, things start to meander now and again. With the demands of network television, episode orders tend to be lengthy. Grey’s Anatomy routinely goes the full 22 episodes, while Scandal went from 22 to 16 episodes last year, and How to Get Away with Murder has had three 15-episode seasons. Grey’s is the most relaxed of the three when it comes to plotting, so while that show goes through a kind of sine wave of ebbs and flows, it never feels like it’s creaking under the weight of plot. The same can’t be said for for the other two shows, which are usually great at picking up all the chips and nailing a killer stretch run of episodes, but often struggle to stretch one breakneck story over so many episodes. But imagine a season of Scandal that lasted ten episodes. Would they have to limit themselves to killing only one Vice President per season? Perhaps. But think about how much tighter those plot arcs could be.
Netflix Could Use Punchier Seasons
The knock on Netflix series is that they are “13-hour movies” or even the dreaded “novelistic.” In other words, these aren’t episodes of television, there merely parts of a lugubrious whole, which, unless they grab you right away with something really stylish (Stranger Things) or an effective narrative hook (13 Reasons Why), can make the prospect of pressing on for the whole season feel like a slog. Think about Bloodline. Or even a far more successful show like The Crown, which was handsome and incredibly well-acted, but where the pace of the season couldn’t help but drag. With her years spent doing the episodic thing on ABC as well as anyone, there’s every chance that Rhimes will be able to deliver a far punchier season than Netflix viewers have become accustomed to.
Shonda Could Really Do Something with the Relaxed Boundaries of Streaming
Look, Shonda Rhimes has been doing pretty well pushing at the boundaries of network TV as it was. Certainly in terms of sex and sexuality, where How to Get Away with Murder has consistently and smartly sexualized its characters in ways that TV hadn’t seen before, much less on network. Annalise Keating has gotten to be unapologetically bisexual, not to mention the transgression of allowing a dark-skinned black women the chance to own her own sexuality onscreen. That show’s guy-on-guy gay sex scenes have also been among TV’s most defiantly explicit … within the restriction of network regulations, of course. On Netflix, no such regulations exist, which could mean we are in for something seriously sexy if Shonda decides to pursue it.
Maybe Shonda Rhimes Can Finally Start Winning Some Awards?
In her many years spent dominating TV over the past decade or so, Shonda Rhimes has only been nominated for three Emmy Awards: two for producing Grey’s Anatomy during its early, Emmy-friendly years, and one for writing the Super Bowl episode where Kyle Chandler gets blown up by the bomb Christina Ricci was holding into inside that one guy’s chest cavity. Well-deserved, I’d say, but also that it’s been ten years since she’s gotten any Emmy love is a shame. It’s not like Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder have been these flawless seasons of television or anything, but neither was Downton Abbey, you know? But with this Netflix deal, she’ll be moving into Emmy’s newest darling. If Rhimes is able to produce the next Stranger Things or The Crown, or hell, even the next House of Cards — and we’re a long way off from seeing even what kind of show she’s going to end up producing for Netflix, but go with us here — we might finally get an award in the hand of one of TV’s most influential and deserving professionals.
