Ostensibly, the strongest Shonda Rhimes character on screen is Viola Davis’s headstrong lawyer in How To Get Away With Murder, but it’s Scandal‘s Olivia Pope who makes this list for the simple reason that she’s genuinely dangerous. Kerry Washington’s facial contortions can be distracting on screen, but the threats she makes as Olivia Pope are the whole reason I watch the show. People either see her character as a god or as a scared little girl always getting trapped by increasingly complex circumstances, but the whole point is that most of the show has always been Pope against the world, and to see Olivia Pope survive–maybe even thrive–through crises is entertaining if not endearing. (Also, for anyone that thinks Olivia Pope is as soft as her wardrobe makes her look, that one time, she beat someone to death with a chair because he made lewd comments intended to trigger her PTSD.)
