Entertainment

Shonda Rhimes Will Make the Spelling Bee Awesome

by Rachel Simon

Anyone who follows Shonda Rhimes on Twitter knows a few things about the Scandal and Grey's creator: she spends a lot of time talking to her fans; she misses Cristina Yang just as much as you do; and she really, really loves the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Each year, the showrunner takes to the site to express her excitement over the annual competition, enthusing over her favorite contestants and sharing her anxiety about particularly hard words. With Rhimes' crazy schedule of late, though (she's beginning prep for her three shows' upcoming seasons), her must-read updates for this year's event weren't a sure thing. On Tuesday, however, Rhimes revealed that she would be live-blogging the Spelling Bee as normal, so fans looking forward to reading her passionate, hilarious posts can breathe a big sigh of relief.

According to ABC, Rhimes will write up her reactions to the Bee on A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, the blog she's contributed Scripps-related posts to for several years. The competition airs May 28 and May 29, and if history is to repeat itself, then one can expect Rhimes to spend seemingly every waking minute of those days watching, reacting to, and blogging about the Bee.

Why? According to the showrunner, she's been interested in the Bee for decades, and was a self-described "bee nerd" in school. Although she never competed herself, she "grew up in books," spending much of her time reading. Today, she watches the Bee with friends, family, or co-workers, all while looking up words and doing "a little research" for her live-blogs.

"I think for me the excitement or the interest is that it feels like one of the few times on a big scale we are celebrating smart," Rhimes said.

Thanks to Rhimes' frequent updates, one doesn't even have to watch the two-day-long event to experience the thrill of the Scripps Bee, but you know she'd want you to. After all, this is a woman who loves the Bee so much that she incorporated it into one of her shows (and perhaps another cameo will come — Rhimes said that "it's not impossible" for Olivia Pope to be a former spelling bee champ). Even without Rhimes' encouragement, though, the competition should already have been on your radar; what's more enjoyable than watching dozens of awkward, brilliant pre-teens struggle to pronounce "cymotrichous" (last year's winning word) in front of millions of their parents, friends, and millions of viewers? Absolutely nothing, that's what. Rhimes said it best: