When Kerry Washington's daughter, Isabelle Amarachi, was born on April 21, Shonda Rhimes and the writing team of ABC's popular political soap Scandal must have breathed a huge sigh of relief. For most of Season 3 they had to work around Washington's real-life pregnancy, since her character Olivia Pope did not have a similar bun in her oven. In retrospect, making Olivia pregnant may have been the easiest way to deal with the situation, since the directors had to get pretty creative with their use of lamps, large purses, and shadowy objects in the foreground to obscure Washington's baby bump.
Multiple articles have been written poking fun at the blatant camouflaging of Olivia Pope's midsection, which — while hilarious — make us wonder what would have happened if the writers had considered the alternative. What would Season 4 of Scandal look like if Olivia was now a mother? Would she be the World's #1 Mom? Or a hellish parent straight out of Mommie Dearest? I mean, let's be honest: we all know Olivia Pope is fierce as hell, but she's usually too busy saving herself or the President or the world to put much time into raising a child. But before we make a final determination, let's analyze the factors at play here:
Olivia's fiercer than any Tiger Mom.
Like we said earlier: Fierce. As. Hell. Nobody would ever mess with Olivia's kid on the playground. Olivia would undoubtedly brave hell and high water to get the best for her child. Sure, this might occasionally backfire on the kid herself if she ever decided to sneak out in the middle of the night. But otherwise, it's a terrific quality to have in a mom.
But she's always making out with Fitz.
STAHP. Seriously, new moms can't be continually sneaking off to the White House to canoodle with the leader of the free world. Cut that nonsense out, Olivia. Somehow, "mom" and "mistress" just don't go hand-in-hand very well.
She'd have to cut back on the wine.
While we're on the subject of things Olivia wouldn't be able to do with a child around... A good mom probably shouldn't be sauced every evening when the kid gets home from school. But we all know how Olivia loves her red wine (while on her white couch in her white outfit), so we're sensing a potential conflict of interest here.
The kid would have the worst grandparents.
Can you imagine? One is the child-murdering leader of a shady government organization. The other is a sociopathic terrorist and state-secret-selling con artist. Not exactly Cliff and Claire Huxtable, are they? Pope Family holiday dinners would be awwkwarddddd.
And the babysitter would probably be a lunatic.
Here's the scenario: It's Take Your Kid To Work Day. Olivia brings her child to Pope & Associates. Everyone's oohing and aahing over the excessive adorableness. And then the call comes in — Olivia and her magical fixing powers are needed at the White House. So she leaves her child with her trusted coworkers while she hustles over to save the world real quick. Who's best qualified to look after the kid? Unstable, torture-loving Huck? Psychopath-in-training Quinn? Sweet-talking, sex-in-the-workplace-having Harrison? (Well, not Harrison because he's probably dead.)
But that baby would be fashionable.
I mean, look at that hat. Mini-Pope would be one of those disgustingly fashionable toddlers that make adults jealous because they can't put together an outfit that coordinated and stylish.
Olivia's child would always be in danger.
Just like a superhero, Liv's enemies probably wouldn't hesitate to use her child's well-being as leverage against her. Remember what happened to Fitz's kid?
Yeah, Olivia really has no business raising a child until after she's gotten out of the fixing business. But you just know that if she ever chooses to leave D.C. behind and start a family, she'd totally have that whole parenting thing handled.
Images: Craig Sjodin/ABC; Giphy (9)
