I agree with you with ninety percent of what you say here. And I’m willing to admit part of my problems is my problem with Rhimes’ series. I actually was a huge fan of two series she has a less direction attachment to — For The People and Rebel both of which I’m still pissed at ABC for cancelling before they could reach their potential. My problem with her idea as Peak TV is that she has the habit of putting revelation following revelation so quickly the viewer has no time to process. This was a huge problem with Scandal and to a degree Murder (I actually have a separate issue with Murder as a series which i will not bore you with; if you have the energy to look through some of my articles on Rhimes’ you will see the specific complaint.) This is not strictly speaking a flaw SOLELY fixed to Rhimes’ series — Homeland did that quite bit in Season 2, to use an example I can think of.

I just don’t like how ABC, just as NBC did with Dick Wolf and the CW would do with Greg Berlanti, would devote entire nights to her schedules. There were actually some series ABC ran that I felt in comparison with Rhimes’ work WERE great TV that no one watched because it dealt with the same issues realistically. One of the best series of the 2010s aired on ABC in the past decade: American Crime. In my opinion, it was as close to a series like say The Wire, that network TV has ever gotten. It’s ratings were low, I admit, but infinitely superior in quality. It basically gutted me when it was effectively canceled (I think) for Station 19. (The dates may be off on that one so you might want to verify that on your own.)

I’m inclined to look at other female showrunners — Phoebe Waller-Bridge Issa Rae and most recently Quinta brunson in particular — as better examples of the new. They have a way of looking at female characters — and in the latter two cases, particularly women of color in a way that Rhimes on her best day never approaches. A series like Abbott Elementary is the best incarnation of the new in my opinion.