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I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate CultureGab Fest Ambivalent Elegy Edition.

It's Wednesday, November 13, 2013. On today's show, Scandal. We discussed the hit ABC drama with Slate's own June Thomas. And then Provence 1970 is a wonderful new book about the reinvention of American cuisine. We're joined by its author, Luke Bar. And finally, the mega video chain

blockbuster is closing, and we sound the appropriate note of yes, ambivalent elegy. Joining me today is

Slate's deputy editor, Julia Turner. Hello, Julia. Hi, Steve. And of course, Slate's film critic,

Dana Stevens. Hey, Dana. Hello, Stephen. All right, well, let's dig in. Scandal is the ABC hit

drama. Its third season premiere drew a pretty whopping to my mind, 10.5 million viewers. It's the brainchild of Shonda Rhymes, best known as the creator of Gray's Anatomy. It stars Carrie Washington as Olivia Pope, a Washington, D.C. fixer, who now presides over a kind of sort of law firm that fixes things for scandal plague

politicos and other famous and rich and attractive people. We're joined by Slate's

culture critic June Thomas to talk about scandal. June, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Stephen. June, I just want to let you know that I finished the final and fifth

episode of the fall, and it's the best television since The Wire, but we can move quickly along.

Of course it is.

June, I have to say, I don't watch a lot of network narrative TV or network dramas, and the show sort of had me at hell and lost me at low.

You know, it kind of, it's snappy and fun, but it's very broad and very hammy.

But it's a big, it's a big hit.

There's an audience for this out there that's still enormously large.

Is this part of your regular diet of viewing?

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