A year of feminist finales

IN 2012, FIXER OLIVIA POPE, PLAYED BY Kerry Washington, made her power-suit-clad debut, covering up D.C.’s bad behavior by day and sleeping with the President by night. Initially, many critics dismissed Scandal, Shonda Rhimes’ follow- up to Grey’s Anatomy, as a “guilty pleasure”—a loaded term that conjures images of women eating cartons of low-fat ice cream in front of the TV. But Rhimes proved that a show isn’t a guilty pleasure just because it stars a woman, and Olivia’s exploits won over a large audience: two seasons later, ABC made Scandal the corner-stone of a Thursday- night block of hit dramas produced by Rhimes.

Two weeks after Olivia first graced the small screen, a narcissistic writer named Hannah Horvath declared herself possibly the “voice of a generation,” launching countless essays lamenting that millennial women would destroy the world. Girls, which starred