Madam Secretary continues to pull in a good size audience (well over 10 million viewers) each Sunday night on CBS, despite the fact that Sunday means audience members have to pay attention to sporting events and make sure they know what time the episode will actually start.  Thankfully we live in a modern age where the crawler at the bottom of the screen is often used to announce exactly what time both Madam Secretary and The Good Wife will begin if it is different than what was announced in television guides.

So how does Madam Secretary measure up to Scandal?  Both shows are set in the Nation’s Capitol.  Both shows theoretically center around solving problems of great import and keeping our nation running.

The primary difference is that Madam Secretary has thus far focused primarily on big problems.  Treaties between nations, treason, an operatives cover being blown while he is over seas and the decision having to be made does the government send in a Seal team ala going after Bin Laden or are diplomatic channels used to recover him.  Complex issues are faced every week, and in the end someone, somehow, comes up with a remarkably simple solution.  The twists and turns of the episode keep you wondering how these characters will pull it out, and how the real folks in Washington, D.C., get things done.   There are subtle reminders not only about how much goes on that we will never see, but about how nations care who extends their hand first to shake on a deal, and that words matter in public statements that may well end up in the history books.

Madam Secretary can give someone unfamiliar with the workings of political machines a lot to think about.   Scandal on the other hand delves into the behind the scenes in an entirely different way.

Scandal explores exactly what the title implies.  The Scandals Washington, D.C. wants to make go away, where Madam Secretary is focusing on the events of their world and trying to cope with them.  It might be fair to say where one is looking purely inside the beltway, the other has a much broader view, looking outward, where Scandal is exploring the hidden secrets of the lives of those who govern a world in which I’m grateful is fantasy, Madam Secretary rips multiple headlines at a time, turns them into an engrossing episode, and by the end of the episode I feel as though I have some understanding of just how complicated a world we live in… and why I am grateful I never chose to make a life for myself in our Nation’s Capitol.

For some, Washington, D.C., is the land of dreams, hope and potential, for others it is a place of back room deals, seedy plots, sequestrations, a land where two political parties take pride in being loyal opposition.  Madam Secretary and Scandal are both imaginary works, taking very different perspectives on the same basic location.   Where the President in Madam Secretary relies on his Secretary of State to solve the problem of the episode, in Scandal the problem of the episode needs to be solved by Oliva Pope, a keen problem solver, but someone who, in most episodes, is not a part of the political machine.

If you are watching one show, give the other a try.  Both Madam Secretary and Scandal have a lot to offer in terms of making you stop and think about how Washington, D.C. functions, how you might wish it functions.  Where Madam Secretary highlights the complexities and details of politics and makes me marvel that anyone survives treading in those waters Scandal makes me particularly glad that is not the world we live in.

Madam Secretary airs Sunday nights on CBS.
Scandal airs Thursday nights on ABC