Channel Surfing: 'Scandal' in an Election Year This season, the critics Neil Genzlinger and Mike Hale are checking out favorite shows and seeing how they hold up. Previous entries in this series include posts on "New Girl" and "NCIS." Fans of ABC's "Scandal" went into the second-season premiere Thursday night waiting for two questions to be answered. The first, after the cheesy cliffhanger that ended last season, was pretty straightforward: What was Quinn's real identity? Answer: She had been working in Olivia's office under a false name and was wanted in a bombing that killed her boyfriend and six others. The second question, though, was more thematic, and the answer was more shocking: Given that this season will coincide with a real-life election, would the show's writers somehow turn from Clintonesque sexcapades to story lines reflecting the current presidential contest? Boy did they, unleashing a vicious, thinly veiled dig at -- Michelle Obama? The episode included a scene in which President Grant (Tony Goldwyn) and the first lady (Bellamy Young) ended up in a shouting match after a press conference in which she surprised him by all but declaring war on a foreign country. "Your opinion doesn't matter," the president bellowed. You're the first lady. Your job is to plant gardens and decorate rooms and let them blog about your clothes. You're ornamental, not functional. Take that, real-life first lady, on the off chance that you were thinking of becoming more politically involved during the campaign. Anyway, Quinn (Katie Lowes), now revealed to be Lindsey (or, for all we know, Lindsay), was the recipient of some exceedingly swift justice. The prosecutor (Joshua Malina) was finishing up his opening statement in her trial before the episode was 10 minutes old. And Olivia (Kerry Washington) saved Quinn/Lindsey/Lindsay from the gallows with one of those one-sided phone calls to Someone Really Powerful that are a cliche in these types of shows. Suddenly the judge declared the evidence against Quinn to be insufficient and that was that. Just who was on the other end of that call is, no doubt, something that we'll be left guessing about for a while. In any case, as we found out at the episode's end, the whole Quinn saga still has a ways to run because both Olivia and Huck (Guillermo Diaz) had a hand in creating her fake identity in the first place. Ah, the intrigue. The episode's secondary story seemed a bit lazy, involving a Rhode Island congressman, a single man, who was caught on tape having sex with a woman, also single, in his office. The crime here was, what, misuse of government furniture? Anyway, Olivia gave him a somewhat elementary lesson in spin control and, as usual, problem solved. Ms. Young's first lady, who (better throw in an "apparently" here, given how manipulative these folks are) is pregnant, seems poised to assume a larger role in the series, which may not be the best idea. Is it just me, or are both the character and the actress rather off-putting and unconvincing? The episode did leave us pondering which is more cynical, timing a pregnancy to win re-election or timing a war to win re-election? But maybe it's more to the point to ask -- and feel free to chime in here -- whether this show, full of sex and far-fetched plotlines, will feel more relevant or increasingly irrelevant as the country focuses on the serious business of choosing a real-life president.