See, I disagree. I think some of her episodes do achieve peak tv status. That’s the problem. The peak tv moments are undermined by the bodice ripper parts, not because it’s sexy, but because it’s sex between the daughter of a Mexican drug lord and a creepy murderous fixer. People can’t digest the serious trauma raised in the peak tv moments if two scenes later, Jack the Ripper is telling the five time rape survivor current district attorney that he should have killed her when he had the chance.
It does feel anti racist but not persistently feminist, for all her shows feature female leads. They actually consistently support patriarchal norms and structures to a fault, to the point that fathers are predictably redeemed for various horrific crimes, heterosexual romantic relationships are redemptive, single women destroy themselves, queer characters destroy themselves etc.
Shonda Rimes is important and complicated and monstrous and a herald of the new.
But we can’t get hung up on the idea that she’s the incarnation of the new.
Better is already happening.