The season’s wandering eye for subplots consistently nudges the central lovers out of frame. Each of these detours is distracting, blocking the climb to the romantic pinnacle we otherwise could have achieved. It also gets in the way of the full consummation of the Shondaland adaptation’s more radical intentions. Along with being sexy entertainment, the show aspires to disrupt expectations about who is allowed to star in our romance fantasies. It set out to repaint the ballroom-wall-to-ballroom-wall whiteness common in historical romance and offer a modern, feminist approach to the genre.