Must tweet TV is back! For those of you who don’t have twitter you didn’t miss anything. The Scandal hashtag feed was so fast it was a literal blur and impossible to read – I gave up trying. Did the episode live up to it reputation as operatic television? Yes, although it feels more like an opening act than midway through. Maybe that’s just the effect of the hiatus…. Anyway, this roller-coaster ride has a super steep upward climb, sudden drops and some crazy turns. Let’s recap, because God help us I think we’re building towards some major loops!
What does the Rolling Stones song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” have to do with “Ride Sally Ride? If you don’t know the song, here is the relevant chorus:
“You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need”
That theme is running all throughout this episode!
Scandal picks off right where we left off in episode 3×10 “A Door Marked Exit”(if you don’t know exactly where that is, you can check out Catching Up With Scandal a Mid-Season Recap!) First Lady Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young) is trying to look calm as she hurries through the White House – and completely failing. Her destination is the office of Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry)where she has just two words. “She’s running!”
The “she” is Vice President Sally Langston (Kate Burton). After all they’ve done for Sally – not to mention Mellie’s personal reminder to Sally about that help – the woman is still going to be screwing with her husband’s presidency. It’s yet another failure for Mellie and she is beyond furious. After a montage of the various press outlets going crazy waiting Sally’s official announcement, we’re back inside the White House. James Novak (Dan Bucatinsky) is pestering Cyrus about what the official message is. He apparently has been given the job of White House press secretary by husband Cyrus.
James: Cyrus I have the entire press core waiting for me!
Cyrus: We’re waiting on the numbers
Mellie: (walking in) Well, what’s the message?
James: (to Mellie) Do we call her a traitor?
Cyrus: We’re waiting.
Mellie: (to James) I say we get personal. Paint that reckless half-wit with a crazy brush. She’s delusional
James: And emotionally crippled. Her already fragile mental state suffering a deadly blow from the passing of her husband.
Mellie: Sexist. But effective. Leak that on deep background
Cyrus: We’re not leaking anything – we’re waiting.
I wanted to highlight that dialogue because with what happens next you might miss the commentary Shonda is making about James and Mellie. They are very alike in their thinking – petty manipulators who think they are smarter than they really are, and see themselves as having a moral superiority to their spouses. The truth is they’re just as bad.
However, what happens next is pretty spectacular, so here’s the whole scene:
What strikes me the most in that scene is the secretary! That, “I tried” looked is hilarious! In terms of what transpires between President Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant (Tony Goldwyn) and Mellie, I think Mellie’s sarcasm is warranted. What the heck are Fitz and fixer extraordinaire/campaign manager Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) thinking? I don’t care that it’s Fitz and Olivia being together – making out in the middle of a political crisis is a dumb move!
There’s a definite message being sent to us watching: Fitz is feeling reckless and invincible. In this episode his constantly grabbing and kissing Olivia when she’s trying to discuss issues don’t feel loving. It about shutting down whatever he doesn’t want to talk about. I’m reminded of Sandra Bullock in the movie 28 Days – she’s in rehab and in the middle of an argument her new cocaine-addicted friend starts kissing her . She pushes him away and says, “were you trying to snort me?” We get this kind of behavior from him throughout the episode and it’s a dangerous combination. You know, the kind of thing that gets a person in serious trouble – or even killed. Being that we know there are people who want him dead, let’s hope he comes to his senses before making it way too easy to do. Case in point, the way Fitz reacts to Sally’s announcement.
Sally’s official announcement took everyone by surprise. Her move about leaving the ticket but not leaving office even torpedoes’ one of Olivia’s talking point to use against Sally: you can’t call someone a selfish quitter if they don’t quit! Yet while everyone else is talking the situation out, all we see is this murderous look from Fitz.
With B613 under his command I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s planning to just have Sally killed.That would explain his insistent on having his buddy Andrew Nichols run with him as Vice President – and his drinking in the middle of the day. It’s the behavior he began after murdering Supreme Court Justice Verna Thornton (Debra Mooney). He was numbing himself out from his feelings of betrayal and his self-loathing about his killing Verna. He won’t even look at Oliva’s list of candidates. Her list is based on fighting off Sally. If Sally’s not running against him then he doesn’t need to be concerned. Of course, he can’t tell Olivia, “Don’t worry, hon, I’m going to have Sally discreetly murdered, so your list isn’t necessary.” He can’t bear her knowing that.
However, Olivia is sensing something is off. Especially when she finds out from Cyrus that Fitz has removed her father (Joe Morton) as Command of B613 and replaced him with Jake. She immediately seeks out her dad, although I’m not sure what she was expecting to do here.
Personally, I can’t get enough of this scene. Every time I watch it there are nuances from Joe Morton that I missed before. Right before this is when Olivia first approaches and lets his guard down. It gives us a glimpse of what he might have been like had he really just worked for the Smithsonian. For that brief few seconds you get to see the man who loves his daughter. Unfortunately, Olivia just had to mention her mother. Why, knowing what she knows, would she mention her? It pouring salt on a major wound, not only reminding him of the distant past, but the recent turn of events.
I am glad they had this talk though, because Olivia really did not understand the depth of what had transpired. While we don’t a full view of Kerry Washington’s response to hearing that her lover told her father about “The way she tastes” what we do see it telling.
Possible Olivia thoughts: “Oh, no he didn’t – I’m going to kill him!”
By the time the camera moves so we fully see both Olivia and Rowan, Olivia is already in tears. She is devastated by what Fitz did, both for her father’s sake and for her own. However, she doesn’t get any real time to dwell on it because the next thing she hears is that her father is going to kill Fitz! Not immediately though. Rowan’s first agenda is to destroy Fitz’s presidency and career. That’s why he’s warning Olivia to move away from the white house. (The emphasis on “white” by Joe Morton is just the right tone, the implications about who has power and control in the larger world is so like him!)just destroy him. Later we see him meeting with Leo Bergen (Paul Adelstein ) Sally’s campaign manager. He’s already making his moves to bring Fitz’s presidency down!
I haven’t decided if Leo is another Cyrus or just an asshat. I’m leaning towards the latter because Cyrus would never be foolish enough to hitch his wagon to someone like Sally, I mean, he really has to be desperate to believe he can make this work…. Unless he really didn’t know how committed to her religion Sally is. After Sally explains to him that she didn’t kill her husband, I think he’s now realized what he’d gotten himself into!
I did not murder my husband, Leo.
The devil murdered my husband when he snuck inside me. And the reason I was not vigilant, the reason I did not rise up and turn the devil away from my gate is that he distracted me. With pride. With pride he distracted me into turning my back on my flock into abandoning the innocent unborn. I was distracted and I let the devil inside of me, and he used my hand as a vessel of murder, a vessel of sin.
Leo turning pale & sitting down.
He’s just realized Sally is crazy!
It’s no wonder that Leo runs to Cyrus’s office right after. He needs be around someone he can relate too! Writing-wise what’s really cool about Sally’s monologue is that beneath her creating a supernatural reasons for her actions is some actual logic. Sally did get completely hyped up over this political move to run against Fitz, and she did make it more important than her religious values which are her very identity. Daniel’s taunting words and behaviors made it all for nothing and she snapped. It’s a crime of passion – as in extreme emotional distress. Any jury would see that. However, that snap isn’t from an outside source, it’s because of her own choices. In other words, Sally, even if devil made you do it, you still did it – and you bear that responsibility. Sally’s not going to be okay until she tells the truth…. It’s another Verna situation in the making.
Next up in this episode is the saga of Cyrus and James. James appears to be playing nice with Cyrus, but he’s actually being a deceitful twit. I have little sympathy for James now. When Cyrus pulls strings and breaks a bunch of laws to get him a kid, it’s fine. He’s mad because Cyrus tried to use him to entrap Daniel Douglas and write a story on it, but really, he’s mad because Cyrus is smarter than him. Period. Had James found out on his own about Daniel Douglas I’ve no doubt he’d be writing that story about closeted husbands in power couples. So now he’s trying to get the next big story and prove to Cyrus he’s just as smart. As we see from his conversation with Attorney General David Rosen (Joshua Malina), he’s not.
James has no idea how close he came to death the last time Cyrus thought James was betraying him politically. If Cyrus finds out that James is the leak do you think Cyrus will let it slide twice? Of course, if Rowan intervenes it could be Cyrus that ends up dead. Already we’re up to a possible body count of three this season – and there’s still more!
Harrison Wright (Columbus Short) calls David to look into the VISA of Adnan Salif, At first David says no. I think it’s because he thinks Harrison is asking for Olivia. It’s the pleading desperation in Harrison’s voice that gives him pause and agree to do it. Harrison is freaked out by this guy being back! Abby Whelan (Darby Stanchfield) finds him in her office taking her gun!
Abby is so stuck on the word normal! Her relationship is David is all about “what normal couples do.” Now we have her declaring normalcy about her and Harrison:
We are the normal ones. If we have to borrow a gun, we ask.
DABBISON!
Poor Abby. She doesn’t even catch the oxymoron about normal gun-borrowing. Sooner or later she’s going to realize what Quinn did in “A Door Marked Exit.” Their normal is not “normal” at all! I wonder if that’s when she and David will break up. Come on, you know they will – this is Scandal. Now will it be a Harrison, Abby, David love triangle or over some Cyrus related drama for Olivia?
The triangle will have to wait for now, because Adnan Salif shows up and pays a Harrison a visit. Once Harrison decides not to shoot her, they have sex on Harrison’s desk. Yep, the former boss who wants to kill him, Adnan Salif, is a woman. Apparently they had an affair going on the whole time Harrison worked for her. Does this mean she’s willing to let the reasons she wants to kill him go. Somehow I doubt it.t
Seriously, all these people with passion for people who are no good for them! At this point the only couple Abby and David could go on a double date with would be Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes) and Charlie (George Newbern).
First of all, here’s the line of the night:
As long as people have to live together, somebody is gonna pay to have somebody else killed – fact of life. – Charlie
Charlie is one happy sociopath. He gets to murder for a living and he’s found his soulmate. Everyone needs someone to love, right. I suppose we should be grateful for B613. Charlie could have been a random serial killer. Now he just kills on assignment – sort of like using methadone to get off of heroin. What I’m surprised at is how much I like this pairing. I was a huge HuckleberryQuinn fan, but the last few episodes have completely killed that.
All kidding aside, Charlie’s genuine caring and enthusiasm for Quinn has precedent – his friendship with Huck. The fact that Charlie didn’t kill Huck is huge. It showed he had the capacity to form attachment and care about another person. Granted, it has to be a person with a similar aptitude and skill set, but he cared enough about Huck to let him go. In “A Door Marked Exit” Charlie refered to the saying, “If you love someone set them free – which is exactly what he did with Huck. Only Huck didn’t come back. Hence His reaction when Quinn came back was surprise, joy and gratitude.
Is Quinn really happy though? She did seem excited to know they had another job. The woman does love her drills and dead body clean ups! However, she didn’t look thrilled when they had that kid being used as a bargaining chip so the coroner would lie about Daniel Douglas’s death and say it was from an alcoholic fall and a massive brain bleed. I don’t think Charlie is a child killer, (although Huck’s short-lived girlfriend was, so…) but Quinn definitely is not. Even using it as a threat obviously did not sit well with her. She also freaked out on her first kill. As she watches her old colleagues Abby and Harrison driving away it clear she misses her old friends and her old life. She doesn’t know that Olivia wants her back – and Olivia has no idea that Huck made it known to Quinn that he wants Quinn dead. For now, there’s no going back for Quinn, and she is grieving that.
Quinn watches Abby and Harrison drive away.
HuckleberryQuinn is over, so how could these two work together for Olivia. I can’t see Charlie becoming a gladiator, but back when Rowan was in charge of B613 he did want the same deal Huck had. Maybe he could be a subcontracted gladiator? He would kick Huck’s butt if he tried getting to Quinn. Darn it, Shonda Rhimes has done it again – made a person whose choices are a social anathema someone to cheer for! Yes, I am rooting for…the happy sociopath.
Another table that’s been turned are my thoughts on Mellie. With Fitz being such a jerk the fact that she’s still willing to do what’s necessary for him to win this campaign has surprised me. I know it’s because “she likes being the president’s wife” but still. When Leo ambushed Abby on live TV and re-started the rumors up about Olivia and Fitz, this was a brilliant counter move. Not all of Mellie’s moves are smart, so I’ve got to high-five her for this, “take my husband’s mistress to lunch” day.
The other Mellie issue I’m pleased about is that there is finally another man to occupy Mellie’s attention – even if he is Fitz’s friend and new V.P. running mate! Mellie is a physically attractive woman. Her interactions with Andrew, who knew her even before Fitz, could prove to be a revelation about Mellie. Who knows, once upon a time she may have even been a nice, less conniving person.
Olivia’s reactions to Andrew Nichols ( Jon Tenney) – who is slap in the face from Fitz in terms of trusting her judgement – are amusing. With her team and with Cyrus she’s been looking for reasons to explain why he’s not a good idea. The only issue he has is being a playboy. When she sits down with the man she’s not able to hide her dislike of Fitz’s choice. However, she does at least comes to respect him.
Wait until she finds out that love of his life is Mellie! Her gut is definitely right. This is not a good idea. It would be nice if they could become a happy foursome. Olivia could pretend to date Andrew Nichols, Fitz could pretend to love his wife, and everyone could just switch beds at night. Being that this is Scandal, I’m sure that’s not what’s going to happen.
One reason it won’t is that Olivia already has a second man – Jake Ballard. I can’t help but think Andrew’s words about not pretending to love someone had something to do with her choice to move forward with Mellie’s plan? She can’t date just any man for show, but she cares about and is attracted to Jake.
When Olivia says to him that “Vermont seems farther and farther away” Jake has no idea what she’s talking about – but we do. How long will she have to wait for it to be possible to have an honest relationship with Fitz – if every. Jake is there and available. At least her dad hasn’t promised to kill him, right? Maybe in Olivia’s mind she thinks she can protect Jake in this B613 mess. God knows Fitz isn’t listening to her, so there’s only so much she can do for him – even if he is the love of her life. Fitz is a patriot – and that is one of the things she loves about him. Only, as we just heard, she’s questioning if being a patriot is such a good and healthy thing. Besides that, there’s that crap he did with her dad. Like, really, Fitz? There is a part of Olivia Pope is damn mad at Fitzgerald Grant! If the Rolling Stones is the episode’s theme, this has to be the song for Olivia’s state of mind: The Isley Brothers and “Love the One You’re With.”
What did you think of this week’s episode? Are you excited about the rest of the season? Let me know in the comments!
TITLE SPOILER FOR NEXT WEEK:
“We Do Not Touch the First Ladies”
It sounds like Fitz doesn’t want anyone to have Olivia or Mellie! Seriously, Fitz?
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