You know, a lot of television promos promise big things, but they rarely are as big as expected. Scandal is an exception. The ads made the promise that episode 13 of Scandal would change everything. In this case the hype is absolutely true. Everything – and everyone – has shifted. More than living up to it’s name, this week’s Scandal episode is the most scandalous yet!
Before I write another word, a reminder: this is a recap and review of the events, and I can’t do that without saying what happened. In other words, yes, there are SPOILERS for Scandal season 2 episode 13. If you haven’t watched it yet, get thee to your DVR and come gab with me later.
This week Scandal had my mind spinning in less than 10 minute. Then it proceeded to pile on shock after shock. Some of them were actually good shocks – like Abby – but many were not. As for the ending – my mind is BLOWN. That’s at the end though. The first thing that hit the screen is learning Huck (Guillermo Diaz) apparently got to oil man Hollis Doyle (Gregg Henry) in time to join him and Huck’s fellow former assassin group member, aka David. Considering it’s two deadly assassins in a small space, the fact that only talking occurs is surprising. I guess that’s because it was an easy fix. Well, that and Huck let David know he had no intention of killing him. The deal Huck lays out is simple. If Hollis agrees not to take the deal being offered by assistant attorney general David’s Rosen (Joshua Malina) and he lives. If he does at any time try and take the deal, Huck’s David will “collect a paycheck” – in other words, kill him. Hollis wisely agrees to the deal.
That elevator scene is less than a minute – so if you weren’t watching right when Scandal started you may have missed it. Even if you did see it, you might have forgotten about all about it because in the nine minutes left we find out that a ton of information. President Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn) knows his wife Mellie (Bellamy Young)induced and is still determined to divorce her. Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) tells Fitz that she said yes to marrying Senator Edison Davis (Norm Lewis),but then Fitz begs her to wait for him. He’s pretty persuasive, and Olivia never can resist those kisses. She says she’ll, “think about it” but I think anyone watching assumed she’d eventually say yes.
Talk about switching gears! (I love watching Kerry Washington playing that helpless to say no side of Olivia. It’s such a contrast from the totally controlled Olivia Pope, yet completely believable.) Right before that hot make-out session, Olivia had been telling off Chief of Staff, Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) for trying to have Hollis killed. Cy was shocked when he found out Hollis was innocent and he would have killed an innocent man. (Understand that innocent here is a relative term.) He explains to Olivia that, “…the power, it goes to your head and it’s hard to pull back sometimes” and apologies When he reiterates it “won’t happen again, Olivia let him off the hook. Mainly because they still have a David Rosen problem. The assistant attorney general is still pushing on the vote-rigging scheme. While she’d been willing to come clean when it would take done Hollis, now that it’s not, the only person it would hurt is Fitz. (And we all know Olivia never wants to hurt Fitz.) Cyrus definitely wanted to get Olivia off the whole tell-everything and-send-us-all-to-jail track, so he immediately said Fitz, “…wouldn’t survive knowing, it would change him, it would break him.” Yes, this is still going through the first ten minutes, so I’ll get back to that line later.
Within that same ten minutes we find out who tried to have the president killed. It was Supreme Court Justice Verna Thornton (Debra Mooney) WHAT?! This is the first out of nowhere shock, although in retrospect, it makes perfect sense. After all, she was the first one to cave on the election rigging in the first place. So in terms of holding the moral high ground – not so much. Like pretty much everyone on Scandal, the end justifies the means. Only Verna, facing her own end, had a different end in mind. She wanted to give the country back to the American people. Yeah, right. Neither Olivia, or anyone else is buying that. If that’s the case, why have him killed when she could have just turned them all in? Her answer is she wanted to “give America their country” – but without destroying their faith in their country. She sounds just like Cyrus did when he told Olivia that turning everyone in would be like telling a child that there’s no Santa Claus – destroying “the people’s” faith in their government. Anyone noticing a trend with all these power-players with noble intentions? How about they all think they’re noble while most of the country are serfs? Anyway, I love how Olivia calls her that whole spiel, telling Verna that it’s not about the people, it’s that she’s a coward. If the vote rigging came out, her career, her time as a Supreme Court Justice would be forever tarnished and she couldn’t face that. With that, Olivia storms out.
At first I thought, “Wow. Thornton’s really no better than Hollis, she was willing to kill just to save her reputation.” However, that’s not the whole story. Think back to that little montage of events that played through the scene. One of those moments is Verna seeing Olivia and Fitz kissing. Verna knows about their affair! Remember back on the plane when Verna was arguing for the vote rigging? Her reason to say yes was that Fitz was the real deal, a once in generation leader, honest and true. That is what’s really driving her. Seeing Fitz with Olivia knocked him right off his pedestal. Here it was she had believed in this man, had broken the law and her own sense of morality, for a guy cheating on his wife. And the woman who’d been the final hold on out had been screwing the guy.
It’s all there in that scene. Verna’s exact words to Olivia are: “Because confessing tells America that their country is built on a lie.” Right after she says it, the flashback clip comes up of her seeing Olivia and Fitz through the blinds while her voice-over states that “it’s a fallacy.” The fallacy isn’t the vote rigging. The fallacy is Fitz. That’s why she played such hard-ball about getting on the bench. At that point she already knew Fitz was cheating, and she’d be damned if she didn’t at least get the bench and the opportunity to do some good, despite her lapse of judgement. Then, the day before her swearing in, she found out about the cancer. Was a year or two on the bench enough to warrant what she did. Apparently not. Verna couldn’t bear the idea of this man running the country when she knew he wasn’t the great man that she thought he was. No, it doesn’t justify her trying to assassin Fitz, but it does at least make sense. It’s actually the same logic that led Olivia to say yes to the vote rigging in the first place. Someone decides they know what’s best for the country, and takes on the blame that it’s not happening. Therefore, that person must, “fix it. That’s why once Olivia storms out she calls David Rosen.
All of the above happened in less than ten minutes.
The commercials gave me no time to process. The next thing I knew, David Rosen is being held up in the hospital corridor. Apparently Olivia anticipated Verna calling him and gave an order of no visitors. Of course, that order won’t hold for the president of the United States. Fitz is making up for lost time, felt guilty he hadn’t seen her – being that she’s dying and all. It’s a good thing he did because while he’s there she goes from dying to dead. He runs out of the room saying “she’s not breathing.” As the crash-cart comes rushing in he watches in shock.
Show creator Shonda Rimes didn’t hit us with Verna’s dying until after showing us Olivia back with her team at the office. After breaking the news about Verna’s role in the assassination attempt, she moves on to the David Rosen problem. Huck reminds her that they still have “bobble head” – the listening bug in David’s apartment. Abby (Darby Stanchfield) is incensed – but surprisingly she’s not overly upset. Olivia has all the CD’s of the recordings brought over – they’re going to go through all of them to see if the can find out what David really knows and how he knows it. Abby’s only stipulation is that whenever she’s on a CD’s – and it sounds, “R-rated” – they bring it her and she’ll listen to them. A large stack of CD’s soon pile on her desk. Poor Huck, clearly amazed and overwhelmed by whatever sexy times he heard, may never be able to look at Abby the same way ever again!
After that came a series of events that happen pretty much during the same time period. I’m going go through the events themselves – not the way they were viewed – because while the back and forth cuts of scenes are suspenseful to watch, they’re not such great reading.
David Rosen is determined to pop this case wide open, which leads to him back to the guy that gave him the information in the first place – Cyrus’s husband, former reporter James Novak (Dan Bucatinsky). James, happy with his baby girl Ella, is no longer interested in this being pursued at all. Tough luck for him, because without James, David can’t show that the corrupted chip actually came from that voting machine. Rosen will be sending James a subpoena…which arrives that evening for an appearance the following morning.
What follows is one epic scene! It’s got everything, great performances by both actors, humor, anger, and raw honesty. First the humor. James is mad. He’s mad because if Cyrus fixed a national election it’s gonna mess up their now perfect life. Meanwhile, Cyrus is barely listening. He’s in fix mode, talking about constitution lawyers, making a case for gay marriage (nationally) so James can’t testify against him. When James shoots holes in that idea, Cyrus starts saying he could send James and Ella to Switzerland – or France. This train of thought has James even more upset: the adoption isn’t final so Ella can’t leave the country, and he’s not leaving Ella or Cyrus. As Cyrus continues to push the idea, James completely snaps:
Are you insane!? I’d be a fugitive! I’m not made to be a fugitive, I’m not made to break rules. I’ve got asthma. I’m made for five star hotels and room service. Fugitives don’t get room service. What did you do! Did you seriously steal the presidential election? And you thought no one would notice?! Cyrus! Are you listening to me!? I want some answers!
You see, the entire time James has been going on, Cyrus has been silently staring at him. After a pause, he says, “Take off your clothes.”
What! Seriously? No. It’s not what you – or James – think. Cyrus wants to make sure James isn’t wearing a wire. Oh, okay, that makes sense, especially for someone like Cyrus. It makes no sense to James of course. He’s insulted, but Cyrus is insistent. James, with the demeanor of a kid on the playground, then says that for all he knows, Cyrus is wearing a wire. It’s the wrong move, because Cyrus immediately starts to strip. Yep. The two men, glaring at each other, strip down to wearing absolutely nothing!
That whole bit is hilarious and seems like it’s a moment that can’t be topped. Yet, it layers into what is actually the heart of the scene – that raw honesty I was talking about. Cyrus tries lie about having anything to do with vote rigging, but James isn’t having it. He tells Cyrus he knows he did it, because he knows who Cyrus is – despite the fact that Cyrus placates him and thinks he’s hidden himself from James. Throwing down the gauntlet he tells Cyrus that if he loves him – “Show me who you are.” Stripped naked, Cyrus does.
I’m not even going to try to encapsulate Cyrus’s response, because while the reasons are poignant, it’s the emotion in the words that is so riveting. If Jeff Perry isn’t nominated for a supporting acting award this Emmy season then we have absolute proof that no one who votes for those awards actually watch anything that’s not on cable.
It’s clear Cyrus really does love James – which is why the next thing in this story-line’s sequence of events is shocking. Cyrus asks James what he’s going do, and the answer is cryptic. He’s sleeping in the room with the baby. When Cyrus presses him, James says, “What I have to. I have to take care of our baby girl, Cy.” The next morning James is heading into court. Following not to far behind is David – Cyrus’s David. Cyrus has put a hit on James. Seriously. Luckily he can’t go through with it. Even if James is going to turn him in, for once a person is more important to Cyrus than maintaining power…maybe that talk with Olivia helped?
Whatever it is, it turns out to be a good thing, because James gets into court and lies his butt off – totally hangs David Rosen out to dry. Only then does the whole thing make sense. James was mad enough to not want to be in the same bed with Cyrus that night. He was mad because he was going to have to lie under oath! It never occurred to Cyrus that taking care of Ella meant making sure that BOTH parents were around. It’s a huge game-changer in three ways. As I mentioned, it’s really the first time Cyrus has put personal feelings ahead of his political agenda. It’s also the first time Cyrus sees he really has someone in his corner in a way that has nothing to do with politics, a someone who truly knows him – and loves him anyway. The last point is that’s it’s the second time in two days that he’s almost had someone killed where it would have been a huge mistake. I think that’s going to be giving him pause later down the line.
Meanwhile, on that same night, Huck finds the recording that says David has the sim card from the voting machine. No problem. Abby knows he’s got a safe in his closet. She’ll just go over, seduce him, and then when he leaves she’ll crack the safe and grab the card. Olivia says she doesn’t need to, but Abby’s fine with it. At least until she hears in David say he loves her while she was sleeping over one night. She figures out that Olivia got David’s ex to lie in order to split them up and confronts Olivia on it. Olivia tells her she did, and Abby figures out it’s Harrison Wright (Columbus Short) – her best pal – that Olivia got to pull the job. Abby is more upset with that than the fact that Olivia ordered it done. Harrison, talking even faster than usual, reminds Abby of the gladiator code, of diving of of cliffs, and following orders, as well as how Olivia saved them all….
I’ll get back to this, because on that same night Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes) hears the proof that Hollis is the one who killed her boyfriend and ruined her life. She goes to Huck and wants to know if five grand is enough to for him to kill Hollis for her. (Quinn – what are you doing!? Now you’re wanting to kill people, too?) Of course, five grand isn’t nowhere near enough to hire a hit-man – never-mind one like Huck. However, Huck tells her he’ll do it for free – on one condition. She can never work for Pope and Associates ever again. Because killing Hollis would be out of revenge, and gladiators don’t do things out of revenge. They fix things. She can’t have Hollis killed because of what happened to her as Lindsay Dwyer and still be Quinn Perkins. (I love Huck, I really do. His logic is just so pure – not his actions, his logic.) Quinn takes this in and then withdraws her request. She chooses Olivia and her new family over revenge over her old life (at least this week – this is after the world of Scandal) Likewise, while Abby is wrecked by it all, at the end of the day, she goes through with her original plan. At first everyone assumes she didn’t take the chip. Darby Stanchfield plays the moment of revealing that she had taken it perfectly. She’s chosen what’s most important to her, but it’s still breaking her heart and I really felt badly for her (Even though if she handed helped David in the first place…) Still, by sacrificing any chance she could have with David Rosen, she regains the group’s loyalty. She’s also forgiven both Harrison and Olivia and let’s them comfort her. (Side note. I’ll telling you, Abby and Harrison are so gonna be hooking up at some point!)
If there’s a theme this week for Scandal, I’d say that it is about love and loyalty. It seems everyone’s loyalty and/or love life is being looked at and tested. To that end, as predicted, Olivia turns Edison down – for the second time in her life. He, naturally, wants to know why. Her answer is a major insight into Olivia’s psyche. She states: “I don’t want formal, and easy, and simple… I want painful, difficult, devastating, life-changing, extraordinary love.”
Finally! An answer that explains everything about Olivia Pope! Early in life Olivia Pope read way too many Jane Austen novels. Not that her entire list is insane, but Edison’s response is dead on. Out of Olivia’s entire list the two adjectives he pulls out are, “painful” and “devastating.” Why? Because they are the ones that have nothing to do with love. Difficult is not devastating, and, yes, love is not always easy or simple. A painful love isn’t the real deal. It’s the stuff of young teenagers, or battered women, or…a psyche shaped by Jane Austen. Can things in a relationship be painful and difficult? Definitely – witness Cyrus and James – but that’s not the same a painful love which a relationship that is torturous.
For a painful love you just have to go back to Olivia and Fitz. When Olivia goes to Verna’s funeral she tries to give Fitz a pep talk about his eulogy. His response isn’t just cold, it’s mean. Worse, when she tells him she turned Edison down to wait for him, he tells her that he’s not leaving Mellie. WHAT?! Why? Call in Verna’s revenge. It seems Verna also equally angry with Olivia for destroying her ideal of Fitzgerald Grant, as she was with Fitz himself. In terms of loyalty, she felt betrayed by their actions. She’s the one who actually called Fitz to come see her – to tell him about the entire vote-fixing scheme. Well, she told him most of it. She deliberately held back the fact that Mellie also knew about the vote fixing that was done. Thus Fitz now thinks Mellie is the only person he can trust. As the old saying goes, (Olivia Pope, this means you) be careful what you wish for.
Although Verna told Fitz that the only reason she was telling him all this was because of his father, it seems pretty clear it was to torpedo his relationship with Olivia. However, she obviously never knew Fitz as well as Cyrus or Olivia, because she also told Fitz that she was going to be telling the entire thing to David Rosen. If she knew him they way Cyrus and Olivia did she would have invited him to her deathbed to tell him.
Remember when Cyrus said if Fitz ever found out what happened it would devastate and change him? In the moment I thought he meant he’d fall apart and not have the willingness to be president. Now, I realized that wasn’t it. Fitz is someone who believes in the high road, that the good guys always win. As Cyrus once said – he and Olivia do the dirty work that Fitz would never have the stomach to do. That inability to do the dirty work is what changed once he learned the truth. When Verna told Fitz that she’d been turning all the rigged election information over to David Rosen – which would end his presidency, President Fitzgerald Grant doesn’t let her tell David Rosen anything. He kills her. It’s the biggest game-changer of the night.
Wow! I can’t even begin to imagine what happens next week! Do you think Fritz is going to find out that Mellie was in on it too? Is Quinn going to eventually go postal? What is Olivia going to do about her love life? Any thoughts on this, post them in the comments! Honestly, I can’t wait to see what happens next week!
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