Scandal: Season 4 Episode 5 

Things got a bit physical this week on Scandal and not in a good way. We are taken back to Olivia’s law school friend, Catherine who is in prison for the murder of her daughter. It turns out her husband is in cahoots with a drug lord and he knows who killed his daughter. I’m not exactly sure where that entire arc is going but it seems like a mess. While Liv and Quinn were on stakeout, they witnessed the murder of the dead girl’s best friend. Quinn also noticed her swallow a key before she was shot. Quinn was actually pretty productive this episode. She went to the coroner’s office, did a little gastric bypass on the dead girl and retrieved the key from her innards. Awesome (or gross, depending on how you look at it)

Olivia hasn’t heard from Jake in a while and she is starting to worry about him. She gets a surprise visit from her father at her apartment and they have some father/daughter moment where Olivia tells him about Jake not being in communication with her. She fears she is turning into one of those people who is wandering about asking why her “boyfriend hasn’t called her” but at the same time she cant shake the feeling that something bad has happened to him to which Rowan replies “what can happen to a man like Jake Ballard?” Oh Rowan. She continues to call his phone, leaving him voice messages. She finally leaves one final message telling him he better call her back in 5 minutes or she will just assume that something bad has happened to him. To be honest, I love seeing this side of Olivia. You can’t tell me she doesn’t love this guy and she called him her boyfriend! She finally cracks and asks Huck to track him down. A resourceful Huck trace Jake’s last location and tells Olivia the last place he was at was the White house. She calls Fitz and demands to know if he is holding Jake. Fitz tells her he cant say anything and he gets off the phone.

She gets another surprise visit from Cyrus who was more than happy to spill to her that Jake is in custody because he killed Jerry Grant, Harrison Wright, and James Novak. Cyrus tells her Jake is a monster and while she may have conveniently forgotten that side of him, he hasn’t and the next time Olivia sees him, he will be dancing on Jake’s grave. That’s nice Cyrus except you put a hit out on James once and you indirectly gave Jake the order to kill James. You were all too happy for Jake to kill the threat last season when you didn’t know it was your husband. Please exit stage left with your nonsensical grief. Olivia goes to confront her father about the whole situation and Rowan reaches for the stars with this ridiculous scenario where Jake killed Jerry and Harrison because he wanted to destroy Olivia’s ties to Fitz and OPA because he (Jake) is in love with Olivia and wants her all to himself. For a moment there I really thought Olivia believed her father, the compulsive liar and killer.

Meanwhile Jake has refused to eat or drink since his imprisonment so when Fitz pays him a visit and they sing along to Otis Redding’s “sitting on the dock of the bay” Jake lets down his guard and eats a sandwich. Fitz tells him he wants to make sure he is of sound mind when he confesses to the murder of his son. Jake tells him this isn’t about him killing his son; this is all about him putting his hands where they don’t belong. This is about him being in love with and leaving with Olivia. Fitz heads back to the White House and runs into Mellie who is pissed that he missed their daily grave visit. Fitz tells her he was interrogating the man that killed their son. Upon hearing all this new information, Mellie says to him that this is a good thing. Their son’s death wasn’t random; it wasn’t senseless. It had meaning. She says on some strange level. She actually feels better. I think we just saw the last of smelly Mellie because she finally got in the shower. Yay! Now bring on power hungry and scheming Mellie Grant.

David shows up at Abby’s office and confesses to her that he is responsible for the Judge’s suicide. He says he blackmailed him with B613 information in order to get his vote. For some reason, Abby considers this to be Olivia’s fault because she rushes over to Liv’s apartment and proceeds to say some horrible things to her. She shut her mouth long enough to see that Olivia was a wreck. Abby, friend of Olivia finally makes her reappearance and she asks Olivia what’s wrong. We finally see Olivia break down in tears and confess everything about Jake and how she does not believe he would do all those things. Fitz goes back to Jake’s cell and starts interrogating him. Jake being the charming troll that he is, goads Fitz by telling him how he made love to Olivia and how that is driving Fitz mad. Fitz is of course beating the crap out of Jake as he is saying all this. You lose this one Fitz because we know if Jake were not in chains, he would pummel you to the ground. I hope you feel good about yourself beating a man in handcuffs.

Huck is still stalking his wife. Turns out she knows he has been watching them and they have had confrontations. He confessed everything to her and she didn’t believe him and she thinks he needs mental help. He promises to stop stalking them if he can see his son. She agrees but when he shows up to her house, his son is nowhere to be found and waiting for him is a shrink. He loses his mind and almost chokes the poor shrink. I feel bad for Huck. Maybe Liv or Quinn can speak to his wife and convince her he is not crazy. Pretty good episode and next week looks like it will be a good one too.

Written by Lady Sith

*image from usmagazine.com