This week’s Scandal kicked off with Olivia having a dream/nightmare about getting intimate with Jake and Fitz as their faces interchanged; so kinky. At the end of the last episode, we saw Olivia being comforted by Abby and its no surprise that when Olivia wakes up screaming from her dream/nightmare, Abby was there to comfort her. I just hope they stop trying to drive a wedge between these two. Their relationship works so well when they are not at odds with each other. The case of the week comes in the form of the death of former President Randolph Cooper, a revered Republican president. Olivia Pope gets a call from Leonard Carnahan, the man who was imprisoned for the attempted assassination of Cooper years ago. Cooper survived his shooting but the bullet was permanently lodged in his brain. Now the former president is dead, Carnahan believes he can prove that he wasn’t the shooter if Olivia could find a way to have the bullet retrieved from the dead president’s head and a ballistics test done on it. My gut feeling told me this dude was one of those losers who just want their shot at fame and I was right. Turns out the bullet matched and Carnahan revealed that the whole point of this exercise was to make sure he didn’t go down in the history books as one of those failed assassins.
Meanwhile, Cyrus is still being a sugar daddy. He has even gone as far as telling his boy toy, Michael that he will get him an apartment and a secure cellphone. I can’t believe Cyrus is really doing all this. It’s hard to reconcile this reckless Cyrus with the Cyrus who called himself Olivia’s monster. We all know Michael doesn’t care for Cyrus so we weren’t surprised when he apparently read through Cyrus’s email and shared some damaging information with Lizzie Bear. Olivia and Fitz finally come face to face and Fitz shows her evidence that proves that Jake killed his son and Harrison. Olivia still doesn’t believe it and demands to see Jake. After some manipulation from Eli Pope, Fitz allows Olivia to visit Jake. Jake is bloodied and he tells Olivia he loves her and it is ok if she chooses Fitz. He also knows nothing he says will change her mind about his guilt. Call me crazy but I don’t think for a second that Olivia believes Jake is guilty. Jake gives her the number to an offshore account and tells her to make sure the money in the account goes to his mother.
Eli, still up to his manipulative games convinces Fitz to hand Jake over to him so he can beat a confession out of him. When Olivia hears this, she confronts Fitz and tells him she basically just signed Jake’s death sentence by handing him over to Eli. They get into a screaming match with Fitz telling her they are ruined because of what Jake did. Olivia tells him if he doesn’t transfer Jake to a real prison, they will be no hope for them at all, Fitz jumps on this and demands she tell him if there is hope for them at all. Olivia begrudgingly tells him “there is hope”. Fitz visits Jake and tells him he is transferring him to a supermax prison as a gift to the woman they love.
While Jake was in Eli’s custody, they had a little heart to heart. Eli reminds Jake that he warned him that he would be the one standing over Jake’s dead body. Eli goes on to lecture Jake about how he handed him his most prized possession on a silver platter but instead of being appreciative of this, Jake challenges him by investigating him for the murders of Jerry and Harrison. It is obvious here that while Eli loves Olivia, he still feels the need to have control over her life and he wanted Jake to defer to him. Eli likes a well-oiled machine and Jake challenging the status quo was never going to fly. Both Fitz and Eli were trying to control some aspect of Olivia’s life. Fitz by using Jake to insert himself back in Olivia’s life and Eli by having Jake transferred to B613. When Eli realizes that Jake has been transferred to a prison, he pays a visit to Olivia while she is swimming and demands to know why and how dare she interfere. She tells him he may be command but she is in possession of some skills that he will never possess.
Quinn is still trying to investigate Catherine’s case. Last week, Quinn dug out a key from the dead girl’s innards, this week, she discovers that the key opens a locker that contains pictures of Olivia Pope. Olivia is being watched and I have to admit to being a little bit scared about that. While Quinn was off investigating, Huck was stuck at his desk playing video games. The last time we saw Huck, he was trying to see his son despite his wife’s attempts to get him committed to a shrink. Immediately I saw him suddenly addicted to video games, I knew there had to be some specific reason. At the end of the episode, we see that the opponent Huck had been playing against this entire episode was none other than his son Javi. It’s sweet and sad at the same time. I just want him to at least have some kind of physical contact with his son. He deserves it. Mellie has a meeting of the minds with the wife of former President Cooper Bitsy. I love this woman! Throughout her conversations with Mellie, we discover that her husband had ADD thereby leaving the running of the country to her, he banged anything in skirts and would not have been elected for a second term were it not for her. She tells Mellie that even though she did all these things, she will forever be remembered as the wife of a man who did something with his life.
Lizzie Bear, armed with the information she got from Michael, leaks to the press that Fitz was planning on closing some naval bases. When the WhiteHouse is confronted with this, Cyrus lambasts Abby and tasks her to find out who leaked the story or she will be fired. At the funeral of the former president, the press asks Mellie about the naval base closings. Fueled by her conversations with Bitsy, she throws her husband under the bus by telling the press he is committed to the protection of the United States and he would never dream of closing those naval bases. Cyrus gets on the phone with Abby and starts throwing tantrums about her being incompetent. Abby gets the last laugh when she informs him that while she was doing her job, she discovered that Cyrus had gotten a new unsecured phone and checked into a hotel several times. She tells him that maybe he should worry about his own backdoor. I see what you did there Abby.
Written by Lady Sith
*image from New York Post