Scandal Recap: Full Circle
Scandal tried to warn us and we didn’t listen.
Right before last night’s episode of Scandal began, a viewer discretion warning popped up due to violent content. Immediately my mind went back to when Maya Pope chewed into her wrists. I just KNEW tonight’s episode would be bloody by Scandal standards and boy was it!
Number one question before tonight’s episode? Who bought Olivia? It damn sure wasn’t Fitz so I’ll leave it like that for now.
HER ONLY FRIEND
Apparently Olivia and Abby have a standing monthly coffee meeting. I am assuming its monthly because I am pretty sure that Olivia has been gone more than a week in Scandal time. The episode opens with Abby waiting for Olivia with coffee only to see that Liv is a no show. This is odd, even more so when she calls Liv and there is no answer and her voice mail is full. She storms over to the OPA offices to find out if anything’s wrong but doesn’t get answer from Huck nor Quinn. She’s not a gladiator anymore they tell her which makes her visibly upset. It is not until she is briefing the President that she finds out what is going on with Liv. Storming over to David’s office after finding out that he knows as well, she railroads him for not telling her. Olivia is her only friend, she tells David. She has always been there for Abby and the one time she needs to do the same for her, she can’t because no one told her anything. She would go over a cliff for her friend and is heartbroken that Olivia is missing and no one thought that she needed to know.
Abby has been redeeming herself lately with me after her fiascoes earlier this season. All BS aside, Abby really does love Olivia and I do agree that she should have been told that Liv was missing. There was an “awwww” worthy moment when David tells Abby that Liv is not her only friend.
EXECUTIVE ORDERS
Cyrus is around doing Cyrus things. He has a few executive orders for Fitz to sign. The first one being to wipe out his entire Secret Service detail and another to have the NAVY Seals protect him. Cy gives Fitz the resignation letter that he plans to have Andrew sign. One small problem though. When Cyrus takes the letter over to Andrew, he refuses to sign it. He tells Cyrus that he will tell the public that Fitz went to war for his mistress if they think about sending him to jail or pushing him out. Fitz tasks Cyrus with finding proof that Andrew manipulated the assassination attempt and subsequently the war.
Cyrus makes his way over to Elizabeth’s office where he tells her in no uncertain terms that she will now be working for him. There is no where she can run or hide that he will not find her. It is now her duty to help him find the evidence that he needs to make Andrew go away.
To make matters even worse, Andrew goes to Mellie’s office and tells her that she will help ensure he stays Vice President or else the whole world will know what they have been doing behind closed doors.
Side note: where is the young man that Cyrus is supposed to be marrying? I know that’s not important now but I’m leaving a note for us to revisit this entire arrangement once Liv is back home.
MAJOR PLAYER
The bidding has started for Olivia and Huck, Quinn and Jake need a way to get in. The first issue is that they need money in order to buy her. Yes, Fitz and The White House are getting in on the bidding but even they may not have enough to legally do this so the OPA team has to ensure her safety on their own. Quinn is the first one to point out that aside from student loans, she doesn’t have much to her name so she’s not sure where they are going to get the money from. Jake says that he has an offshore bank account with about two million dollars in there. Quinn, with her ever present snark, lets him know that it’s chump change and won’t cut it. Huck interrupts them to say that he has over two BILLION dollars that can be used. Where did he get all of this money from, you ask? B613. He figured that after the dismantling the money had to go somewhere and he feels that the funds would go a long way to paying him back.
Now with the money in hand, they have to find a way to get in on the bidding. The auction is so high profile and secretive that you have to be a major player in the black market to get invited. The White House is in cahoots with terrorists who are bidding on their behalf but the OPA team needs one. Who do they know that can provide them with the leverage they need? Maya Pope.
They all take a little trip to Maya to explain the situation. Now with Olivia being Maya’s daughter, you would think she’d jump at the chance to help her daughter. Wrong. She wants something in return. Initially, she wants to be transferred to a medium security prison that has a library with books, a yard with grass and a fence and people to talk to. That’s not even be a possibility, especially with David’s annoying self interrupting every minute.
Every time Maya makes a request for something, David hits her with a NO!
I thought David was about to pop a blood vessel.
Eventually Quinn comes up with a solution. How about a flat screen television mounted on the wall outside the jail bars for Maya to watch. She’s fine with that and David reluctantly agrees so Maya gives them the scoop on how this will work.
THE DEEP END
I need Olivia to return quickly, if for no other reason than to reel Huck back in. We all know that Liv is the glue that holds most of these characters together but I don’t think that has ever been more evident than with Huck. We learned pretty early on in the show that Huck’s addiction is killing. He has been doing a lot better over the years in scaling it down, with the help of Olivia, but with his moral compass gone that all goes out the window. After Maya tells Huck that in order to get the information they need from Gustavo (her cocaine friend that will give them access to the auction), he is going to have to kill the men that he and Jake were tailing. Has Mama Pope ever met a plan that she didn’t change? Anyway, Jake initially bucks at the idea but Huck is for it. Will it help bring Olivia back, he asks? The answer he is given is yes so he smashes his ear piece and goes to work.
A seemingly long time has passed before Jake decides to go and check on Huck. Now Jake has seen a lot of things but he’s never seen Huck’s handiwork up close and personal. He walks into the apartment where the men were and it is a massacre. Heads are smashed, blood is splattered all over the walls and several limbs are laying on tables. Meanwhile Huck is still going to town on someone in the corner and he is soaked with blood from head to toe. He tells Jake that Gustavo is going to want proof so they’re going to have to take the heads. Jake volunteers to do it and asks Huck to go get cleaned up. Jake then takes the saw and starts to take the men’s head off.
OH. So Jake, you’re just fine with sawing off people’s heads too?
Later that night Jake tries to speak to Quinn about Huck but gets rebuffed. She tells him that though what he saw was probably sick and bloody and twisted, she knows that Huck can pull himself back. However, at that time she didn’t know how far gone Huck really was. After being outsold and having no way of knowing where Liv was being taken, Huck tells Jake and Quinn that it doesn’t matter where she is because she’s dead. He proceeds to describe in detail what exactly the buyers will do to Olivia as they try to make Fitz their puppet. They will send her back piece by piece until she becomes unrecognizable and Fitz tells himself that she can’t be saved. Huck tells them that they should pray she gets a single bullet to her head to be done with it.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that Huck is almost at the end of his rope. We know that Huck has a crazy side to him but without Olivia there, he’s now completely disconnected to just about everything and that is very worrisome.
MELLIE FOR PRESIDENT
I have to say that the evolution of Mellie and Fitz’s relationship has been an interesting one to watch. They went from a couple who seemingly hated each other at the beginning of the show to one who now understand the reality of their relationship. They’re never going to be madly in love with each other again but that’s okay for them. Mellie, who deep down thought that maybe they could reconcile, has given up that fairy tale dream albeit a small one. Now some of you will argue and say that Mellie never really wanted Fitz back with her and I will have to disagree. At the end of the day, Mellie is a woman and she wants to be loved. I am pretty sure at the beginning she wanted her family in tact and for Olivia to be out of the picture.
I say all of this to say that it seems that Mellie and Fitz are genuinely friends now that understand what they have to do for themselves and their country. They need each other, not for love but for power and success. Fitz goes out to the balcony to see Mellie having a drink. She asks about Olivia and he lets her know they are hopeful that she would be brought home in the next 24 hours. She tells him about the encounter with Andrew and how he’s going to have to let him walk because he has threatened to go public with the fact that he and Mellie slept together. She knows that she wouldn’t be able to recover from that sort of backlash.
Mellie then proceeds to ask Fitz what he wants more than anything. His answer is to have Jerry back, alive. They both know they can’t have that so she asks him what he wants that seems possible. Olivia. His answer is Olivia, back home and safe (and of course with him). Ask me what I want, she says. He does and her answer is to be the President of The United States. Fitz pauses for a moment and then looks at her only to say that okay, Andrew will walk.
WOW. This was a very important scene for me. I think this, as well as last week’s scenes with these two, will set the stage for the Grants’ relationship going forward.
Let’s just pause to talk about Mellie for a moment: she has honestly become one of my favorite characters on the show. All the #TeamOlitz madness aside, I have absolutely loved seeing the many different facets to her character. Mellie is a three dimensional character with complexities that surprise, terrify and anger you all at the same time. She’s real and I love what they have been doing with her character lately. The scene with her and Fitz reminded me a bit of the one with her and Karen earlier this season. Remember when she told Karen that because she was a girl and the President’s daughter she couldn’t get away with sleeping with more than one person or indulging in certain things? If it was a boy, the media and America would say its fine. This was reminiscent of that. They would forgive Fitz a hundred times but with her, not even once.
NEW PLAYERS
We see that Ian has taken Olivia presumably to the other side of the world where he brings in two tech guys and Gus, the man who Olivia hit over the head two episodes ago. Gus is still angry with her over that and disagrees with Ian’s new plan of action. She is the hostage, Gus says. There is no reason why she should be walking around like she’s in charge or even going along with this plan. Ian is not having it and let’s him know that the rules have changed and this is is how it will work.
A little while later, Ian wonders how much Olivia will go for. $500,000,000 seems like a good number but Olivia is insulted. She believes that she will probably go for a billion five. Ian in a show of good faith (whatever that means by his standards), tells Olivia that as it gets down to the wire he will let her choose who gets her. It’s not going to be sunshine and roses either way but he can let her have a say so she’s not sold to someone with absolutely no scruples. He asks her to shake on it and just as they are about to seal the deal, Gus shoots Ian in the back of his head.
Now I am upset! Because Ian should have made Gus leave as soon as he started voicing his displeasure about this. Ian should have known that Gus doesn’t have any real loyalty and now Olivia is a boat load of even more trouble.
In shock by what has happened, Olivia is wondering how this turned left so quickly. While Ian wasn’t a boy scout, he was the lesser of two evils. Having Gus in charge does not bode well for Liv and she knows that. Halfway through the episode, she tries to turn the young techs who are managing the auction. She tells them that she knows they want to build companies and have freedom and power. She tells them that she can give that to them. She can ensure that they stay out of prison and be properly compensated for helping her. For a brief moment we think that the Olivia Pope magic is going to work again. Wrong. They don’t want tech companies, they want money – lots of it. The young men are unwilling to help her and she is now left to wonder her fate.
12 hours before the auction is set to be closed, they take it offline. Very strange considering the bidding rate was well over one billion dollars. When Olivia asks why this happened, she is informed by Gus that someone came to him personally and offered cash. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Who did he sell her to, she asks? Iran.
The episode ends with Olivia’s transfer. The bag is taken off her head and she faces her buyer. We, however, have to wait until the next episode to find out who it is.
I can’t take too much more of this. Scandal needs two hour episodes until we #SaveOlivia.
Before I finish, I will say this. I am very curious to see Liv post-kidnapping. I don’t know how far off we are from her return but I’m guessing maybe another two or three episodes. What is the endgame here? We know she will have some serious PTSD but how much of the old Liv will there be? Honestly, the idea that a black woman was put on an auction block for the highest bidder hasn’t sat well with me. I was a little hesitant and anxious for this week’s episode because I wanted to know how this would play out. I trust Shonda’s storytelling abilities so I am very curious to see what’s next. We’ve seen Olivia broken down but I’m going to need her to be built back up in a monumental way.
Another poignant scene for me last night was when Fitz told Cyrus that they had to get Olivia back, not for him or to beat Andrew but because the war has to mean something. That stuck with me for a bit because in the midst of the #SaveOlivia campaign, I think many of us forgot that men and women have died because Fitz sent the country to war.
For those who haven’t seen it, check out the preview for next week’s episode. My money is still on the buyer being either Stephen or Papa Pope.
Natalya is the author of All The Things I Never Said, a soul-stirring collection of short stories, prose and love letters for the soulful wanderers, the brokenhearted and the hopeless romantics.
You can follow her rantings and occasional sparks of brilliance on Twitter @NatalyaMuncuff.
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