If you haven’t seen tonight’s episode of Scandal (“Say Hello to my Little Friend”) stop reading now!
Tonight’s episode of Scandal almost managed to get all the way through the hour without Olivia and Fitz’s paths crossing. Almost. Fitz managed to call Olivia in the final moments of the episode, as though he has some kind of sensor in his mind that detects when Olivia is on the verge of letting go. The interesting thing was, the moment that Olivia and Jake were having seemed to have nothing to do with Olivia’s feelings for Fitz. Meaning, she didn't go running to Jake because something went wrong with Fitz. If anything, her connection with Jake these days has more to do with the messed up relationship she has with her father, and that’s a whole other can of worms. The point is, Jake and Olivia seem to be bonding over something unrelated to Fitz, which I kind of like.
This will always be Olivia and Fitz’s story, so I have no doubt that they’ll find their way back to one another, whether it be a season from now or next Thursday night. But I don’t hate that Olivia and Jake are re-connecting in more honest territory. There was chemistry between them in Season 2, but Jake was lying to Olivia at that time. The cards are on the table now, mostly face up, which could make for some interesting developments between these two.
Ok, I’ve talked way more about Olivia’s love life than I intended to. The whole point of the introduction was to point out that very little of tonight’s episode dwelled on that, which I like. Don’t get me wrong, the romance is a driving force in this series. But it’s a bigger and better force when there are interesting things happening around it. Tonight had no shortage of that.
First we have Olivia and her gladiators working on a case, just like the old days! Desperate for clients, they took in a Senator who sent sexty-photos to one of the many women he was cheating on his wife with. She turned up dead and he was being tried for murder. Surprise, surprise, the wife did it. That was barely a twist -- to anyone whose seen enough murder mystery shows where a cheating husband's mistress turns up dead. Sometimes, the wife did it -- but it played out well regardless. Kudos to great guest stars Patrick Fabian and Melora Hardin for bringing a little something extra to the table. Watching to Hardin’s character drink wine and reminisce about the time she brushed feet with the sexy-thighed former soccer player caused me to flashback to The Office’s “Dinner Party” episode, when Jan got drunk and kept listening to Hunter’s song about ”that one night.”.
Moving on, we have Operation Remington. Fitz found out a former pilot named Peter Foster had committed suicide. He arranged for the man to be buried at Arlington and even attended the funeral. It seemed likely that the mysterious Operation Remington had something to do with this, given the mysteriousness of the president’s interest in this man's death. But I didn’t put two and two (and two) together about Huck and this guy until Huck started having those flashbacks later on in the episode. Foster’s the guy Rowan had Huck kill. It's all connected! Ok, that much we knew, but at least this explains who that guy was.
That brings us to Huck, who was approached by Jake to take down Command, meaning to take down Rowan. Huck wasn’t interested. He just wanted to go to his A.A. meetings, talk about the “whiskey” he drank and move on with his recovery, if possible. Then he listened to the audio Jake got of Cyrus and Rowan talking about the President and Peter Foster, and now it looks like he’s on board to work with Jake. This could be very bad if things go wrong, and given how Rowan “owns” them, it’s very possible that one of them is still reporting to Rowan. And by one of them, I mean Jake. I’m more inclined to think Jake has ulterior motives than I am Huck because… well, Huck is Huck. He’s a killer sometimes, but he’s one of Olivia’s people. Jake is still kind of an outsider, as likable as he is. So I’m not saying he’s definitely still working for Rowan, but I still think we need to consider him a potential wild card.
One more note about Huck, he called out Quinn on her stalking him. We've seen Quinn show a slightly disturbing level of interest in Huck's work. And by "work" I mean his "drinking" and by "drinking" I mean killing people and liking it. Quinn's been following Huck around and acting concerned about it, but Huck turned it around on her tonight and told her that her interest isn't in him, but in his obsession. An obsession she might be developing herself. I want this to be going somewhere more interesting, but unfortunately, Quinn's not around quite enough for me to feel much momentum in this story. Of course, I'll be singing a different tune if and when she goes over the deep end.
Finally, we have Mellie and her big mouth. She verbally griped about some voters back stage and someone’s microphone was on, which brought some bad press her way and ended up helping potential presidential candidate Josephine Marcus -- played by Lisa Kudrow -- in the process. While Mellie attempted to apologize about her comments, Congresswoman Marcus was all too happy to ride that wave, until Cyrus managed to dig up some dirt on her. Apparently, Marcus abandoned her newborn baby at a hospital when she was fifteen.
It was looking like that ended the situation, which surprised me. It seemed like a big waste of Lisa Kudrow to only have her in a couple of scenes. I was hoping to see her go head to head with Mellie for a round or two. But the preview for next week’s episode indicates that she’ll be back, so this was all just set-up for her own scandal. And you know who’s good at dealing with those?
The episode ended with Fitz showing up at Rowan’s office. What these two will be chatting about, we can only guess. Ok, Remington. That’s my guess.
