Last week on Scandal: Things happened! Olivia has a fake boyfriend now! Other stuff!
So, okay:
- Everyone went insane this week, Sally especially, obviously, until Fitz snapped her back to reality by tanking a debate with a huge flub in order to keep her from confessing — on live television, during a Presidential debate — to murdering her gay husband, so his wife and Chief of Staff wouldn’t go to prison for covering it up behind his back. It’s fun to write out plot lines from Scandal. Really drives them home.
- I still think Sally should have stuck with her original debate strategy. “Yum Yum, Crispy Piggy” would make an excellent campaign slogan and bumper sticker.
- Jake also went insane, to the degree reciting a troubled life story in one long monologue to someone (or no one!) while sitting in the dark in your secret spy headquarters office can be considered a troubling sign. Which it probably can. Olivia really knows how to pick ’em.
- And speaking of powerful, mentally imbalanced people Olivia plays kissyface with, Fitz seemed to be doing better this week. Except for the part where he had his tongue down his mistresses’ throat in front of an open window of the Oval Office, which seems somewhat less than advisable from a secrecy standpoint.
- As Olivia correctly pointed out between gasps of delirious laughter, all three candidates in the upcoming presidential election are, technically speaking, cold-blooded murderers: Fitz killed Vera Thorton in the hospital, Reston killed the contractor who was sleeping with his wife, and now Sally killed her husband. DEMOCRACY IN ACTION.
- For a guy who recently became unemployed, Eli Pope sure spends a lot of time riding around in limousines. Although I suppose terrifying monologues lose some of their punch if you’re crammed knees-to-chest with your briefcase in your lap in the backseat of an Uber driver’s Civic. File it under a business expense.
- I love when Cyrus has his fleeting moments on conscience, because it’s always fun to see where he draws the line, even when he’s quote-unquote being good. Like, he’s sorry that he pimped James out as part of a plot that ended with the Vice President murdering her husband, but he’s still definitely all about having the Vice President murdered to cover it up.
- Also, bless Cyrus’s heart for trying to convince Jake that the entire Western world would crumble if the Vice President got arrested for murder. When he got to the part about people refusing to pay their taxes, I just pictured someone sending a blank stack of forms to the IRS with a sticky note on it that said “VICE PRESIDENT KILLED A DUDE. I’M OUT.”
- What kind of rinky-dink spy agency is B6-13, really, if the dude in charge is sending a brand new agent with no formal training and an attitude problem out to investigate the scandal and cover-up surrounding an Executive Branch homicide? He didn’t have someone else, perhaps with, like, six months of experience? Who would he have sent if Quinn had the flu? The janitor?
- I gotta get that safe-cracking app Quinn has on her phone, though.
*****Statistical Breakdown of Olivia Pope’s Day:
35% – Wine
20% – Yelling at people
15% – Getting yelled at
10% – Treason
7% – Adultery
5% – Having powerful men offer to whisk her away to the country
4% – Walking around on the sidewalk all like “Dammit, I am Olivia Pope.”
2% – Looking at the caller ID of her ringing phone and sighing
1% – Answering the door for surprise visitors at her apartment
1% – Miscellaneous Olivia Popery
*****Scandal has exactly two characters with anything resembling redeemable character traits, and one of them appears to have just gotten a bullet to the forehead. Actually, maybe “redeemable character traits” is going a little far. Let’s just say they’re nice. Unfortunately for them, in the Scandal universe, being nice means you repeatedly get trampled and dragged through the mud by the parade of morally bankrupt monsters you have to deal with every day. Poor, sweet, naive James and blind do-gooder optimist David Rosen. It was only a matter of time before one of them got slaughtered in the street by a bad man with silencer. They never stood a chance.
As far as which one of them got shot (and I guess we shouldn’t just assume death, because Scandal), my money is on James, if only because David is a more useful character to have around on the show. I mean, someone has to get blindsided by Olivia at a trial and made to look like a total boob every couple months, you know? Might as well be a familiar face. And even if I’m wrong, there’s still the possibility that James sees a shiny penny in the street on the way home and gets so excited about it that he forgets where he is and gets hit by a bus. Can’t rule that out either.
Next time on Scandal: We find out which Bambi got murdered. Probably!
