Previously on Scandal: Someone had a bomb. Mellie drank hooch and got HONEST.
In the opening of last night’s episode, Olivia told her other boyfriend that the time had come for her to be “a good girl.” By the time the episode ended, she had slut-shamed a murder victim in front of the entire country and watched the real killer walk away scot-free. Things got complicated. Also, the First Lady of the United States called Phoebe from Friends “trailer trash with a push-up bra.” But we’ll get to that.
The BIG STORY this week is that Scandal did “an Anthony Weiner episode,” which is only partially true, really. Yes, it was an episode about a sleazy politician who sent text messages to a bunch of ladies under a hilarious pseudonym (REDWOOD JOHNSON) and asked them to do all sorts of sexy and/or perverted things (TOILET PICTURES), but it seems a little unfair to give Anthony Weiner so much credit for that, because I really feel like Scandal would have gotten there eventually anyway. This is a show that literally just had the First Lady get drunk on moonshine and vow to destroy her husband and his mistress in a long, Baptist-preacher-sermon-style speech that opened with an offer to have sex on the table in an ornate White House dining room. They’d have figured it out if we gave them more time. I’m sure of it.
Anyway, the case itself? Not that interesting! That is really saying something, seeing as (a) it was a murder trial in which said pervy Senator was accused of killing the girl he was sexting; (b) Olivia and her team went to great lengths to slut shame the murder victim (reminder: EVERYONE ON THIS SHOW IS A TERRIBLE PERSON); (c) there was like a 30-second montage of female witnesses listing off the deviant things he said to them and asked them for, which, again, involved pictures of at least one of them on the toilet; (d) THE SENATOR WAS PLAYED BY PROFESSOR LASKY FROM SAVED BY THE BELL: THE COLLEGE YEARS; and (e) it ended with a surprise twist, which was that his wife actually committed the murder, and she totally got away with it. That’s the thing about this show: it’s so consistently insane that Professor Lasky can call himself Redwood Johnson and demand disturbing fetish pictures from women he barely knows and be found not guilty in a murder trial only because his SECRET MURDERER wife provided an alibi and blindsided the prosecution, and I can watch it all happen and find myself thinking, “Eh, it was okay.” That can’t be healthy.
Oh, and speaking of the prosecution being blindsided, let’s be really clear about something: David Rosen is a terrible lawyer. We’ve seen that he can be a decent investigator if you suspend him from his job and give him like a month to cover an entire wall of his apartment with pictures and documents and crazy-person-scribblings that connect them all, and he’s a useful pawn if you’re cooking up a scheme that requires a high-ranking government official to lean on other high-ranking government officials, but as far as the actual practice of law as a United States Attorney goes? Garbage. Every single trial, Olivia yoinks victory away from him at the very last second, and every single time he looks at her with the expression somewhere between shock and real sadness, like he actually expected it to be different that time. It’s kind of heartbreaking. He’s basically the Charlie Brown of high-profile murder trials.
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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now I’m picturing Professor Lasky asking Kelly Kapowski to send him all sorts of vile bathroom-related pictures. Goddammit, Scandal.
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It’s starting to dawn on me that the only two characters I care about at all on this show — for very different reasons — are Huck and Mellie, so I’m just talk about them for a little.
Huck has problems. Actually, Huck has always had problems. But now, Huck has problems. Ever since he found out Olivia’s dad is the guy who ran the murderspy agency that turned him into Dexter meets Michael Weston from Burn Notice meets Eeyore, my man has been coming unglued. He’s back to “drinking whiskey” — which means he’s back to attending meetings and speaking in his thinly-disguised, hilariously corny murder code — and he’s neckbeard-deep in investigating all the stuff about the president’s secret military mission that Cyrus and Eli are running around and trying to cover up via clandestine daytime meetings on park benches around Washington, and it’s … it’s … I JUST WANT HUCK TO BE HAPPY, OKAY? I can’t help it. I get attached to these sad sack characters. It’s a personality flaw. I’m sure a psychologist could have a field day with it. But at least Huck finally cut through the bullsh*t and screamed in Quinn’s stupid fangirl face about playing murderspy around the office like her six months of tugging on his cape means she knows a single damn thing about any damn thing. God, she is the worst.
And speaking of things a psychologist could have a field day with, I have done a complete 180 on Mellie after her drunken tirade last week. I used to hate her so very, very much, and now I love her. All it took was a little moonshine. I’m easy like that.
What did she do this week, you ask? Well, after saying all the right things to the press when they asked her about a potential Democratic challenger in the upcoming election — played by Lisa Kudrow, in the first appearance of her character’s arc — she forgot her microphone was on and called her “a piece of trailer trash with a push-up bra and a microphone” and dismissively said ignorant people would eat that schtick up “like fried Twinkies.” Then she got all huffy about apologizing for it, and got EVEN HUFFIER when Cyrus pointed out that there may be serious political consequences from a scandal-plagued White House disparaging a popular member of the opposing party and alienating huge swaths of rural and/or female voters. She’s essentially become Cruella de Vil at this point. I fully expect her to stride into the Oval Office next week carrying a long black cigarette holder and wearing a full-length coat made of Dalmatian fur. Someone make me that Photoshop.
Next week on Scandal: The president confronts Cyrus! Lisa Kudrow has a secret baby! A SECRET BABY!
[Photos via ABC]
