It’s funny that, even in a fictional Washington D.C., we’d find so many characters tortured by the lies they’ve told. Everyone from the advisor’s boyfriend to the President himself seems to lie awake at night, wondering about who they really are other than, of course, lying liars who lie. I guess we should all be happy that fake Washington D.C. has a big, judgmental conscience with which to flog themselves, as I’m pretty sure that’s not the case in real life.
After POTUS has held a press conference to blacken Graydon Osborne’s life and service (in real life, I’m pretty sure the President wouldn’t be pointing out, hey, MASSIVE security breach at our highest levels, but we’ve got it all under control! Now! We think!), Quinn and Huck do a security sweep of Olivia’s apartment. This would be more impressive if they didn’t apparently do it at the same time every week. I’m thinking Quinn might still be clueless enough to work on a predictable schedule, but not Huck. Given that this is how we start off the episode, I’ll admit I’m instantly in a bad mood. Yes, “Scandal” plays so fast and loose with logic and realism it might as well be taking place on Mars, but these two short scenes don’t do much to advance the story other than make it clear no one really cares whether this show is even slightly believable.
But the good news is, with the mole dead, the gladiators and Olivia can finally relax, right? Poor David Rosen can go home and brush his teeth in his own kitchen sink, and Molly has nothing to fear from Osborne. All is well in the world! For the five minutes it takes for everything to be turned upside down and frantically shaken as if God is searching for a quarter in the bottom of Her purse.
That shake comes from Susan (or Susie, or whatever) Osborne, the wife of the so-called suicide. She wants her husband’s name cleared! Olivia talks to her as if she’s a small, somewhat sad and stupid child, assuring her that everything is over and she and her gladiators really need to take showers and get off the caffeine. But then Mrs. Osborne reveals that her husband’s suicide not was addressed to Susan, and he NEVER called her Susan. It’s not much, and Olivia isn’t buying, but she’s willing to keep listening. And then, as all of her tired gladiators watch in horror, Olivia takes the case.
As usual, there is much running around. The Scooby gang discovers that the suicide was almost too perfect — but Molly getting a $100,000 payday and abruptly heading to the airport is a dead giveaway that Susan Osborne may just be right after all. David, who is now pretty clearly a member of the Scooby gang (a gladiator in training? Scrappy Doo?), has his contacts in Homeland Security nab Molly before she can book a flight to Belize. It’s all coming unraveled despite all of Jake’s very careful raveling.
Unfortunately, Olivia decides to chat with Cyrus about this in her apartment, her apartment that’s under Creepycam courtesy of Jake. Jake informs his shadowy contact that Olivia is on to them, and Shadowy suggests he take care of Olivia. Not in the nice way, to be clear, but the dead way.
So, what does Jake plan? A romantic date with Olivia, of course! I realize we’re not supposed to really know if Jake is a psychopath or a good guy in psychopath’s clothing or what, but Jake is starting to make my head hurt. My latest guess is double agent or… well, that or he’s a really, really bad guy. A bad guy with a weakness, apparently, for Olivia. Which would suggest he doesn’t really have what it takes to be a spy at all, double or otherwise. But I guess even Mata Hari had her weaknesses.
Olivia shoots him down, then shows up at his house with burgers. Good thing he turned off the Creepycam screen before answering the door! To distract her from her phone and all the damning messages she will surely find there, he has sex with her. This is such a reverse Bond move I now want to call him Pussy Galore, just for fun.
After they have network TV sex (take off shirts, nothing else, then fall out of frame), Jake tries to keep workaholic Olivia away from her phone like he’s on “The Brady Bunch” trying to hide the fact he’s adopted a pet frog or put gum in his sister’s hair. I will say that there’s a certain amount of truth to the idea that Olivia can smell a rat at twenty paces UNLESS she wants to see that rat naked, in which case she can’t control her feelings and her lips quiver if she thinks the rat doesn’t like her as much as she likes it. Even when Jake accidentally reveals he knows Olivia doesn’t really cook, she shrugs it off not as a reveal (he couldn’t be spying on her, of course! She has weekly camera sweeps of her apartment which are entirely predictable!) but as cute date chatter. Olivia is the type of girl who has such lousy man reading abilities she’d fuel an entire slate of Lifetime movies.
Anyway, Jake can only distract Olivia for so long. Finally, she has to get out of bed, put on his adorably huge dress shirt, get a glass of water and try to watch TV — accidentally turning on Creepycam. Oops! Jake tries to inform her it’s not what it looks like, which is finally sounding warning bells in Olivia’s brain. But when she tries to run, he wrestled her to the ground and points to the screen, where someone is prowling around her apartment as if on cue. What luck! Anyway, Olivia banged her head and bleeds everywhere and Jake has to take her to the hospital, where Fitz shows up.
Fitz has now had a few weeks to hate Olivia, then have some hate sex with Olivia and say rude things to Olivia, and now he seems to be swinging back toward loving Olivia. Maybe he senses she had sex with another guy, I don’t know. But this episode has a lot of Fitz feeling sad and cheering on Cyrus in his boy troubles and even apologizing to Mellie if he had anything to do with turning her into a pathological liar. Apparently pretending to love his wife for a television interview makes Fitz realize he’s as much of a lying liar who lies as his ex-girlfriend, so maybe he should visit her in the hospital when she’s feeling and looking her best. I know I’d love that.
And speaking of resuscitating old relationships, Fitz keeps trying to get huggy with Cyrus, who reacts like a beaten foster kid. Why are you calling me, Mr. President? I didn’t eat all the peanut butter, I swear! Anyway, after telling Cyrus to hold on to James and not let go, he confesses he committed a little itsy bitsy murder of that pesky Supreme Court justice. Would Olivia understand? Would she forgive? You know, I got kinda mad at her for rigging an election, but I killed someone, so even stevens?
Cyrus basically tells him to shut the hell up and stop being stupid, but he says it in the nicest possible way, as he doesn’t want Fitz to get all mad at him again. Cyrus just wants to be loved! Which is basically how he gets James to let him move back into their apartment. James isn’t really mad at Cyrus anyway, but mad ay himself. He perjured himself! He knows too much and he’s tortured! I like James, but I frequently forget he’s on this show and not “The New Normal.”
In other news, the show tries to prove that Huck can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’, but I’m starting to think Huck may just go insane at some point or move to Belize (hey, Molly seemed to think it was alright) because he’s been through an awful lot. When he and Quinn go to investigate a storage locker tied to the mystery bank account that paid out Molly (who gets killed, like we knew she would), Huck gets knocked over the head and stuffed in a box with duct tape on his mouth. Quinn manages to find him after many hours, but by that point Huck is pretty much losing his fool mind, I think. He’s now afraid of water and small spaces, which means he won’t shower OR ride in elevators ever again, and I suspect that’s going to hinder some of his investigations.
What do you think is going to happen with Huck? Do you think Olivia and Fitz are getting back together? And what’s going on with Jake anyway?