After last week’s explosion on Scandal – and I’m not talking about that poor woman – there’s a ton of pieces to pick up. I’m sure there’s a Humpty-Dumpty analogy or quip I could do about it all. I suspect though it would be better to just jump right into thoughts on “Say Hello to My Little Friend.”
However, Before I get into the ABC TV show Scandal, I’ve got to ask, was anyone else having a surreal experience with all the spying on our allies and American citizens? It’s been going on at least since the passing of Patriot Act under George W. Bush in 2001 – complete with secret courts and information on specifics being kept from the president. Talk about shades of B613! Judy Smith, the inspiration for the character of Olivia Pope – played by Kerry Washington – was out of the White House at that point, but it still makes watching Scandal a bit edgier for me.
Anyway, it’s whole new world on Scandal now, and there’s no magic carpet ride in sight. We’ve only known Olivia Pope as this super-strong and savvy woman who was afraid of nothing. Now we know there is one thing she truly fears – her father, Rowan Pope (Joe Morton).
Olivia says she needs to “be a good girl, go to Sunday dinner.” This is not about giving her Dad a second chance. This is putting her fingers in her ears and going “la-la, la-la, la!) She knows Jake Ballard (Scott Foley) is probably right about her father – but she can’t bear to think about it. “He would never hurt me, physically.” That may be true, but he’ll have no problem hurting anyone Olivia shows the slightest interest in. Jake is testimony to that. If she wants to keep the people she cares about safe, Huck, for starters, she has to pretend her father is just a normal guy. If they’re any second chances involved here it’s Olivia giving herself a second chance to pretend her father isn’t a monster.
Jake’s pleas about taking down Rowan Pope aka “Command” remind me of a young earnest kid – he’s got that zeal that reminds me the 1960’s Vietnam war protesters. Only Jake’s passion is apparently Olivia Pope. It’s her face that’s kept him going – in his mind, it’s her that’s saved him. This is similar to the reason Huck (Guillermo Diaz) is so devoted to Olivia. She saved Huck by reaching out to him , pulling him off the streets and back into a life better than the hell he’d escaped from, something he’d never thought possible. So he and Jake do have more in common than it appears at first. Huck was more broken when Olivia found him. He also seems to have been better at his job. I say that because Jake has ultimately messed up just about every assignment we know about. He was supposed to keep tabs on Olivia without her knowing, and sleep with her, not fall in love. Last year Charlie (George Newbern) outsmarted him when Jake was trying to track him. Generally speaking Jake doesn’t seem to have the same kind of precision and compartmentalization that Huck and Charlie have shown. Maybe that’s why he seems to have a bit more of his own free will? He never was programmed as well as they were, so he’s got a bit more of his autonomy?
Huck is somewhere between Charlie and Jake. Charlie has no problem with being a killer – at least that we’ve seen. B613 seems to have harnessed someone who otherwise would have been a serial killer, although he’s not without a certain compassion, seeing that he couldn’t kill Huck – whom he’d trained. As we saw at the AA meeting (where he uses the word whiskey as a substitute for murder) Huck admits that he enjoys killing. At the same time, like an alcoholic, it’s not something he feels good about enjoying. it’s not something he wants to do or be. They say that the alcoholic has a different reaction to alcohol than the normal person. It’s like a switch in the brain that once turned on can’t be turned off. Unlike Charlie, had Huck not been introduced to the art of murder by B613, he wouldn’t have gone there on his own. B613 picked him because they saw the potential for him to be very good at being a murderous spy – not because he was a sociopath (like Charlie).
That’s why Huck is worried about friend Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes). He knows that once that switch is turned completely on, it won’t turn off. Quinn hasn’t killed – yet. She’s right on the edge. Huck doesn’t want her to tip over. It also makes him question why she’s drawn to him. At the moment he thinks that the reason Quinn is so into him is because she’s circling the bottle. She wants to do what he does, be what he is – but that’s not…personal. This is why the music “Do You Love Mary Jane” is so appropriate in that opening scene where Quinn is spying on him at the AA meeting. Huck doubts Quinn’s concerns are really about him.
Is Huck right? I’m not sure. I think there’s some truth in it, but I also think that what drew Quinn in to begin with was it being a way to get closer to Huck to begin with. Basically, Quinn would do anything for Huck….
Quinn in season 2, “Where’s the Cytron card, Bil-ly!?
It’s just that the anything is something Huck is now trying to put away, and Quinn is now well on her way to her own addiction.
It’s like the girl who never drank – because nice girls don’t drink – who falls for a bad boy. In order to get closer to him she starts drinking with him, but then discovers she really likes drinking…. I’ll be coming back to this video, because it’s important for later.
In terms of being unsure of affections, Attorney General David Rosen (Joshua Malina) and Pope associate Abby Whelan (Darby Stanchfield) are having the same problem. Call them even in terms of the stolen Cytron card. Now they’re tentatively trying it again, but Abby is hesitant to sleep with him, I think because sex makes Abby lose all reason and David once was able to turn her against Olivia. She doesn’t trust herself…but she still wants David. David has little patience for her on-again off-again game-playing, because he has no intention of being led around by the nose. So, they both have the same problem: they don’t trust Abby.
Sex addiction is officially running rampant in D.C. – at least in the D.C. of ABC’s Scandal. (Sorry, no comment on the real D.C. can’t afford to be sued.) David actually suggests to Abby that Pope & Associates take on the client he’s defending. I’m guessing he figures they could use the money – and that this was a case he couldn’t lose. Well, he was right on the first assumption, but wrong on the second.
Senator Richard Meyers (Patrick Fabian) had been sex-texting pictures of what’s in his pants to a woman who ended up dead. Worse, she’d been trying to blackmail him beforehand. This is likely not a case Olivia would take on, but after the fiasco of having her name leaked as the president’s mistress she lost her clients – despite being exonerated when it was proven the affair was the 26-year-old White House intern Lauren. The wife attorney Shelley Meyers (Melora Hardin) is vouching for the guy, and the senator swears it’s just one girl he did this with. With the wife vouching the man, as reprehensible as his sexual stuff is, probably is not the killer.
Of course turns it’s not just one girl (When is it ever with these things) and after being blindsided in court with that fact, the team ends up having to “slut-shame a dead girl” in order to prove the senator isn’t the only one with a motive to kill her. None of the them are proud of it, but for Olivia, who is trying to keep her eyes straight ahead and do “what works” – winning this case is important to regaining her reputation as a fixer.
So when it then comes out that he’s been sending pictures during the trial itself, it really seems like it’s all going to be over. Shelly Meyers, who’d been standing by him the entire time has taken off. Even Abby and Harrison (who’d been so thrilled that they’d gotten a client) offered to work for free so that she could drop the job. As James Novak (Dan Bucatinsky) originally told husband Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) about the Senator Meyers case:
This, in a party that already had a wang problem – thanks to your boss.
This latest blow seems impossible to overcome.
I’m going to wrap this case up quickly, because it’s really a means to an end. They are able to find Mrs. Meyer because she’d mentioned to Olivia that her daughter was doing a report on Elizabeth Cady Stanton. That’s the alias she used to check into a swanky hotel. (Seriously, why did she even bother? If you’re going to use an assumed name, why use one so obviously assumed that everyone knows it’s you? Happens all the time – and not just in fiction. Strange….). Olivia goes to talk to her and comes up with the strategy to have the wife tell the truth: tell how vile she thinks her husband is, how much she can’t bear to look at him. However, as much as she’d like to, she can’t let him go to jail for murder when she knows he couldn’t have done it because he was at home with her.
David Rosen sees the writing on the wall and can’t believe he’s going to lose to Olivia Pope, again. If only he knew…. Olivia was feeling really good about herself, until the senator comes to her to talk about his wife. The guy really does have a sex addiction problem. It’s not that he doesn’t love his wife, he’s just insanely compulsive. He snaps those pictures of himself the way an alcoholic drinks: when he’s stressed, worried, elated…it’s a total mood manager. Now, he’s worried about his wife. Not that she’ll never forgive him, he doesn’t expect that, but he’s worried that she won’t forgive herself…for lying on the stand. While he absolutely did not kill that girl, he wasn’t with his wife either. That’s when Olivia realizes she’s been played. It’s Mrs. Meyers who killed the woman – and the senator has no idea. Shelly has been a step ahead of Olivia the entire time.
How was she able to do it? Because Olivia had her eyes staring straight ahead. Under normal circumstances, Olivia would have been asking the questions about who did kill the girl and she would have looked into that ability instead of just taking the senator’s word. Eyes straight ahead throws Olivia Pope off her game, and now she knows it.
When Olivia confronts Shelley, Mrs. Meyers throws Olivia’s words back at her: “Everyone deserves a second chance.” Is she talking about her husband – as in that’s why she killed the girl. She’d believed him when he said it was just one woman he’d done this with. Or is she talking about herself, the chance to be the kind of role model she wants to be for her daughter – which she couldn’t be if she went to jail for murdering her husband’s lover. Not exactly the strong feminist thing to do. At the hotel she had said this:
I am done forgiving him. The sacrifices I have made for that man. The marriage I protected…because I thought it actually meant something. And for what? So he could shove a camera down his pants.
Now we know just how far those sacrifices and protections went. She sure as heck wasn’t about to lose her career and her daughter over him too. In either case, Shelly Meyers succeeded in pulling off this cover-up. So, even though Olivia won the case, in terms of what she was out to prove to herself – she lost.
Meanwhile, over at the White House, President Fitzgerald Grant has his own problems. One of them is his wife, Mellie (Bellamy Young). Now, Mellie is always a problem in one way or another, but in this case the problem is a straightforward political one.
Cyrus is obviously worried and upset, but Fitz is oddly unconcerned. When Cyrus goes on about how badly Mellie has behaved Fritz yells at him to leave her alone. Mellie is surprised, and grateful. Absently Fitz takes her hand and says, “We all make mistakes.” It’s an interesting video for a couple of reasons.
Yes, that is Lisa Kudrow playing democratic presidential hopeful playing Josephine “Josie” Marcus. She’s going to be doing a multi-episode arc, so it’s good to get a sense of her now. The other thing is Mellie’s reaction to Fitz’s behavior. Mellie so wants to believe that Fitz could love and forgive her – I’d almost believe that she actually loves him. (I suppose she does, at least as much as she’s capable of experiencing real emotion.) However, the last time she’d trusted Fitz it had all been part of his plot to get Olivia Pope accepted and her out of the White House. She’s not about to fall for that again!
In this case, she’d have been better off trusting he was sincere, because he actually was. Not because of Mellie though. Earlier he’d learned that Peter Foster was found dead. He’s very effected by this and sent Tom out to find out what he could about the guy’s life. When he hears how sad the man’s life been and that he’s being buried in a pine box somewhere, he arranges for him to be buried in Arlington Nation Cemetery. On top of that, he attends the funeral. He tells the sister:
Pete Foster was an American Hero – and he deserves to be buried as such.
Last week, Fitz refused to tell Mary Nesbitt the truth about her son being an American hero, allowed his body to remain in the morgue because no cemetery would accept him for buried because they believed him to be a traitor. As we saw, She blew herself up. Everybody makes mistakes….
There’s more than just that though. Fitz is a war hero – “Operation Remington.” Only it’s become clear over the last few episodes that whatever heroic thing he’s supposed to have done was really done by this Peter Foster. For some reason, his heroic deed was transferred so that it’s listed as something Fitz did. It’s something he feels bad about – it’s a mistake, that, like Mellie’s can’t be undone. Fitz can’t make this guy’s life better. He’s doing what he can do – make sure the man is at least properly buried. That’s why he was gentle with Mellie earlier. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” is from the Christian prayer “The Our Father.” If Fitz wants forgiveness for his misdeeds he needs to be forgiving of others. In letting go of denial he’s also doing what in the addiction treatment world is called “making amends.” Last week it seemed all Fitz cared about was what happened to Liv when that bomb went off. Through his actions now, it seems he was just as affected by the tragedy as Olivia was.
Here’s how all these things end up weaving together. First of all, When Olivia refused to help take down her father, he approached Huck with the idea of trying to do it.
Huck’s response was automatic: no one takes down Command. It’s that B613 programming. As Jake said, no one’s ever tried. However, Jake’s confrontation occurs right after Quinn had expressed concern about him, and had shown way too much fascination with his killing someone. Huck secretly goes to the man’s funeral that he’d killed. There he discovers that man was a war hero – which isn’t mentioned in the papers at all, and sees that the president is there. That makes him suspicious. It’s not just that the President is there though, Tony Goldwyn’s performance through this is amazing. So few words, and yet so much is being told. Huck may not have been able to hear the words, but he certainly could see the emotions on the president’s face. There’s something very wrong going on.
Meanwhile Jake is still on his mission to save princess Olivia from the evil king. He’s been tailing Rowan Pope and manages to be there when Cyrus meets with him. Cyrus had just found out that Pete Foster was dead and that Fitz had arranged and gone to his funeral. (The handy side of having a husband who’s a journalist. James had come in all upset that Cyrus hadn’t told him about this – only to discover that Cyrus knew nothing about it.) Jake isn’t able to get a full recording of the conversation because a group of school children singing walk by causing a lot interference on the recording.
Nevertheless, there’s enough for him to piece together that Pete Foster flew a mission that could affect Fitz and that the mission is missing from the records. He takes the information to Olivia, who wants nothing to do with it, but Huck overhears the entire conversation. When Jake angrily tosses the information and recording down in her office, Huck retrieves it. As he reads and listens he realizes that the missing mission flight number was tattooed on Pete Foster’s body. He’d seen it when killing him.
Cyrus is still busy trying to clean up Mellie’s error. He has his intern Ethan go dig up dirt on the democratic candidate in her home state. (Loved the little comment, “That’s how Nixon did it – and it still works. Nixon as a politic role-model….) It appears that when the woman was 15 she’d gotten pregnant, but there’s no record of her giving birth – despite her going into the hospital. Cyrus thinks he’s home free, but even I can see that it’s likely the child was given up for adoption. With that out of the way Cyrus can turn to other matters – like the funeral Fitz went to:
This is an election year, sir, and I’d hate to see your conscience get in the way of your goal.
Wow. There’s a quick reminder about who Cyrus is. He reminds Fitz that if he keeps looking back at the past other people will too and the truth, whatever truth they’re hiding, will come out. Neither man want this to happen. Cyrus should know by now that Fitz never agrees so readily to anything….
As for David and Abby, once the case wraps up Abby sex-texts David a picture taken down her pants. Yep, that’s what she learned from this case – and David ends up taking her to bed. So what is this about? Is it them giving each other a second chance, or are they in denial that their thing is all about the sex? Could it be that they are addicted to each other? Abby herself tells David, that “It’s an addiction – I couldn’t help myself.”
It’s an addiction…or love….
Huck has hacked into Pete Foster’s autopsy reports and gotten the missing flight numbers when Quinn walks in wanting to know what he’s doing. Aside from telling her to stop sneaking up on him, he says nothing. The next thing we see is Jake knocking on Olivia’s door saying he needs to talk to her. Again, Olivia doesn’t want to hear it, but gets a shocking surprise. Huck is with him.
What has pushed Huck to take this risk? I think it’s Quinn. Remember, right before Jake approached him the first time, Huck had that confrontation with her. When he comes back from meeting with Olivia and Jake, he has this confrontation with Quinn:
I think Huck is afraid of Quinn turning into him, or worse being “recruited” by B613, and he blames himself. He was her Charlie, her mentor. He let her into his world so he’d be less lonely, and now he’s afraid that she’s sliding into the hell that he lives. The only way to stop it is for him to become free so that he can put down the killing. Quinn will see “how he’s thirsty” and what it for herself…. Huck has no hope of putting down his murderous ways if Command still has enough of a hold on him that he can be ordered to kill and is powerless to not do it. Jake opened the door to the possibility that Command could be taken down, but I think Huck’s feelings for Quin are what pushed him through it.
Apparently, Olivia was able to take in what Jake and Huck told her, because Jake is still at her apartment and they’re sharing a bottle of wine. I don’t really blame her. She’s had an awful day, one that proved she can’t just hide her head in the sand and be effective at her job. Then she gets this information on B613. It’s not like she can call Fitz and talk to him about it. Downing a huge glass of wine she admits to Jake that she’s scared. Jake convinces her to lay her head on his chest, which, despite her scoffing laugh, she does. To her surprise, laying her head on his chest as he promises that “he’s not going anywhere” actually makes her feel better. Again, I can’t blame her. When your last boyfriend could really only be there when he could get away from his wife, someone who can be there all the time has to feel good. The two start making-out –
When in Rome….
– but are interrupted by a phone call. It’s Fitz.
Fitz is in his car when he calls. He’s had a hard day too. Olivia is being very formal and trying to hide the fact that Jake is there. Just when Fitz starts to open up about his day, Jake says, “More wine” – loud enough so that Fitz could hear. He does so on purpose, and Olivia knows it.
Is she amused or annoyed with him….
Poor Fitz…but, really he’s not in any position to do anything about it. Besides, he’s on a much bigger mission. He hangs up the phone dejected, but then he’s arrived at his destination. Flanked by his body guards, Fitz strides down the hall and walks into…Rowan Pope’s office. Rowan was not expecting company.
Rowan: What the hell is this!
Fitz: This, is a reunion. One that is long overdue.
That’s right guys. President Fitzgerald Grant was a member of B613. I can’t say that I’m completely shocked. Fitz was never shocked about hearing that B613 existed, yet the President’s aren’t supposed to know about them. Even Cyrus was surprised that Fitz knew of their existence. From the way he speaks it’s apparent that somehow he actually was able to get out. Being that supposedly no on gets out…I can’t wait to hear what back story Shonda Rimes has cooked up! However, it makes sense that her father wouldn’t want his daughter hooking up with a man he couldn’t completely control. Perhaps his concern about Fitz and Olivia has less to do with the Republic and more to do with keeping his own butt safe.
As for this Jake, Olivia, Fitz thing…I don’t know, maybe they should consider polyamory? It’s not like Fitz is available, but I’d still say Olivia’s heart still belongs to him…mostly. What do you think?
Join us on GossipandGab.com for our season three news, previews, and reviews for ABC’s Scandal. Bookmark us or friend us on Facebook or Twitter for all our latest updates. You can also follow me on Twitter.
The post Scandal Season 3, Episode 4, “Say Hello to my Little Friend” Recap/Review: Addictions, Denials, and Second Chances appeared first on Gossip and Gab.