Scandal moves at the speed of light, so you can’t miss an episode. This week seems like a perfectly innocent episode about the president’s daughter making the dirtiest sex tape ever. OK, not that innocent. But in an episode with a sex tape, Fitz yelling at “Smelly Mellie” and Fitz making out with Olivia in the Oval Office, none of those things come close to being the most shocking.
Instead, it’s all about Tom the evil Secret Service agent who killed the president’s son on Papa Pope’s orders. By the end of this episode, Fitz learns the truth. Well, he learns the “truth” that Rowan wants him to believe.
The Dirtiest Sex Tape Ever
Olivia gets a call from Karen, Fitz’s daughter, for help. She’s drunk at a party after slipping her Secret Service detail. Olivia and Quinn show up to get her out while Huck shuts down everyone’s cell phones to avoid an embarrassing video. Karen, like her father and mother, deals with the death of Jerry by getting wasted and making bad decisions.
On the helicopter ride back to the White House, Karen gets a text containing a video of her at the party. Olivia sees it, calls Cyrus and demands that he wake up the president because it’s the dirtiest sex tape Olivia has ever seen. It involved two guys and the Eiffel Tower, which, if I’m being honest, isn’t THAT dirty.
Needless to say, Fitz is furious, begging Olivia to find the sex tape before it leaks while also keeping Mellie in the dark about her not-so-sweet daughter. OPA works out of the White House, much to Abby’s chagrin, and finds the boy who sent the sex tape.
They do, but the boys’ parents want $2.5 million for the tape. Between these two and the Grants, I’m starting to rethink my position on Rowan being a bad parent. Fitz reluctantly agrees to pay it, sweeping it under the rug just like his father would’ve done.
Olivia tries to make the deal, but when the parents want an extra $500,000, she snaps and rescinds the offer. Instead, Olivia goes into bad-ass mode and threatens to utterly destroy their lives, painting them as child pornographers who forced their son to make the tape so they could blackmail the grieving First Family. Seriously, why would anyone ever cross this woman? They quickly agree to hand over the tape.
Grant Family Drama
On the personal front, Fitz wants to know where Olivia went for two months. Olivia lies that she needed to be alone and blames her mom for ruining everything.
Things in the Grant family go from bad to worse when Mellie sees Olivia in the White House, then barges into the Oval Office to yell at Fitz. They have an epic fight in which Mellie says that she’s the matriarch of this family and will take of things, not Olivia. Fitz responds that “Smelly Mellie” hasn’t been anyone’s mother since Jerry died, wasting away and getting drunk at 11am.
He informs Mellie that their daughter made a sex tape and that’s why Olivia is handling it. Mellie, hilariously, responds that a sex tape means that Karen takes after her father. After some reflection, Mellie decides to step up and be a loving, supportive mother to Karen, giving her a sweet little pep talk.
Later, after Olivia finds the sex tape, she meets Fitz in the Oval Office and things get very heated very quickly. There’s groping and kissing. So it only took four episodes for these two to get back to making out in the Oval Office. Karen really does take after her dad.
However, Olivia stops Fitz because she needs to clarify that she didn’t leave by herself, she left with Jake. Fitz isn’t happy at all and cuts their sexual reunion short.
Jake vs. Papa Pope
Rowan wants Jake dead, so he enlists Tom the evil Secret Service agent to do it. Tom blows up Jake’s car, but Jake knows all of his tricks. Jake tracks down Tom for a talk, revealing that his orders are about the death of the president’s son, which means Tom will be killed after he takes out Jake so Rowan can cover his tracks. Poor Tom, stuck in the middle of two deadly men.
Jake goes to David to make sure the B-613 files are released in case Rowan succeeds in killing him, but David refuses because he’s still feeling guilty about that judge he blackmailed killing himself. Jake doesn’t like it when David tries to grow a spine, so he chokes him until he hands over the storage locker key.
Tom’s False Confession
When Fitz learns that his daughter slipped her Secret Service detail, he orders Cyrus to launch a full investigation. By accident, this inquisition leads to the revelation that Tom was at the military base where the virus that killed Jerry was stolen from.
Tom knows he’s screwed and is about to be interrogated, so he calls Jake who encourages him to tell the truth about Rowan and Jake will back him up. Jake comes to the White House with his evidence, but Fitz refuses to see it. Instead, Fitz goes to watch the interrogation of Tom, who starts to confess.
But then…Papa Pope walks in! Well, this is awkward. Papa Pope is very intimidating and encourages Tom to tell “the truth” about who gave him the order to assassinate the president’s son, while Fitz and Cyrus watch. Tom, scared out of his mind, says that the order came from Jake.
Jake is then immediately taken into custody by the Secret Service. Well played, Papa Pope. Things are moving a lot faster on Scandal than I thought, which is always the way it goes. This is going to get intense.
(Image courtesy of ABC)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
