Olivia wears many white hats on Scandal and this week she’s a marriage counselor. She tries to help a prominent couple fighting for gun control, Huck and Quinn and even Fitz and the Mellie. None of these are easy cases, especially since Mellie is nuts while Huck and Quinn are turned on by memories of pulling teeth.
Besides watching Olivia fix an awful couple, gun control and Fitz’s State of the Union speech, this episode also has Cyrus hooking up with a hot dude, Jake investigating Harrison’s murder and David using blackmail to become Attorney General, a delightful little irony.
The Gun Control Couple
Fitz’s State of the Union address is all about gun control and the special guests are a high-profile married couple. James is a war veteran and Lisa was a teacher who saved the kids’ lives during a school shooting, but wound up in a wheelchair. They’re the perfect photo op.
But they refuse to come to D.C., so Cyrus, now a reluctant vegetarian, blackmails Olivia into fixing that. When Olivia arrives in New Mexico, she sees that James and Lisa are far from the perfect couple, yelling and fighting. He mocks his wife for being in a wheelchair while claiming that being tortured by the Taliban was better than being married to her. She’s just as bad. They’re awful, awful people, but Olivia tells them to suck it up and do their duty to their country and for gun control legislation.
In D.C. Olivia asks Huck and Quinn to babysit James and Lisa, which serves as double marriage counseling since Abby informs Olivia about Huck and Quinn’s sexy times all over the OPA office. While Huck and Quinn fight in the hotel bathroom about how their relationship could never work because he once pulled out her teeth (a memory that somehow fills them both with sexual tension), Lisa stabs James with a corkscrew. If Quinn did that to Huck, it would be considered foreplay.
The next day, Olivia gets them to agree to attend the SOTU by offering to help them get a divorce and spin it so they both walk away looking good. OK, so maybe Olivia isn’t the world’s best marriage counselor if “Get a divorce” is her solution.
Crazy Mellie
The First Lady’s awesomely epic downward spiral continues. She enjoys fried chicken and eats potato chips while wearing her pajamas at her son’s grave. Unfortunately, a reporter gets a picture of her at the grave and it goes viral, causing the media to speculate that Mellie is nuts. Cyrus calls Olivia, who gives him a helpful way to spin it as a private matter.
Fitz wants her to attend the SOTU to prove she’s stable, but she doesn’t care at all about playing the role of the dutiful wife. Cyrus tries bonding with her because he lost his husband, but Mellie doesn’t buy it because it’s not the same. For starters, Mellie wasn’t involved in her son’s murder.
As the SOTU approaches, Abby puts on her white hat and gives Mellie a big pep talk about the fact that kids die, but she needs to suck it up and do her job, which is to stand by her man and play the role of First Lady. There are a lot of people being told to suck it up in this episode.
The State of the Union
Everything works out at the State of the Union, with James, Lisa and Mellie all showing up. Before the speech, Fitz winds up alone in a room with Olivia and asks her advice on the speech. Olivia, who is somehow the single most powerful human being on the planet, can convince him to go off-script and ad lib an entire section.
He does, and it’s all about how strong Mellie is and how awful it is that their son died, but there are plenty of other children dying from gun violence every year. I don’t want to engage with Scandal in a gun control debate, and I’m in no way a supporter of guns, but Fitz’s argument is very weak. Basically, he says that dead kids trump everything and uses a purely emotional argument to rationalize that the 2nd Amendment is stupid, just like slavery.
The speech goes over well, but afterwards, Mellie kicks off her high heels, tears at her pearls and collapses on the ground. I’m very curious to see where this Mellie storyline is heading.
Cyrus and the Gigolo
Cyrus is feeling lonely without James. He goes to a gay bar for a drink and a hot younger man (played by Matthew Del Negro, aka Scott’s dad on Teen Wolf) flirts with him. Cyrus turns him down, but after the SOTU, he returns to the bar, finds the man and they get a hotel room and make out.
The hot dude strips down to his underwear, at which point he tells Cyrus that he’s a “sex worker.” I hate to say this, but no duh. Did Cyrus really think this hottie was that into him? Cyrus starts to walk away, but then the gigolo, named Michael, removes his underwear. Well played.
Still, nothing happens, as we learn when Michael meets up with…Lizzie! That’s right, the head of the RNC is pimping out this man whore to ruin Cyrus. Sort of like how Cyrus pimped out James to ruin Sally’s husband. Gay sex on Scandal is always a weapon of manipulation.
Jake and David
-Jake begins investigating Harrison’s death and starts putting the pieces together. Cue Jake vs. Papa Pope, round 321.
-Jake is staying at a hotel, willing to have booty calls with Olivia, but nothing else since they’re no longer on the island. The episode ends with Olivia, all horny after talking with Fitz, arriving at the hotel room for hot, hot sex with Jake. Something tells me she’s not thinking of him.
-David goes through his Senate confirmation hearing for Attorney General, but it hits a speed bump when RNC chairwoman Lizzie uncovers that time Olivia and Harrison framed David for beating his ex-girlfriend. Nice callback. But David uses the B-613 files to blackmail a senator to fix the problem so he can still be confirmed.
(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.
