Amidst all of the craziness and heightened drama and murder, Scandal is really about a love triangle. Fitz and Jake both love Olivia, and Olivia loves both of them. In this episode, with Jake under arrest for murdering Fitz’s son, it gives the president a chance to work out his frustrations.
Fitz has two sides. He wants to be the good guy, the White Hat who Olivia fell in love with, so he tries to keep the interrogation of Jake above board. But when that doesn’t work, he decides to beat up the man who’s screwing the woman he loves. Sometimes the president is no better than an angry frat boy, getting into a fight because some chick broke his heart.
Jake’s Interrogation
Jake is in custody, stuck in the same room where Papa Pope was held last season. So basically it’s the Command Interrogation Room at the Pentagon. He refuses to talk to anyone but the president. Cyrus urges Fitz to try torture since Jake’s B-613 history makes him resistant to questioning, but Fitz wants to do it by the book.
Eventually Fitz agrees to pay Jake a visit. Jake is happy to immediately talk to him about how Rowan obviously set him up, but Fitz is hellbent on getting Jake to confess. That’s when Jake realizes that he’s screwed because Fitz is just working out his frustration over Jake being with Olivia, so he won’t believe anything Jake has to say. However, Jake delivers a killer speech about how he knows Fitz is a White Hat, and that’s why Olivia loves him. But Jake is also a White Hat, which is why she loves him too.
Cyrus goes to Olivia to tell her about where Jake is and how he killed Fitz’s son and Harrison. Cyrus is certain that it’s true and is eager to dance on Jake’s grave since Jake is the guy who killed Cyrus’ husband. Olivia is horrified, but doesn’t believe it because the story involves her dad.
Olivia confronts her dad about how he clearly did this, but Papa Pope lies his way out of it, coming up with some crazy motive for Jake, killing Jerry and framing Olivia’s mom to ensure that he could be with her instead of Fitz. Luckily for us, Olivia doesn’t seem willing to believe it. However, one good thing does come from this, and it’s that Abby and Olivia become friends again when Abby provides a shoulder to cry on about the Jake drama.
At the end of the episode, having gotten nowhere with a confession, Fitz decides to take the gloves off. He asks Jake to confess, then starts beating the crap out of him while Jake reminisces about the Island and talks about how good the sex is with Fitz’s ex, Olivia. I want to be on Team Jake, but taunting the guy who’s beating your ass into a bloody mess isn’t the best idea.
Mellie Learns the Truth
Drunk and Smelly Mellie has another shouting match with Fitz in the Oval Office, this time about how she knows he was banging his mistress instead of visiting their son’s grave. Fitz breaks down and tells her about interrogating the man who killed Jerry.
And Mellie’s reaction is very disturbing. She’s actually happy to learn that her son’s death wasn’t some random illness, it was a murder with an actual purpose, and that killing him helped Fitz win the presidency and stay in the White House. “He died for our sins,” Mellie adds. Yes, she just compared her son to Jesus Christ, which I suppose makes her the Virgin Mellie.
Fitz doesn’t appreciate that Jerry being murdered makes Mellie so happy. Because it’s really weird. On the bright side, Mellie decides to take a shower, so she’s not smelly anymore.
The Caitlin Murder Mystery
The investigation of the murder of Olivia’s friend’s daughter continues. Huck and Quinn figure out that the man attacking Caitlin in the video is the law firm’s head of security. Quinn and Olivia follow him and watch as he has an argument with Faith, Caitlin’s BFFs, and kills her. Unfortunately, he’s a former police captain with lots of friends on the force who will look the other way.
Olivia confronts Caitlin’s dad, who runs the law firm, and eventually learns that Caitlin was killed because she stole a super important file and hid it, and Faith died because she took the key to the locker containing the file. So wait, the head of security killed Caitlin? That was resolved very easily.
Quinn deduces that Faith must’ve swallowed the key, so she breaks into the morgue and cuts open Faith’s body, digging through her guts to retrieve it. Scandal has desensitized me so much that I don’t even think twice about how gross that is. There had better be a good payoff with that key and the file, because it’s hard to care about this storyline when Jake is getting his ass kicked by the president.
Personal Dramas
-David drunk dials Abby for a late-night booty call. She’s not up for it. He tries to apologize the next day, but he can’t take the hint that she’s not into him anymore. That night he drunkenly confesses to Abby that he used the B-613 files to blackmail the judge, leading to the judge’s suicide. His takeaway is that he’s not very good at being Olivia Pope.
-Huck continues to stalk his wife and son, but he gets caught and she wants nothing to do with him or his crazy story about how he had to leave or the super spy organization he worked for was going to kill them. In Kim’s defense, that is a ridiculous excuse and I wouldn’t believe it either.
-Kim allows Huck to see their son, but instead it’s a set-up to have Huck talk to a shrink. Huck does not take it well, especially since he worked so hard trying to wrap a present for his boy.
Next week on Scandal: Abby confronts Fitz about beating up his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. I’m pretty sure that same thing happened on One Tree Hill, only it was set on a basketball court, not in the Oval Office.
(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.
