If you haven’t seen this week’s SCANDAL, you might wanna stop reading right now. Otherwise, you’ll find out how Liv wound up in the hospital, Huck wound up in a box and Fitz wound up married to Mellie!
Unhappily Ever After: Cyrus has the nearly impossible job of preparing Fitz and The First Bitch for their first interview since his shooting and the baby’s birth. “This is Macbeth,” Cyrus says of their marriage. “They want the fairy tale!” Unfortunately, things aren’t any better for him on the home front given that hubby James is giving him not only the cold shoulder but the cold whole damn body. Fitz’s advice? “If you love him, don’t give up.”
Murder, He Wrote: While Fitz & Company are high-fiving the fact that the mole is dead, the widow Osborne tells the Gladiators that her hubby clearly was murdered. Her proof? How he addressed the letter he left behind. “In 30 years of marriage, he never called me Susan!” declares Susie, Hon, Babycakes… but never Susan. Word spreads and oddly, almost nobody is happy to learn that Osborne wasn’t the mole, least of all Cyrus, given that the president’s been telling anyone who’ll listen that the mole is really, most sincerely dead.
I Spy: Jake may be hot as hell in his uniform, but he’s proving tobe one cool customer. He’s so good at spying on our gal Liv that he actually breaks into her apartment and has all his cameras removed before Huck and Quinn (or Lindsay… let’s just call her Quinsay) come in for their biweekly sweep of the place. And then? That’s right, he breaks in again to reinstall everything!He also takes another meeting with the Mystery Man to fill him in on the fact that Olivia knows Osborne wasn’t the mole. MM’s response? “I trust you’ll take care of this!”
Huck In A Box: Realizing that Molly is the key to figuring out what the heck’s going on, the Gladiators begin searching for her. It’s obvious that Quinsay has been spending way too much time with Huck when she talks about the proper and improper ways to dispose of a body. Huck finds a storage unit“Albatross” has been renting in which he finds a big, empty box… which doesn’t stay empty for long after someone clubs him from behind and shoves him into it! Quinsay manages to find her mentor, but he’s pretty badly beaten. Who did it? Huck’s fellow former assassin, Charlie!
Fake It ‘Til You Make It: Jake makes a major whoopsie by saying he knows Liv never uses her kitchen, then covers the slip by calling it a hunch. Speaking of covering, Fitz and Mellie mask their animosity and actually do such a convincing job of playing lovebirds during their big television interview that Liv, watching at home, chugs from her bottomless glass of wine before grabbing Gettysburgers and heading over to Jake’s. He actually gets her to drink a (gasp!) beer, smooch and have the kinda steamy sex she usually reserves for a certain politico. Despite the title of this section,there is definitely no “faking it” going on when these two connect.
Liar, Liar: Sick of living in a hotel, Cyrus goes home and even offers to go to therapy with his hubby. James, knowing full well they can’t go to a shrink and discuss how Cyrus stole an election, goes into whiny mode until his voice reaches a pitch heard only by dogs in far-away places. Cyrus points out that he is who he always was, and that James is simply feeling guilty because he chose their relationship over revealing the truth. “It’s rotting deep inside you,” says Cyrus, “this choice you made. And it’s not so much the choice, it’s the fact that you now know you’re capable of making that kind of choice.”Basically, Cyrus seems to be saying, “Welcome to the dark side… we have cookies!”
True Lies: Molly’s stopped at the airport and admits that she lied because she was forced by someone very, very bad to do so. Meanwhile, a drunk Fitz regales a less-than-thrilled Mellie with the real story of how they met(as opposed to the lovey-dovey version they’ve been telling for years): turns out his dad basically hooked them up because she was a blue blood. “It wasn’t even a blind date, it was a merger,” he reflects. “It was just shy of prostitution.” He asks if she’s tired of pretending and she replies, “Every married couple alive pretends. They pretend they don’t hate their in-laws or their husband’s stupid jokes or their wife’s shrill laugh. Or that they don’t actually love one of their children more than the others.” That right there is almost enough to make me call my mom and demand she admit to loving both her offspring equally. “Buying into the delusion that there’s any other way to… get through an entire life together? That’s the fantasy,” says Mellie, who is now officially bumming everyone out.But her honesty does get Fitz to apologize if he was the one who “did this to”her. Speaking of lies, Abby tells David, “Liking sleeping with you and not wanting you to die is not the same as having feelings for you.” He gets her to admit she has feelings for him… but mentally says “Gotcha!” before saying he can’t love someone he can’t trust. And everybody knows you can’t trust a ginger.
Parting Shots: Cyrus gets a call from Fitz, who confesses that he murdered Verna, and the Gladiators learn that Molly’s dead thanks to a supposed hit-and-run accident. Fresh from having slept with Jake, Liv gets the shock ofher life when she finds out that his TV gets more than just HBO. In trying to escape, she falls and hits her head, passing out even as Jake is trying to explain that he’s been using the cameras to protect her from “him”, a mysterious, armed masked man who’s in her apartment. Waking up in the hospital, Olivia finds Jake hovering over her and insisting she stick to the cover story he provides her. Why? Because the next person to enter is Fitz. Liv realizes her former and current lovers know one another and, as Fitz goes in for a neck nibble, her eyes get about as big as those of us wondering what the heck is going on!
Richard Simms is the Executive Editor of Soaps In Depth magazine and the author of Crimes Against Civility, which is available on Amazon.com.
Leave a Reply