SCANDAL Recap: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

So ten months have passed since the last episode and apparently Fitz has taken up a pretty heavy drinking habit; I mean who drinks in the shower at 10:00 in the morning. Fitz is still playing house with Mellie out of heartbreak and Cyrus has been completely shut out of everything. I’m not sure why Cyrus hasn’t just asked Fitz what exactly the problem is but since he hasn’t he doesn’t know Fitz knows about Defiance. Olivia tells Cyrus she is pretty sure that is what is going on with Fitz and why he is shutting them all out, well all except Mellie whom he expected this sort of behavior from. Cyrus confronts Mellie about Fitz knowing about Defiance, Mellie thinks Fitz is just upset because of something that happened with Olivia. I would be a lot less calm if it took my husband damn near a year to get over a fight with his mistress. Cyrus thinks enough is enough so Mellie brings it up with Fitz. Of course Mellie being a low down woman throws Cyrus under the bus, saying it was all Cyrus’s idea and Fitz is right to shut him out and not to trust him.

Let’s cover the mini crisis of the week that will turn into a bigger issue over time. Four American’s are taken hostage, not just any American’s but CIA operatives. Fitz wants to send in a SEAL Team to get the hostages but Cyrus asks him to wait for some more intel and surprisingly he listens – for a moment anyway. Mellie gives her own two cents and advises Fitz to send the team in without waiting. Either because of the copious amount of alcohol Fitz has been drinking or the apparent lack of sleep he listens to Mellie and sends the SEAL Team in. The mission turns out to be a trap, they had the wrong address and ever worse there seems to be a mole in the White House.

Meanwhile David Rosen is no longer the problem – he however has a problem. Rosen wakes up to find a woman, a dead covered in blood woman in his bed. The cops come by on a noise complaint and Rosen tells them everything is fine, no problem here. That means he has only one option. He has to call Olivia for help.
The Gladiators step up to help David and really it is the least they can do after screwing him more than once this year. Wendy, the dead girl, has no employment history, although she somehow manages to pay rent in a good neighborhood, and is a regular at the bar Rosen frequents. Rosen may be spending a little more time at the bar now that he has been fired and black balled by the Justice Department. He did try to start his own law firm out of his apartment but mainly he teaching high school Government and borrows money from his Grandmother to pay rent. It’s a little sad as Rosen always did the right thing.
Despite Rosen’s hesitation he lets Pope & Associates handle things. This involves cleaning Rosen’s apartment – something Huck is surprised to find Quinnsay is very good at – and moving Wendy to her own house and staging a break-in gone wrong.

After digging into Wendy’s personal history the team finds a shocking number of pictures of men. These men all ended up being involved in scandals of their own after meeting Wendy. Wendy was using them to dig up dirt and then selling the stories to the tabloids and what Wendy wanted from Rosen was the Defiance story.

Wendy has also been receiving calls – post mortem – from a phone in the Pentagon. More specifically the Joint Chiefs Office.
Enter Scott Foley – Olivia has what looks like a contrived (on his part) meet cute at a coffee shop with our Mr. Foley earlier in the episode and after hearing about the calls from the Pentagon Olivia pays them a visit. She asks for Captain Jacob Ballard and there Scott Foley is again being all hot and flirty with our Ms. Pope.
Olivia tells him about Wendy’s death and asks if he was one of the guys Wendy was trading secrets for sex with. He admitted to being approached by Wendy but that was as far as it went. Captain Jacob does some more flirting and asks Olivia out to dinner, an invite she declines.

Even though Rosen told Olivia he wants nothing more to do with her he finds Wendy’s flash drive still in his laptop. He brings it to Olivia and has her click on the file Albatross. It contains missile codes, the location of the Presidents wartime bunkers among other things. Olivia offers to help him dust off his white hat and get to the bottom of this.
That night when Olivia gets home she decides to call Captain Jacob to take him up on his offer for dinner. They have a really nice fun flirty banter. It’s such a difference from the intensity of Olivia and Fitz’s relationship.
The point is she accepts his offer for dinner and before they hang up we see Captain Jacob watching Olivia via closed circuit cameras. He has her entire apartment bugged. Does Huck not do regular security sweeps of Olivia’s place – because he should.

Side story: Fitz and Olivia are Cyrus and James’s daughters God Parents which causes an awkward situation as Fitz hasn’t seen Olivia since Verna’s funeral. Having them meet up again in a church is nice symmetry. The entire ceremony is spent with the two of them staring at each other and it doesn’t go unnoticed by Mellie. At the after “party” while everyone is cooing over Ella Fitz grabs Olivia before she can leave. I mean physically grabs her arm and pulls her into a closet where he takes her against the wall. When they are done she tries to apologize for her part in Defiance but Fitz is still mad, very mad.
Fitz: I may not be able to control my erections around you but that does not mean I want you. We are done.

So, there you have it, things are not so merry in DC.  We have a mole in the White House, David Rose and Olivia are working on the same side for once, Scott Foley is deliciously devious and Fitz needs to get it together before he runs himself into the ground.

Scandal airs Thursday 10/9c on ABC