SCANDAL Recap: Saint Olivia Pope

Scandal starts with Jake sleeping off his time in the hole in Olivia’s bed while she watches over him and Huck following Olivia’s father now that he knows he is Command.

Over at Pope & Associates the team, concerned about covering the rent is taking clients without running it by Olivia first. This week’s client is Mary, a woman who wants their help with a private family matter after she has a meeting over on The Hill.

At The White House Mellie is actually feeding her youngest child – I had no idea she even knew how to do that. She and Fitz are arguing while Cyrus tries to tell them about all of the happy family photo ops he has planned for them. Cyrus says they are also going to go have a family vacation at Camp David. Of course neither of them wants to go which I find ridiculous. I mean I can’t believe neither of them thought this whole tell the world my husband is having an affair/tell the world I had an affair with an intern thing during an election year through. If you want to win back voters you have to make it look like you are mending your relationship. You are hot and all but you are not a Kennedy. This is something Cyrus tells them in more eloquent angry terms.

Back over at Pope & Associates Quinn did some digging on the new client, Mary. Her son Chris was killed in an FBI raid at a terror cell headquarters just over a year ago. Also Quinn hacked into Mary’s bank account, “because she can.” and the amount of the check she wrote Pope & Associates is the total she had in her account. The Gladiators are suspicious. What they should be suspicious about is Quinn’s nonchalance about hacking into people’s accounts. Olivia heads over to The Hill to find Mary. Olivia finds her in the office of the Congressman from her home state with a bomb strapped to her chest.

While that is going on a man tries to break his way into the Oval Office – insisting he must see The President. Because of the bomb threat and the attempted breach of the Oval Office Fitz and Mellie are quarantined in a bunker. It looks a lot like the bunker they were in a few episodes back to discuss how to handle the cheating scandal.

Olivia tries to talk Mary down but she is pretty hysterical. She has wanted answers since her son died but no one would listen. They will now. Mary says her son wasn’t a terrorist, he was innocent. She wants the file about his death unclassified.

Cyrus is still at the White House where he sees the file on the man who tried to break into the Oval Office. As soon as he sees his name he tells the Secret Service to let the man go. Then Cyrus immediately calls Eli and tells him they have a Remington problem.

Olivia makes a call to her team dispatching them to do some digging and she manages to get Mary to release all but herself and the Congressman. This act also releases Fitz and Mellie from the bunker. Fitz gets to the Situation Room to hear the options. The FBI wants to take a shot if there is one and Fitz says that it is a go. A SWAT team heads into position. Mary freaks out when she hears the very not so stealthy SWAT team approach the office door when Olivia rushes to the window, pulls the blinds and stands there. Fitz who is watching this from the Situation Room yells, “Stand down!” He also wants a line into that room, right now! Cyrus says no, he won’t let Fitz talk to her; they will not make any more headlines together. Olivia for her part also asks to speak to the President but the negotiator for the FBI calls Olivia a terrorist for blocking his shot at taking Mary out and says the President won’t talk to her. Why are negotiators on TV shows always such dicks?

While all of this is happening Huck is still following Eli who has gone to visit the guy who tried to breach the Oval Office. Eli has an envelope of money for the guy, who says no more deal. Eli talks the guy into staying quiet for a little while longer and as he leaves Huck puts his gun to Eli’s head.

The Gladiators are trying to hack into the FBI to get the file but Quinn isn’t quite good enough at hacking yet. Such a shame since she was all high and mighty about her hacking skills over the last few episodes. I am not ashamed to say I am not fond of this new Quinn. Abby for her part is paying a visit to Rosen who refuses to help. Harrison is still at the Capital Building and an FBI agent shows him part of the file on Chris. He is in a recruitment video for Al Qaeda. Apparently Chris was a terrorist. Harrison relays this to Olivia.

As Harrison is leaving he sees the FBI agent getting into a car though and it has State Department plates. He calls Abby with his suspicions who asks Rosen to at least look up the agent who spoke to Harrison. Rosen does and she is not an FBI agent. Abby relays this to Olivia who asks Rosen for a favor. Moments later Rosen is in Cyrus’s office. He wants to see the file on Chris. Cyrus thinks Rosen is overstepping. In exchange for the Cytron Card Rosen got a job, not the right to show up and ask favors willy nilly. Cyrus tries to dismiss him but Rosen isn’t having it. He starts naming off the agents involved in the incident and shares how all of them were promoted a week after the raid. Rosen is pretty sure that proves a cover up of some kind. Cyrus may be a monster but Rosen is bad ass. Good for him standing up to Cyrus.

Mary is still pacing the Congressman’s office when the phone rings, it is Fitz. He is there with Cyrus, Rosen and the head of Counterintelligence. What he is about to tell Olivia must be kept secret. Chris wasn’t a terrorist, he was CIA. He managed to infiltrate Al Qaeda and then bring in other CIA agents as his recruits. He was a hero, but this is something his Mother can never know. The safety of the 57 agents still undercover would be compromised. Chris was killed by the FBI because they didn’t know Chris was CIA. He died for his country and for that Fitz is sorry but no one, not anyone else, can ever know the truth.

For a moment I want to punch Olivia because she says, no. She actually says she cannot lie to Mary. Seriously? National Security. FIFTY SEVEN other agents undercover. It’s not a great choice to have to make but, honestly. She seems smarter than that. Turns out she is smarter than that, she turns and tells Mary the lie. Mary starts to seriously break down. Olivia holds her while she cries. Mary then lets the Congressman and Olivia go before slamming the door behind them and blowing herself up.

Olivia doesn’t have much time to breathe though as Quinn shows up at the Capitol, she snooped into what Huck was doing on his computer, he looked up everything he could on Olivia’s Dad and now Quinn is worried. Quinn, darling, if you hadn’t have been snooping in Olivia’s stuff in the first place this would not have happened! She is the reason Huck knows who Command is and that he is Olivia’s Dad.

That night at The White House Fitz finds Mellie drunk off her Dad’s hooch. The way Fitz looks after sipping it that stuff is no joke. It must not be as Mellie is drunk, like giggling and you can hear her Southern accent drunk. Fitz doesn’t understand why Mellie is celebrating; he thought Olivia dying would have been her dream come true. It’s just the opposite; Mellie couldn’t stand if his whore died in a heroic way, that would make her Saint Olivia Pope. At least with Olivia alive Fitz still has a flaw, his achilles heel.

A little worse for wear Olivia gets back to the office to find Huck waiting for her. She wants to know if he killed her father. He is talking crazy like maybe he did but no, he didn’t. He couldn’t. In fact instead of killing Eli he ended up doing a job for him. He killed the guy who tried to breach the Oval Office and made it look like a suicide. After all Eli did to Huck he is still owned/controlled by Eli. Olivia nods because she knows exactly how that feels.

We end with Olivia getting home to Jake. She wants to know how he is there; they don’t just let people like him out so…Is he spying on her? Is her Dad controlling him? Jake doesn’t know why he was let go, he has no idea. Olivia says Eli controls everything; no one walks away from him. Not ever. Jake says he never thought he would get out; the one thing that saved him was picturing Olivia’s face. She saved him.
They sit on the couch while Eli tries calling Olivia’s phone.

Scandal airs Thursday 10/9c on ABC