SCANDAL Recap: One Mother of a Secret

Alright, this episode was awesome – as most episodes are – and quite a bit happened.

Over at the White House Cy and Mellie are meeting with Leo Bergen (played by Private Practice‘s Paul Adelstein). He is a campaign manager and they are in need of one. Leo has some reservations about Fitz one of the big ones being, “his wife is a frigid shrew.” Mellie seems taken aback like this is news. Didn’t Olivia say something a little less upsetting but exactly the same when she took over the campaign to get them elected the first time? Leo goes on to say he will not work for losers and that is what Fitz looks like. He looks unhappy and tired and generally a loser.

Elsewhere Josie Marcus is meeting with Olivia. Olivia thinks she is there to “interview” to be Josie’s campaign manager. Josie however doesn’t want Olivia as a campaign manager, what she needs is a fixer. She tells Olivia about the baby she had at 15 and gave up. There are maybe five people back in Montana that know about her secret. She wants Olivia to keep this secret a secret. Olivia sends the Gladiators to Red Springs Montana. It’s a deer head on the wall of the one motel kind of town.

During their trip Quinn is being frozen out by Huck and she tattles to Harrison who reminds her she went all, “Drill baby drill on him.” That’s right, Huck told them and now Quinn is grounded so to speak.
Annoyed at being grounded in Montana Quinn finds and buys a gun. That does not bode well.

The Gladiators find three of the five people still around town. They pay off two of them before heading over to see Billy Joe, the baby daddy. He won’t take their money though, turns out Cyrus’s “bitch boy” (as Abby puts it) Ethan is granting Billy Joe an on air interview to tell his side of the story. Fortunately for Olivia and company Huck is able to pull up some information on Billy Joe. He is having an extramarital affair. Since he wants to keep that quiet he accepts the money from the Gladiators. Funniest line of the night goes to Ethan who calls Cyrus to tell him, “We got Pope’d, sir.”

The last person the Gladiators track down is the nurse that delivered the baby. Said nurse lets it slip to the Gladiators that Josie’s Mother raised the baby Josie gave up as her own. She is Candy, Josie’s “sister”.
When Olivia confronts Josie with this news she says Candy doesn’t know and Josie never wants her to.

Cyrus still pissed about being, “Pope’d” has other plans though. The first Democratic debate is happening between Josie and Governor Reston. With a whisper from Cyrus, Reston has found out about Josie’s baby. Just like that it is out there. Josie falters for a moment and then tells her story. She spins the story out in a way that enthralls the public all while keeping the secret that Candy is her daughter. Except Candy is listening to this, thinks about it, does the math and figures it out. She is crushed.

Also in this episode is the Correspondence Dinner. David asks Abby to go with him but Abby lies and says she will still be in Montana. David stops by Pope & Associates, catching Abby in the lie. Later that night Abby comes by David’s place looking gorgeous. She is sorry, she wanted to go but she couldn’t. Her ex-husband was there. David says next time don’t lie, just tell him, he will understand.

The night before the dinner Fitz and Olivia have a nice phone chat while Fitz is hiding from Mellie in the bathroom. They talk about the Correspondence Dinner. Olivia has been vetting his jokes for years and he asks for her help to do it now. Of course Olivia does. She tells him to own his current image, mock himself openly and laugh at himself. Fitz tells Olivia he loves her and then they start coming up with more jokes together. All the while Mellie is listening at the door. She looks very heartbroken but I am torn. This marriage was never a marriage. It was a set up by two politically minded families and has been broken for a very long time. She wanted to be First Lady and she got it. Sometimes though she looks so sad/heartbroken that I feel bad. No woman should have to hear her husband say he loves another woman.

At the dinner Secret Service Agent Tom motions for, a very fiercely dressed Olivia, to come with him. He takes her to meet with…Mellie. Mellie wants Olivia to come back and run Fitz’s reelection campaign. “He needs you, Olivia. He is tired and broken and it isn’t the job. It’s doing the job without you. He’s not alive when you aren’t here. He can’t breathe when you aren’t here. You, you are everything to him Liv. He needs you, so I need you.”
It’s an amazing touching fantastic scene.

Now on top of all of that Jake and Huck are still digging into Operation Remington. Jake says he saw Fitz just 10 hours after the mission in Iran so that narrows down where he could have been. After some calculating Huck says Fitz would have been in Iceland at the time Operation Remington was going down.
While Jake was at the Correspondence Dinner with Olivia Huck figured it out. Huck tells Jake about a plane crash in Iceland. A 747 carrying 300+ passengers. The crash was contributed to mechanical issues but there was a fisherman that reported flares at the time of the crash. Huck can’t verify that though because all satellite footage of that area at that time have been deleted. Huck says the President must have shot the plane down at the request of B613. The worst part, a passenger list from the plane shows a Maya Lewis, Olivia’s Mom, was on board. The boys head over to Olivia’s apartment with their information.

Two more things happened worth mentioning. First off VP Sally Langston corners Leo Bergen in the men’s room of the Correspondence Dinner. Yes the men’s room. She is, hypothetically, going to run for President as an Independent and wants him to help run her campaign.

Fitz talks to Cyrus about having B613 shut down. Cyrus, pulls Fitz out of camera view in the Oval Office and in very hushed tones begs Fitz to let this idea go. He says anyone who has had that idea before has ended up dead and unless Fitz wants a grassy knoll like situation in his future he needs to drop this now.

Scandal airs Thursday 10/9c on ABC