Finally, the moment has come: when we can all, once again, vividly imagine doing it with Tony Goldwyn, pressed against the wall of the Oval, with our suit jackets and pumps still on, just praying no conspicuous dry cleaning will come out of any of it. THAT'S RIGHT GUYS — SCANDAL IS BACK! It's time to bust out the Tide bleach pens, because the white coats and theoretical hats are out in full force and the time has come for every Scandal fan to finally answer the question: are you gladiators, or are you bitches? Our dry spell has at last been lubricated with Tony Goldwyn's furrowed brow and impassioned if disingenuous gaze. And god does it feel good.
The episode opens where last season left off — none of that shit where years or months pass between seasons and devoted viewers have to spend at least a full five minutes piecing together how far into the future they are. No, we open with Olivia's father status-shaming Olivia into not becoming first lady or something, and trying to force her onto a private plane that will take her anywhere other than where the President of the American Everywoman's sexual fantasies resides. Even though Olivia is smartly dressed for travel in her spiffy, figure-flattering workout clothes, she decides she can't leave Fitz behind. He's obviously way too hot (plus she never got to sock Mellie in her hairspray) so once Cyrus assures her his allegiance via the flight attendant's borrowed cell phone, she marches right off her plane and right back to the business casual she never got to pack in the first place.
A black limo is conveniently positioned at an angle yonder from the aircraft, with the back window down, ready for Father Pope to lean in and say something snide to his offspring before she speeds off to the emotional and physical safety of her workaholism.
Cut to the Oval, where Fitz excretions are surely crusting up the perimeter of the room where the overhead surveillance cameras can't see, and the Vice President is nattering on about how she's deeply connected to the lord and cannot help an unfaithful man who has violated god get through his scandal. Cyrus helpfully reminds her that "the lord did not fill out his voter registration card" which translates to, "WTF are you smoking, crazy lady?" As Fitz stares pensively at the wall, looking for remnants of bodily fluids that the steam cleaner might have missed, the veep tells Cyrus he is a godless gay person who cruelly brought a "brown" baby into his home and what a dirty bastard he is for not fearing god, etc.
Once Fitz has decided the dainty white drapes are clean enough, he turns around and tells everyone to get out of the room so he can have his way with his VP. And by have his way with her, I mean he tried to get her drunk, because he likes to drink at inappropriate times and if there's anything everyone knows about people who like to drink at inappropriate times it's that they like to drag other people into their inappropriately timed drinking too. So he gets over his prep school impulses not to offer her a scotch because she's a woman (sexist) and feeds her one anyway while explaining that he needs her to give him time to reveal the truth to his family before he goes public with it. Because he's so handsome — and evidently, a bit loose with whoever gets the passcode to the family jewels — she's like, "OK, I'll give you time," while obviously secretly hoping he'll do her against the wall next.
With the sound of those camera snaps that will haunt all of our dreams, we're back to Liv in her limo, pulling up to her office where the media has descended on her like Kate Upton jiggling her boobs. She's still wearing her jogging clothes, which has got to be the worst because don't you hate it when you get dressed to work out and then never do? Just as she's wondering how she's going to penetrate the very virile press outside her J. Lo mobile, Huck flings open the back door and brings her to safety.
Once inside her private Restoration Hardware store-cum-Olivia Pope HQ, she's in her satin blouse and gray suit slacks, ready to do some personal damage control once her team tells her that all her clients are canceling their contracts faster than you can say "Fitz's penis." So then Olivia has to do the worst thing in the world — make phone calls — to varying degrees of success. Really, would a mass text not have been more efficient? "Hi… fixing everything [sunglasses-wearing emoticon]. Call you next wk [heart eyes emoticon]." People tend to be fine with texts when the texter is known to be in a time of crisis. While Liv is on the phone, Harrison informs the team that they will fix this, even if Liv won't.
Camera snap camera snap camera snap, ominous music, and back to the White House, where Mellie's about to rip the pearls off her neck and throw them against the wall in a blind rage. Instead she maintains her self-control and prods a secret service officer about how Olivia's name leaked. We know he did it because of his flashback, but he's too pussy to be like, "Me! It was me!"
Olivia, meanwhile, is back in her office, looking like she's going to cry when she sees television footage of Fitz walking behind a random guy peeing on her building (I mean, think of the rent she probably pays). Then a motorcade of black cars is summoned to transport her and her white coat to Fitz's nicely furnished bomb shelter so they can resist fucking each other in Mellie's presence.Olivia and Fitz decide they're going to come clean about their affair, but in order to do that they need to decide a really important detail, which is how many times they'll tell the press they screwed each other. Mellie, who evidently believes the higher the bouffant, the closer she is to getting the hell out of this windowless room of Olivia and Fitz's horniness, freaks out and says she's not OK with telling the press they were screwing every chance they got. Olivia politely asks her, "How many times would you be OK with?" And Mellie, whose face looks like it wants to run scared from her head, says two times, she'd be OK with two times. So then they have to decide which two times, and the whole scene is getting really gross because it's like: here's a hot man with his two women and one of them is calling the other a whore and they both really want to fuck him deep down so aren't they just so CRAZY via this man. The most progressive thing about the whole situation was that they looked like they were set in a Jamiroquai video.After Mellie storms out, somehow managing not to hit her hair on the doorframe on her way, there's clearly only one thing left for Olivia and Fitz to do, and that's screw. That's why we all watch this show, and besides, they've never done it on the set of "VIrtual Insanity." (At this point in the program my fiance let out an exclamation of glee, which surprised me since he thinks Scandal is "terrible," but when I turned my head to be like, "OMG YOU LOVE THIS SHOW!" I saw he was actually just reacting to a video of a sports thing on his computer. Men.) But since Olivia is too stressed out to get it on, even in a locked, windowless room guarded by soldiers with huge guns, where everyone would just assume they did it anyway, she simply lets Fitz hold her before rapping on the door three times and being received by the G.I. Joe who will escort her safely away.Fitz goes to talk to the veep and say that his family will stand by him and he'll make things right. The veep, who we all hate so very much, says, "A good man is hard to come by." (She's obviously trying to seduce him because he looks so good.) He asks her about her husband and she says he's good but, "having a little more fun these days," or something to that effect that *totally* implies he's cheating. Tony, clearly bored by her personal life and wanting to get back to his own, says that when they make the announcement about the affair, there will be a theoretical window, and he wants her to theoretically climb through it. "Use the moment to rise," he tells her. Of course, everyone in politics is as self-centered as a summer Alaskan day is long, so she's like, "OK duh, yeah, me me ME!" "Why are you extending kindness?" she says. "Because we're not married to each other," Tony Goldwyn replies. Yes, it's hotter that way, right? Moving on.As Mellie runs to Cyrus saying she doesn't want to go public, the gladiators have convened around Harrison, who is practicing his power clashing and telling the team they have to save Olivia if she won't save herself. "Are we gladiators? Or are we bitches?" he asks. "Bitches!" they all cry. JK JK they said gladiators.And all of a sudden footage of the redheaded White House comunications aid named Jennine saying the president is "freaking hot" is playing on the national news. And Olivia's name is out of the running for "women the president was diddling," even though all the nation really knows is that their president is a hottie.
Cut to Mellie, who tells Fitz leaking Jennine's name was her plan — a "crazy idea" she got after Fitz leaked Olivia's name. Well pipes full of names are just bursting all over the place now aren't they? Fitz tells Mellie, "As long as you had her name in your arsenal of weapons, Olivia was at your mercy. Now she is free." Free to be at his mercy when they're banging in the shower! Yeah! And with his eyes glazing over in that way that you just know he's thinking about which sex positions he'd use in that bomb shelter, the episode ends and the affair drama is theoretically "fixed." Here's to Fitz and Liv actually getting it on next week!
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Photo: ABC
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