Yet another dramatic, Olitz lover’s quarrel launched us into last night’s episode of Scandal. We watch as Fitzgerald and Olivia get dressed in one of their fancy “meeting” rooms and simultaneously argue about Olivia’s choice to faux-date Jake. If all of this drama between the two keeps up, much of the Scandal fan base will surely wind up on Team Jake. (Some of us are already firmly there.) There’s also this issue of redundancy. As far as plot, some folks are tired of waiting for Olivia and Fitz to get it together! But this dance of theirs is, sadly, kind of natural. They’re star-crossed! So they’re probably never going to get it together, and we all might have to just accept that, even as we watch them struggle against the inevitable.
One welcome break from Olitz came with the flashback to the time after Mellie’s sexual assault at the hands of Fitz’s father. (We first learned of this in the powerful episode, “Everything’s Coming Up Mellie”.) But now we see the aftermath of the assault—the effect this secret is having on Fitz and Mellie’s relationship. We also see how far back Mellie and Andrew Nichols go, since he was lieutenant governor when Fitz was governor of California. Another scandalous story begins to unfold when a rumor begins to fly about Nichols’s past drug use. Now that he’s been picked as Fitz’s running mate, all of the skeletons are sure to come out, but Mellie seems especially defensive of Nichols on this issue. We come to find out that this is because the oxycontin found in his possession was actually hers, as she attempted suicide shortly after being raped. In between these flashbacks, we watch her get closer to Nichols, who remains firm in his decision to protect her; naturally, they end up making out in the White House room of First Ladies portraits. Because, apparently, we do touch the First Ladies. Sometimes.
So Fitz’s campaign for re-election is running into a series of complications. In this episode, the administration has to find a way to kill the drug story (they go with the good ol’ fashioned bit where they accuse someone of being paid off); Olivia has to figure out if her father is the one trying to leak the drug story (since he has threatened to take down the whole republic); and Hollis Doyle is back in the picture, playing nice with Vice President Sally Langston while making new deals with Cyrus for the Grant administration. Another interesting player here is Adnan Salif, who’s using Harrison to get involved in the presidential race. (She’s blackmailing him with some Clearwater scandal he doesn’t even want Olivia to know about.) And then there’s the whole Daniel Douglass murder cover-up, which is still an issue, with Plubius (AKA James) and David working together. Charlie and Cyrus did not succeed in whatever they were planning this week (since the Gladiators swooped in and faux-kidnapped David), but they’re definitely not going to sit back and let this story leak to the public.