We’re getting closer to the winter hiatus! (When did this start being a thing on TV?) Join Keidra, Viv, Raizel for our thoughts on an especially off-the-rails Scandal episode. Now with 100% more Digital Underground references!
KC: As I mentioned on Twitter, I am pretty sure the writers of Scandal were shrooming when they wrote this episode. I don’t even know what makes sense anymore. Still, the cray is oddly compelling. I was only truly shocked by the last 3 minutes of the episode, because even all the craziness of the hour as a whole was typical for Scandal.
We pretty much all called Mama Pope as a spy/agent type. I don’t think she’s a terrorist and I don’t think she’s all good/evil. I think Maya and Eli/Rowan are for DAMN SURE the Irina and Jack of Scandal, which means they both have blood on their hands, more than likely.
VO: That’s what I was puzzled by as I watched the online reactions as the show aired. We all knew that Mama Pope was hardcore something — I mean, seriously, who the hell CHEWS THROUGH THEIR OWN WRISTS? — so the ending didn’t surprise me. And I don’t think that she doesn’t love Olivia. It is possible to love someone and use them *cough*Cyrus*cough*.
Keidra said it best when Olivia’s a fixer — she sees the world in absolutes of how to fix things. The beauty of both Rowan and Maya is that life isn’t that clean — there’s these shades of grey and I feel like Olivia’s starting to have to deal with it more in her life, whether she wants to or not. Life is a fucking mess and people are messy Olivia, get used to it.
KC: So are we to assume Qunin is DEEEEEP undercover? I don’t think she is going to survive this season but I’d love it if she went out like Severus Snape, all I WAS DEEP UNDERCOVER THIS WHOLE TIME BITCHES.
VO: I want that with the burning of a thousand suns, because I hate the thought that Quinn is this stupid. How the hell did she survive getting out of bed, given the way she’s been painted this season? Which is also disappointing, because I liked her as the audience surrogate — kind of sweet, naive and learning the ropes, before she became “MURDER IS MAGIC!”
I also was irritated at Huck for his whole torture thing of Quinn — I know it might be the whole “You play with the big dogs and you get bit” thing, but I felt like it was overkill — he couldn’ve confronted her without the Victorian dentistry techniques. But looking back, it makes sense he’d resort to torture — this season he’s been thrown for a loop and he’s relapsing into his old addictions (as if his laying hands on Olivia wasn’t a clue in the first place).
And I’d like to say that no one I know wants to have sex after getting their teeth pulled (with or without a creepy ass Huck licking their face). After my wisdom teeth were pulled, I wanted to sleep and eat mashed potatoes. Not sex.
KC: I am super tired of the Liv/Fitz “jam” callbacks. I know those jam fantasies are supposed to be a way to make them seem like maybe the had a chance of being a normal, stable couple, I think it makes them sound delusional. We are never going to get to know if Olivia ever had a chance to be in a stable relationship (or on her own!) because she will always be dickmatized while Fitz is around.
VO: What bugs me is that it’s like the same song (to quote Digital Underground). There’s tension and eyefucking (usually with Olivia wearing an amazing dress), hot sex, no communication, Olivia breaks them up under some bullshit pretense, Fitz stalks her, then they get back together. Did they learn nothing the last time around? Really, Olivia has a fear of commitment (because if she tried to make jam, it’d be horrible, as Shonda said in a Vulture interview) to real love. Not that it surprises me, given her parents and their relationship.
Kerry Washington is an amazing actress and I really look forward to seeing her do other things (please put her in a romantic comedy), but I feel like the story isn’t doing Olivia favors, whereas now, the supporting characters are shining a bit more. It could be the fans hollering for more Olitz, and thus they’re stuck in this loop. Either that or this season is about how messy her personal life is and we have to patient and see what she teases out.
KC: Sally killing her husband was just DUMB. I am sorry, it was a surprise, but a dumb surprise. I am sure she is going to call up Pope and Associates (oh how twisty!) but I am tired of these heads of state just hauling off and killing people. Jesus, every politician in the Scandal-verse is a psychopath.
RL: I think that every single presidential candidate that the Scandal audience has been introduced to that is still in the running — Fitz, Sally, and the leading cratic candidate — have all committed murder. Not killed someone, murder.
VO: They have! How the fuck are they still on the ticket for the election? Are the voters on drugs?
That being said, I think Sally’s going to try and pin the murder on Cyrus, given that he had the photos of James and Douglas — the whole jealous husband thing. Speaking of James and Cyrus, Jeff Perry and Dan Bucatinsky killed this episode. I love how James called out Cyrus for trying to out a man still in the closet, as well as the whole betrayal thing.
As another commenter put it — James is probably going to stay with Cyrus, but he should pack an exit bag and keep it in the front closet. What I’m hoping for is that this puts them on equal footing where James fires back at Cyrus. Like the great soap couples of yore — Alexis Carrington-Colby and Dex Dexter come immediately to mind as well as Todd and Blair from OLTL — where there’s the mix of passion and power games.
Now if they could do that with Olivia and Fitz, that would make me root for those two a little more than this “star-crossed lovers” thing.
