SPOILER ALERT! (stop reading if you don’t want to know what happens in this episode)
A lot happened this week on Scandal and I honestly don’t think there was a dull moment. Get into all of the details in the recap below!
We find out he was on his way to have dinner with Olivia and he’s about to tell her about his exchange with her father but they’re interrupted by Olivia’s phone. She tells him that they’ll talk about it later and she runs to meet Quinn at an out of control college party because Karen Grant is pissy drunk and throwing up.
Cyrus is talking to Michael after doing the deed when he’s interrupted by a phone call from Olivia telling him about Karen’s situation. Olivia calls Huck and has him shut down the cell service in the area surrounding the party. They have her put on a happy face and act like things are normal as they make their way through the party to get out. During this the party goers think they know who she is but as they go to Google her they’re shut down thanks to Huck shutting down cellular service.
They escape out of a window to the roof and get into the waiting helicopter.Olivia tells her that once they get to the White House the secret service will take over. Karen gets upset because she thinks it’s Olivia’s job to cover for her but Olivia tells her that this was just a favor and she needs to explain to her parents why she dodged her secret service agents and snuck out to get drunk at a party.
She tells her that she doesn’t need the agents who couldn’t even protect her brother when they were standing right next to him the night he died. She gets an alert on her phone and it’s a video of her at the party with some guys. She calls Cyrus and tells him to wake up Fitz. Cyrus meets her with hesitation and Olivia puts him in his place telling him that she’s just seen the dirtiest sex tape she’s ever seen in her entire life starring the president’s daughter.
Fitz is pissed. He then softens and asks her if she was raped. She quickly tells him that she got drunk, smoked weed and had consensual sex with two guys. Olivia dismisses Karen and tells Fitz that they are dealing with a girl with daddy issues. He tells her that Karen is his daughter and she tells him that every girl is someone’s daughter. She then tells him that he needs to focus on finding the tape before it hits the internet and goes viral. Fitz pretty much begs Olivia to find the boys in the video because this is his daughter and he needs her on the case.
Abby spots Huck and Quinn walking the halls of the White House and confronts them asking them why they’re there. They tell her that they can’t tell her . She goes off on a spiel and then she’s interrupted by Cyrus who tells her to leave them alone. Abby tells him that he can’t keep undermining her every time Olivia is around. Cyrus goes into one of his spiels about how she won’t know everything that goes on with the president especially if Olivia is involved. He also pretty much tells her that she’s jealous of Olivia and that’s something she needs to work out with herself on her own.
Mellie is oblivious about the sex tape scandal and Fitz decides that she doesn’t need to know. He makes up a lie for why she’s there. OPA sets up in the Oval Office and try to narrow down who the guys might be. They get down to four guys and she recognizes one from his tattoo so Olivia sends Huck and Quinn out to get him.
Rowan meets with Tom at the now iconic bench to discuss how and why he wasn’t able to kill his target, Jake. He tells him that Jake used to be Command and knows his every move. Rowan isn’t here for the excuses and tells Tom that he needs to do his job and he now has a deadline to complete it. Rowan leaves and Jake shows up telling Tom that he knows he’s trying to kill him. He tells him that he knows he killed Jerry (Baby Fitz) and that if Jake is gone Rowan isn’t going to let him walk away free. Jake tells him that he may not trust him but Tom for sure doesn’t trust Rowan.
Olivia goes to Fitz office to update him on their progress. He tells her about how he’s been working so hard since Jerry’s death and she tells him that burying himself in work isn’t always the best answer. He comes right back at her and says that running away isn’t the best thing either. He asks her where she went and if she took off alone. She straight lies tells him that she did and she just needed some time alone. He tries to apologize about her mother but she tells him not to because she ruined his family, her and them or us as she put it.
Jake goes to David and tells him that Rowan is trying to kill him. He wants David to promise he’ll release the B613 files if anything happens to him. David tells him that he won’t because he doesn’t want anything to do with the files and wishes he never opened them in the first place. Jake asks for them back but David says no because it will bring down the U.S. government, the files are evil and they shouldn’t exist. Jake chokes him up and demands he give him the files or he’ll kill him. David gives him the key to where the files are.
Olivia is walking through the White House when Jake calls telling her he needs to see her to tell her something. She asks him if it can wait until that night but he says it can’t. She sees Mellie coming her way and tells Jake that she has to call him back as she turns to walk the other way. Mellie catches up to her and asks why she’s there. Olivia tells her she needs to discuss it with Fitz but Mellie grabs her up and tells her she needs to tell her why she’s in her house.
Mellie confronts Fitz in his office wanting to know why Olivia was there and telling him that he was supposed to tell her when he was seeing her again. Fitz tries to interrupt her but she continues making accusations and he tells her that Karen called Olivia. He tells her that Karen got into a situation at a party, Olivia is handling it and she should be glad she called her. Mellie snaps and tells him that she is the mother and they are her family, she’s the one who holds everything together and she wants her out.
Fitz then goes off telling her all of the different sides Mellies he’s dealt with without complaint but he won’t deal with righteous history rewriting Mellie. He tells her she hasn’t been a mother nor held anything together since Jerry died. He then tells her about the sex tape of their daughter and how she should be glad Olivia is fixing the mess that they made. He continues on and tells her that he’s to blame for some of what’s going on but the difference between him and Mellie is that he has been running a country every day while she’s been laying around in dirty clothes, eating junk and getting drunk. All Mellie heard was sex tape and tells him that Karen obviously takes after her daddy.
Quinn confronts one of the possible guys Karen slept with, Bobby, and asks him about the video, threatening to ruin him unless he turns over the video while choking him. She tells Olivia and Huck that she got the name of the other guy as well as his parents. Olivia meets with his parents and tells them that OPA is going to delete the video from their son’s phone as well as scan their phones and cloud network to make sure it’s 100% gone. The father asks her how much are they going to pay them for the video and Olivia since they know they can get a lot for it since it stars the president’s daughter.
Olivia tells Fitz that the parents want 2.5 million dollars and Fitz is not here for it. Olivia tells him that he doesn’t want to refuse to pay them because it will effect Karen’s future and all she’ll be known for is this sex tape. He mumbles a few things and Olivia says something about bad parents and Fitz gets all mushy and tells her he is a bad parent and a failure as a husband before grabbing her in an embrace. He tells her to never leave him like that again, that he almost died. He then starts to undress her, asking if she missed him. They start passionately kissing and Olivia stops him telling him that she didn’t go away alone. Fitz puts two and two together and realizes she went away with Jake.
He tells her to say that she went away with Jake, she does and he says he’s pretty much failed as a husband, a father and a man. Olivia goes to touch him and he grabs her by the wrist before pushing her away. He tells her to pay the parents the 2.5 million dollars before turning to get a drink. Olivia asks him if he wants to talk to Mellie first and he tells her no since there is no partnership, he’ll just throw money at the problem like his father did and sweep it under the rug.
Olivia meets with the parents to give them the check when they asks for $500,000 more dollars for “expenses” so the world doesn’t find out the president’s daughter is a dirty slut. Olivia takes their picture and one of the check with her phone and tells them that the deal is off. She tells them she’s going to leak it to the tabloids and destroy them. The mother says that they’re the ones with the video and Olivia goes off calling them sick sons of bitches.
She tells them that the Grants just lost a son and they’re are dealing with children who are at the age where they experiment. She follows by telling them that they are exploiting them and it pretty much makes them dealers of kid pornography starring their own son. She goes into a spiel about how she will ruin them and make everyone hate them because that is what she does and she’s the best person at doing the job. She tells them to sign the disparaging agreements and dismisses them.
Mellie takes away Karen’s phone and talks to her about what happened with the sex tape. She tells her that she thinks she did it because she was feeling sad and wanted to feel numb because she saw her brother die right in front of her. Mellie tells her because of this she gets one free pass and Karen tells her that she really misses Jerry. She tells her that because of who she is she needs to keep her legs closed.
During an investigation of his secret service team Fitz finds out that there were discrepancies with Tom’s schedule and he was at Fort D tow days before the election when he was supposed to be at the White House. Fitz makes a call on a secure line. Meanwhile Tom calls Jake and tells him that he’s being questions about his schedule during the time of the election so he needs to get out of town. Jake tells him that he needs to tell the truth so he’ll have the upper hand over Rowan and he has proof. Tom agrees to work with Jake to help him take down Rowan.
Jake goes to the White House to give Fitz the evidence but Fitz is leaving and doesn’t want to talk to him. Tom is being questions about his whereabouts on November 2. Tom is about to confess everything when they’re interrupted by Rowan who says he’s taking over the questioning. On the other side of the mirror Cyrus is looking on when Fitz enters telling him that he’s the one who got Rowan there. Tom demands to speak with the president but Rowan cuts him off and asks him for the truth.
Rowan pulls out pictures that place Tom in a lab where a strain of meningitis went missing, the same one that Jerry died from. Rowan tells him that he will be held responsible for Jerry Grants murder and wants to know under whose order he was under. Tom won’t speak and Rowan continues to ask him until he lies and says that Jake gave him the order to kill his son. Fitz gives the order to have Jake taken into custody, as well as Tom and Rowan walks away with everything working in his favor.
Some takeaways…
– I officially hate Daddy Pope. He’s evil and I really hope at some point during the season things will come full circle and he get what he deserves.
– It’s no secret that Fitz isn’t one of my favorite people, but when he went off on Mellie I almost threw my shoe at the screen. He went off and I agreed with everything he said. I also appreciated the scene between Mellie and Karen and I hope that this is what gets Mellie back on her game.
– I’m Team Jake until he dies so I have high hopes that he will get himself out of this situation. As much wrong as people have done in this series, at least Jake is trying to right a lot of those wrongs.
What are your feelings about Rowan this season so far? Let me know below!
Photos: ABC
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