By Marcus Jones
Via Entertainment Weekly
So as it turns out, last week’s “Scandal” premiere received 10 million viewers, and as mentioned before, still managed to keep the level of crazy us gladiators thrive upon with the introduction of Olivia’s dad, Eli Pope (Joe Morton). This week we dove further into the Popes’ relationship with a flashback to Olivia’s law school days. Funny how it just takes some clip-on bangs to make a young Olivia Pope believable, but the homeless Huck with a Jheri curl wig is still pretty cringe-worthy.
Anyhow, the show started off with the revelation that Olivia’s dad actually took her to dinner every Sunday in hopes of forgiveness for abandoning her after her mother passed, and also this is how Olivia paid for graduate school. While we all know how evil Mr. Pope can be, he does seem genuinely nice with Olivia and he did introduce her to one of her favorite pastimes of drinking wine on couches while intensely staring out into space. Also, for a gladiator, it was a little sad to see Olivia not put up much of a fight when her purse got stolen, however, Huck’s fighting skills were definitely cheeseburger worthy. Huck fills Olivia in on B613, but when Olivia asks Daddy Pope (a.k.a. Rowan a.k.a. Eli a.k.a. B613 Command) about it he says all homeless people are criminals. So who does Olivia go to for help? Bearded David Rosen, of course! Nice to know it only takes a tweak of your hair to make you age six years on “Scandal.”
Anyway, in true corporate synergy, the week ABC is launching “Once Upon A Time in Wonderland,” “Scandal” has a wonderland of its own called Acme Corporation which happens to be the BS13 headquarters. It only takes Olivia one intense glance at the pen her dad gave her to figure out that he was the one who tortured Huck. To wrap up the past sequence when Olivia tries to throw into her dad’s face that her fiancé Senator Davis is on the Senate committee that could shut B613 down, he sets up a car crash telling Olivia that Davis just was not the right guy for the job. Olivia said she was done and Daddy Pope replied with the magnificently malicious line “We’re family sweetie. We’re never done.” Spoken like a true evil spy.
Now for the present day, and probably the strangest, funniest storyline… Newly crazy Quinn made like Huck and hacked Olivia’s e-mail to reveal to Huck that Olivia ended her relationship with her dad right after Huck was delivered back to his Union Station Metro bench. Olivia lied to him. She did make a deal to save him.
Throughout this episode Olivia is doing her fixing for Jeanine — soul music montage included. However, everyone else is dead set on Fitz taking the fall for this — from Cyrus and Mellie lighting a fire under the president to tell the (partial) truth, and Olivia’s dad coming to her workplace to taunt her about never seeing Jake Ballard again if Jeanine does not admit to the affair.
Olivia, in a last ditch effort to save Jake, calls Fitz and yells about saving Jake and living in Vermont. If this alternate reality continues, the Tourist Office of Vermont really needs to take note, but of course with the nature of B613 there really is not much anyone can do to get them to release Jake.
In this week’s Mellie update, the First Lady Macbeth notices some talking heads discussing how if she lied about the mistresses she would ruin her political career, and of course she decided that it was worth $2 million to get an innocent girl to admit to having sex with her husband — funny how Mellie works. When Olivia gets wind of this she gives Jeanine a pep talk about lying and mirrors, but it doesn’t matter at all. The President has organized a press conference to show he has presidential balls and they have in fact come into contact with Jeanine the aide. This move frees Jake who shows up to Olivia’s house at the end, but the real shock of this episode comes when Huck choke slams Olivia onto her car for lying to him about the deal with her dad/his tormentor. The episode ends with the hashtag #badjake or #goodjake which is really hard to interpret from his “hi,” but the real question from this episode is what Huck’s next move is now that he knows Olivia’s father is the one who tortured him.
Marcus Jones is a staff writer. Email him at entertainment@nyunews.com.
