On last Thursday’s episode of Scandal, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” Olivia Pope and her father Rowan go head to head; Huck discovers a startling truth about Olivia; Rowan wagers with Captain Jake Ballard’s life; and Fitz bets his presidency to meet Olivia’s one request.
Copyright ABC Networks
By Tara Moore–
Watching Olivia Pope and her father Rowan playing chicken all night was a bit of a doozy, but seeing how Olivia flexed her apparently big muscles to get Fitz to save Jake Ballard and her father to release Huck four years ago was worth the back and forth. Last season we had to witness Quinn Perkins turning into Huck, but last week we saw just how far she’s willing to go. And this time, it almost cost Olivia her good graces with her one strong-arming gladiator. But if we’re being totally honest, is it the end of the world that she didn’t tell Huck her father was in command, if she was able to save his life?
Huck’s past is something we’ve only been able to assume about, but last week Shonda Rhimes walked us through how it all unfolded; the Sunday night dinners, the leftovers for Huck, and the crazy story he told Olivia about Wonderland, that turned out to be true. Now we know that Olivia found out her father was lying about his profession, and he was in fact teaching people how to kill people, Huck for one, and throwing them in holes to condition them back into their killing roles when they have a crisis of conscience. Rather than tell Huck she found out, Olivia blackmailed her father when she introduced him to her then-boyfriend Edison, the US Senator recently put in charge of the Senate Committee on US Intelligence. Swift power play Liv, threaten your father’s whole operation in exchange for the care of one homeless former killer in a subway station.
But while all of this was being uncovered, Rowan was dangling a little bacon in front of Olivia, bacon in the form of Captain Jake Ballard, who she knows went missing after he saved her life and lied to the president. The last time we saw Jake he was being tossed into the same hole Huck was when he tried to get out of “the life.” His presence was so strong last season, we never wrote him off. We’re glad to see he’s alive, though not necessarily well. Demanding Fitz flex his presidential muscle to get Jake out of the hole so Olivia could do her job and clear the name of the wronged White House staffer accused of having an affair with the president was the icing on the cake, even though we’re not entirely sure her father would ignore her request to spare his life. We’ll find out more on that tonight when Liv and Jake have a talk on her couch, over wine. How fitting.
Cyrus is starting to realize that he doesn’t have much pull over the Fitz’s decisions, could it be that Fitz is growing the presidential jewels that Cyrus demanded of him? There are a lot of demands floating around this season, but we’re more interested in the relationships are up in the air right now; Olivia and Huck; Olivia and Jake; and Olivia and Fitz.
Only time will tell.
