Scandal - S3E8 - Vermont Is For Lovers, Too
Previously on Scandal, ‘Everything’s Coming Up Mellie’
This week, I’ve written the recap in three segments, focusing on one block of storyline at a time: Olivia/Fitz/Mama and Papa Pope, Quinn and the Josie Marcus laptop caper, and Cyrus pimping out his husband. Enjoy!
Mama Pope is No Joke
We pick right up where we left off last week: Eli Pope is visiting Mama Pope. And since Olivia is asking questions about her, Mama Pope needs to go bye-bye. He’s going to have her moved out of the country, but before he does, she wants to see their daughter. Eli ain’t about that life. She begs, he refuses. She screams his name as he walks out the door.
I don’t usually get squeamish over such things, but watching Mama Pope chew on her own wrists almost made me pass out. That’s right. She sits on her cell floor and gnaws on her arms.
Mama Pope has been moved into a makeshift hospital room. The doctor tells Rowan she’s well enough for transport, but that mentally she’s a hot ass mess. She kept chewing on her arm until she hit an artery. That’s like its own brand of crazy.
Mellie is watching the interview she and Fitz gave last episode, swooning over the part where Fitz put his presidential foot up the interviewer’s ass. He’s not really paying attention, though. Gee. Wonder what he’s thinking about. He tells Mellie not to wait up and leaves the room. He calls Olivia, but she doesn’t answer the phone.
He calls her while she’s at work, and she answers, but tells him to stop calling her. She hangs up and then beats the shit out of the phone. Jake tells her that’s not going to work. If the president wants to talk to her, he’ll find a way.
Olivia returns to her apartment and finds Secret Service Tom waiting for her. She refuses to be summoned, but the poor guy is just doing his job, girl! He hands her an envelope from Fitz and it holds a pic of her with Eli. Next thing you know, Olivia is strutting off the presidential helicopter and into a cabin in Vermont. She tells Fitz he has one hour.
One hour my ass.
Fitz is upset that Olivia never told him who her father was. He says he could have protected her. She counters that she doesn’t need protecting. She is the one who hurt him. When she demands to know why they’re in this house in the middle of nowhere, Fitz reveals that he had the house built for them to raise a family together. He wanted her to see it before he sold it.
Let me say that again: That man built her a fucking house in Vermont where she could make jam and have all of his babies. *swoon*
She kisses him and then they get it on in many different positions.
Meanwhile, Mellie has Fitz’s secretary try him on every damn phone he got, but he’s not answering. She then has her call Olivia, who doesn’t answer either. Poor Mellie.
Mama Pope and Papa Pope are looking at a bunch of news clippings of Olivia. When she asks why there are no REAL photos, she realizes that Eli and Olivia aren’t close. She accuses him of being a bad parent and he’s all, “Hello, Pot. You’re calling ME black?” Eli tells her doctor to make sure she is deeply sedated because they’re going to move her.
The next morning Olivia’s helicopter ride home arrives and Fitz asks her to stay another day. She needs to get back to work, but before she goes he wants her to know that he loves her. And he’s going to love her no matter what happens as he tries to bring her dad down. She tells him he should do whatever he has to do to get answers because she’s going to do the same. Then she tells him not to sell that damn house and Olivia Pope-Walks across the grass to the helicopter.
Back at the office, Jake says he tried to reach her last night and she said she was busy. “I told you he’d find a way,” Jake says, all butthurt.
Mellie visits Fitz in the Oval Office and asks how New Hampshire was. It’s clear she knows he was with Liv. She says they maybe try to get Olivia back on their campaign and he says, “Maybe we should.”
The doctor begins to sedate Mama Pope, but when Eli shows up, he finds the doctor passed out with the syringe in his neck. He calls for the guard.
Olivia is walking up to her apartment building when someone calls her name. It’s her mom.
Baby Huck F*cking Up
Charlie drops his new recruit off at the office. Quinn now has to report back to B613 everything that is going on in Pope & Associates as it pertains to their investigation into Operation Remington. They’re hoping to get surveillance footage of the guard’s murder and Quinn starts sweating.
Someone broke into Josie Marcus’ house and took Candace’s laptop which held all of their campaign strategy. She says it has to be Reston, but Olivia says they can’t be the ones to make that accusation. She puts Abby and Harrison on the case.
Quinn, posing as an technician, gets the surveillance footage of the building across the street from where the guard died. When Jake shows up unexpectedly, she pretends she was just being proactive. He praises her and she says that’s something Huck should do: give her more credit.
Olivia tells Quinn to turn over the footage she’s working on to Huck because she needs her working on Josie’s burglary case so they can prove it was Reston. Quinn tries to resist, but Huck takes over. Candace goes on TV and basically accuses Reston even though the gladiators told her not to. Harrison is sent to babysit Candace and tells her to have a damn seat and do as she’s told.
Abby wants David to search Reston’s offices for the laptop, but he says he’s going to let the Capital Hill Police do their job.
While Jake and Huck are thisclose to getting a clear image of the woman who killed the guard, Quinn gets a hit on the campaign laptop at Reston’s campaign headquarters. The FBI raids the offices while David gives a press conference. Candace basks in the glow of “I told you so,” but Harrison warns that no one likes a sore winner. Olivia tells Josie they must stay above the fray and let the media trash Reston for them.
Eli tells Charlie to make sure Quinn gets all the info she can and if she gets busted, well, Charlie knows what to do. Charlie doesn’t look too happy about that, but he complies.
Huck finally tells Quinn she’s doing a good job because Jake said he doesn’t tell her enough. Later, she meets Charlie in the parking garage and pulls a gun on him. He tells her that she’ll just get a new handler, one that doesn’t like her like he does. Then he says she knows she likes him, too.
Huck tells the team that he wasn’t able to clear up the image they got of the woman who killed the guard.
David gets a call that the laptop they recovered didn’t really have much campaign strategy on it and everything that was on it was wiped clean the day before it was stolen. Abby swears she and the gladiators had nothing to do with it. She calls Harrison and tells him that Josie’s SisterDaughter must have been behind it and he’ll have to talk to her. Easy for him to do, he was in bed with the SisterDaughter.
The team confronts Candace who compares what she did to what Olivia and team does. Alone with Josie, Liv tells her she needs to fire Candace. She agrees to hold a press conference throwing Candace under the bus, but when the time comes she takes the blame and drops out of the race. Harrison tries to say something to Candace, but she brushes him off and heads back to Montana with her sister… I mean, mother.
Quinn arrives home to find the photo of her at the crime scene on the floor. Huck is there, in the dark. He says they need to talk about who she works for. His torture tools are laid out on the floor. Quinn shits herself.
Cyrus the Pimp
Cyrus tells James he recommended him for a fluff piece on the vice president’s husband. James had been icy towards Cyrus until he heard that news. He’s looking forward to getting back into the game by interviewing Daniel.
Cyrus tells Mellie they’re a go in trying to frame Daniel. He thinks that James will turn down Daniel’s advances and then they can blackmail Sally into not running. Mellie isn’t so sure that Daniel will make a pass at James, but Cyrus tells her that’s where she comes in. Mellie cozies up to Daniel and gossips that James and Cyrus have an open marriage. “It’s not fair. Gays have all the fun.” Yes. She said that.
James is frustrated that all Daniel wanted to talk about was college football. Cyrus suggests that James goes for the more causal approach: talk to him at home, with bourbon. James says he knows Cyrus is only being so helpful because he feels guilty about being mean when James got fired. Yeah. That’s it.
Cyrus assures Mellie that it’s going to go down that night. He has someone set to take pics of Daniel hitting on James at the house later that night. Mellie warns him that it may not be such a good idea to set up James, but he tells her his husband is not her husband and he won’t cheat.
That night, Daniel does hit on James, but James tells him to stop. Daniel says he wouldn’t have done it if Mellie hadn’t told him he had an open marriage. James pieces it all together and realizes that Cyrus set him up.
Cyrus is up, waiting for James, but jumps in the bed when he hears him coming. James goes to take a shower and Cyrus gets a text from his private eye who sends him pics of James and Daniel going at it. Cyrus cries.
