By Phil Andros
So I have to admit, I’ve been dreading the return of Scandal. I should preface this by saying that I was not a yuge Hillary supporter, but Donald Trump? Seriously? Shit is getting real people and it’s real like a bad Shonda show real. But the teevee is supposed to be about fun escapism and this blog ain’t my soapbox so that’s the last I’m going to say about our current mess.
And I have to give Shonda credit. As nutty as the world is, she managed to one-up the nuttiness and give us full on crazy! You go girl?!?So here’s where we are after the first three episodes…
First scene is Frankie Vargas (or Hottie Governor) winning the presidential election over Mellie. I bet Shonda is kicking herself that she ejected Hollis before the break. See, even in crazy Shonda-world even Hollis couldn’t become president…or could he? How did we get so lucky? Only interesting tidbit in my view from this scene is that Jake’s wife, Vanessa, is hitting the champagne really hard and DOES NOT look happy. I expect her to be killed in a later episode. At which point Jake will marry me. Hey, it’s Shonda’s world, anything can happen.
And then pretty much 2 minutes later Frankie is assassinated allegedly by some redneck who was quickly caught with, of course, an ironclad case against him. But you and I know that Cyrus had him killed. We were talking about it before the break. The only real question is how Tom did it, right? Sigh. But Olivia is really off her game and goes running to confront Poppa Pope, convinced that he had Frankie killed. Not so far-fetched really but a good excuse for a typical Poppa Pope scene where he yells at Olivia and tells her how week she is. He’s a good actor but the Garden of Eden Serpent + Jack Nicholson in a Few Good Men approach is frankly starting to get a bit boring. There’s only so many times he can scream YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH at Olivia. But at least he advances the plot by telling her, basically, that he sat this particular murder out and she should look at Cyrus.
I guess in fairness to Olivia, the list of people in this show who could have killed Vargas is pretty long. Mellie – murderer, Cyrus – murderer, Huck – murderer, Quinn – murderer, Charlie – murderer, Fitz – murderer, Rowan – murderer, Jake – murderer, but excused because he’s hot, Olivia – murderer, Tom – murderer, etc. I don’t think David has killed anyone and I’m not sure Abby has either – please remind me in the comments if I am wrong. Or if I forgot any other murderers on the show.
I should mention at this point that the show is replete with amazingly tedious flashbacks showing, again, what we all knew – that the boring black guy and Mellie were fucking. Thankfully I was watching on iTunes so I could just fast forward through most of it. Really felt like filler, didn’t it?
Olivia and the gang set out to prove that Cyrus is the killer…really boring spy stuff here that felt almost rote at this point. Huck, Charlie and Quinn hack, Quinn breaks into the FBI to get the laptop, blah blah blah. And of course they tie Tom to all of it and by proxy, Cyrus.
So at the end of the third episode, Tom is confessing to murdering Frankie on behalf of Cyrus. Same Tom who murdered the President’s son and a few dozen other people. Who ended up having an affair with Cyrus, which skeeves me out every time. Who beat up Frankie’s non-girlfriend which caused the major rift between Frankie and Cyrus. Who Mellie got out of jail. Who is so distraught at being scorned by Cyrus that he’s willing to go to jail forever to punish him. Ironic, no? Ok, no, not really. Rather stupid actually unless Tom is really acting for Poppa Pope or someone else.
Things we learned:
- Olivia sabotaged boring black guy and Mellie’s relationship by getting Abbey to make him press secretary for Fitz. Ok then. Mellie and Marcus are clearly getting back together. Anyone disagree?
- Quinn and Charlie are now engaged. But she’s decided she needs to look into his past. Um, ok. Remember just 6 seasons ago when she was a clueless person who had been framed? Now she’s a super hacking killing spy person. So what really could be in Charlie’s past that she could object to? My guess for now is she finds an ex-wife and some kids.
- We got a long boring civics lesson from David about the Electoral College as if we didn’t just live that boring civics lesson.
Here are the questions I have:
- Will Mellie actually become president or will Shonda figure out some weird twist to bring Hollis back? With Trump in the Oval, it’s GOT to be tempting for her. Was that what David was setting up when he told Fitz that the Electoral College has a lot of leeway and can do pretty much whatever they want?
- Did Cyrus actually know that Tom was going to kill Frankie and how quickly will Cyrus get out of jail? I mean, all signs point to yes, but Tom is clearly a few cards short of a full deck. Plus Frankie did threaten to put Cyrus in jail on day one so that’s pretty decent motivation. That said, I can’t really imagine Shonda leaving Cyrus in a jail cell all season. Seems boring so my guess is that he gets out. This probably involves Tom getting killed in jail. That’s ok, I think we’re all over creepy Tom at this point. Plus the thought of him and Cyrus fucking is only surpassed by the thought of Cyrus and Cyrus’ Whore fucking in terms of grossness.
- Why is Abby on Team Cyrus? Did that strike any of you as weird? I mean I know that she’s competing with Olivia but her badassery is pretty lame overall. And supporting Cyrus when the evidence was pretty clear he was involved and, in fact, tipping him off, just seemed out-of-place. As did getting Jake to coerce a confession from redneck dude. Does she need her parathyroid checked?!?!
I’m sure I will have more to say after the next episode. If I can stomach watching. Stay tuned.
I don’t like the way Shonda is portraying Abby. I am not sure if it is her acting or it is bad writing or they want a Abby vs Olivia plot line. Either way Abby is really getting on my nerves and I ff through her scenes.
Totally agree. She has really been a character in search of a storyline ever since she left OPA. She’s not believable as a badass and now that OPA is basically all hackers and killers she doesn’t really fit in there.
Also, I forgot: What do you all think Poppa Pope’s angle is right now? You know in the end he’s going to win. Maybe Jake becomes President?
I saw Bellamy Young on one of the morning shows recently and she said that they had to reshoot a lot of stuff after Hillary lost the election.
It seems to me that means that Mellie was all set to win the election and everyone would live happily ever after. I feel like the first few shows were reshot to have Mellie lose, and then we will eventually somehow get back to Mellie being the president and the original episodes would start. I really don’t think Shonda ever believed that Trump had a realistic shot at becoming POTUS.
It’s also pretty tragic that the hot governor got himself killed.
I’m pretty close to being done with all things Shonda . Between Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal she just seems to be phoning in storylines . I had to watch scandal twice to understand what the heck is going on
. With Poppa Pope in the mix, the shooting of the president didn’t come as a surprise, as he would want the person in the oval that he would have total control over. Actually, I predicted Mellie would win only to have her assassinated so Jake could become president . But then again what do I know as I had to watch the last episode twice to understand what the heck is going on . All of the characters seem like strangers and nothing about their personalities seem to be the same as they were in the past seasons
I miss the old seasons where the focus was on Olivia and her Fixing business, where each week some Washington insider got themselves in some sort of a mess and her team of special skilled misfits had to get to the fixing of their mess
I believe Shonda dug herself in a hole by being overconfident in believing that Hillary would win the presidency and then had to scramble to do some sort of hodgepodge rewriting. At least that’s what it looks like to this viewer.
I agree with everything you said. I too had to watch the last episode twice. It was then that I hunted down Paul and chained him to the radiator. I’m going to need him to explain EVERYTHING to me slowly using small words.
Lets start with Phil. Not Paul. SMALL ENOUGH WORDS?
And I also agree with you. There is basically no unifying theme at all yet to this season and the first 3 episodes seem really rushed. And kind of lame if I’m being honest.
I don’t really get why they had to redo the scenes anyway. If Mellie ends up President it’s not like that will be reality anyway. I am still sort of hoping they figure out a way to get Hollis the oval office but that doesn’t really make much sense since the rest of them would have nothing to do.
I’m aware that it’s not real life and remind myself that it’s a TV show (and a TV show with Shonda Rhimes at the helm, ) , But, I still cannot wrap my head around the idea that “Smelly Mellie” could ever be considered a viable candidate for President! Then again, I never thought we would be in the position we are now…#nopeitsnotadream
I wouldn’t go as far as art imitating life, …..but good grief
Well, Phil… I got 50% of the letters right. And considering you only ever show up during Scandal, I’m okay with being half right