Man, poor Mellie: The second she finally finds a man, only literally a week later the affair gets botched after one of her annoying children caught her on her knees. Couldn't one of those losers on Secret Service detail have stood in front of the door while Mellie did her "Big Momma Thang"? This poor woman cannot catch a break even when it comes to being broken off. Shameful.
On another note: Fitz and Mellie's kids reemerged on last night's Scandal! And yes, I forgot all about them, too.
The angry boy and girl duo were imported from their boarding schools to do a national TV interview with their parents, though that task proved to be quite the challenge for Olivia Pope 'cause those kids need therapy. As it turns out, the boy hates his pappy so much that he ran an anti-Fitz Twitter account that branded Fitz as a fascist, and he planned to rock a "Reston for President" t-shirt during the telecast of the interview. Meanwhile, the girl couldn't understand how her mom could stand by her father, asking, “Why are you still with him after everything he’s done to you?"
Talk about it, Girl Child of Fitz. Talk about it.
Anyway, all that brings us back to Mellie's botched affair: Girl Child of Fitz ended up turning on her mom after she saw her blowing "Uncle Andrew," and at one point, screamed at Mellie and ordered her out of her room. If Mellie had decided to slap the indignation out of her, I wouldn't have called CPS. But you know, violence is never the answer. Better yet, this would've been the perfect time for Mellie to turn on an oldie—Christina Aguilera's "Get Mine, Get Yours"—and explain the facts of life to her antsy, vegan teenage daughter.
As for Andrew, Fitz sucker punched him and then pounced on Mellie for purportedly destroying their marriage. Why can't she just tell Fitz that the father he hates raped her, and that his son may actually be his brother and get it over with? Right, because it's too much. Still, I am sick of Mellie Mel being treated like a power-hungry pariah when in actuality, she has more heart on this show than arguably anyone else.
And just a side note: Two points for Andrew after he responded to Olivia Pope's warning to stay away from Mellie as the White House doesn't need another sex scandal by simply saying: "Glass houses, Olivia." TRUE. THAT.
Speaking of sex and scandal, there was so much licking and fingering going on last night. Fitz and Liv, Mellie and Andrew, Quinn and Huck, Harrison and Adnan Salif.
Let's turn to Huck and Quinn. So Huck remains equally smitten and guilt-ridden over Quinn, and is hard pressed to get her out of B316. When he turned to Olivia for help, she goes all "Umm, she pulled a gun on me and she made her choice, B," on him. Huck then beat the hell out of another B316 worker as a means to get to Jake. Still with us? OK, so then, Jake—not giving a damn about Huck's thoughts and feelings—sent Quinn directly instead. That lead to another odd make-up session between the two in which I get the sense that while Quinn continues to be pissed at him over torturing her and threatening murder, she harbors some feelings towards him, too. Thing is, she's with Charlie now, who suspects Quinn isn't being completely forthright about what happened a week prior in her apartment with Huck. No worries, though, as Charlie broke his lease and moved with Quinn to "protect her."
Now with Harrison and Adnan: Adnan ran to Olivia Pope & Associates pretending to need help in turning on Olivia's mama. Naturally, she really just needed access to the office so she could steal the president's schedule and security intel in order to plot something. She screws Harrison one last time and proceeds to give him a needle injection of poison or something ala Dexter Morgan. However, have no fear about that: Jake Ballard and the rest of B316 is watching.
On that, the episode actually gets off with Pope and her people digging into B316 and trying to locate the source of their funding. Daddy Pope calls her to let her know that he called in favors to make sure her head wasn't chopped off and tossed into a garbage disposal for messing with the wrong ones, because that's what daddy's do. However, once Jake Ballard approached Rowan Pope at his day job, Rowan decided to go ahead and spill the details (it's funded every department, you dummies).
I don't want them to dismantle B316 because I'm enjoying Jake Ballard in his new position way too much. Last night he told Fitz that he wasn't handing over a terrorist to him to boost his lil' presidential campaign by informing him that he wasn't "his bitch." Then Cyrus entered the office trying to crack his skull with a vase, he put him in some kind of Cobra Command death-lock and told him to calm his revenge-seeking ass the hell down. Cyrus, I know you're in pain, but you were trying to kill your husband using someone from that same agency a few episodes ago. My absolute favorite Jake Ballard moment last night was his interaction with Rowan.
Listen, I know you all enjoy Daddy Pope and his monologues, but I found it so refreshing that Jake heard him say all that shit and hit him back with, “Thank you for reminding me that when I decide to kill you, I need to do it all by myself.”
This word is being abused to death, though as a native Houstonian, I reserve the right to say Jake is so trill.
My other favorite "Damn, that hurt me!" line honors go to Liv's mama, who called her up and informed her that when it comes to her folks at the White House, "You think you’re family, but you’re nothing but the help.” Mama Knows.
All that said, this was my favorite episode of the season thus far. Unlike recent episodes, while there was still a whole lot going on, I didn't feel like, "Well, shit, let me stop drinking this red wine because these Scandal writers are getting me drunk enough on storytelling." Good job, scribes.
Written by Michael Arceneaux (@youngsinick)
