I can't say the opening stint of Scandal's fourth season has swept me off my feet. The midseason finale ten weeks ago was wasn't as good as I hoped, so Shonda Rhimes had a pretty big job to do last night to keep me on the bandwagon.
Fortunately, she delivered. Well and truly delivered, in fact. Titled "Run", with Tom Verica in the director's chair, and Kerry Washington taking charge in front of the camera, they blew it out of the park with the finest episode of the season, and one of the best in the series' history. I went into this episode with no expectations. I knew that anything was on the cards, and that approach definitely paid off.
Instead of spending a precious minute running through a refresher reel in the opening seconds, we were reintroduced to Olivia's living room, and the final moments of last year's midseason finale played themselves out from a new set of angles, with some added dialog. Jake had just arrived, Olivia looked as if she was on Cloud 9, dancing away to music, and a glass of fine wine in her hand.
Then that moment we had all been waiting ten long weeks for: where did Olivia go?
I'm sure you've already memorized the beautifully planned and executed snatch-and-grab. A single masked man barges in, picks up Olivia, and carries her into the apartment next door. Jake - who didn't realize he missed a major beat - flew downstairs and chased after the car he thought contained Olivia. Back upstairs, Olivia drops a ring and buries it under the rug. She torments her kidnappers like a pro - almost as if she's been in this situation before.
Fast forward a bit, and Olivia finds herself in a cell with another man. Her thought process is akin to that she uses in crisis management, running election campaigns. Just like she thinks of escape plans in her day job, her mind is in overdrive. Ingeniously, she uses the underwire in her bra to fashion a hook to open a window. She gets caught though, with the man she was with paying the price.
Amazingly, the creative team find the time to introduce a terrific dream sequence, showcasing Olivia and Fitz in the fairy tale of Vermont. Abby, the only other character besides Jake and Fitz, and strangely, Tom Larsen, and of course Olivia, shows up and rambles on enough to snap Olivia out of the dream, but not before inspiring Olivia to undo the hose clip from the sink, and use the pipe it was attached to to secure her freedom.
Only that freedom was very short-lived. It turns out the whole thing was a game. It was a prison inside a prison. The hour winds up, and we now know who took Olivia, but we don't know why.
It's a rare event in television land when a series takes its lead character and dedicates an entire episode to them. So rare in fact that series that do attempt them never do it again. They are rare because storyline progression is next to impossible to achieve without the supporting cast present. Despite this, every dedicated episode I've seen has been excellent to watch, and Scandal has met that mark with ease. Kerry Washington was outstanding throughout, and this episode will go down as one of her most memorable performances in her career.
I'm really hoping the episode is the kick in the guts Scandal has been missing to really get this season moving. The one-off is out of the system, so now it's time to move forward and make the most of the momentum this episode has provided. Bring on next week!
Thanks for reading! Share your thoughts and theories in the comments below, and check out Scandal's ratings on my TV ratings website, www.seriesmonitor.com/scandal.
