This was by far my favorite episode of the back half of this season thus far. “Pencils Down” was solid. It was “vintage Scandal”, complete with the twists, the turns, the poignant, the unexpected and the funny. It was great! Chris Van Dusen, you’ve managed to redeem yourself with this one. That’s all I’ma say.
With unknown players in the game revealing themselves and others being uncovered, the landscape of the presidential race just got a bit more interesting. From what was revealed in this episode (and from what we all know to be true when it comes to this show), whatever is up ahead is guaranteed to be bananas.
If you didn’t watch this episode, I encourage you to do so. You won’t regret it.
The Darkside of the Moon
Now that Olivia has quit this business of pretending as if “optics” was stopping her from running Mellie’s campaign, she is out front negotiating the terms of the first debate between the candidates like a badass. Quinn’s words from the last episode may have recalled Olivia to her fire-breathing ways because she huffed and puffed and successfully blew down the house that stood in the way of what she wanted. The BNC producer said no to her request for a red light and a buzzer that would inform the candidates of when their time was up and so Olivia threatened to ruin their debate by auctioning off an exclusive interview with Mellie Grant to the BNC’s competition.
As Olivia walked away from the debate negotiations, she did so with satisfied smile because she knew that she had said enough to have the producer rethink his position and agree to her terms, which he did. That had to have been a satisfying moment for someone who hasn’t done much of any big talk as of late.
With that matter handled, Olivia and her team put together a focus group that would help them determine what the public considers to be Mellie’s weaknesses. These people didn’t have a kind thing to say about the former First Lady. They referred to Mellie as smug, arrogant, a Washington insider, a know it all. One woman remarked about how Mellie’s hair reminded her of her soap operas, and another said that she liked Mellie’s book but not Mellie herself. As one guy put it, “She might be okay if she didn’t talk.”
Ouch. Needless to say, Mellie is not happy about what this group has to say about her. Interestingly enough, Olivia said similar about Mellie during an earlier phone call with Abby. Not only did she call Mellie arrogant, she also referred to her as stubborn and as a pain in the ass.
It really makes you wonder why it is that Olivia is even putting up with her at all. I’m not yet convinced that acquiring power is what’s driving Olivia here and I simply can’t take Olivia at face value when she says to Abby that she thinks Mellie would make a “great president”. Girl, what? On which planet?
Anyway, the feedback they receive from the group is that Mellie has an image problem that they have to fix. While it may be true that Mellie is addressing the issues that these people say are important to them, she isn’t connecting personally. She’s too aloof. Olivia is stressing to her the importance of not dismissing what these people are saying for they are the people who will be paying attention to the debates and also the same ones who will be going to the polls to vote, and that they won’t be voting for her if they feel that she believes that she is smarter than everybody else. Mellie chafes at this and cites her Rhodes scholar credentials as something she is pulling from in order to make things better for people like them and bristles at the idea of having to dumb herself down in order to connect, but eventually relents. What she says next has me giving Olivia a major side eye: Mellie Grant, woman of the people.
Oh, hell nah. No, ma’am. You’re seriously using the Fitzgerald Thomas Grant III strategy with Mellie Grant? Really??
This right here told me that Olivia wasn’t truly putting her back into her role as Mellie’s campaign manager. Not in the way that she should be. If she were, she wouldn’t have rolled out a strategy that was tailor made for Fitz and try to have Mellie fit into it. That’s like having her don one of his suits because it looked good on him.
Olivia gets pulled away from her conversation with Mellie when Quinn shows up to give her an update on what she has discovered on Jake, which isn’t much. She’s been following Jake via security cameras located about the city but hasn’t found anything remarkable, so this meant that they were now to move on to plan B, which involved infiltration via Vanessa.
At some point that same day, we see Olivia in a parking garage with Edison and she asks him straight out if he’s running for president. He asks her how she heard and she tells him in response that he should announce. He tells her that he will be doing that in the morning, but before he does that he wanted to check in with her about “Meridian Terrace” and Olivia states this simultaneously, knowing that this was something that he’d be concerned about.
Edison tells her that once he announces, his enemies will dig deeper than they ever had before to find dirt on him and Olivia tells him (in an intimate way btw) that he doesn’t have anything to worry about. He had her back and vouched for her “character” on television (aka lied for her), so she owes him.
He thanks her and starts to walk away when she stops him to say tell him that he’ll be a great candidate. Edison appears pleased by this statement and thanks her before remarking that it’s about time that the nation has its first black president and Olivia counters by saying that it’s about time that the nation had its first woman president. They share a laugh before the moment must have reminded them of the good times when they used to engage in friendly sparring over politics. Aww to the ship that never got a name. The fandom is petty like that.
Later (another day?) we see Mellie debate prepping at OPA while Hollis has taken to the gun range with a message to his contestants and to anyone else paying attention that he believes that “debate prep is for ninnies.” Mellie, meanwhile, is struggling through her prep where at some point Olivia tells her to “lose the bitch face.”
When Mellie tries to smile, Olivia tells her that she’s still in bitch face mode except this time she looks like a know it all. Unsure of what it is that Olivia wants from her, Mellie tells her that what she needs to be is the woman who was on the Senate floor filibustering. That’s the woman that America wants to vote for. That woman was human.
Hmm. Has Olivia convinced herself that the Mellie that she has know for nearly a decade is more like the one who was filibustering and less like the one who treats virtually everybody around her like peasants who are unworthy of being in her presence? She seems to be trying hard to fit a square peg into a round hole and it just isn’t working. Mellie is trying to follow Olivia’s directives, but none of them are natural to her and she is thus flailing.
We later see Olivia coming into Quinn’s office and having a brief conversation with her about the wedding books strewn across her desk and its connection to her charade with Vanessa. Their discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Alejandro Vargas who has come to offer Olivia dirt on Susan Ross in exchange for dirt on Edison Davis. In rejecting his offer, Olivia tells him that she doesn’t play dirty (Lies!), but Alejandro isn’t letting her go so easily. Already armed with her cell phone number, he sends her his contact information...in the event that she should change her mind.
Slick bastard. Now get out of here before I start shipping you to myself.
His actions get Olivia to thinking and so we next see Huck presenting information that he had managed to dig up on Alejandro. He has apparently been the campaign manager for every contest that his brother has been a part of and won them all (this would explain him taking charge the way that he has with Cyrus. See section further down). No one has a 100% success rate in this business, and as it turns out, Alejandro has been ensuring these wins by digging up dirt, intimidations, exploiting connections. He is loyal to his brother to a fault.
This is in definite contrast to the picture that Francisco painted of his family in front of those voters in 511, isn’t it? It would seem that he left out a bit of his family’s bootstraps narrative.
Marcus comes into the conference room then to say that he has reviewed the footage that they shot of Mellie during her debate prep and despite the fact that she is working hard, she still isn’t coming across as relatable. Huck actually is the one to interrupt to fill in that Mellie is “still no woman of the people.” LOL! I get the sense that Huck isn’t particularly fond of Mellie Grant.
Marcus would like to have another focus group, but there is no time. Hollis currently has all of the attention with his bacon-frying gun shooting and they have to do something to get Mellie out in front of the cameras before the debate in two days. Huck suggests the Gettysburger test, which required Mellie to humble herself enough to show up there like a regular person and order a few things off of the menu. This was her chance to be relatable to the American people.
Unfortunately, Mellie’s penchant for improvisation gets her into trouble when she makes the claim that she goes to Gettysburger every Sunday after church. The problem with that statement is that the restaurant is closed every Sunday, a fact that all Gettysburger faithful know. She’s just proven herself to be a fraud and it is nobody’s fault but her own.
Of course, Mellie can’t ever admit to having ever done anything wrong. Her decision to lie isn’t her fault. It’s Olivia’s fault! After all, it was Olivia who told her to be “woman of the people.” This Gettysburger business was Olivia’s plan, so whatever happened with it is on Olivia’s head.
Sigh. Aside from Mellie being Mellie, I can’t completely disagree with her here. Up to this point, Olivia has used a campaign strategy that did not at all fit Mellie and which was actually doing her a disservice.
With this effort to humanize Mellie having failed, Olivia now has to think up some way to counter this. She starts to pace (her standard mode of thinking), but Mellie barks at her to stop thinking and start doing, and demands that Olivia fix this situation.
Again, I am wondering as to why Olivia is even doing this. Sis, why are we here with you?
Given the time restraints, Olivia now finds herself considering the proposal that Alejandro had offered her earlier. It’s one hell of an attractive red apple that would be a quick fix to her Mellie problem. The media would be distracted by something new and Mellie’s blunder would soon be forgotten.
Olivia, however, is having an attack of conscience. Taking Alejandro’s deal would require her to go against her word to Edison and against her own intention to run a “clean” campaign. It would also mean that she would have to sacrifice Susan Ross to save Mellie, a move that would sabotage someone that she actually likes and make things difficult for Abby and the White House.
So what does Olivia do in this situation? She calls her father over to OPA because she is in need of his assistance with this. Rowan is there not because she wants to be talked off of the cliff but because she needs a push over it. Olivia is unable to cross over the line without having an excuse to do so. If her father gives her permission, she could place the blame of her betrayal on her father. She could then say that it was he who encouraged her to do it. He gave her that push. The guilt of a decision that she made would thus not sit heavy on her conscience, but would instead be relegated to the compartment in her head where she places all of Rowan’s other bad things. He would then be the bad guy, not her.
Recall what Huck said to her about Rowan’s function in her life:
“No, you don’t have a guy. Your guy is your father and you really do need him because as long as he’s by your side, nothing you do seems bad in comparison.” -- Huck, Wild Card (episode 512)
Just look at the people who Olivia has surrounded herself with lately. Setting aside her gladiators, she is dancing with people who either justify, accept, encourage or reflect her bad behavior. Rowan, Jake and Mellie. They also happen to be people who (consciously or subconsciously) Olivia view as being worse than she is.
After explaining her predicament to Rowan, she’s expecting him to give her some speech about power and how she should be thinking only of herself and how friendship (and love) hinders her from being great. She’s practically begging him to say it these things, but none of them is what she gets. Instead Rowan tells her what she needs to hear and not what she wants to hear.
In posing a series of questions to her, Rowan points out that Edison is not only someone who put his neck out for her when he didn’t have to and publicly vouched for her character, but is also someone that she cared enough about in the past to protect from his (Rowan’s) wrath by breaking off their engagement.
“This man has been nothing but nice to you. … You’ve played dirty before? Poisoned a few arrows? Of course, you have, but that was always at the expense of someone you loathed. You were Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. This would be different. This would be hurting someone you respect, someone who is innocent, someone who has never done anything to harm you. You’d no longer be Robin Hood, Olivia. … The reason Mellie Grant imploded today is because you were trying to make her into something she wasn’t. I’d hate to see you make the same mistake with yourself.” -- Rowan
Given all of Rowan’s speeches about power and its acquisition, him saying this to Olivia had me suspicious. He’s now evoking the white hat? Why?
Interestingly enough, his words to Olivia are almost identical to the ones that she offered to Abby in the last episode where she warned her bestie against taking off the white hat and choosing instead to be a monster. There is no turning back after that. In this instance, Rowan tells Olivia that once she crosses into those dark waters, she will no longer be the white hat wearing Robin Hood, and Olivia chimes in to say that she would then be like him. Yikes! Frost central, but it was also the truth. She knew it. He knew it. There was no need to pretend otherwise.
And speaking of truths, what Rowan said to her was also true with regards to Mellie, and I have already elaborated as to the why. Olivia was dealing with an apple tree but was expecting it to fruit tomatoes. Why then would she be surprised that her apple pie ended up being an utter failure?
You see that last line of Rowan’s speech? The part about hating to see Olivia try to make herself into someone that she isn’t? That line is a laugh because the version of Olivia that Rowan is appealing to is the very one that he detests. The selfless, empathetic, white hat wearing Olivia is someone that Rowan considers to be weak and limited, and yet he exploits her whenever it benefits him. Olivia appears to be just as confused as the rest of us by his words. What’s his motivation here?
We soon find out when Quinn returns from her dinner date with Vanessa. That poor woman. Vanessa, that is. She’s a clueless twit. It’s either that or she’s pulling one hell of a con on the con that Quinn is pulling on her. She seems to be truly enamored with Jake and wasn’t at all suspicious when he asked her for all of her banking information under the guise of it being part of the background check that the NSA performs on their partners. (Vanessa needs more cynicism in her life and far less trust.)
Quinn pops into Olivia’s office and informs her boss that Vanessa is being used for her bank accounts. Having looked into NSA procedure, Quinn verified that financial information isn’t part of the standard spouse registration form. When she took a look at Vanessa’s accounts, she found that someone had accessed all of them and worked out a way to incrementally withdrawn money from these accounts to be used to fund a super PAC!
Incremental withdrawal of money? I’m willing to bet that the amounts being withdrawn are low enough to escape detection. Remember when Rowan explained to Olivia how he managed to fund B613 by siphoning money from the entire budget of the federal government (ep 316)? He had been the one to write the algorithm and the only one who was in control of it. Looks like Rowan is back to his shenanigans, this time with a different purpose in mind.
The candidate that the super PAC is for is none other than Edison Davis! Say what?? Rowan’s whole Robin Hood speech to Olivia makes sense now, doesn’t it? He didn’t want his daughter to do anything that would torpedo the candidate that he was backing. The irony of him throwing his support behind Edison’s candidacy isn’t lost on me either.
Olivia goes over to Edison’s office to warn him against her father, but she’s already too late. Rowan has already gotten to him. Edison says that it is hard to turn down someone of Rowan’s stature when he says that he can make you the next president of the United States. Edison apparently knows more about Eli/Rowan than he initially let on. As head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he is privy to a lot of things.
Olivia desperately stresses to him that he doesn’t want Rowan anywhere near him, but her words are falling on deaf ears. It turns out that just like many others in this town, Edison is also looking to acquire some power for himself. It’s unclear whether this is Edison talking or Rowan, but Edison says to Olivia that while there are amazing perks to being a Senator, he and the other 99 Senators know that they aren’t making a difference. For them to make any mark, they have to become President.
Yep. Sounds like something Rowan would say, but I also don’t know this brother very well, so this could have been in Edison all along. He wants this just as badly as Mellie and Susan and Francisco and Hollis. The thirst is very real.
Olivia tries one last time to warn him against joining forces with Rowan, telling him that he is getting in bed with a monster, but Edison counters by saying that he’s actually getting in bed with a monster’s father.
Damn, bruh. That was uncalled for. But I did cackle.
Edison choosing to remain aligned with Rowan effectively thrust him out of the good column and into the bad for Olivia. It made it all the more easy for her to pull the lever on something that she wanted to do anyway, only this time, the indecision was gone. Edison’s jab coupled with the backing of his candidacy by her father meant that Edison was now expendable.
The question that remained was how far off of this cliff was Olivia willing to fly once she got her hands on the Susan information?
Armed with what she now knows about the money, Olivia seeks out Jake. He’s at dinner with Vanessa and he receives a text from Olivia that he leads Vanessa to believe is something classified. He gets up from the table and goes to meet Olivia where she is waiting for him. She walks into the women’s restroom with him following behind her, and once they are inside, she roughly pushes him against the wall, locks the door to the room and then commences with some rough sexual play.
Jake reminds her that Vanessa is right outside and Olivia asks him if Vanessa is aware that he’s using her accounts to launder money into Edison’s super PAC. Of course, he has no answer to that. Olivia then proceeds to pull him further into the room and against the sink where she starts to unbuckle his belt and he starts on her coat.
Jake tries to deny Olivia’s accusation, but she cuts him off and says that he knows that she is right. She then goes on to repeat to him what he said to her in the previous episode in her apartment about how he is in love with Vanessa, how he wants normal, how he is choosing normal. She recounts how he had called her a twisted sociopath who takes whatever she wants no matter who gets knocked down along the way (this sounds a bit like what he said to her in 507).
In the last episode (514), Jake had made Olivia out to be a broken woman who was obsessed with him and was running on some conspiracy theory that he and Rowan are up to something nefarious. His words--and what she also witnessed with Huck’s handling of Kim’s boyfriend--led Olivia to believe that she was likely doing what Jake accused her of; that she was stalking him and hung up on with something that wasn’t actually happening. (Yes, folks. I’m now with the idea that she really did mean what she said to him in that scene though I still am of the opinion that a lot of what she said was in fact bullshit.)
Come to think of it, what Jake pulled on her in that episode was akin to the tactic she used on Edison in 211. Remember that backwards countdown where she insulted his intelligence? Jake did the same to her. And just as Edison reconsidered his position and later came back and apologized to her for accusing her of being a criminal, a whore, an idiot and a liar, Olivia did the same and eventually apologized to Jake. Well, I’ll be damned.
Now that Olivia knows that her suspicion was justified, she’s come to let Jake know and she's put a hurting on him. Her hand finds its way into his pants and proceeds to do some not very PG things in there. She says to him that all of what he had said to before didn’t exactly sound like the truth right then with her hand on his pecker. She tells him that he may be the one that she likes to ride, but that no one will ever ride him like she does.
Alright then.
Sheeeeeeit. Not only did she disprove all that he has said to her previously about being in love and wanting to move on, she did so while holding him captive. He couldn’t have thought with his big head if his life depended on it. And unlike when he broke into her house like a creeper, Olivia wasn’t there to have sex with him. She came to take back the power that he thought that he had that he had over her.
Jake is completely overcome by her magical hand, lost in sensation when she tells him to pass on a message to her father, which is that whatever game he is playing, that she intends to win it. On that note, she unhands the brother penis, grabs her purse and sashays out the door like boss.
But, Liv, ain’t you gonna wash your hands?
I guess his pencil got put down. Heh.
I do have a question though. Why did she tip Rowan off on the fact that she is onto him? Olivia does know that part of the game for Rowan is him knowing that she knows that he’s up to something, right? One of the main points of his games is for her to find out what he’s doing and for her to try to stop him. Olivia has to know this. He hasn’t deviated from this tactic since the moment that he first appeared on screen. And because I believe that Olivia knows this to be true, I am convinced that she is as addicted to the dysfunction and chaos as Rowan is. As her mother said to her once, she is just like him (in ways).
The next evening, Olivia arrives at the site of the debate and Mellie pounces on her as soon as she sees her. It’s been 24 hours since “burgergate” and she wants to know what Olivia is doing to rectify the situation. She is freaking out about what Sally will likely ask her about the whole thing and Olivia says to her that she’s just going to have to go out there and do her best. The rest will be handled by her. It was already too late to come up with a strategy that could counter the damage that burgergate has caused. She instructs Mellie to trust her on this.
Olivia then goes off to meet up with Alejandro. She gives him her dirt on Edison and he passes her the goods that he has on Susan. She tells him to go ahead and take a look at what he’s got, It contains details of Edison’s stint at Meridian Terrace, a rehab facility in West Virginia. He had to go there to kick his addiction to painkillers. When Alejandro questions how it is that she knows this, Olivia says that she is the one who sent him there and then covered it up. This happened back in 2009.
(I’m not going to try to bother to work out how this fits into the Scandal timeline because the timeline is already hopeless. We’ll just go with it. Umm hmm. 2009.)
Leaving Alex and finding an isolated area outside, Olivia pulls out the contents of the envelope that she was given and takes a look at the dirt that she had just received. It must have been something else since it caused her some surprise.
Whoo baby! What skeleton has Alejandro shaken out of Susan Ross’s closet? Could it be related to her daughter Casey’s father? We never did get the details on how he died. If there is anything that this past season has taught us, there is more than meets the eye with little Susan Ross.
How Olivia intends to use that information is anybody’s guess, but mine is that she won’t. Not in the way that she believed that she would anyway. Whatever was unearthed must be the kind of bombshell that if unleashed would kill more than just Susan’s chances at the presidency. It just might send the Grant Administration into a tailspin.
The Dimming of the Susan Ross Show
Following the opening scene, which involved the negotiation of the debate terms between the three Republican candidates (on what green earth would we see two women and one man competing for the Republican nomination?), we see Susan Ross engaging in debate prep with the President standing in as Hollis and a woman standing in as Mellie. This scene reminds me of the one in S3 when Fitz was prepping with Mellie and Andrew to go up against Sally and Gov. Reston. Susan is knocking it out of the park and everyone present is impressed by her performance. Fitz, Elizabeth, Abby, Ethan, the stand-in for Mellie. Everybody.
During a return to her new office following the debate prep, Abby is startled by David who has been waiting for her return. He is still in need of discussing his lady issues with Abby who is none too keen on getting pulled into his drama, but David persists anyway and starts to relay his situation as he had tried to in the previous episode. He says his problem is an “addiction” that has been affecting his concentration at work. An annoyed Abby tells him drop “her” and when David wishes to know which “her” she’s referring to, she kicks him out of his office. LOL! Abby doesn’t have time for David and his two women.
On his way through the halls of the White House, David is in contemplation of his predicament when Elizabeth happens upon him and orders him to follow her. He thinks that they are about to engage in their usual dirty when he steps into the office and finds Susan sitting there behind her desk. He is surprised by her presence and gives a backward glance at Elizabeth because he clearly expected differently. The reason why he was pulled into Susan’s office was to discuss him and Susan coming forth officially as a couple at the end of the debate. He would show up on stage to stand with Susan during the time when the other candidates will have their families come out to greet them. Susan is hesitant of this plan and doesn’t wish to place that pressure on David, but when Elizabeth expertly toss this in his lap, David agrees. Susan is pleased and she looks at David like…
Later Susan comes by to thank Abby for clearing the President’s schedule to allow him to assist her with her debate prep. While there, Susan recognizes a notebook sitting on Abby’s desk and inquires about it. Abby tells her that it belongs to David who was just in her office telling her about the dilemma he has with juggling his women. Because Abby didn’t know that Susan was one of these women, she didn’t realize that Susan’s shock at that bombshell was a real and personally devastating. She thinks she’s merely sharing an entertaining, if not strange, story with a fellow woman who’d get a kick out of it. Yikes!
Returning later for more prep work, Susan is zoned out and totally off of her game. Elizabeth tosses a concerned look in Fitz’s direction. Something has changed between their prep that morning and the afternoon and they have no idea what.
Susan’s distraction continues into the next day where she is now misremembering details and quoting the wrong stats for unrelated subjects. This time, Fitz isn’t standing in as Hollis but is observing from the table in front of Susan. He gently corrects her mistake and gives her the correct answer before instructing their moderator to start again from the beginning. Freaked out, Elizabeth places a call to David to find out what it is that he did to break Susan.
David wouldn’t have known the answer, but he does come by to find out why it is that Susan is suddenly bombing when she had been doing so well before. The first thing she asks him upon his arrival is if he is cheating and he denies this to be the case.
Now is David actually cheating on Susan? Technically, I’d say no. Cheating would have required that he had been involved with Susan and then stepped out of the relationship to be with someone else, right? This isn’t what is happening here, but the truth isn’t any better. How could he confess that the evolution of their relationship was due to him going along with his girlfriend’s plan to exploit Susan’s feelings for him in order to get her to run for president? That kind of confession would be grounds for murder.
David manages to convince her that he doesn’t have anyone else, and when she embraces him, it is clear that David is experiencing a severe attack of the conscience. This moment later leads to him finally standing up to Elizabeth and breaking up with her. Elizabeth cannot believe it. The little bug is dumping her! Talk about being blindsided.
David confesses to Elizabeth that he is in love with Susan and Elizabeth goes off. She’s in shock. She refers to Susan as a muppet and adds that she isn’t even “one of the main ones. She’d be way in the back. They’d only let her play tambourine her their little muppet band.”
I hate these Scandal writers, man.
Back at the White House, Susan is still looking over her debate prep material when Fitz comes into the room, surprised that she is still around. He instructs her to go home so that she may get some rest, but Susan is not sure that sleep is something that she could accomplish if she tried. When she apologies for performing badly during her prep sessions, Fitz tells her that she has no reason to be sorry, but she insists that she does. Because she was dealing with a personal issue, she was off her game and she disappointed him, but she says to him that now she is back. Susan then tells him to pose a question to her, it doesn’t matter what. She’ll be able to handle it.
Fitz agrees to her request and poses a question about the federal deficit. Susan is set to answer, but that pesky personal matter that she referenced pokes out its ugly head and she instead asks Fitz why it is that he cheated on his wife. Caught off guard by the question, Fitz asks her if this inquiry is related to her debate prep and she says that it is. She says that she knows that she shouldn’t ask, but she wants to know why he did it. She then reforms the question to one that asks him why is it that anyone cheats.
The look on Fitz’s face is priceless because Susan has just unwittingly cast him as someone who is an expert on the subject. Her response? “Well, you’re pretty good at it.” HAAAAAAA!
Fitz takes no offense at her candor and actually chuckles over it. Susan goes on to say that she doesn’t want to be one of those women who believes whatever a guy says to her simply because her self-esteem can’t handle the truth, but she adds that she truly does believe that David (she doesn’t mention his name to Fitz) truly does love her. To that, Fitz tells her that people step out on their relationships for different reasons, so he doesn’t have an answer for her as to why people cheat, but what he can tell her is that if she feels that her guy is cheating on her, he probably is.
Damn. Definitely not what Susan wanted to hear, but it was what she needed to hear. (Second time that this has happened in this episode, ey?) Have I said how much I love The Fitz and Susan relationship? I’ve shipped them since they collaborated together on the Brandon Bill in episode 419. I really do love how their relationship has evolved and how Fitz doesn’t hold her opinions about his character against her. She hasn’t exactly been wrong even if I do find her position to at times be a bit sanctimonious.
Having gotten that bit of real talk from the President, Susan returns to the question that he posed and answers it like a real G. Then she bids Fitz a good night and finally leaves for home.
Sigh. I just want to give her a hug. It’s go’n be okay, Suze.
The following evening is debate time. Susan is outside having a smoke when David happens upon her. He came looking for her to make sure that his tie matches her outfit but then stops mid-sentence to remark on the fact that Susan is smoking. She tells him that she had quit when she found out that she was pregnant with her daughter. She relays to him how she stressed to her daughter the downside to smoking and David says to her that that is indeed good advice and wonders why it is that she isn’t taking it herself. Susan tells him that it is because she is dumping him. When pressed again on the issue of another woman, David finally comes clean and says to her that he had actually ended the other relationship because he didn’t want to lie anymore. He didn’t want to lose Susan, so he cut it off with the other woman. He tells Susan that he loves only her and that he’s all hers. Well, that comes too little, too late now, doesn’t it, David?
Susan definitely isn’t here for anything he has to say and she tells him that since Elizabeth has already told the press that he’ll be joining her on stage, that David is still going to have to follow through with that. She then extinguishes her cigarette and abandons him.
Welp. Looks like David’s pencil’s been put down, too. So sad. (Not really.)
Susan wasn’t going to allow herself to be toyed with. The end.
Now inside of the convention center (I assume), Susan informs Elizabeth that she has broken up with David because he was cheating on her. Elizabeth, who was already going off about the fact that she has already told the press that David would be coming out on stage, immediately snaps her mouth shut at that bit of information. She clearly looks panicked over the possibility that Susan knows that she had been the other woman, but Susan doesn’t know a thing.
Both ladies then start to cry, but for different reasons. LOL! Elizabeth because David dumped her and Susan because she dumped David. Susan mistakes Elizabeth’s tears as being shed on her behalf and thinks that despite the times when Elizabeth is mean that she does have a heart in there after all. Elizabeth doesn’t dissuade her from this opinion and just nods, which then prompts Susan to embrace her and they then cry together. LOL! I tell ya...
The Eclipsing of Cyrus Beene
Cyrus is now in his new position as campaign manager for the Francisco Vargas campaign, and he is instructing campaign workers when an unidentified man strolls in and steals his thunder. Well, it would be more accurate to say that the man killed the snooze button and let the alarm go off because Cyrus’s tactic of speaking to the room as if they were students to his professor just wasn’t working. He was not connecting at all.
Then comes this stranger who boisterously addresses the group and gets a reaction out of them. He is passionate, he is fiery, and gatdamn it, he is foine. Alejandro “Alex” Vargas, brother to Francisco, blew into that room like an unanticipated twister on Cyrus’s otherwise sunny day, catching the older man flat-footed.
Cyrus watches as Alex riles up the group and it is made clear in that very moment that Cyrus is the outsider. He doesn’t have the history that Alex has with these people. He isn’t a believer as they are. At that very moment, Cyrus was the outsider and that didn’t sit well with him at all.
When he goes to Francisco about his concerns about Alejandro’s influence, the latter doesn’t understand what Cyrus’s problem is. Cyrus is looking for boundaries that he just isn’t going to get with this duo. It situation had to have felt familiar to him for it was similar to when he was dealing with the impenetrable entity that was Olitz in the Oval. Nothing got to Fitzgerald without first going through Olivia, and now he found himself facing a similar predicament with Alejandro and Francisco.
The following day, Cyrus is seen coming into Francisco’s office where Francisco is in discussion with his brother. He is armed with information from separate sources that Edison is throwing his hat in the ring, but Cyrus is late with this news for Alejandro has already beat him to it. Again, Cyrus has been caught off guard. His suggestion that they change strategy and get some opposition research is met by Francisco saying that Alejandro has it covered.
Ooo...Cyrus is none too happy about any of this. As he had earlier suspected, he has come to the realization that he really isn’t the one running this campaign.
Later Cyrus is met in a hotel room by Tom who has succeeded in finding absolutely no dirt on Edison. Cyrus finds this to be impossible since with Edison is from Florida and the state being known for corruption, there is absolutely no way that Edison could have escaped any of it.
Damn, the Florida shade.
There is indeed dirt on Edison, but with Olivia having handled that situation long ago, there isn’t any now to be found. Edison isn’t their main concern anyway, but Cyrus tells Tom to keep digging around.
Just as Tom gets up to strip out of his clothes after asking if Cyrus needs to get immediately home, Cyrus wants an update on what has found on Alejandro. Since Tom had yet to find anything, Cyrus instructs him to put his coat back on and go out and find him some dirt. Tom was definitely disappointed at having a nookie session thwarted, but he obeys his master. Before he leaves, he tells Cyrus that Alejandro is nothing but a hiccup, someone he can deal with, but Cyrus knows better. When it comes to family, blood is indeed thicker than water. This isn’t a situation where Alejandro is some random Joe who is looking to take Cyrus’s job. This is blood. And when it comes to blood, they get “rewarded for the simple fact that they are blood.”
Ain’t this the truth. Cyrus is aware that his position as campaign manager rests on an unstable foundation and he must find a way to fortify it before, in his words, he gets demoted to being Francisco’s body man. LMAO!
That would be quite a fall, going from Chief of Staff to the President to campaign manager to body man. Cyrus may as well give up the ghost now.
So what did you guys think of the episode? What's Olivia about to do with the information she got on Susan? Will she use it or will she opt to do what she knows is right and inform the White House of the bomb she is holding? What do you think is Susan's secret? Be sure to comment below or tweet me your thoughts!
Thank you much for reading this recap/review of Scandal episode 515. We've got six more episodes to go, people! You know that means that some crazy, twisty insanity is surely on the way. See you all next week!
