Scandal

This week’s episode is full of twists and surprises, just as every good Scandal should be. The episode starts off with Olivia sitting on the floor in her room, a battered Jake sleeping peacefully in her bed. Memories whirl around in her mind and the crisp whiteness of the scene contrasts with the dark flashbacks haunting her tranquility.

“Is your job to kill?” she remembers asking her father, scared to know the answer yet pressing for the truth nonetheless.

“Is your father commander?” Huck screams in her not-so-distant memory. He is beside himself, completely distressed and unstable.

Olivia knows she needs to contact Huck and make sure he is all right. She hasn’t seen him since the night she confessed to him that her father, Eli Pope, was in fact Commander, the leader of the B6-13 mission Huck was a part of.

However, Huck is nowhere to be found. He will not answer his calls and he does not show up to work at Pope Associates. The entire gang of Olivia’s “gladiators” is worried; they know something is wrong even though they are not sure what it is.

Back at the White House, Cyrus tries to convince Fitz and Mellie to improve their appearance as a couple with the press since the news about the affair died down. Cyrus knows that if the Grants do not inform the public that they are carrying on through the storm, the American public will become concerned and lose faith in their president. Therefore, Cyrus tells Fitz and Mellie that they must attend a romantic weekend getaway at Camp David where there will be plenty of photo opportunities for them to save the public face of their marriage.

However, fate has other plans in store for the president. For one, a mysterious man breaks away from a tourist group and frantically tries to find Fitz in the White House. Although the Secret Service quickly catches the intruder, he is still insistent in speaking to the president and says he has knowledge he needs to share about the secret Remington mission that Fitz was a part of.

Meanwhile, at the Capitol, another pressing matter is at hand. Olivia’s new client, Mary, has taken nine hostages, including Olivia and Congressman Jim Struthers, as part of her mission to obtain her murdered son’s sealed FBI file. Therefore, instead of going to Camp David, Fitz goes to a safe room where he will lead the FBI in handling the immediate threat.

The FBI claims that they killed Chris Lawrence because he was a terrorist, recruiting members to join his terror organization. Mary does not believe her son was a terrorist and wants to learn the truth of why he was murdered through the sealed file.

After much negotiation and frustration, the president finally calls Olivia, who was acting as a liaison between Mary and the FBI, to tell Olivia the truth as to why the file is sealed. In reality, Chris was a CIA agent working undercover as an al-Qaeda recruiter. He recruited 57 other CIA agents who are currently posing as al- Qaeda members.

Unfortunately, the FBI did not know of Chris Lawrence’s true identity and killed him in a raid. So, even though people say he was a terrorist, in reality he was an American hero and martyr. However, Fitz tells Olivia that she must not tell Mary of her son’s true identity because if his identity is leaked to the public, the 57 CIA agents currently in al-Qaeda will be tortured.

Olivia agrees and tells Mary that the file said her son was indeed a terrorist. Mary, completely distraught by the news, lets the hostages free and then kills herself by releasing the bomb. Knowing her son was a terrorist was too much for her to handle. Ironically, that knowledge is what made her a terrorist in the end.

All the while, Huck has been following Eli Pope around D.C., waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He finds Eli outside a trailer and pulls out a gun; his time to seek revenge on Commander is finally here. However, Eli knows Huck well and offers him something he can’t refuse. The White House intruder from earlier is inside the trailer and as a professional assassin, it is Huck’s job to kill him.

Huck recounts this story to Olivia, telling her that he did the job Eli asked of him without complaint. The sad fact is that once Eli owns and controls a person, he will always own and control that person. This bothers Olivia and once she returns home for the night, she asks Jake why he was set free. What did he have to give Eli in return?

Jake is unsure of his debts to Eli, all he knows is that Eli will continue to control him the way he controls Huck, Olivia and the rest of the people he is involved with. Ultimately, there is no escaping that man, he is the eyes and ears of the city.