Would You Mind If We...Spoon?

"Scandalous Thursdays!"

"Hi!  My name is Faith Margaret and I watch Scandal."  I enjoy it.  Thoroughly…and will blog  right here about all new episodes on Thursday nights beginning next week.  Oh!  Your theories about what is happening next in this suspenseful show are welcomed along with my musings.

“Shame needs three things to grow exponentially in our lives: secrecy, silence and judgment.” ~Brene' Brown 

Shame is what this episode is about.  Mmmm hmmmm.  How Olivia finally confronts the actual shame she has felt from the very beginning when she had that first kiss with the man that would be POTUS.  How she has hid from that shame in expensive, fly clothes and finely crafted 5-inch heels.  How she imagined a happily ever after that would lay that shame to rest, finally.   Shame.  Shame.  Shame.    

While Olivia was having the absolute worse day of her life ever that mean, righteous, nasty Sally Langston was relishing in the public discovery of the affair between POTUS and Olivia “…that seductress, Olivia Pope…”  Oh, Olivia.  Time just stops.  Things get quiet.  And then she gets the hell outta dodge leaving the POTUS to defend his choosing Olivia and thwarting all attempts to get him to smother the firestorm that is building.  Bottom line:  He ain’t saying a damn thing ‘til his Boo is right by his side.  Take.  That. 

Olivia jumps into action to try and save herself and who does she find her way to under the cloak of darkness?  That damn, Quinn!  Who on the writing team decided Quinn would be a heroin on this show?!?  She keeps a nasty home, which has to get under impeccably coiffed and dressed Olivia’s skin but Quinn is true to her gangsta self when she answers the door packing a big gun.  Alright, alright, alright…I admit Quinn is ride or die for her boss and will do whatever is necessary but no need.  Olivia has a different plan of managing her own crisis.  Ignore it!  Same old Liv, “I need to work!”  She peels out of her designer labels and throws on drab clothes Quinn has tossed throughout her clutter bedroom.  And she’s off!

Mellie gets wind of the latest drama and goes to her husband, the POTUS and demands he apologize to her for giving her divorce papers.  And then she offers to make things all better by simply denying the love affair.  See, she needs to be in the White House in love with her husband to assure her political future as a senator, “America won’t elect a woman they believe can’t get laid.”  Oooo,  s h a d e!  Is that a dig to Hillary?  I digress.  POTUS believes Mellie gave the pictures to Sally Langston.  Mellie believes POTUS purposefully outed his timeless love affair with Olivia.  It makes no difference anyways, Mellie!  He *clap* don’t *clap* want *clap* you, *clap* Boo *clap* Boo!

New case!  “Upside down, boy you turn me.  Inside out and round and round.”  Older man marries a younger woman and the husband comes up dead.  The older man’s son is missing and he is suspected to be responsible for murdering his father in a slip and fall, so the younger stepmother is concerned about his sudden disappearance.  Well, apparently step monster has been canoodling with some other cat for 5 years and won’t get a dime if she is caught with another man.  Motive?   

Fitz is clear he will no longer hide his love affair with Olivia and intends to move on with his entire life.  The Vice President that babbles and babbles and babbles is clueless.  Until she’s not.  David Rosen is on a mission to get proof that Mellie leaked the photos but we all know it’s not Mellie.  No…that would be too simple.  The POTUS Chief of Staff leaked the photos to Sallie Langston from Mellie’s office.  What does she want, anyways?

Back to Olivia.  Did you catch how Olivia is out doing her business looking…ordinary?  Mmmm hmmmm.  Desperate to blend into the background like ordinary people.  Determined to avoid the admiring eyes of ordinary people watching her move through the world with the “Olivia Strut” (my old man HATES the Olivia Strut, by the way and hasn’t watched one episode in its entirety since he watched her doing the Olivia Strut).  Gone are her fly clothes, replaced with a gray tshirt, jeans, black baseball hat and a hot leather jacket.  A perfect outfit, though for hunting down the stepson that killed his father for money.

Enter Jake coming back to help the woman he is in love with, in her quest to love the man she is in love with.  Pitiful.  Just…pitiful.  And he comes through the doors of “Pope & Associates” with our boy, Huck in tow.  All fixed.  All better.  Huck and Quinn are still beefing, giving each other side eyes and damn near hissing at each other across the room.  They need to get back to doing the nasty already so the team can get back together again.  A reporter finds his way into the offices and can’t take the hint to leave well enough alone.  Quinn jumps in right before Huck disembowels the poor reporter with a Number 2 pencil (‘member those?!?).  Fixed my ass!  So now Quinn interrogates Huck on his ability to be a normal person and makes him so pissy that he bounces.  Ugh!!  Quinn is always doing something! 

Remember these?!?

It’s coming!  Cyrus is slowly making his way back into this tangled web lies.  *applause*  My man misses being in charge and putting folks in their rightful place as he reminds them just who he is. Cyrus is beside himself watching all the various news outlets in his home office on big and small monitors with his grandfather sweaters on or wrapped tightly in his robe.  He is quarterbacking Red’s performance and finds it lacking all around.  FUMBLLLLLLE!!!!  He gives Red a little straightenin’ to itch that scratch he has.  “Be.  The.  Adult.  You want to lead be the leader.  Be the adult!  He’ll become the child.  You are the adult!  He is the child.  And you don’t ask children when bedtime is or if they want to eat their vegetables.  You threaten them and you make them eat those vegetables.”  She ain’t crazy and knows Cyrus is the master at running the White House and the POTUS.  As soon as she can, Red reminds the POTUS that Olivia is going to do what Olivia does (find her way out of whatever corner she’s backed into) and he ought to damn well be prepared.  And the child calls Mellie, apologizes and asks her to come home.  Well played, Cyrus!

Meanwhile, back at the seedy motel Olivia is holed up in. *insert slow clap* Jake is inserting himself into Olivia’s business trying to help her figure out how she is going to have what she wants (which obviously ain’t him!).  She wants the POTUS!  I mean, really?!?  What man does that?  You love this woman beyond anyone’s understanding and you counsel her, comfort her and encourage her to be with the most powerful man on the planet?!?  Who you know you will never measure up to?  *smacking my lips*  That’s some…Harlequin Romance novel kinda mess if I have ever heard of it!  You know what I’m talking about?  Those raggedy little paperback books with the big hunky white men and long blond haired busty white women on the cover in some lusty position that our mamas and their girlfriends would read cover to cover with a cigarette burning in the ashtray before they passed it all worn and ragged along to the next girlfriend?  Yeah…that kinda romance!

First of all, I cannot believe Olivia is laying on that comforter on the bed in that motel.  Ewwwww!  What?!?  So, Jake didn’t have one of those blue light thingies in his coat to scan the comforter for bodily fluids that undoubtedly are all over it before letting his sweet Olivia lay across the bed?  Ewww, ewww, ewww!  I digress.  If Olivia had just listened to her daddy, “Mr. Hell or High Water” himself (who better show up and I mean, damn soon!), she would be on the beach somewhere settled (literally) with poor old Jake.  Mr. Available.  Instead of spooning with Jake on that dirty comforter as a stand-in for the man she really wants to spoon with.  Never mind all of that, though.  It takes the innocent and rambling Vice President to shame the POTUS about this adulterous behavior and utter betrayal of the American people.  “You don’t get to be just like anyone else.  That’s not the job you signed up for.”  He leaves Olivia a message saying he will let her go ‘bout her biz’ness.  Again.  Because he loves her too much to see her unhappy while he gets his happy.  And Mellie is coming back to the White House. 

A little Aretha Franklin to close the show this week, singing about wanting a do right, all night man.  Right as Olivia admits to a throng of crushing press that she is having a Harlequin Romance Novel love affair with the POTUS.  Dressed in that gray tshirt, jeans and hot leather jacket.  Hmph!

How many times have we asked ourselves, “How did I get here?” Until next week…