Credible Presidential Candidacy vs. Secret Baby
Josephine Marcus enlists Olivia Pope & Associates to deal with that whole pregnant-at-fifteen cover-up thing -- with, let's say, mixed results.
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Previously
Democratic Presidential hopeful Josephine Marcus (Lisa Kudrow) scored points off the President's (Tony Goldwyn) recent public revelations of philandering! Cyrus's (Jeff Perry) lackey Ethan (Vanya Asher) went to Marcus's district and learned that she'd had a baby at age fifteen, but that no one knew what had happened to said baby after Marcus left the hospital without it! Jake (Scott Foley) and Huck (Guillermo Diaz) started to figure out that the late Pete Foster (Patrick St. Esprit) had something to do with an Operation Remington! Fitz found out that Pete Foster had been killed, and marched straight into Rowan's (Joe Morton) office to confront him about it!
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Love, Hate & Everything In Between
Holy Dinner Of Obligation
While Rowan tries his best to act nice (or maybe this is him being nice -- it's hard to tell) like he and Liv (Kerry Washington) are a normal, cordial father and daughter enjoying a nice Sunday-night dinner, Liv refuses to let him forget that they aren't, and that she's literally only there so that he won't use his influence to make any more of her associates kill anyone else. When she describes suppressing her instinct to be "the brave, outspoken girl [her mother] taught [her] to be," Rowan counters that he actually thinks she is who she is because of him. Too bad we'll never know who's right because Liv's mother is definitely 100% dead!
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That Happened
This Is Command?
While Eli/Rowan/Command has been out at dinner with Liv, Huck has been controlling the security system at Command's house so that Jake can bust in and copy a bunch of shit off his computer; of course Command comes home before Jake has been able to copy all the files onto his thumb drive, but ultimately manages to evade discovery. And look, I know that both Huck and Jake were trained to be able to get in anywhere and cause all kinds of mayhem, but Command is the one who trained them. He doesn't have a security system on his house that's impossible to crack? Or on his computer? He doesn't have the place wired with cameras that he reviews every night? …Okay.
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Meeting Time
The New Liv
Who called the meeting? Cyrus, I assume.
What's it about? He wants to hire consultant Leo Bergen (Paul Adelstein) to run Fitz's re-election campaign.
How'd it go? Wow, so bad! Leo starts out seeming like he's on board, geeking out about being in the Oval Office and everything, but then starts listing Fitz's problems with his credibility and penis; he goes on to tell Mellie (Bellamy Young) to her face that Fitz has "a 'his wife is a frigid shrew' problem," and that Fitz looks like he hasn't been laid in forever. He dismisses Fitz for looking like his heart isn't in it, and predicts that Fitz will lose the election. Finally, he says they all know the only reason they're trying to hire him is that they destroyed their relationship with Liv, and that he's due to meet Marcus next. D'oh.
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Meeting Time
The Old Liv
Who called the meeting? Josephine Marcus.
What's it about? She wants to turn her current heat into a real, competitive bid for the Presidency, and she wants to hire Liv to help her.
How'd it go? Very well. Liv frankly tells Marcus that she needs to increase her gravitas and learn some message discipline, at which Marcus hires her on the spot, telling her aide/sister Candace (Sally Pressman) to leave so that she can tell Liv about the secret baby, and ask Liv to craft a strategy for how to deal with it so that it doesn't derail her candidacy. The only problem is that Liv's first idea is to frame it as a way for Marcus to emphasize her support of access to contraception, but Marcus refuses to use the story for political gain. GET READY TO LOSE THE PRESIDENCY, YOU DUMMY.
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Flashback
What We Talk About When We Talk About Operation Remington
When the rest of the OPA crew clears out of their Montana motel "suite" to run down the only five people who know the truth about Marcus's secret baby, Huck takes the opportunity to dig into the files Jake got from Command's house, and finds a security video, from Rowan's office, of the President's pop-in. Switching from surveillance to regular film, we see Fitz shrug off Rowan's attempt to pretend Foster committed suicide, and then Rowan tells him that someone has been accessing the Navy files pertaining to Foster's involvement in Remington. Armed with this knowledge, Huck calls Jake to fill him in, but Jake doesn't really need the briefing just then, because he's about to get accosted by four Secret Service agents. Normal stuff.
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Meeting Time
Let's Basketball It Out
Who called the meeting? Fitz.
What's it about? He wants to play a round of one-on-one with Jake, because Fitz recently played with Lebron James (who I guess exists in this reality), and Lebron went easy on him; he knows Jake won't. Also he wants to talk about Liv.
How'd it go? Well, Jake refuses to talk about Liv, and how it happened that he went from watching her to sexing her, I would say it doesn't go the way Fitz had hoped.
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Phone Call
Wrong Tree Barked Up
Cyrus calls Liv to offer her a little job: he wants her to go to Montana and dig up some dirt on Marcus and her secret baby; he adds that he sent a kid there to do it, but that he's too green for Cyrus to be able to count on him doing it right. Liv smiles to herself, hangs up, and calls Harrison (Columbus Short) to tell him there's another team in town. Big mistake, Cyrus. Big. HUGE.
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Plot Lightning Round
Dirt Dug
Quinn (Katie Lowes) wants to go chat up the people from Marcus's past, and bitches to Harrison and Abby (Darby Stanchfield) that Huck is jamming her out, whereupon Harrison informs her that Huck told them about her "Drill, Baby, Drill" moment. She's grounded!
Marcus's high-school best friend and her cousin are both fine taking briefcases full of cash to keep her secret!
When the baby's father, Billy Joe (Michael Mahon) demurs about taking the money, and meets Harrison and Abby wearing a suit even though he's a cement plant foreman, and tries to get rid of them as vehicles pull up outside, Abby figures out something's up, and heads out to see Ethan and a news crew!
Harrison calls Huck to get dirt on Billy Joe like NOW!
Huck finds a standing hotel reservation, Harrison confronts Billy Joe with it, and poof: exposé turns puff piece! Another victory for Olivia Pope & Associates!
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That Quote"We got Pope'd, sir!"- Ethan -
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That Happened
Raging Fitz
Fitz goes on a telling-people-some-shit rampage, first ordering Mellie to let Cyrus worry about his re-election campaign, and then ordering Rowan not to fuck with Jake even if Jake is the one looking into Remington. No one likes it -- particularly not Rowan, who declares that he's never taken orders from anyone in Fitz's office, but sure, why not have a power struggle with someone who can't stop proving he's totally above the law?
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Hell Yeah!
Gratuitous Shirtless Jake
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Love, Hate & Everything In Between
Butt Out, Fitz!
Jake has just finished using Huck's office computer to find and print a list of missions Fitz flew before he was President when Liv enters. Jake lies that he was concerned about her because he knew her team was out of town; Liv lies that she forgot her phone, but when Jake notes that her phone is in her hand, he figures out that she means she forgot her "secret Fitz phone." Liv sadly tells Jake that she always used to vet Fitz's jokes for the White House Correspondents' Dinner (which is imminent; David (Joshua Malina) has already invited Abby to be his date), so basically, Liv is waiting for Fitz to need her. But then she throws the Fitz phone away and lets Jake take her out for dinner. Can this idiot please figure out that Jake is great and Fitz is full of shit? Other than the fact that Liv's father might kill Jake at literally any moment, he's perfect!
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Hell No!
You Wanna Be On Top?
The OPA away team having tracked down the nurse who treated Marcus when she had her baby, Liv confronts Marcus with what they found: she didn't place the baby for adoption; her mother passed the baby off as her own, and duh, that baby grew up to be Candace (who obviously doesn't know anything about any of this). Marcus doesn't want to get out ahead of the story and expose her family to getting ripped apart by the press. Liv asks her how badly she wants to be President, and after expositing that she only got into politics after her husband was killed in "that stupid war," to protest it, she gives Liv her final answer: "How bad do I want it? Not that bad." Fine, but maybe don't hire Olivia Pope and then tie her hands? SHE IS TRYING TO HELP YOU, TEEN MOM -1.
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Meeting Time
Non-Absolute Power Still Corrupts
Who called the meeting? Fitz.
What's it about? He wants to find out from Cyrus how he can get rid of B613.
How'd it go? Not well. First of all, the second Fitz utters the name "B613," Cyrus silently flips out, paranoid that they're being recorded, even in the Oval Office. Then he tells him that disbanding B613 is not possible, period, and that if he tries to fuck with its budget or something, he'll be killed by "a lone gunman on a grassy knoll -- just ask Kennedy." Hey. It's EITHER a lone gunman OR a grassy knoll. Come on, Cyrus.
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Hell No!
What's She Going To Get -- Finishing Nails?
While the rest of the away team packs up to leave Montana (Abby calling to lie to David that she's going to have to stay for a few more days and will thus miss the dinner), Quinn goes back to the hardware store to return the wifi equipment they bought. Told she can only have store credit, she sees something she may want to use it on.
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Fight! Fight! Fight!
Reston vs. Marcus
At the Town Hall debate, even though Liv warns Marcus that Gov. Reston (Tom Amandes) has been fed baby info by Cyrus and is about to spring a trap on her, trying to tell her how to handle it when it happens, Marcus stands firm, saying she will definitely not admit to anything. Sure enough, he does ask Marcus whether she has any past moral failings she wants to admit to, and after a long moment, she tells the whole true story, minus the part where the baby is still in her life in the form of her "sister," Candace. But Candace, standing by, certainly knows what's up. And though Marcus handles it perfectly -- watching at the White House, Cyrus and both Grants can tell Olivia has been representing her -- the first thing Marcus does when she leaves the stage is fire Liv.
Winner: Marcus, who flattens Reston and Liv in a single blow. And her sister/daughter, but…okay, yeah, I guess Marcus kind of lost, too.
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Hell No!
Someone Google Spinal Transplant Surgery
Liv is drinking in her office when the secret Fitz phone rings and she digs it out of the garbage. He wants to congratulate her on handling Marcus so well (she has to tell him she got fired), and then, sure enough, to talk about his jokes for the correspondents' dinner. He's ashamed to make jokes about anything because he feels so unworthy -- just another philanderer, just like his father -- but they soften each other up as she feeds him lines, like she's spent the whole episode yearning to do. Meanwhile, eavesdropping the whole time: Mellie. BOTH THESE WOMEN NEED TO LEAVE THIS CHUMP LIKE YESTERDAY.
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Phone Call
Planes And Plans
Huck is telling Jake he's figured out that Fitz could have been in Iceland during the operation that Foster actually flew in his place, and still made it back to Iran to meet Jake right afterward, when Liv calls and basically orders Jake to escort her to the dinner. Jake says no, but relents pretty quickly. Spoiler: he was definitely right the first time.
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Plot Lightning Round
Diners Dash
At the dinner, Fitz sees Liv with Jake and cries inside!
Sally (Kate Burton) follows Leo into the men's room and tells him she wants him to help her run for President against Fitz…as an independent!
Off a pointed look from Fitz's main Secret Service dude Tom (Brian Letscher), Liv takes off to meet with Fitz!
But it's not Fitz who's summoned Liv: IT'S MELLIE!!!
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Dialogue
Getting The Old Gang Back Together
I like your new boyfriend. Is he married? …No, wait, I'm sorry, that was below the-- I am sorry. Please. Stay. Sit. Hear me out. I'd like you to come back and run Fitz's re-election campaign.What?Do you remember what it was like four years ago, Liv? What we were like? Fresh and young and full of ideas, and now, four years later, my God, look at us. Congress has stalled everything we've tried to push through, approvals are in free fall, people want change and of course that's exactly what the Democrats are running on -- but that's-- I'm not even worried about all that. Anyone can fix that. That's not why he needs you.Mellie--He needs you, Olivia. He is tired and broken, and it isn't the job. It's doing the job without you. He's not alive when you're not here. He can't breathe when you're not here. He doesn't have the will to run, much less win, when you're not here, because you -- you're everything to him, Liv. He needs you. So I need you. Come back. Come back to us.Does he know what you're asking me?No. No. He'll get on board. Of course he'll get on board. You and I -- we've always wanted the same thing, Liv: for him to be the man we both know he can be. And after all we did, we owe him this -- a chance to run on his own steam, and win. -
That Happened
These Two
Having already busted her at work for totally not being in Montana when she said she was, David finds Abby waiting for him, all done up, at his apartment. She tells him she did want to come to the dinner with him, and he says he saw her (abusive) ex-husband there, and why didn't she just tell him why she didn't want to go? I can't care about these two figuring their shit out, sorry.
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Wrap It Up
Jake blows off Liv because he knows she just couldn't come to the dinner to see Fitz unescorted but he doesn't like being used!
Marcus comes to Liv's office to say she hates how right Liv was, but she was right, and Marcus wants Liv to work for her campaign! Liv turns her down! But Marcus tells her to sleep on it!
Quinn plays with her new toy!
Jake comes home to find Huck there because Huck figured something out! There was a 747 crash off the coast of Iceland the night Fitz was maybe there, and though it was blamed on mechanical failure, fishermen saw flashes, and the satellite images of the area that night have been erased, and the plane may have gone down because there was a woman on it named Maya Lewis who never took her husband's name BUT HER HUSBAND'S NAME WAS POPE! SHE WAS LIV'S MOTHERRRRRRRRRRR!