If You Like Fights About Whether Fitz Owns Olivia, You'll Love This (And Every) Episode Of Scandal

Fitz vs. Liv

As Jake, Tom, and a bunch of other Secret Service agents stand in a locked-down hotel hallway, Liv and Fitz post-coitally rage at each other, I guess because they don't know how make-up sex works? Fitz is still furious about the Jake beard situation, all "fox in my henhouse" this and "he will try to win you" that. This whips Liv into a high dudgeon about how she isn't a prize Fitz can win, and that she did this not for the sake of Fitz and his election chances, but for herself, so that she could work on the campaign without being a joke, and all her talk of having a career and a life she wants to protect might carry more weight if she weren't fucking a married man and in fact JUST FINISHED FUCKING A MARRIED MAN, but anyway, he's all, Vermont!, and she's like, Don't make promises when all we have is today and he's all, I so sads. Oh yeah, and in the course of all this, she yells about having already fixed a Presidential election, so now that's something every guy in the hallway knows, nice work Liv.

Winner: Jake? The only one in this "love" triangle with anything resembling dignity or integrity, AND HE'S JUST A BEARD?!

Flinch By Flinch

As Andrew and Mellie find themselves alone in a war room and she tells him nothing can happen between them so if he's on the ticket to be close to her he should get over it, he says that's not the only reason he accepted the veep slot, which slams us into a flashback to the moment when, fourteen years ago, Andrew eavesdropped on Fitz and Mellie fighting about how she didn't want to go to a dinner honouring Fitz Sr. and how she wouldn't let Fitz touch her. (Fitz has no idea why, but, of course, we do.)

Dirty; Money

Alert Type: Sexspionage Alert.

Issue: That lady who came to visit/seduce Harrison last week still has her hands/parts all over him, and is still controlling him with what we may safely assume is ill-gotten money.

Complicating Factors: Apparently there's more to Harrison's Adnan Salif entanglement than we thought, and this lady threatens to tell Liv about whatever it is Harrison did.

Resolution: The briefcase full of cash is apparently going to be donated to Fitz's re-election campaign.

Spoiler: This lady doesn't actually work for Adnan Salif....

Love Among The Gladiators

Abby decides the right way to tell David she loves him is to whisper it while he's asleep, but of course he wakes up, and of course before he can respond, he gets a call from James, the human cockblock, freaking out about getting unmasked as Publius because Cyrus has buttonholed Vanessa Chandler. Sorry Abby, your DTR sex will have to wait for David to deal with another Deep Throat OH YES I DID.

In Serious Publius

Situation: Cyrus needs to find out the identity of this Publius who's leaking to Vanessa Chandler.

What Makes It Awkward? He's enlisted James to help him crack the case, and...James is Publius.

How is order restored? It kind of isn't, except insofar as James gets off the hook for the moment: Cyrus hires Charlie to mess with Vanessa's phone so they can surveil her, and to stake out a meeting between her and Publius where Publius is supposed to hand over something pretty explosive (the NSA recording of Sally on the phone with Cyrus after DD's murder). But when James finds out Cyrus's plans, he and David agree that David should go. (To be continued!)

Absolute Power!

Remember how Jake is now the head of B613? Well, that means he has the highest security clearance of any person anywhere ever and that he's about to get access to even more hot info: "A trusted agent will reveal themselves [sic] to you shortly." HMMMMMMMM.

Strange/Fucked-Up Bedfellows

Who called the meeting? Leo.

What's it about? He and Sally want Hollis to support Sally's campaign.

How'd it go? Bad. As Hollis yammers on about what he'll want in exchange for his support (to name her Secretary of Energy), Sally spends the whole time distracted by flashes of the night of DD's murder, making Leo visibly nervous and jumpy like maybe he backed the wrong horse???

San Fernando Valley Of The Dolls

Welp, despite all the great vetting by Olivia Pope & Associates that found Andrew Nichols is totally clean, the TV reporter Carla Steele has turned up evidence of oxycodone having been delivered to the governor's mansion back in the day, and Andrew says it's true: it was him. He hurt his back during the campaign and blah blah blah. He offers to resign from the campaign, and Liv's like, yes, definitely do that! But Fitz wants her to try to fix it first, which means threatening Carla...who seems pretty unthreatenable.

B613-y Question For You

Liv gives Jake a quick call to ask, hey, after an old B613 Command has been removed from his post, how much power does he still have? (Or "she," but...let's get real, probably only "he.") Jake says none. Liv's still pretty sure this story's coming from her dad, though. Hm, I don't know. Despite that whole thing with the security clearances earlier, I'm not so sure I believe B613 is as all-powerful as we've been given to believe: they haven't even replaced Jake's old-ass phone yet!

Beyond The San Fernando Valley Of The Dolls

Remember how Andrew said he was the one who took delivery of the pills that time? Well, he was just being a gentleman because of the time he came into Fitz's office at the governor's mansion and found Mellie passed out with an empty pill bottle next to her...

...and then stuck his fingers down her throat to make her puke them up and not commit suicide like she'd planned.

Quinncy Drew, Girl Detective

Ugh, so Charlie having turned her down when she asked to help him keep tabs on Rowan, Quinn's taken it upon herself, which is how she sees Charlie take off when Cyrus calls him about Publius and can then turn her attention to Rowan, having dinner with/being confronted by Liv about this whole drug story. Quinn is good enough at stakeouts that Charlie the superspy doesn't clock her, but Liv walks out of the restaurant and basically right into her? Cool. Anyway, Liv tells Quinn to come back and work for her again because B613 will "destroy" Quinn (and god, if that's true, can B613 hurry up and do that, please?). Liv says she can help Quinn, who replies, "I'm helping myself." She kicks Liv out of the car and, when Liv refuses, pulls a gun on her.

Jake vs. Liv

After ordering Jake to her apartment, Liv immediately starts in on him, bitching that with all the agents under his command, he just had to assign Quinn to tail Rowan? Jake is in no mood for her shit, and tells her that (a) he didn't, and (b) if he had, it's not okay for her to tell him how to do the favours she asks, like...tailing her father. He then tells her that if this fake relationship is going to work, she need to "stock [her] damn fridge": "If I'm going to be your fake boyfriend all day, I'm going to come home at the end of it and drink real beer and eat real food. Wine is not beer, and popcorn is most definitely not real food." Then he goes to take a shower before they have "pretend sex."

Winner: Jake but also me.

Loyalty Program

Who called the meeting? Cyrus.

What's it about? Sally.

How'd it go? Fine; it's really just a quickie to inform us that the reason we just heard Leo whining on the phone to Hollis that he hasn't given them the money he had promised is that Hollis is actually a mole on Fitz's behalf. So: now we know.

The Doctor Is Out (Of Fucks To Give)

Who called the meeting? Abby and Harrison.

What's it about? Carla Steele's upcoming exclusive on the drugs being delivered to the California governor's mansion.

How'd it go? Huck has tracked down Murray Levine, the doctor who gave Andrew the drugs, and Carla's put him up at a hotel with a PA to guard him, but Levine shook his tail and went to the bar to drink, which is where Abby and Harrison try to threaten to out his dirty laundry (he says it's all out already) and then appeal to his good nature and sense of morality to convince him not to ruin a good man's political career by talking about his drug addiction on TV. Levine snorts, "Shoulda thought of that before she called me," and Abby and Harrison are like, guh?!

Hot Pants, Summer In The Capital City

Situation: Mellie wants to make sure Fitz doesn't drop Andrew from the ticket.

What Makes It Awkward? Mellie's contradicting Liv's advice opens the door for Fitz to confront Mellie about the list of potential beards she gave Liv in the last episode, and order her not to talk to Liv about anything ever again.

How is order restored? Mellie soulfully asks what it's like to be so in love with someone that you'd risk everything you've ever worked for or cared about, and Fitz makes faces like maybe he might think of Mellie as a person, but then he just says he has to get back from work, and she's dismissed again to whatever she does when he's not there and doesn't care about.

True Confessions

Fourteen years ago: Andrew dares to follow up on saving Mellie's life by being nice and inquiring after her, and she freaks out and tells him the reason she wanted to kill herself, so...he's still the only one not directly involved in it who knows about the rape.

Mellie vs. Liv

Even though Liv still thinks Rowan is behind the drug story, the quickest way to get past it is to discredit Levine by making it look like he was paid off, so she does that and then goes to tell Mellie. She lets Mellie know that she knows Mellie was the actual recipient of the drugs, but since she assumes that Andrew took the fall for Mellie because the two of them were and still are fucking, she makes the tactical error of saying she knows it must be difficult for Mellie but that she and Andrew will have to stop, and Mellie's like, you know it must be difficult because you've been there? NUH UH. "When I was faced with the chance to cheat, I kept my knees together and I said no. We are not the same." (And then we see a flashback that confirms that it's true -- she was into Andrew, but she turned him down.)

Winner: Mellie.

Have Some Sense, Idiot

At a fundraiser, while Andrew gives a speech slagging off Sally's disloyalty and far-right values so that Fitz doesn't have to, his running mate looks out and sees that Hollis is there, whereupon he tells Cyrus that he doesn't want to take any of Hollis's dirty money and furthermore that Cyrus should refund whatever he paid to get in tonight. Irrespective of the fact that Hollis is a Sally mole, which Fitz doesn't know, he does know that Hollis was involved in stealing the last election so maybe don't make an enemy of him? Duh?

Spying Is Not For Everyone

After figuring out that Cyrus has sent an assassin to kill whomever shows up for the meeting with Vanessa Chandler, James calls David all in a tizzy to warn him not to go, but before David can pick up his messages, someone comes up behind him, throws a bag on his head, and shoves him into the trunk of his car.

David calls Abby from the trunk of the car to say he's been abducted and that he loves her and that he should have said it the other day but he's saying it now, but OH SNAP, she hacked his email because she could tell from his furtiveness that he was up to something, and totally just saved his life!

After Charlie calls Cyrus to tell him Publius was a no-show, Harrison's pretty lady friend comes around a pillar to thank Cyrus for getting her a visa because OH SNAP, she's Adnan Salif even though I and probably all of us were under the impression that "Adnan" is a boy's name! Anyway, she has money and wants the Grant campaign to have it!

Jake calls Quinn in to tell her she's not qualified to follow Rowan, and she responds by showing him stills, from Department of the Interior CC footage, of Leo and Rowan meeting! She's not such a baby after all!

Huck brings Liv an unasked-for coffee for the fifteenth time this episode, finally forcing her to say she doesn't drink coffee and him to respond that it's a gesture you make when you want to apologize. But as soon as he's opened the door for her to say he went too far with Quinn, he turns it back around on her and said everything that happened with Quinn was Liv's fault, which it kind of was! She took home a monster and put him on a leash, but that doesn't make him a puppy! "You should have never given me someone to love! Monsters eat people, Liv! It's what we do!"

Andrew and Mellie small talk around a bunch of First Lady portraits just so he can say he could steal the Jackie Kennedy one and she can say, "We do not touch the First Ladies" (we get it), and then he tries to kiss her and she puts him off and he goes, "We do not touch the First Ladies," and then she jumps on his face!

Liv tries to talk campaign talk (the drug thing seems to have blown over), but Fitz just wants to talk about Us. Does she have feelings for Jake? DOES SHE?!

Tom shows up in Jake's office with his first nightly delivery! He's Jake's guy on the inside! And it's a memory stick which, when Jake sticks it into his MICROSOFT SURFACE, shows the meeting we just saw between Liv and Fitz in the Oval, so Jake gets to see Liv tell Fitz that, with regard to the question of whether she has feelings for Jake, SHE DOESN'T KNOW!

Adnan returns to her hotel from the fundraiser to tell her partner, "We're in," and LOOK WHO HER PARTNER IS!!!!!