Mommy On The Lam

Dental Daaaaaaaaaamn!

Alert Type: Torture Alert.

Issue: As we saw in the last episode, Huck used photo-enhancement-fu to determine that Quinn is the one who killed the stair car driver guy from Liv's mother's downed flight, and now he's going to torture her up until she tells him whom she was working for.

Complicating Factors: Huck really likes Quinn, but he also really likes torture.

Resolution: Charlie comes by to activate Quinn, per Rowan's order, and gets her untaped. (She also jumps him, sexually, which is (a) not okay and (b) GROSS CONSIDERING THAT BY THIS POINT HUCK HAS YANKED TWO OF HER MOLARS AND PRESUMABLY HER GUM HOLES ARE STILL BLEEDING?)

Spoiler: What Charlie doesn't know is that Quinn already promised Huck that once she got close enough to Rowan, she'd kill him like she did the stair car guy, and the last thing we see her do, in Rowan's office, is get a syringe in position in her hand.

Principles Are For Losers

Who called the meeting? Leo.

What's it about? He's got papers for Sally to sign that will get her on the ballot in all fifty states and resign her office as Vice-President...but he's going to need her to commit to abandon her Christian base and change her stance on abortion first.

How'd it go? Sally is really not okay with the idea at first, but ultimately her lust for power cancels out her advocacy for the unborn. Which makes sense, since we know she already countenances some things personally that she's publicly opposed to (cough closeted husband cough).

Don't Use Your Husband For Political Sexspionage

Oh Cyrus. You thought you had it aaaaaaaaall figured out when you put James in Daniel Douglas's path in the hopes that (a) DD would hit on him and (b) James would refuse him and expose him publicly. Too bad you didn't take into account the possibility — even when Mellie warned you — that James might actually (a) figure out that you'd used him as your pawn and (b) totally nail DD anyway. Now you're living in a hell of (a) guilt, (b) betrayal, and (c) extremely clumsy double entendres from James about his "story" on DD, to wit: "got him to go deep"; "we barely scratched the surface"; "coulda been a threesome."

No One Escapes Command

As usual, Abby is the only one who manages to be a total C about a client — in this case, Maya — aggressively demanding that she tell the gathered OPAers (and Jake) where she's been for the past twenty-two years. Maya says that she had figured out Eli/Rowan's real deal, and had evidence she was going to use to expose him, so he locked her up instead; then she gets to the part we know: that Rowan was about to move her somewhere, and that she escaped from the warehouse way station she ended up in after she chewed through her wrists. Huck and Jake freak out at this news — viz "No one escapes Command" — and quickly figure out that she must have a tracking device in her. Which she does, and which they cut out of her with a knife (I guess they always get injected into the same spot because they find it immediately) while Liv watches kind of dispassionately from her current catatonic state. And when Charlie & Co. follow the signal, they find the device in a puddle of blood, and Maya and her entourage long gone. Rude not to clean up and leave the place as tidy as they found it, but I guess they were in kind of a hurry.

Old Friends

How lucky that, OPA having decided to relocate Maya to a safe house in Hong Kong, Harrison still has a friend who can do up a fake passport in a hurry! Less lucky is the fact that she's a friend from his old job, and her primary loyalty may not be to Harrison.

Stories We Tell

Though Liv has been cool (or worse) to Maya through this whole episode so far, Maya does convince her to sit, verrrrrrry reluctantly, for a breakfast, during which we get a new idea of an alternate-reality Liv to compete with the one who lives with Fitz in Vermont and makes jam: when Maya was in prison, she imagined Liv married to a dentist named Ray — "because dentists come home for dinner" — with a son named Sam, having a life full of love and laughter and happiness. But now that she sees what Liv's life is really like, she realizes how wrong she was. Sure, Liv has had success, but she doesn't seem to have much laughter: "Guess I was hoping you'd have more of me in you, and less of your father. But Eli raised you in his image, didn't he." Good to know that, in the last twenty-two years, none of Maya's mom-guilt muscles atrophied! GEEZ!

Swordfight!

Who called the meeting? Jake.

What's it about? He's bringing Fitz up to speed on the whole Maya-is-alive situation, and asking for Fitz's help in neutralizing Rowan (through murder).

How'd it go? Poorly. After Fitz has to admit his impotence with regard to B613, the whole discussion devolves into fighting over which of the two of them is going to be Liv's champion. Fitz is all, "You want to be a hero — you want to be her hero? Word to the wise: she doesn't need one." And Jake is all, "Must be nice, letting other people fight your battles." What a couple of bitches!

There's Tit For Tat, And Then There's This

Jake and Huck think they've figured out how and where to take out Rowan (assisted by a bunch of B613 alumni or moonlighters), but you come at the king, you best not miss: of course Rowan's not there; of course he's rigged the place with explosives that kill a couple of Jake's guys; and of course he gets back at Maya for her coterie's attempt on his life by putting her on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list with a "fake" name and "fake" charges, which is going to make it hard for her to get to Hong Kong if she's going to fly commercial. (If this was a scheme she engineered to get herself on a private plane...not bad!)

Bye Bye Bye

Who called the meeting? Sally.

What's it about? She's giving Fitz the courtesy of telling him in person that she's resigning the vice-presidency and leaving the Republican ticket so she can run for President herself, as an independent.

How'd it go? Pretty well from her perspective, because he is totally blindsided, and she has the pleasure of catching him off-guard — at first, he thinks this is just tactics and that she doesn't really intend to run. But then she tells him how his infidelity has damaged the party and that she actually is a viable alternative to him as a candidate, and he stops being smug and starts being scared, fronting, "You will regret this day forever." "See you on the battlefield," she shrugs. Kind of a great moment for her, for once!

James vs. Cyrus

James having given Cyrus to believe that DD would be coming by the house to finish up the interview for the profile James is writing, Cyrus finally cracks and stomps into their bedroom, trying to catch James and DD in flagrante delicto. Of course he doesn't, but at least things finally come to a head (hee hee), with James telling Cyrus he knows what Cyrus did and that it totes backfired on Cyrus, sorry not sorry. James tells Cyrus he wants a divorce, whereupon Cyrus tells James that there are photos of his assignation with DD and that Cyrus will use them in court to get full custody of their daughter (the kid Cyrus never even wanted in the first place? Okay). Cyrus's death blow: "You're not going anywhere. You never do." Brrrr.

Winner: Cyrus, though I doubt he'd say it was worth it (particularly since he has to go straight from this fight to getting reamed by Fitz and Mellie for fucking up their Sally containment plan).

You Two Need To Quit It

Well, even though Abby tried to work her sexual magic on him, David hasn't been able to get Maya's Maria's name off the FBI list and it seems like OPA is at an impasse, so there's nothing for it but for Liv to slip away and call Fitz, to distract herself from the fucked-up situation she currently finds herself in. She's surprised to learn that Jake caught Fitz up on her mom being alive and on the lam, and...long story short, she says she can't ask him to weasel Maya off the FBI list because it would draw the bad kind of attention to himself, but of course he's going to do it anyway because he's an idiot.

Real Husbands Of D.C.

Who called the meeting? Cyrus.

What's it about? At Mellie's direction, he's seeing through the honeypot plan by showing Sally the photos of James and DD and hoping they'll get her to forget about running for President.

How'd it go? Pretty much exactly the opposite way from what he'd hoped. Sally's obviously not thrilled to see her husband Doing It with James, but she asserts that Cyrus is never going to release them: it would destroy James if he did, and the party wouldn't tolerate the President's Chief of Staff's husband having sex with a married man. BLUFF CALLED, BRO. Also, Cyrus then has to call James and apologize, during which conversation he lies that Sally will never see the photos, and you know that's going to come back to haunt him later, particularly since James is actually in the process of packing when Cyrus calls.

Dammit, Marie!

Liv's spent the whole day flashing back to the morning her mother left for her fateful flight — remembering, for instance, that Maya was getting ready to meet a reporter in London to give him the materials she had on Rowan and suggesting that said reporter could corroborate her story and, by going public, whistle-blow Rowan and save herself, though Maya nixed that idea as too risky for the reporter — but it's only after Maya's gotten on the plane Fitz has arranged for her that Liv remembers the most important bit of information: right after Maya walked out the door, someone called the house looking for Liv's mother, "Marie." Guess what? Rowan didn't make up all the charges against "Marie Wallace": that's Maya's real name, and those were real charges, and this whole time, Rowan's been protecting Liv from Maya: "He's not the monster. She is." Nothing like backing the wrong horse, right Liv? (Something she does around 51% of the time, by my calculations, but this one is proooooobably the worst.)