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So let’s get right in to it. Jake Ballard wins for the best rapid-fire hyper-dramatic Scandal soliloquy of the night. “You are Rowan’s greatest achievement and you don’t even know it!” Yassss Jake. Best read of the episode period. Okay, back to the beginning.

This episode is all about Bill Cosby and college rape-culture and most disturbingly some weird attraction between David Rosen and Portia de Rossi. (I can only see her as Portia de Rossi and constantly cannot recall her character name, which I just googled again and, oh yeah, it’s Elizabeth North.)

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Fitz has escaped impeachment and now must apologize to the American people for being a huge Presidential ho-bag and most importantly making them have to explain to their children what sex is. Everyone is concerned about the kids, so in Scandal-land the press is impressed with this speech and ready to give Fitz a second chance. Of course, Cyrus and Olivia both have plans for Fitz’s image rehab. Cyrus want to stage a Latin American press-op, while Olivia thinks small policy achievements, pardons and award-giving will make the lying, cheating, Mellie-abusing Fitz win back the hearts of the people. And because, Fitz is now Olivia’s bitch, he’s already onboard with her plan before Cyrus can even present his. And Cyrus being the love-obsessed borderline jealous freak of a Chief of Staff that he is, is of course pissed off, so much so, you can tell we’re in for one of those diatribes where his head starts shaking and his eyes bulge out of his head like he just walked off the set of ‘The Walking Dead’ by the end of the episode.

“You are Rowan’s greatest achievement and you don’t even know it!” – Jake Ballard

Moving right along. Fitz gives some guy who wrote a book a Presidential Medal of Honor and Red is running around the White House gushing about how his book gave her the courage to leave her abusive husband. I always forget that Red has a back story since it comes up so infrequently and she’s been boring ever since she stopped sleeping with David Rosen.

Okay, back to the Bill Cosby storyline. Olivia gets called to her mostly defunct OPA office where the Gladiators are awaiting with their client, but not so fast… Huck’s got something to say:

Huck: Olivia WTF, you let out Rowan?

Olivia: I really don’t understand why everyone is making such a big deal out of this. I didn’t have to get married to the man who went to war for me and left his wife for me and essentially is the crappiest POTUS in the history of the universe for me. It was totally worth it to let my serial killer Dad out of prison.

Huck/Quinn: Okay, there’s a girl in the room.

Who’s the girl? The girl is a rape victim who wants the President to know about her assault. But why, Olivia asks? Because the man who assaulted her is (cue dramatic music) the Presidential Medal of Honor Awardee dude. This storyline becomes an afterthought so I’ll wrap it up here. Olivia and her flunkies go to interview the author guy and he says the victim cheated in school and wants revenge. There has to be that whole “I have one rule, don’t lie” Olivia scene in every episode, so they return to their client and accuse her of being a liar, who promises she’s telling the truth so that Olivia can quiver that lip and say, “It doesn’t matter what I believe,” because she has to say that every episode as well. Upon further investigation Olivia & Co discover that author dude is Bill Cosby and he’s drugged 89 women and that his wife knew about it. Cheating, lying President Fitz can’t rescind the medal he already gave him so Olivia blows up this man’s spot by having all the women come out and accuse him at once. And since this was literally the exact same story as The Cosby saga, no one cares about this unsurprising and wholly inconsequential storyline.

Okay, let’s get back to this Jake Ballard speech. Oh.My.God.So.Good. I love how he’s been shading Olivia lately. It’s about time somebody tells her about herself. So Rowan killed Elise, who we also don’t care about, but Jake does, so he’s MAD as hell at Olivia, which he should be, especially since he helped her declare her love for Fitz and create this shit storm that she was too cowardly to see through and thus released Rowan who killed his wife that we don’t care about. But that speech — so good.  Anyway, Fitz finds out that Rowan is out and Olivia lies through her perfectly bleached teeth and to no one’s surprise, Fitz puts Jake in charge of hunting down and killing Rowan. (I’m making a prediction that Jake Ballard dies at the end of this season.)

Meanwhile, Portia de Rossi wants her job back so she goes to David Rosen looking for back-up. He doesn’t bite, so she says she’s going to go on The Glen-Beck-Sally-Langston show and expose all the dirty triflin’ sh*t she knows Fitz did when she was working for him. Abby does what Abby does and looks frantic, Liv is all like, let her do it, and Cyrus is like, “throw that bitch in a dungeon.” (It’s weird because I still don’t care about Portia de Rossi being on the show other than I’m glad she’s on TV again. Anybody remember the Ally McBeal days?) Suddenly Portia de Rossi has way more power than I remember her having last week, but I think it was really all a plot-line to move us towards some unsexy sex between her and David Rosen.

Now to the best moment of this episode — the Cyrus speech! There’s a scene in every episode of Scandal, usually around 36 minutes in, when it is finally revealed what the hell the point of the episode is. This week’s entire episode was to bring us to the coronation of Olivia Pope as POTUS. Cyrus pulls Olivia aside in the White House to passionately explain, while green-glob oozed out the side of his mouth, that Fitz was an impotent and incapacitated president who is totally whipped by Olivia Pope vajajay thus making him a political drone and her the actual functioning President of the country. I love this speech for two reasons. 1. It’s so true. 2. Cyrus being jealous and totally Mariah-Carey-level obsessed with Fitz really cracks me up. Anywhoo, finally we get it, now that everything is out of the way Olivia Pope is President! Except (cue dramatic music), where is Papa Pope?! There’s only 2-episodes left before winter break, whatever that is, so next week should be good. Pops is in the previews for next-week so that’s a win already. A couple mentions before I sign-off.

  1. There was some storyline happening between Vice President Cukoo Bird and David Rosen. Not sure why, but it happened. I’m guessing she’ll find out he’s banging Portia de Rossi and really stir-up some trouble four or five episodes from now.
  2. Does anyone think it’s funny that new Columbus Short gets exactly the amount of screentime as first Columbus Short, which is like, none? Everytime I see him on screen I chuckle a bit.

Okay beauties, that’s it for now! See you next week! Tell us your favorite moments of the episode in the comments below!

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