Recap: Scandal-Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington

When Scandal opens, Liv is crouched on the floor, still shell-shocked at the turn of events from last week. Jake is lying prone on the bed, alive, but asleep. Fitz calls, but Olivia isn’t in the mood. She calls Huck, but Huck isn’t in the mood. He is too busy stalking Liv’s father.

Liv reports to work and finds a client with a huge retainer waiting, but the client has to run since she has a “meeting on Capitol Hill”. The Gladiators do a little more digging, and something smells rotten in Denmark. Liv decides to head to the Capitol to see what the deal is.

At the White House, it’s a typical merry morning. Fitz, Mellie, and Cy are strategizing at the breakfast table. Mellie is feeding baby Teddy so that he knows who she actually is, Fitz is snapping at Mellie and Cy, and Cy is trying to convince the two that they need to sell a reconciliation to the world. Finally, after Mellie and Fitz yell “Shut up!” at each other, Cy demands they spend the weekend at Camp David as a photo op.

We see a familiar face in a White House tour. He escapes, and tries to get to the Oval Office. Security takes him down quickly, but not before he starts screaming about talking to the President about Remington. (!) Meanwhile, Liv walks into the Capitol, and between the empty offices and running employees, she follows the action, walks into an office, and her client is there with a huge bomb strapped to her chest.

Fitz and Mellie are whisked away to a protected bunker while the Secret Service investigate the intruder and the potential bomber. In the office, said bomber, Mary Nesbitt, is adamant her son was mistakenly killed by the FBI in a raid. The records were sealed under the Patriot Act, and all they would tell her was that he was a terrorist. She has tried every way she could to get someone to unseal the file, and feels this is her final option.

Enter hostage negotiator Ernie Hudson!(I don’t care what his character’s name is, it’s Ernie Hudson.) Nesbitt has put Liv in charge of talking to him, and lays out her demands-unseal the file or she blows the place up, hostages included. Meanwhile Cy gets intel on the man attempting to see Fitz (Pete Foster), and tells the Secret Service to release him. He then places a call to Eli (who narrowly misses getting executed by Huck on the street) and tells him, “We have a Remington problem.”

Ernie calls Liv and tells her that that Mary can see the file, but only if she turns herself in. Liv knows that is not going to fly, so she changes the game and gets Mary to release the aides as a show of good faith. Now released from the bunker, Fitz gets the file on Mary Nesbitt’s son, and we know from his grim expression this isn’t going to be an easy fix. Liv has been on the phone delegating tasks to her Gladiators. Fitz is in the situation room and OKs the order to have Nesbitt taken out by snipers. Harrison is on the ground and passes the info to Liv. In a show of incredible bravery/stupidity, Liv plants herself in the window to replace Mary as the target. Fitz almost loses his lunch and demands the snipers STAND DOWN.

Ernie calls back, pissed at Olivia, and demands the congressman’s release. Liv tells him it isn’t happening and demands to talk to Fitz He tells her despite the fact that she thinks she is callingythe shots, the United States doesn’t negotiate with terrorists so he isn’t negotiating with her. (Oooo!) About 5 seconds later Fitz gets a call on the bat phone, and he expects Liv to be on  thother line, but it Jake (looking pretty damn perky) calling on behalf of Liv to get info about the sealed file. Fitz blows him off, and calls him an errand boy. Eli goes to visit Foster, and promises him that he can get an audience with Fitz. When Eli leaves, Huck is waiting with a gun to his head.

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The Gladiators are busy: Quin has been frantically trying to hack into the FBI database and calling Huck, who isn’t answering the phone. She decides to go to his work station and see what he was working on before he decided to go MIA. Abby goes to David to get help, but he’s got nothing to give. Harrison gets a visit from an FBI agent who has video proof that Mary’s son was in fact a terrorist with Islamic extremist ties. He calls Liv with the bad news, but he realizes that FBI agents don’t drive State Department cars, and Abby gets David to look up this so called agent. Turns out she doesn’t exist. Liv gives an impassioned speech to David about truth, justice, and the American way, and gets him on the team.

David visits Cy to get answers. Cy (he thinks) decimates David, and tells him this is above his paygrade. David ignores Cy’s rant, and pulls out evidence that something is being covered up-probably the murder of an innocent young man by the FBI. Cy admits to David that something is happening, but it isn’t what he thinks.

Finally, Liv gets a call from Fitz, and what he tells her is classified and he asks her not to react to the news. Mary’s son was not a terrorist, he was a hero. He was undercover CIA, and infiltrated a high level Islamic extremist group. The FBI did make a mistake in killing him-they thought he was the real deal. If the records are unsealed, the 57 agents he recruited will be tortured and killed. At first Liv resists keeping the truth from Mary (Really???) but quickly realizes there are 57 lives in jeopardy. She has the unenviable task of telling Mary her son was a terrorist, but assures a broken Mary that she will do everything to help her.

Mary releases Olivia and the congressman, but at the last minute she locks herself in the office and blows herself up.

Shaken, Liv staggers back to the office, and encounters Huck sitting at her desk in the dark. He tells her about his day, and how he stalked her father and put a gun to his head. Liv demands an answer, did he kill Eli? Finally, Huck breaks down and tells Liv what happened, and how Eli controlled him despite his best efforts, and how he killed Pete Foster for Eli. He was a broken man, and he an Liv cried it out in her office.

Fitz gets back to the White House, Mellie is drunk off her ass. "Cheers Baby!" she slurs, as she lays out her plan for Fitz domination-use Olivia against him, and use her well. You can just see the cogs turning in Fitz's head. What's his play now?

Worse off than earlier, Liv staggers home and finds Jake waiting for her, being Creepy Jake again, asking if she is hungry, giving her a domestic kiss on the cheek. Liv is beside herself, and demands to know How.Is.He.Here. Is he on assignment? How did he get out? No one ever gets out. No one walks away, including Liv herself. She and Jake sit on the couch, ignoring the calls from Eli and Fitz, realizing the lot of their lives.

Whew! Someone tell a joke!

This is my week here at my blog home, but every other week I share Scandal recaps at Heroes and Heartbreakers...see what Kwana Minatee-Jackson has to say about this week's episode here.