Scandal Season 4 Episode 15 recap
Wow, what a great Vice President she will be. How secure I am in her talents. Or not: She will surely bring down the White House and all its inhabitants. Oh woe.
Right? Either way, you’re like, how did we just watch a 40 minute story about a woman with a nerdy laugh? Who caaaaaaares. It’s the Vice President, they don’t do anything. Sure, watching her get Sarah Palin-ed was vaguely interesting, and more interesting because inexplicably, Abby is apparently still sleeping with that guy, instead of David Rosen …but what does it matter in the end? Unless she overthrows the president – and I’m pretty sure we’ve all learned that this show does not work when it’s doing anything that might conceivably have been pitched on the West Wing; she’s nothing more than a punchline.
Which meant there was lots of time to look at the other storylines. Yes, Olivia having flashbacks is entirely reasonable given not only that she was kidnapped but that the reality she came back to is not that great, with the exception of its abundance of flat irons and cashmere. Only now that we have Olivia safe and sound, now that we know what happened to her, I am scandalized by her father basically refusing to help her out of her jam. Who knows if he would have been able to, but he’s Rowan Pope, man! He could at least have shouted “Hell and high water!” at a few people.
So it’s a very depressing thing to think the people around you aren’t competent. In fact, Olivia now goes between two medium-boring TV shows, one that Abby is on, and one that Quinn and Huck inhabit, creeping around with whatever unsavoury thing has to be done this week.
So I was actually really pleased that the Huck (“Diego”) story came to light. We’ve known some of it, but the endlessness of his wife not knowing or not understanding was a beat they could only play so many times, so I appreciate the way that went down. Also I don’t know if we knew before that she was a lawyer, so finding that out gives her a lot more credibility and makes her less like a babe in the woods.
But I mean, the bigger question is – to what end? Where do we go now? Yeah, yeah, Olivia has popcorn and wine, but what’s the actual be-all to end-all of the next phase of the series? To me, it was at its absolute highest point when they were fixing problems for random white-haired senators and the workings of the White House and Cyrus and Mellie were the ever-present thorn in Olivia’s successes. Where do we go from here?
Apparently one of the answers is we’re going to meet people from Cyrus’ past, and that’s fine, maybe that eats two episodes, and I guess we’re going to talk about “Oh, this is what happens if we expose B6-13 …which…how many people know about it anyway? Are you really telling me our four are the only four?
Anyway. We’ve lost our way, and on one level, that’s fine. The show kind of drags us in that direction over and over, and I like the feeling of that, like we’re on that amusement park ride that pulls us closer to and then further away from the point. But…I don’t know where we’re going now. I’ve had a whole season of Olivia feeling uncomfortable and strange and not herself – so I’m ready to shake it off now. I need her to be back on her feet now, or the premise of the series is kind of gone, and if nothing else, Huck and Quinn need a mommy, badly.
