By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Friday, March 20, 2015
Lena Dunham of "Girls" fame last year in a "Saturday Night Live" skit played a new Gladiator on "Scandal" and spent the entire time agog over how crazy efficient they are.
Now super "Scandal" fan Dunham gets to live out her fantasy for real on the actual show playing a character Suzanne Thomas who goes head to head with Olivia Pope and ends up dead.
Good news for Liv: by the end of the episode, after a bout of post-kidnapping PTSD, Liv gets her groove back - at least in the sack.
Suzanne is pitching a book to publishers featuring her (consensual but kinky) goings on with 17 powerful political men in D.C. Abby's man Leo Bergen is one of them.So Abby asks Liv to shut this down.
It doesn't quite go as hoped.
Let's just summarize Dunham's most Dunham-like lines, said in "Girls"-like fashion:
"Oh my god! You're Olivia Pope! Am I in trouble?"
"Do you want to be my publicist?"
"Olivia Pope don't come cheap!" after asking for $3 million to not publish the book.
"When did you become so weak? Afraid. You're Olivia Pope. In political circles, that's like saying you've been to the moon! You've stood on the mountaintop. You make Rumsfeld seem like a nanny. You and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. That's all we got!"
To get dirt on Suzanne, Huck steals the manuscript from her apartment while Quinn's B613 buddy Charlie tries to entice her with his "torture" style, which is a bit rough even for Suzanne.
The book names the men only in pseudonym so the Gladiators gleefully figure out who the 17 men and gather them in a room to try to convince them to shell out $175K each to make this go away. District Attorney David Rosen, by the way, is one of the men who did the dirty with Suzanne. He refuses to go this route.
So the Gladiators dig deeper and figure out that Suzanne's employer knew her reputation for kink and tried to sleep with her. When she refuses, she gets fired and blackballed. So this book is her revenge.
Liv becomes Suzanne's supporter and says they'll get her work and ensure the boss is fired. Suzanne is cool with that. She even hugs Liv.
Problem: when Quinn and Huck visit Suzenne, one of the 17 men is threatening Suzanne with a knife. They push the guy out of Suzanne's apartment, then shocker! Huck slits Suzanne's throat.
Why? He doesn't want her blabbing about David Rosen, taking him down and Huck's chances for full criminal immunity over blabbering about B613.
Only Quinn and Huck know he did this. They don't even tell Liv. Quinn convinces Liv to keep this buried and not go after the 17 suspects. How? I have no idea.
Since Suzanne typed the transcript out on a typewriter, they only have so many copies. And Liv keeps them all for safe keeping. Just in case.
Curiously, Cyrus earlier had offered $3 million to get his hands on the transcript. She declines, allegedly disgusted with his pragmatism. Then she does it herself because Liv doesn't mind being hypocritical. This is Washington.
In other storylines:
Unsubtle use of 1980s music: "Let It Whip" by the Dazz Band while the Gladiators read Suzanne's "50 Shades of Grey"-esque manuscript. Quinn seems especially turned on. "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye while Liv tries to get her groove back. But dang PTSD kicks in and she runs out instead of having meaningless sex with a hot dude she meets at a bar. Fortunately, later, she decides to "honor" Suzanne with a little hot you know what at the end of the episode.
Watch Abby blow her top again: At the start of the episode, Abby finds Leo Bergen's unspecified "dustbuster" ways "disgusting," at least when it comes to doing it with Suzanne. But clearly, she has enjoyed it herself. She just wants this potential scandal to go away so she isn't humiliated publicly and forced to resign as White House lead spokeswoman. Leo says he could fix this but Abby says she'll handle it. "I'm in charge now!" she screams in her classically annoying Abby way. Naturally, at the end of the episode, she gets it on with Leo, also in 'honor" of Suzanne, having read her missives.
Run, Mellie, run! Fitz's wife is setting herself up for a presidential run by first going for the Virginia Senatorial seat left by the new vice president Susan Ross. How convenient! And Lizzie Bear - currently Cyrus' bee-yotch because he knows about her nasty contretemps with Andrew - offers to be Mellie's campaign manager. Mellie accepts. Ladies unite!
Buddies again: Jake and Fitz are bonding over the one person they love: Liv. They are watching her carefully since the kidnapping. Jake reports that she is drinking wine at night, barely going out, keeping a gun by her side at all times. He says this two different instances. The second time around, she's doing hanky panky with that random bar dude. Does Jake know this and hiding it from Fitz? Hard to tell.
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