By RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com, originally filed Feb. 6, 2015
You have to give Shonda Rhimes credit. She has shaken "Scandal"up this season in a way that has upped an already high stakes world. And she has given Kerry Washington a fresh way to test her acting skills and force her to dig deep. The result: another exciting, fresh episode after last week's off-the-charts crazy one.
Shonda has ditched the "client of the week" for the Gladiators for now. There are no weekly meetings between Liv and her Daddy Dearest. There are no secret rendezvous between Fitz and Liv.
Instead, Liv is a hostage and beholden to Andrew, the vice president and Lizzie, the Republican National Committee chairwoman. Andrew, playing puppeteer, forces Fitz to get into a war with West Angola to help the Republican Party by threatening to kill the woman he loves.
Andrew, with his face full of smarm, has a plan to keep Liv hostage so Fitz will do his bidding until he himself becomes president in three years. Then Liv will die anyway.
So Olivia Pope comes up with a Plan B. She is being watched by Ian, a hired gun/babysitter, in a warehouse in Pennsylvania.
She convinces Ian to become a power broker and sell her on the open (black) market. Control of her means control of Fitz.
After tonight's shenanigans, the question is: how much is Olivia Pope worth on the world market?
The trailers implies: billions!
Question: can he Gladiators save her and kill Ian so nobody shells out a penny? I'm sure they will. We just have to find out how.
In quick order, here are some of the key twists and turns from a very dense hour:
- Andrew and the RNC now has eyes and ears on Fitz, right down to everyone in the Secret Service. Everybody. He can trust no one. The opening scene is the height of creepy. If Fitz tries to save Liv on his own, she dies. So he has to keep his mouth shut.
- Fitz quietly informs Mellie out of Secret Service ear shot that Liv is taken hostage. He ponders letting her die to avoid a war that would kill many more for no real good reason in his mind. He also tells Cyrus by writing him a note in a report "They have Liv" to explain why he went to war. Cyrus understands why he was left out of the whole war planning.
- Andrew has Liv do a hostage video to be seen just by Fitz to prove she's alive. She says he has 48 hours to start a war or she dies. She also drinks a glass of water. Why does this matter? Fitz passes the video to Jake. He and the Gladiators try to figure out who is in the image in the glass. (Bread crumbs, as Quinn says.) But Huck can't figure it out. He can't believe his technical skills fail him. So he reverts to his thug mentality.
- Huck knows Lizzie knows something so he does his magical house entry trick and threatens to kill her daughter if she doesn't help him find Liv. He even tortures her with grotesque slashes on her back that remind me of "12 Years a Slave." Lizzie in desperation tells Mellie.
- Mellie goes to Andrew and sleeps with him, gets him to pass out. (How easy!) She grabs his phones and Lizzie passes them to Huck, telling him to stop bothering her. Huck is able to pinpoint where Liv is. Jake gets avid Rosen to set up a "drug raid" there. But when they go in, the jail cell is empty. That's because Liv successfully convinced Ian to "sell" her. Huck says there's now "chatter" about her all around the world, whatever that means. But these are more breadcrumbs that will hopefully lead the Gladiators to her before she is actually "sold."
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