This week's anagram: Paul Adelstein
I am beyond thrilled that the first person I get to see in the return of "Scandal" is Mellie, who is far and away my favorite at this point. Mellie is in a tizzy because Sally Langston -- even though she murdered her husband and covered it up with Cyrus -- is going to go ahead and run for president against Fitz. Mellie sprints to Cyrus's office to barf out the words and then immediately regrets that her hair wasn't properly prepared for this level of stress.
Idle Lust Paean
Womboflage #1: Fitz's body. Because, of course, while things are happening around him that involve his presidency, he is busy using his tongue to determine whether Olivia has any cavities.
Nauseated Pill
And Mellie storms in on him to tell him that Sally Langston's press conference is just beginning, and the look on her face is PRICELESS -- not sad, not betrayed, not surprised; just queasy, like she walked in and found a week-old rotting sandwich on his desk. Also, the President's assistant can totally see what's going on, too, so it's something of a miracle that the Olivia Pope rumors haven't been confirmed by a hundred White House sources by now. Then again, maybe the secretary really hates Mellie and has taken to whispering, "That's right, HANDLE IT, WINK WINK," every time Olivia walks out of the Oval.
Let's Plan Adieu
Womboflage #2: Extras. Olivia leads the strategy meeting about Sally, outlining all the ways in which her quitting the vice presidency can be spun to their advantage even though their polling is super weak right now because Fitz is a man whore. James, the new press secretary, is over there on the right, trying to help, throwing himself into the evil machinations. And just as Olivia is pretty sure they have this thing nailed down, Sally goes on TV and tells everyone that while she is leaving the ticket and Ross Perot-ing herself, she refuses to quit the veep job because she can't leave this country and the White House in the hands of a heathen wang-waving smuthound. My words, not hers, because Sally Langston hasn't learned the value of a mic drop.
Insult Ape? Deal!
David Rosen has covert NSA tapes of Cyrus and the veep discussing Daniel Deadlas and how Sally did it with the knife in the study. It's inadmissible, though, so he asks James to help him get something on the record. James refuses because he's joined the Dark Side and it has way cooler spaceships... OR DOES IT? Also, it's a front, and at the end of the episode James -- whom we saw begging Cyrus to tell him the truth about Daniel Deadlas so he can do his job to cover it up -- has bugged Cyrus's office, and gives David another inadmissible recording as a show of faith. he tells him that Cyrus is a monster and that he'll sleep with the enemy as long as it takes to bring him down OR wake up with Julia Roberts' hair, whichever happens first. David is like, "Whoever that Publius dude is, is going to get his ass kicked or killed," and James goes, "GULP," and confesses that HE is Publius, and David wants to punch him.
Led Sin Plateau
Jake Ballard is trying to run B-Cool as your friendly, ethical shadowy murder organization, which involves sitting at his desk chatting to people like he's a late-night talk show host. He hasn't decided whether to keep Quinn or cut her loose, but Charlie sticks up for her, because if she's not in B-Useful then what the hell CAN this show do with her?
Allied Peanuts
"THIS GUY. THIS IS THE GUY," says this photo of Fitz and Jon Tenney, who plays Andrew Nichols, Fitz's old lieutenant governor from back in the California days and his only choice for Sally's replacement (against the wishes of EVERYONE else, including Olivia, who points out he could really use someone who isn't a white male). As soon as they picked someone handsome and same-aged, it was so obvious this was Shonda throwing Mellie a bone in every sense of the word, and THREE CHEERS FOR THAT, although I did have a moment where I was like, 'BUT WHAT ABOUT BRENDA LEE JOHNSON,' because I forgot "The Closer" is not real.
Pall Unsaid. Tee!
Womboflage #3: Huck.
Harrison is thinking that all the cheerful pink in the world couldn't convince him to vote for a dude who does the "THIS GUY!!!!" finger guns in a picture. And Abby is wearing a Strategy Cardigan that would be much better with a glass of wine than with a wall of photos, because it really doesn't look right with her outfit.
Taupe Sin Ladle
Womboflage #4: A gigantic purse, although fortunately for Liv, she's already used to those. I hope by the end of the finale she's carrying a full-on duffel.
Penalise Adult
Olivia finds out that Jake is running B-Command, so she meets her father to offer him a sympathetic ear, and instead we are treated to another one of Rowan's twitchy, overwritten rants where he barely pauses for a breath and has a hundred way too polished things to say. He snorts and spits and snarls that Fitz kidnapped him and taunted him about how Olivia tastes and then allowed his terrorist ex to flee the country and is a dumb-ass freak and he is going to END FITZGERALD GRANT and Olivia had better RUN and REND HER GARMENTS NOW to save herself some time later because Fitz won't even make it to the end of his term. And maybe he just means politically, but it certainly comes off in an I WANT TO MURDER way. It's obvious the writers are twitching for reasons to give him these, because Joe Morton is brilliant at delivering them, and it DOES at least make you think, "Wow, this guy is jacked in the head." But it is also EXHAUSTING sometimes.
A Denial Lets Up
Olivia realizes her dad is basically still a crackpot. This is the same face I was making. DIAL IT DOWN, ELI POPE. (Or Rowan? What the hell do I call him?) Go take a spa weekend.
Laud Alien Pest
Abby puts on a wrap dress that I'm pretty sure we've seen before, and goes on TV opposite Paul Adelstein -- who is so DELIGHTFULLY cocky and shit-stirry (especially with Cyrus in this hour, who knows that Paul knows what he knows about Sally) that I'm so happy he's still here -- and insists that Sally is weakening the country by splitting from the president. Paul Adelstein casually responds by reawakening the Olivia Pope affair rumors, and Abby is super thrown by that, because it NEVER occurred to ANY of these so-called experts that swapping in another lover is not the same thing as disputing that? COME ON. Even Adelstein is like, "Who's to say he had only ONE affair?" BULL TRUE.
Weirdly, in Abby's next scene, she's back to wearing what she had on in the previous one, which feels like a continuity mistake because I can't imagine she'd have bothered to take the time to reconstruct her other outfit after the disastrous interview ended.
Satan Duel Pile
A reporter in the press corps is getting tips from a source named Publius about Daniel Deadlas and how he never had an autopsy. Sally wants to 'fess up and quit because JUDGMENT DAY IS UPON US, but then she steps up to the plate and gives a hilarious speech to Paul Adelstein about how she did NOT kill her husband. The DEVIL did, while he crept inside of her because she too busy relaxing her stance on abortion to be truly holy, ergo THE DEVIL TOOK HER LIKE A SAUCY HANDMAIDEN. (My words.) And she sincerely has convinced herself of this. Paul Adelstein's face is like, "Um, okay, nutbar, I'm going to try and play along with you because you're signing my checks and I think we can beat this clown, but NOT GREAT, BOB." Kate Burton has a lot of really insane and vile things to say and she commits to it with amazing zeal.
Lip Sealant Due
Okay, this was cute: Charlie takes Quinn to the hardware store to make her a special murder box of her own, so they get all cutesy with the clerk ("She's building bookshelves") and THEN he gets a phone call about a job, so he asks the clerk for a blowtorch and he's all, "For... bookshelves?" It was good. George Newburn is really a blithe psychopathic delight in this part.
Dupe Tan Allies
It turns out Quinn's job is to convince a kid to let her drive him home so that she and Charlie can use him as leverage. She appears to feel a LITTLE dirty about it, especially because that kid is going to be in SO MUCH TROUBLE later for falling for "my sister plays soccer with your sister and they're both really good and stuff."
Un-adept Allies
Huck and Abby go talk to the ME who sealed Daniel Deadlas's autopsy results. Now, I am misremembering that, I know, but I lost track of whether he HADN'T been autopsied or he HAD and they just sealed it, or both, or... regardless, it sounds like this woman did some poking and prodding against Sally's wishes. And here's what I don't get: They get the truth out of her by pretending to be reporters from the Post. Would you ever open your veins for some random person who showed up claiming to work for the Washington Post, or the New York Post, or even the Racing Post?
Yet the ME confesses that DD didn't have a heart attack. It was... that he was drunk and hit his head on the sink and woke up and invented time travel, and Sally understandably didn't want that to get out. But when Abby and Huck leave, promising to "bury it deep," it's revealed that the kid Quinn and Charlie kidnapped was hers, and they got there first and blackmailed her into using a good fib. Quinn looks wistfully out the window at Huck and Abby while they drive off -- which is all nice and cinematic and stuff, except she didn't actually wait for them to leave properly, so if one of them had just taken one last passing look at the house, they'd have seen her face between the curtains.
Ideal Nut Lapse
Mellie's hair is now unraveling much like her psyche. Why?
Pale, Tiled Anus
Because Fitz is on the cover of The Spectacle looking strangely like Bruce Jenner.
Pulsate And Lie
Womboflage #5: Mellie stages a friendly lunch with Olivia, in a room stacked with reporters, and the two of them beam and laugh and smile and toast each other and drink wine, all the while hissing at each other through their teeth about how Olivia is Fitz's whore (Mellie really loves that word), with nary a concern for the fact that people at the nearby tables should totally be able to hear them. It's a good idea for a scene but totally impractical. I mean, that woman behind the wine glass is live-Tweeting the shit out of this, if it were real life.
And then Mellie says she wants Liv to beard herself so that people stop talkig about her and Fitz, and hands her a menu... of MEN WHO ARE ELIGIBLE. It's LITERALLY a MENu.
Plead A Utensil
Abby is recycling this dress, too. I KNOW we have seen this before. Which is fine, but it's strange that of all the realism to espouse, this show would choose "recycling clothes." The scene itself is about Harrison trying to borrow her gun because he's found out that Adnan Salif's visa cannot be revoked, because she -- in David Rosen's words -- has more powerful friends than Harrison does. And Abby basically asks him not to go insane on her like everyone else has, which is funny. And true.
Pained Lust? Ale!
Womboflage #6: A table and a video camera. Olivia is interviewing Jon Tenney, trying to intimidate him into discussing why he's an irrepressible playboy. Is he gay? Kinky? No: He's BRUISED because he had a great love and if he can't marry her, then he can't marry anyone. And I clapped, because it HAD to be Mellie, and I am glad she's somebody's great love besides mine.
Alien Aped Lust
Olivia, grossed out by her lunch with Mellie and the MENu, tells Fitz she's quitting because she's ruining him. And then he gets all horny and petulant and aggressive, the way they like him to be: They kiss hungrily and then when she tries to break away, he grips her and growls right up into her face that her quitting is what will ruin him and he can't win without her, OR live without her. This show frequently crosses from "passion" to "violent and kind of insane," and I don't think it realizes it. If it DID, that would be an interesting statement about Fitz and this relationship, but I honestly think they might just think it's super sexy that he throws her around a lot and that Liv never, ever gets her way when it comes to him. Fitz ALWAYS wins. And indeed, here, she capitulates.
A La Penile Stud
Adnan Salif turns out to be a lady, in a crazy hot blood red trenchcoat -- because she is TROUBLE and has power she isn't afraid to use questionably, much like Mellie, the other woman on this show who's allowed to wear red. And Harrison brandishes a gun, bceause she'd texted him a photo of him with three friends who've all since turned up dead. But all she wants to do is give Harrison his turn...
Panties All Due
... and so they have desk sex. Which is a bold move when you work in an office that's all windows, even if it IS after hours. But maybe a little peekaboo-ing will cheer up Huck some. He's so MOODY since he tortured Quinn.
Ate Pill Sundae
WINE CARDIGAN ALERT. Olivia drinks aggressively because, as usual, all the people in her life are jacked up. Jake shows up at her door, and she excoriates him for taking command of B-Shady, but he insists he is the president's foot-soldier through and through, and it'll be a kindler gentler B-Nasty, and a patriot above all else. I like Jake Ballard just fine, but sometimes I think he needs to kick all these morons to the curb. Olivia is a nice person and all, but she is never going to be free of Fitz. Go TAP SOMETHING.
Saluted A Nipple
Instead, Liv dares Jake to be the ultimate patriot, and pretend they're dating. EVERYONE acts like this is the answer, when in fact today's media landscape would result in the world noticing how CONVENIENT this timing is. Twitter would be hashtagging this #Imsosure #nicetry #handhimover #letmeshowhimwhattrueloveis
Laud An Epistle
Womboflage #7: Olivia's clenched hands. Fitz is mad that she was out kissing Jake and that it's all over the papers, but Liv silences him with, "This is how you keep me," or somesuch, and Fitz can't say anything because I guess she's right even though CLEARLY THIS SETTLES NOTHING but whatever. So in that sense, I guess she DOES win one over him.
Dual Penalties
Paul Adelstein and Joe Morton are a formidable duo indeed. I can't wait for the spittle to fly.
Due A Tall Penis
And at the end, Jon Tenney turns to Mellie and says, "I've been waiting twelve years for this," and she thinks he's talking about the office but he corrects her, "Standing next to you again," and BOOM. Mellie gets a follicle erection and she had BETTER get on this because the episode where Mellie has finally had sex again and is whistling her way through the White House -- if it happens -- would delight my cold dark soul.