Lo! Ploys! AFRAID.
Mackenzie Astin is at Chez Fitz to do a big live family interview -- which, right off the bat, is a terrible idea. Even if your teenage children LIKE you and were not shipped off to boading school and didn't have a dad who'd confirmed an affair, puutting them on live TV is super risky. And Olivia is trying to get the thing pushed by an hour, but Mackenzie Astin won't have it. He's like, "Don't you know who I am? I'm PATTY DUKE'S kid. My brother was Rudy. I DON'T TAKE GUFF."
Drips Lay Aloof
And this is when we meet the Grant spawn: Karen, played by Madeline Carroll, and Jerry, played by Dylan Minnette, both of whom are Hey It's That Kid actors from lots of guest spots in things -- and Dylan, you may know from being Jack Shepard's son on Lost. So he's good at moping. Which he is doing here. Olivia bangs in there and announces that they need to have a CHAT and NO it has NOTHING TO DO with the hideous princessy decor in the bedroom OR DOES IT. (It doesn't.) (But it should.)
Loopy, Sad Flair
Flashing back a day, it turns out the kids just arrived and neither of them is especially stoked to be there, which causes Mellie to get the kind of Manic Face characteristic of a lot of Thanksgivings in which one or more family members are terrified it won't be perfect. Mellie is also holding the world's largest bowl of green beans. There is no way a family of four, two of whom are teens, will eat that many green beans. It just isn't happening. NOBODY likes beans that much unless they are pickled and/or deep fried. If Sally Langston was on top of her game, she'd be attacking Fitz for food waste.
A Sly Plaid Roof
Team Pope is trying to figure out how B-Jork gets funded, so that they can DESTROY IT. Right. Because it's going to be that easy. You can't just cut up its credit cards, Liv. You can't simply ground it and tell it that it absolutely will NOT get a new dress for the school dance because it's not GOING to the school dance unless it starts to show a little RESPECT AROUND HERE. B-Jork is not just an asshole because it's going through puberty.
Old Safari Ploy
Quinn decided to tell Charlie that Huck broke into her apartment, but she leaves out the part where the two of them tongue-dueled. Ergo, her story is unconvincing and full of holes, and I don't know why she told him in the first place. While they two of them drill into the terrorist they have tied up -- the guy Mama Pope allowed to live last week to give a message to his boss Ivan -- they argue about the details. WHY DID YOU EVEN BOTHER. Also, if I were Quinn, I would assume Charlie has my apartment under surveillance, which means he saw everything. That does not come up, but doesn't it feel like something he'd do? I just... what is the point of bringing all this up if she's going to get caught in a lie? The moral of this story: LIE SMARTER.
A Poor, Silly Fad
Fitz is also being briefed on the missing, soon-to-be really most sincerely dead Dimitri, and his association with Ivan, The Big Bad. This scene only exists so that FItz can say things like "FIND HIM" so that we think he could govern his way out of a paper bag
Salary = Lip Food
Fitz's kids being in the house does nothing to stop him from being all, 'Yeah yeah yeah," to Liv's work concerns -- because he is not especially interested in her brain most of the time; I mean, how often does he just flagrantly ignore her advice and do what he wants, anyway? -- and dragging her to the window for some off-camera nooky.
Adios, Polar Fly!
I don't know if this really counts as wombouflage -- of which we mostly have none this hour because it's all so tightly shot -- but those are some major maternity panties in there. Maybe they used a body double, but they sure look like pregnant wrappings.
Lays A Florid Op
Mellie, meanwhile, is being Fritzed. And of course it starts with him drawing her near, her pointing out this is poor timing because of her children, and him responding by sticking his hand up her skirt and tantalizing her until she melts against him and lets him get his way. So even Mellie gets to become putty in a man's hands? This show feels ESPECIALLY unwilling to give its women any sexual autonomy unless they are also evil (see; Adnan Salif). Can't Mellie just for once shove him down on the couch and straddle him? Can't her libido get to roar on HER schedule and not anyone else's?
Allay Disproof
Wait, here is Wombouflage #26: Flowers. AND A CAPE. Olivia actually swans around in a dark cape, like Batman, righting social wrongs one joker at a time. Here, she sees Mellie and then Jon Tenney coming out of the same room, both tucking their clothes in, because they are TERRIBLE AT THIS. Who in the world doesn't fix their outfits BEFORE they leave The Den of Sin? Can we just be real about this? TV cheaters never fix their clothes correctly the first time and they never know how to behave without shifty eyes. It's dramatically satisfying but real-life maddening because... I mean, I watch TV; I know the signals. You'd think Mellie and Fritz would ALSO have seen some TV and movies in their time, and therefore be like, "What kind of dumb scrambled dipshit would have sex in an unlocked office and then walk out of it 30 seconds apart still adjusting her dress and/or tucking in his shirt?"
Ol' Parody Fails
Mama Pope, at her fancy Pied-à-terrorist, is screaming into the phone at Ivan. Or someone. Adnan Salif thinks that if she's saying tomato and he's saying to-mah-to, they should just call the whole thing off. Mama Pope leans in and purrs that Adnan might be scared, but she doesn't get to back out of this thing until Mama Pope SAYS SO, DAMMIT. Because she's eeeeeevil. And she also has a wonderful collection of terror-mongering grey work separates. Where does she shop? White House, Black Ops? Aberbombie? Boomingdale's?
Lad's Aloof; I Pry
The Grant Spawn are cranky. Why? Because a) Fitz is a cheater; b) Fitz's son runs an anti-Fitz Twitter account and was planning to rip off his shirt to reveal a Reston For President tee during the live interview -- a plan he telegraphs by asking Olivia pointed questions about just HOW live it is and whether they can cut out anything he does; and c) Karen runs off to get Mellie and finds her giving Jon Tenney a blow job, and not straddling him and riding him like a ranch horse, which is what I was hoping for her. For MELLIE, not for Karen. So Jerry here is annoying and Karen feels like her parents are both sleazeballs. Their Christmas card this year should be set to a song by Fitz and the Tantrums, just to see which of their political cohorts gets the joke.
Oops! Flay Laird.
Actually if Mellie's dress was half off, I'm pretty sure she was using a lot more of her personal resources to, um, relieve Jon Tenney's, er, staff shortage.
Slid For Payola
Adnan Salif demands immunity in exchange for everything she knows about Ivan and "Marie Wallace" and their dastardly plan to use the a Destructinator to bring ruin upon the tri-state area or whatever. Liv tells her to screw off, but Harrison and his colorful ties beseech her to grant him this one favor, because he owes Adnan, and also he might enjoy sleeping with her again if at all possible.
Plays Arid Fool
Welcome to your semi-regular meeting of Jake and Fitz, in which Command reminds the Commander-In-Chief that he is simply a figurehead and that B-LairWaldorf does all the governing and war-mongering and terror-fighting and life-removing around HERE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, so go smile pretty for the cameras, Fitz, and let the more deafening wangs wield their might.
Rips Lad. Ay, Fool.
I guess Cyrus has sussed out that B-IllCosby killed James. I figured that out because Cyrus ran into the room and screamed, "YOU KILLED JAMES." Jake coolly is like, "Sorry... ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS," and leaves, and then Cyrus calms down and says dully to Fitz that he gets that if James had lived, he'd have brought down Sally and the whole administration, and that James was someone who dared to believe that the veep shouldn't be allowed to murder someone and get away with it, and whatnot; Fitz looked troubled and Cyrus looks kind of dead inside but resigned to reality.
Loaf, Raspy Idol.
Mama Pope calls Olivia and tells her to stay away from Adnan Salif. She then also whispers things to Olivia about how she is not what she thinks she is; she is just The Help, just a glorified maid. Olivia is like, 'Um, and you're a terrorist, so...?" Mama points out that Olivia has no idea what she's saying. She might be right -- I mean, terrorists usually do something to advance a cause, right? Mama blew up a plane just for fun. So she's probably more of a psychopath.
Poor Lady Fails
And Liv gets this phone call WHILE at the White House Guard Gate, clearly thinking, "Um, can someone back me up on this here, or is NOBODY listening in on this at all? NOBODY is doing any spying right now? On me?" She also laments to the dude that she simply didn't have time to stop at the bakery today. Don't get lazy, Liv. Those people KNOW THINGS. Baked goods can be EXTREMELY PLACATING.
O Rad Ploy, Salif
Adnan coerces Harrison into having sex with her while they wait for her immunity deal, because only EVIL people get to take off their underpants without express permission. And afterward, she stabs him with a syringe that knocks him out, and steals a whole USB drive worth of information from Olivia's laptop. COME ON. You're telling me that they had a known terrorist in their offices, and Liv left without even LOCKING HER DOOR? I don't care what kind of agreement they're brokering for her. That is super careless. LOCK THINGS. I mean, I guess she could have smashed the glass with a brick, but... the whole thing was so clean and easy. I feel like you put security in there with them or leave Huck there prowling around with a dart gun.
Yaps Fail, Drool
AND THEN WHY IS THIS BACK. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jake Ballard sends Quinn to find out why Huck is tailing her; Huck tells Quinn that he wants her free, and Quinn references him licking her face before extracting her molars and then shoving his tongue in her mouth and whether that's just how it works with them now, then licks HIS face and sticks HER tongue in his mouth and I SWEAR TO GOD THEY TONGUE-DUEL. Open-mouthed aggressive tongue-slapping. And then she spits that THIS is how it works, and leaves.
I don't know where this is going, or why, but I hate it. A hundred percent hate it. I don't know if it was the writing or the acting that ruined Huck, but I sincerely think it may have been both, and therefore I have NO INTEREST in anything that he does, least of all this psychosexual saliva-swapping torture game. Whenever these two kiss it's like two people who have never had mouth-contact with another human before. Which I WOULD believe, of Huck, except they gave him a wife in his backstory. And it can't be the torture hole, because Jake Ballard was ALSO in a torture hole and yet he did not forget how to kiss a person, so don't blame Torture Hole for this one. SURELY it's direction...? And yet, why? It reminds me of how when Donna Martin had to kiss anyone, Tori Spelling looked like a starving woman in the desert being given a snack basket, the way she ate the actor's face. It's so much ugh.
A Disloyal Prof
Rowan was using his contacts to conceal the fact that Liv was digging into B-RianWilliams. Jake finds out Rowan was nosing around but doesn't know why, and pops by to see if he can get an explanation. Rowan is busy working on Smithsonian research papers about mastodons or whatever, and sneers that Jake just wants comfort from the only other person who has been in his shoes, but that he can shove it with knobs on, because Rowan doesn't care and they're not the same and Jake is all alone. Jake smilingly promises that when it's time for Rowan to die, Jake will kill him alone, and Rowan is like, "Yep!" I know this is unpopular, but I'm not really a big fan of Scott Foley in this right now. I liked him when Jake was being funny with Olivia, but the Command stuff just turns him into whiny self-important Noel-from-Felicity mode and it's really dull.
Lord Alas Of Yip
Karen blurts out to Fitz that Mellie and Jon Tenney were huffing the love glue, and so Fitz bursts in on a staff meeting to give Jon a lovely black eye as a thank-you gift. Fitz is the dumbest. The OH In The White House Twitter account is going to have a field day with this. And of course. he had JUST been waxing poetic to Liv about his bromantical bestie (there's even a moment in this where he and Jon Tenney make tennis plans and Jon trash-talks him and then leaves, and Fitz points at him and giggles, "HEE! He's a good guy"). Jon spits that he wants to go and defend Mellie's honor because it's NOT just a tawdry affair, it's about LOVE, DAMMIT, and only sort of partly hints at Olivia's hypocrisy in telling him they don't need a sex scandal right now. But he goes away, and Liv proceeds to listen in at the door while Fitz and Mellie eat a KFC Family Bucket of truth.
Spoil A Dry Loaf
And so here we get a well-acted but frustrating scene in which Fitz sobs that he LOVED Mellie but she stopped touching him and he NEVER would have cheated on her if she hadn't shut him down and told him childbirth damaged her body, and now he feels like a heel because her body is working JUST FINE for Jon Tenney. WE all know this is because Barry Bostwick raped her, but Fitz does not. He sniffles that he respected that for as long as a poor, sweet, devoted man could POSSIBLY be expected to and then was FORCED to look elsewhere. Can I just point out that this is pure Lindsay Lohan behavior? Don't talk it out with your wife in that decade, or suggest therapy, or anything; just bottle it up and decide to do as you please, and then throw it back in her face later as ALL HER FAULT that he misbehaved. There is something I don't like about how the show is using her tragedy to sugar-coat him, even though intellectually i get that stories are stronger when you empathize with all parties. There is something SO self-indulgent about his rant, and I'm not sure it's intended that way. None of it absolves him, and it's absurd for him to guarantee he'd never have looked elsewhere if not for her push out of the marital bed. Especially because, and maybe I'm misremembering, the way they've shown him behaving toward her up to this point does NOT bespeak a man who felt wronged by a cold wife. He often acts like he actively disrespects her. I didn't watch season one, so I'm not totally sure, though, and any background on whether ANY of this tracks would be very useful, Fug Nation, so have at it. Anyway, he screams at Mellie and stomps his foot, and the tornado of his hissyfit ALMOST gets her to choke out the words that his father raped her (another bit of forced empathy, but somehow it works better on Mellie, and maybe that's because how crappy Fitz is to Olivia makes him AUTOMATICALLY harder to root for no matter WHAT), but she doesn't. And Olivia interrupts to tell them they have to do the interview, TICK TOCK, and Fitz yells that he's talking to his wife and she needs to GET OUT. And in that time, Mellie slips away.
If Loyal, Sad Pro
The Cape's wombouflage campaign continues, as Cyrus convinces Liv that even though he needs to go home and cry, she needs to go inside and do her job. Because, yes, they're both the White House maids, in a way, but... you know what? It doesn't matter. Because it makes no sense. If the show had EVER given us any indication that Fitz was worth fighting for, as a man OR as a president, then maybe I'd be invested in their loyalties to him and/or him winning the election. As it is, I keep wondering what that nice man from Everwood might bring to this fake version of America.
Dollar Oaf Yips
Charlie is celebrating because, when Quinn told him she didn't need to move in with HIM, he decided to give up his place and move in with HER. She does an extremely bad job masking that this behavior strikes her as obsessive and psychotic. I'm thinking Charlie here may not survive the season because he's going to get jealous and then Huck will lick him to death.
Fry Polio Salad
Ivan, played by Carlo Rota (most notably of "24" as Chloe's husband, but also of a ton of other things), is presented with a USB drive by Adnan that contains all the secret details of Fitz's security detail, his code names, his travel strategies -- everything. Which Olivia kept on her work laptop. In an unlocked office. Or, a locked office with breakable glass windows. She has a whole SAFE in there and she doesn't keep sensitive information inside it? Don't hire Olivia, you guys.
I Flop; Lady Soar
I just thought you'd like to see Cyrus's daughter and how he laugh-cries because she is cute and her hands are COVERED in drool and James is dead. If Cyrus believes the children are our future, he should consider quitting and working for a president who actually presides.
Yo! Do Liars Flap?
Joe Morton pops up again, this time to tell Olivia that B-Udget doesn't get its money from one single department. It gets money from EVERY department. When she asks why he's doing this, he does NOT say that he's trying to shift the target on his back onto hers by letting her resume rummaging unprotected into B-Udget's fiscal realities; that is MY concern about what he's doing. But HE says to her that she is family and family always sticks together. Whether he means it or not is hard to tell. He is just here, per usual, for a Rowan Pope Mic Drop.
Lapidary Fools
But as Rowan says it, Liv looks over and sees The Von Grant Family Singers all set for their interview, having sequestered themselves and made up totally privately and in a way that's a LITTLE unfair given that we had to sit through the bratty son and surly daughter having their shriek-crises, so the LEAST we should be allowed is to see how the Grants got them to chill out. I suspect it's because the writers didn't want to figure out what, exactly, they would've had to say. Also, it's worth noting that if next week's episode turns out to be an HOUR of The Von Grant Family Singers working out their problems intensely privately, I will complain a lot. BUT if they offer me THREE hours of that in exchange for NEVER having to watch Quinn and Huck kiss again, I will accept warmly.