People, this review is chockful of spoilers, so read on at your own risk

The last time we saw Liv, was in the campaign flashback, ugly-crying because she’d just voted yes to rig the election for Fitz. Sigh. I cried for the whole day after I watched her make that decision. In fact every time I think about it, it still brings tears to my eyes.

After watching 211, I had an epiphany. I realised that the team of writers at Shondaland were destined to break my heart time and time again, so I needed to get a grip of myself, and assume that everybody is crooked one way or the other, unless told otherwise. I also geared myself up to the inevitable heartbreak that’s headed Fitz and Olivia’s way in the near future.

And so it was with this new found perspective that I ventured into 212.

Truth and Consequences was brilliant, it really was. I understand that lots of fans were annoyed and depressed over it, but I loved every minute of it.

Here’s my not-so-quick recap:

The show starts with a flashback to what looks like a voting hall in Defiance, Ohio. Here we meet Lindsay Dwyer’s boyfriend Jesse, you remember him, he along with six others got blown up courtesy of that psychopath, Hollis Doyle.

Anyway, there’s a fossilized man telling a load of other grave dodgers about these brand new touch-screen voting machines that they will be using for the election. He seemed especially hyped over the fact that this was going to be a paperless system. Sidebar, is there actually such a thing as a paperless system?

Anyway, we find out that Jesse is Hollis’ guy. You know, the guy who swapped one of the voting machines over for one that was rigged. Dum, dum, dum!

As Jesse leaves the polling station, he gets a call from Quinn/Lindsay (Let’s call her Quinnsay shall we?)  who’s super stoked because she’s just passed the bar exam, which means that she’s now a lawyer, or something…

I have to tell you, I liked this version of Quinn, I loved her dress sense, and she seemed so much more carefree and happy. Mind you, I suppose being wanted for killing seven people, getting drugged then kidnapped, and given a brand new identity by an unknown benefactor would put a dampener on one’s spirit.

Back to the present day, we find that Hollis is having a David Rosen Problem.  David tells Hollis that he suspects him of having a hand in rigging the most recent election.  Hollis is briefly rattled, and from what I gather, (because I only understand every fourth word Hollis says)  threatens David’s ability to procreate in future .Hollis says something about bulls, steers and clippers and flounces out in a strop, with his high-paid suits in tow.

Meanwhile back at le White House, Mad Mellie marches (gotta love alliteration) into Cyrus’s office, demanding that Cyrus get his guy under control. Mellie looks like she’s about to have an apoplectic fit, or go into early labour.

I find Mellie at her amusing best when she’s losing her mind. Cyrus looks like the quintessential harried professor, and is in no mood for Mellie’s hormonal mood swings. I love how good he is at throwing shade, without seemingly even thinking about it.

“Good morning Mellie” Cyrus says, “pregnancy gives you such a glow of warmth” Death. I do love Cyrus at his sardonic best.

Mellie screams out that Fitz has asked for a divorce. This gets Cyrus’ attention, and you can literally see him plotting as he quickly ushers Mellie out, telling her to take a load off and go see the doctor or something. Cyrus at his patronising best. He’ll handle Fitz.

There was a funny moment here where Mellie looks like she’s about to hug Cyrus in gratitude, she even goes as far as reaching for him, but she withdraws at the last minute and leaves.

“Breeders” mutters Cyrus in annoyance. He’s got work to do.

Back at OPA, Harrison and Abby are speculating about the diamond  ring that Liv is staring at in the office. They assume that Edison (Grrrrr!) has proposed. “Wife of a senator” says Harrison. “Please, husband of Olivia Pope!” says Abby. I like this Abby, she doesn’t make me want to eat my own face.

Hollis Doyle strolls into OPA to talk to Liv about their David Rosen Problem. Quinn comes face-to-face with the monster who tried to set her up for multiple murders.

Hollis is mighty unhappy because he thought Olivia had taken care of their David Rosen Problem, and they have words. Hollis tells Olivia to fix things, otherwise he’ll fix Olivia and the other members of the illuminate, as well as her “precious Fitz”. Hmmm, does Hollis know about Fitz and Olivia?

Back at the White House, Cyrus interrupts Fitz’s gun control briefing (love how this show is so relevant politically). Once they’re alone, Fitz starts talking about the concept of Big Ideas. Cyrus listens for a moment before launching into one of his epic monologues. Fitz is being delusional if he thinks that he can divorce his 9 month pregnant wife, and move in his mistress, Cyrus goes on to say:

“Now Liv is a lovely, smart woman, I can’t get enough of her, but she’s not exactly a hue that most of your Republican constituents would be happy about, even if they could get past the divorcing, and the cheating and the abandoning of America’s Baby, it concerns me Sir, how big your delusion is”

Yep, he went there. But it’s not like he was saying anything that wasn’t true. Modern day Republicans aren’t that diversity friendly as far as I can tell..

Now usually such a monologue would have gotten through to Fitz in the past, but unfortunately for Cyrus, he’s dealing with a New Fitz. This Fitz can’t find two fucks to give. He’s not afraid anymore, he has nothing to lose, he’s going to divorce Mellie, and he’s going to keep his presidency. That’s today’s Big Idea, and Cyrus needs to do his job and make it happen!

Can we get an Amen, praise the Lord, and Hallelujah from the pulpit please!

Flashback to Jesse at Cytron talking to a colleague, and Quinnsay walks in. Jesse sees an article on his computer and he reads that Hollis Doyle is making billions out of some pipeline deal or other, a pipeline deal that was approved by the administration that is only in office because of Jesse’s dodgy voting machine. He’s furious because Hollis Doyle only paid him one million dollars.

Jesse, being the greedy bastard that he is, asks Hollis for a further five million dollars instead, and threatens to reveal the rigging, effectively signing his own death warrant. What a fucking idiot.

Anyway, back to the present day, and Liv is at the White House with Cyrus who’s just found out about their David Rosen Problem.

Liv looks like she’s overdosed on Xanax at this point, and looks totally out of it.

The weight of the guilt over what she did is crashing down on her, and the result of that isn’t too pretty.

She made a mistake, she should never have voted yes on that plane. She’s a fixer, she doesn’t do things like this. She should have fixed it so that there wasn’t even a reason to have to vote on that plane. If she hadn’t been “emotionally involved with Fitz” if she had kept it together, she would have fixed it. And now, they’re the bad guys. Olivia is tired, she’s been trying to keep ahead of everything, but she’s exhausted, and she doesn’t know how to make things better.

Cyrus looks a little perturbed because Olivia is usually his go-to-girl for all Fitz related troubles. He tells her that she should go home, get some sleep, he will fix this. “Consider it handled” Cyrus says to Olivia.

So that’s exactly what Olivia does.

As she’s walking along the White House corridors, all her past misdeeds come rushing back to her.  From her illicit relationship with Fitz, to putting the mockers on Abby’s relationship with David, to voting yes to rigging an election for Fitz. It’s all too much for Olivia and she goes home and takes to her bed. For three days.

This scene made me feel exhausted and stressed out for Olivia, I could literally feel her listlessness and heartbreak from where I sat. Have I ever mentioned how much I adore Kerry Washington? I love that bitch like a fat kid loves cake. She killed it in these scenes.

When we next see Olivia, she’s still in bed and the phone is ringing. It’s Fitz. He wants to hear her voice, plus he’s got some news.

Fitz knows that something is wrong straight away. He wants to know what the problem is. Olivia in her semi-comatosed state starts rambling. She tells Fitz that Edison (Grrrrrrrrrrr!) asked her to marry him. This obviously startles Fitz, and he tells her not to marry Edison (Grrrrrrrrrrrr!) and that whatever is wrong, they can fix it. He tells her that he’s asked Mellie for a divorce. At this announcement, you see Olivia visibly weighed down by this new information. In her state, it’s actually the last thing she wants to hear. Yet more problems that she’s responsible for. Fitz tells her to wait for him again.

It’s all too much for Olivia and she hangs up without responding. I really felt for Fitz at this point. He assumed that this news would be welcomed by Olivia, so now he’s worried.

We next see a pair of trousered legs walk into Olivia’s bedroom. It’s fucking Edison (Grrrrrrrrrrr!) Seriously, that man is like a fucking leech. No sense and no pride.

Anyway, he’s concerned about Olivia, and asks her what’s wrong. Once again, she tells him to fuck off. He doesn’t heed her words and tries to touch her, Olivia recoils from him and turns her head away from him, effectively ending the conversation. Edison (Grrrrrrrrr!) looks appropriately concerned, but there’s no light-bulb moment for him about the state of their relationship. Seriously, that man is as dumb as a box of fucking rocks.

The next time we see Edison (Grrrrr!) he’s at OPA, telling the gang that Liv wont get out of bed. Liv considers them family, and he’s aware that she confides in them in a way that she doesn’t with him. Can they please help her?

What makes me laugh is that throughout his plea, the OPA crew are looking at him like he’s an alien that’s just landed on earth. Edison (Grrrrrrrr!) leaves without them saying a word. He’s late for a senate meeting.

We flashback to two years previously, and it’s revealed that Becky was the person who Hollis hired to take care of his Jesse Tyler Problem.

Back to OPA in the present and Quinn is tired of not knowing what’s going on. She proposes that they all tell what they know, the secrets that they’re hiding, no judgements. Quinn starts by revealing that it was Huck who kidnapped her from her apartment and gave her a new identity, and she thinks that whoever attempted to shoot the president was angry because Huck and Olivia had fucked up their plans. She also mentions Verna. They deduce that if Verna saved her once, she must have saved her again during Quinn’s trial. If a Supreme Court judge asks you for a favour, you don’t say no, they guess.

Abby admits that she’s been sleeping with David Rosen, and that they knew about Hollis Doyle.

Eventually they work out that Olivia may have been involved in election rigging, hence why she hasn’t ratted Hollis out to the authorities. This was a particularly fantastic scene, as you literally saw them working things out, and coming to the realisation that their fearless leader may not wear the white hat after all. There was something quite exhilarating, yet sad about this scene, I can only describe it as children suddenly realising that their parents aren’t perfect and that they have feet of clay.

Huck leaves the room. He needs to see Olivia.

We cut to Mellie having a pre-natal check up. We find out that Fitz hasn’t been to any of the check-ups with her. The doctor asks Mellie if he was with her when Karen and Jerry were born. (I keep forgetting that they have kids.) Mellie looks sad as she remembers how close her and Fitz were during each of the births. She tells the doctor:

“He held my hands both times, got me to push through the pain, he called me Champ, which I hated, but it worked, cut the cords, he was so proud. I can’t remember a time when we were closer than in the delivery room, both times we were a team”

That sounds nice, says the doctor, looking vaguely uncomfortable with the over-sharing.

Next we have one of my favourite scenes in the episode. Huck (I LOVE YOU HUCK!) enters Olivia’s bedroom and lies down next to her. Faithful viewers will note that unlike with Edison (Grrrrrrrrr!) she doesn’t recoil away from him, this is somebody she actually loves.

The following amusing, but revealing conversation takes place between the two of them:

Huck: “Hollis Doyle has to go, I can take care of that for you if you want”

Olivia: “Huck you have to stop killing people”

Huck: “Why? It solves the problem”

Olivia: “You know why”

Huck: “Because killing people is wrong. In certain circles that’s not true you know.”

Olivia: “In this circle, in our circle it’s wrong. I need you to learn that, I’m not always going to be around…”

Huck: “So what are you gonna do about Hollis?”

Olivia: “Cyrus Beene is taking care of it”

Huck: “Is he?”

Olivia: “Yeah, so you know, don’t worry about it, it’s handled, Cyrus is handling it”

(Olivia turns away from Huck, but turns back when she senses that he’s trying to tell her something)

Olivia: “What?”

Huck: “Cyrus Beene is not in this circle, our circle. Cyrus is in my circle”

Olivia: “No, Cyrus is the White House Chief of Staff, he’d never..”

Huck: “If he says he’s taking care of it… he has a guy, you’ve met him, Charlie from B613 ”

Olivia:  “Oh my God, Cyrus is going to kill Hollis Doyle, are you…are you sure?”

At this point, Huck nods, and this spurs Olivia on. She finally gets out of bed. She’s a fixer when all’s said and done, and she can’t let another person die, not even that weasel Hollis. I can’t lie, I wanted Olivia to stay in bed and let Cyrus do his thing. If anybody needed to die, Hollis was that man.

We next see Olivia entering Verna’s hospital room. The judge looks like she’s just about ready to depart this world.

Verna is writing a long-assed letter when Olivia walks in through the door, and when she sees her, she subtly covers the letter. Enquiring minds wonder if this is a death bed letter confessing to all her sins? I’m wondering now if she in fact writes to Fitz rather than verbally confessing to the rigging. (if indeed it is her who tells Fitz)

Olivia has come to tell Verna that she’s turning Hollis in, she’ll try to keep Verna’s name out of it. Verna tells her not to bother. When she agreed to take part in the rigging of the election, she signed her own death warrant, this is her payment, but Olivia still has a chance at redemption.

Verna is such an enigma to me. She’s obviously a cold piece who has put her ambitions before everything and cheated to get where she is, but at the core, she loves Olivia. It’s this dichotomy that puzzles me, and makes me unsure about whether she’s ultimately a good person doing bad things to get good results, or if she’s just a manipulative bitch who would eat her young to further her own interests. I suspect that the answer lies somewhere in between.

We next see Hollis who’s ranting at his secretary because she persuaded him to have sushi. This bit made me laugh. Hollis is such a good villain.

The next thing you know, the feds walk in with a warrant for the search and seizure of any evidence relevant to the attempted assassination of the president. They find the burner phone in Hollis’s desk. Hollis denies that the phone is his.

This is as a result of Olivia going to David with what she knows (ish).

Back at the Attorney General’s office, David tells Olivia that he’ll probably need more evidence, so if she knows anything else, to reveal it. As Olivia turns to leave, he warns her that this doesn’t make them even.  If she’s involved in this, he will come after her.

Ugh, David and his fucking white hat. He’s going to be so mad when he discovers that Liv split him and Abby up. That should be all kinds of fun. Sigh.

We pan outside and Olivia is doing her Olivia Pope strut, and Cyrus is walking next to her, going a little cray-cray because Olivia has thwarted his plans by having Hollis Doyle arrested.

He was handling things, he tells her. How, she asks him. It doesn’t matter how, Cyrus says. But Olivia wants to do things right, she wants justice not revenge. Cyrus reminds her that they could all go down for this. Olivia doesn’t care, she just wants to do the right thing, the right way. Cyrus launches into another of his epic monologues about Santa, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny. As per Fitz earlier, Olivia ignores him and tells him to get himself a good lawyer.

This was such a great scene, I love Cyrus when he gets into his Prophet Mohammed mode. I particularly loved this from him:

“Justice is for regular people, justice is for Fatty in Ohio, folding their laundry and drinking their beers, we are not regular people”

Olivia argues that they are the people, the people is everybody, not just her and Cyrus.

We get back to OPA where Huck is telling the others that Olivia has turned Hollis Doyle in.

Quinn, who quite frankly needs to take several fucking seats,  starts going on with her fucking disloyal self about Olivia doing whatever she wants to do and not answering any questions.

At this point Olivia walks in and tells them that she’s done lots of things that have affected their lives negatively, and that she’s sorry about that. It’s time for her to come clean to them, and tell them anything and everything they want to know.

Harrison doesn’t want to know and says so, then QuinnBitch pipes up and says that she wants to know. Harrison tells her that no she doesn’t because that puts her in legal jeopardy of being subpoenaed and held as a material witness, if she wants to make that choice, he’s going to leave the room. So will Abby, and so will Huck.

Harrison tells her that she has to make a choice, is she in or out, on the team, or out in the cold?

I’ve never loved Harrison more than at this moment. A true Gladiator. Loyal Abby was back too, and of course Huck would die for Olivia so no worries there.

QuinnBitch realises that she’s outnumbered and asks what Olivia wants them to do.

OPA gets to work, trying to link Hollis Doyle to the attempted assassination of the president. Becky is a key factor, and they need to find a payment from Hollis to Becky for the job. To do this they need to access Becky’s bank account.

We flashback to Becky setting up Quinnsay to take the fall for the Cytron bombing. She’s the one who sent the sexy text to Jesse’s phone. Quinnsay assumes that Jesse is banging some skank and goes off her head at him. This was obviously supposed to be the motive for blowing up Cytron, and killing Jesse and his six colleagues.

Meanwhile at the White House, Cyrus is trying to get his plan to kill Hollis back on track, by getting David to release Hollis, presumably so that Charlie can get on with killing him. Quite frankly, I liked this plan. A lot.

Back at OPA, the gang need Becky’s bank account details, they need to link Hollis’ payment for the Cytron bombing, to Becky’s payment for the attempted assassination of the president. This is a job for Huck.

Huck goes to see Becky in prison. The orange jumpsuit looked particularly fetching on her.

Huck persuades her to impart with her bank account details by giving him his civilian name. I’m hoping that he wrote a fake name or something on there. I’m very uncomfortable with the thought that Becky has his real name.

We flashback to two years ago, and we see Jesse take delivery of the bomb that kills him and his colleagues.

Becky is sat outside, and leaves, looking rather pleased with herself, when the bomb explodes. Part one of her job completed.

We later see Becky making a call to rat Quinnsay out to the police, and as she’s making the call, she sees Huck carrying a drugged Quinnsay into a car. Plan foiled. Bummer.

Back at the White House, Cyrus goes in to see Mellie, he tells her that Fitz is serious about the divorce. “Of course he is“, seethes Mellie.

Mellie finally reveals her loathing for Olivia, but at the same time, she reveals how little respect she has for Fitz, and how she considers him her creation.

Mellie rants to Cyrus:

“You’re supposed to hate the woman. Isn’t that the standard trope? The seductress, the slut, the tramp who led your man astray. And I do. I loathe Olivia Pope. But it’s a boring sort of hate. Uninteresting, cliche’. It’s hard to even get my back into it. But Fitz? I found him. I cleaned him up after that monster who raised him damaged his spirit. I am the one who told him he was someone. I am the one who cheered him on and listened to him ramble about his hopes and his dreams. I am the one who focused him. I did all the work. I did all the work and now she gets to reap the benefits? No. No, I made him. He exists because I say he exists”

Woah Mellie!

She certainly said a mouthful here. More analysis on this later.

Cyrus tells Mellie that he can handle the Hollis problem, but ever since the shooting he can’t read Fitz, he can’t handle him so if there’s anything  she can do, any last cards that she can play, now would be the time to play them.

We next see Mellie enter her ob-gyn’s room at the hospital/birthing centre. I guessed correctly what she was going to do, seeing as it was foreshadowed earlier on in the episode.

Back at OPA, the gang are looking at Becky’s bank account to find the link.

Olivia and Harrison have a lovely moment together, another great show of loyalty by Harrison here, and I love it.

Harrison: “We can just stop. Nailing Hollis for what he did is the Fed’s job, not ours,

Liv: “Harrison..”

Harrison: “My job, our job is to protect you, proving this transaction and having Hollis’s head in a vice is the opposite of that.”

Liv: “I know”

Harrison: “This..could change everything, do you understand that?”

Liv: I understand, but the guilt was eating me alive, that white hat was starting to feel like it was a lie”

Harrison: “Hey, that white hat will always belong on your head”

Harrison takes Liv’s hands for a moment.

Harrison: “ Everything’s gonna be ok, and even if it’s not ok, I got you Liv”

LOVED, LOVED LOVED this moment! Harrison and Huck were my stars this episode.

We then move to David getting brow-beaten by Hollis Doyle’s lawyer. He’s really not doing well, and Hollis doesn’t have a care in the world, because he’s reading some sort of comic strip thingy whilst David is doing his lawyerly thing.

We then go back to the White House, where Cyrus has polling data on divorce. It doesn’t make for good reading. For Fitz’s personal circumstances, he would go down to a 10% approval rating, which according to Cyrus translates to pitchforks at the gates.

But as we know, this new Fitz has no fucks to give (Please Scandal writers, don’t change him, we love this new couldn’t give a flying fuck Fitz) and sets the data aside, announcing that he’s going to see Olivia, “in broad daylight”. My little shipper heart fairly squealed with glee at this.

“she’s upset” says Fitz “I want to see her”.

Cyrus is about to burst a blood vessel. Again

Luckily for Cyrus, he’s saved by the bell when Louise (Fitz’s PA presumably) comes in and tells him that there’s an emergency with Mellie. God dammit. That fucking bitch has purposely gone into premature labour.

Back at OPA, the gang discover that Hollis is not the guy who orchestrated the shooting of the president. I could have told them this weeks ago. Hollis was always too obvious a choice.

We go to the hospital where Mellie is in labour, she reaches out for Fitz, who looks at her in horror, then the realisation that his son is being born hits him, and he goes into father/husband mode.

The episode then ends with a shot of Charlie getting into the elevator with Hollis. Just like he did with Billy back in Season One.

VERDICT

I thought this week’s show was excellent.

What I loved particularly, was how character driven it was. All the dynamics of the major characters came into play here, and it was exquisite to watch.

Scandal for me, delivers every week. Every week for an hour I have the craziest adrenaline rush. The rollercoaster of emotions is immense and I can only sit back and admire the writing prowess it takes to up the ante week after week.

This is not a show that you can watch passively, that’s for damned sure.

KEY MOMENTS

Olivia

Olivia’s breakdown was a key moment for me. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The weight of all those secrets that she’s been keeping were bound to come crashing down on her, and the lengths that she’s gone to in order to protect those secrets were bound to start eating at her soul. Coupled with the fact that Fitz, the love of her life, was shot, probably by one of the men that she colluded with to game the election. A man that she has to protect in order to protect Fitz’s legacy. It was inevitable that she would retreat into herself and hide from the world.

I think from a psychological point of view, Olivia needed this badly. She needed to mourn, she needed to grieve. She needed to take back her soul from the devil’s hands.

She also needed to forgive herself for her past misdeeds. The time-out that she took meant that she would be in a better position to start to make amends for all her fuckups.

I was really pleased that she offered to come clean with her team, she owed them the truth. Although they all declined her offer (sit the the fuck down Quinn) hopefully Abby remembers that she did offer the truth to them when she discovers that she screwed her and David over. I am so not looking forward to that conversation next week.

A lot of fans were going crazy about Olivia telling Fitz that she could marry Edison, have babies, move to the country and make jam, and honestly I don’t get why people can’t understand her motivations here. She is literally knee-deep in shit and mess. At this moment in time, of course living a ‘normal’ life would seem an attractive option to Olivia.

We know that she’d hate her version of normal, but at the same time, people as powerful as she is often fantasize about doing everyday things, and having other people make decisions for them. I totally get this, I wonder why so many other people don’t?

OPA

I don’t know about anybody else, but OPA realising that Olivia may have been involved in rigging the last election was a real goose-bump, moment for me.  What made it even more poignant was that despite their suspicions, the team were still willing to go to bat for her. I think some people don’t believe that that kind of blind loyalty is realistic, but I disagree. I have friends that I’d stand by, no matter what they did (barring kid related atrocities of course).

One of the things that I love about Scandal are the complex platonic relationships. I absolutely adore Huck’s loyalty to Olivia. I know that basically he’s a murderous psycho, but I’d still love him to be my best friend forever.

Also, Harrison really stepped up this episode, his “I’ve got you Liv” was everything. This is what I signed up for Shonda and team!

Fitz

The one thing I adore about Fitz is his unflinching belief that he and Olivia belong together. Of course it’s not realistic,  as Cyrus said, USA is not France, where a politician divorcing his wife isn’t instantly a death knell to his candidacy or his job. I’m a romantic at heart though, so I love that his faith in Liv and himself is so unshakeable.

Fitz asking for Liv to wait for him during his phone call to her, pretty much broke my heart, I can’t even begin to imagine how devastated he’d be if, Oprah forbid, she married Edison. (Grrrrrrrr!)

I loved that he automatically knew that there was something wrong with her. You could see how excited he was to tell her his news, but he held back, instead he wanted to find out what was up with her. I loved his sensitivity with her here.

I also loved, loved, loved the fact that he was willing to go and see Olivia in broad daylight, but how on earth would that have worked? The press follow the president around whenever he steps out of the White House. I’m assuming he was planning to go to the OPA office rather than her home, but still, the speculation in the media would surely have been immense? Reckless much?

This seems more and more like an impossible love, and coupled with the fact that he now has a new baby to contend with, I honestly can’t see a way for him to be with Liv. Other than launching into a full fledged affair of course. And as we know already, that carries its own risks. I’m down for that though, Mellie be fucking damned. The heinous cow.

Mellie

Oh my God. Where the hell do I start?

I have always loved Mellie as a character, but after tonight, I don’t see how she can be redeemed. That baby stunt that she pulled hurt me to the depths of my soul. That any mother could put her baby so unnecessarily in danger in order to keep her husband from divorcing her, is quite frankly something that I don’t understand. The very fact that for her, this wasn’t even about losing the love of her life, and rather it was about the fact that she didn’t want to lose her place as First Lady, made it even worse.

Mellie’s monologue made it clear to me that she considers Fitz her pet creation. A project that she wants to reap the rewards from, herself. Her anger seemed to be more about the fact that Olivia would be the one getting the benefit of all her “hard work”. How is this love Bellamy Young??? Now hush up with your whole “Mellie has fierce love for Fitz” crap.

I was surprised to hear that Mellie knew that Fitz’s father was a monster, yet she didn’t hesitate to bring him into Fitz’s campaign and even worse, proceeded to fawn over him like some star-struck school girl.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I almost felt a sense of relief when she finally admitted how she feels about Olivia. It would seem obvious that she would loathe the woman her husband had fallen in love with, but because of Mellie’s shady ways, it’s been pretty hard to pin down her exact feelings.

Don’t forget, this is the woman who in Season One invited Liv to the State Dinner, because Fitz was missing her and wasn’t sleeping properly. This was the woman who encouraged Liv (albeit with a teary look) to keep her husband ‘happy’ because she was doing her patriotic duty.

This was the woman who went off on Liv because she’d “left the team” thus leaving Fitz broken hearted and vulnerable. This was a woman who encouraged her husband to get Olivia on the job, whenever there was a problem that needed fixing.

Anyway, at least now we know how she really feels, and I for one am actually looking forward to the next time she has a showdown with Olivia. Shonda, we need for Liv to read this woman for filth, none of that submissive crap that we’ve been seeing for a season and a half now. As far as I’m concerned, the gloves have finally come off.

Edison

Sigh. I had a lot of things that I wanted to say about Edison, but honestly, I can’t be arsed wasting my breath. The one positive thing I will say about him was that at least he went to OPA and asked them to help Olivia. I refuse to give him any more props than that. Ugh.

Sooo, Who Shot Fitz?

I knew it wasn’t Hollis. Well, not Hollis on his own certainly. I don’t think it was Verna, mostly because I still can’t think of a single reason why she’d want Fitz dead. Some people were speculating that it might have been a revenge act against Fitz as she was having an affair with Big Jerry. I don’t buy that, I just don’t think she’s that sentimental. This was the woman who looked less than overjoyed at the suggestion that she spend time with her grand kids for God’s sake. Having Fitz killed was of no benefit to her whatsoever as far as I’m concerned. Now, the question of whether she knows who ordered the assassination is a different one. I’ll have to think about that for a bit longer I think.

Until I see something that makes me look at things differently, for now, I’m going to go with  Governor Reston as the mastermind behind the shooting. As for who he’s working with, I don’t have a bloody clue. I’m eagerly waiting until next week to find out. This will be the longest five days ever…