Last night was not a great episode of Scandal, but it was a solidly entertaining one that felt like it was advancing the plot lines that have been stalled considering that at least last season. and THEN, A TWIST.

Scandal spent two weeks teasing the return of Papa Pope, and they delivered on him immediately. The show’s cold open was him asking Olivia to help him shut down the case against B-613, and he explained his reasoning for why she must in one of his grand soliloquies that sounded great but was, as the last few have been, mostly just blustering and chest-puffing. The problem is in the writing, not the delivery; I’m pretty sure the actor who plays Papa Pope could read the ingredients on my shampoo bottle and make them sound both grand and menacing.

After meeting with her daddy (who roofied her new kid toy in buy to get into her apartment or condo and speak to her), Olivia gathered up the squad and made a decision that the safest way to proceed with the B-613 claim was to make it public. even though it would cause considerable collateral damage, the visibility would theoretically (key word: theoretically) make it harder for Papa Pope and his merry bad of clandestine murderers to eliminate their enemies.

Thankfully, the B-613 machinations were mostly put aside until the end of the episode; in their place, we got a weekly subplot that actually felt thematically and structurally tied to what the focus of the season’s last few episodes is undoubtedly going to be: B-613 and the moral dilemmas that surround its existence and potential demise.

In the weekly plot, we met a young activist named Marcus (or, we re-met him; he first appeared in the Ferguson-themed episode from several weeks ago), who was running for mayor of DC. Not only was he leading the incumbent in the polls, but he was banging the incumbent’s wife, and the current mayor knew all about it. In a fairly extreme act of killing two birds with one stone, the mayor sent some goons dressed like ninjas over to stab his wife while Marcus was in his bedroom with her, and Marcus enlisted Olivia’s help to avoid getting framed for murder.

The mayor also had someone hack into Marcus’ email account and plant some threatening emails, which was enough to get Marcus hauled in for questioning. Thankfully, that gave us Olivia’s finest scene in some time: at least a minute of pure, unadulterated ranting directly into the face of a smug old cop, in full view of generally everyone in his command. If this had been a bad episode, this would have made it all worth it; thankfully, it wasn’t.

Olivia’s own set of goons eventually found enough proof that the mayor had bought the hit to get him to withdraw from the race and endorse Marcus, but, in a fit of conscious indicative of the fact that he’d never be a good occupation politician, Marcus got up at his own press conference and confessed. He told everyone he had been banging the mayor’s wife, who had had her killed as revenge on both of them; what wasn’t attended to is that he a lot more or less also admitted that he had Olivia tamper with a crime scene and conceal a murder. That’s exceptionally and entirely illegal anywhere but in Shondaland.

It’s not hard to see how this all neatly fits in with Olivia’s own moral dilemmas of the episode. Marcus confessed out of his own righteous moral requirement, and Olivia’s wrestling with similar issue: torpedo the B-613 case to help her daddy and try to put the whole thing behind everyone, or cooperate with the hazardous investigation in the name of justice and endanger literally everyone she cares about in the entire world, including herself?

While Olivia was contemplating that issue, the episode’s other plot came into play. The White house was trying to pass a bill that was never really explained but that everyone seemed to think was very important, and they needed their kooky vice president’s vote in buy to break a tie. She insisted on reading the 1,200 page law before voting on it because she is not a occupation politician used to doing what she’s told by people with a lot more power than her, which delayed things for…a while. Hijinks ensued, and they ultimately cause rewriting the bill into a Real, helpful law and launching Mellie’s Senate campaign to distract the press from the false start.

Somehow, in the middle of all this, Olivia and Jake sat down to talk about B-613 with David, and in that conversation, they told him about the time that Rowan bought a passenger jet shot down, and they told him who did it : Ο Πρόεδρος. But, like, before he was the president. Olivia was upset afterward, obviously, so she called Russell, the dude who calls her Alex.

He came over immediately, and although he did give her a stern talking-to about how it’s not great to roofie people (“Sorry, it was my dad,” is an awkward explanation in that situation), he ended up fully naked in her apartment or condo befoγια να ενοχλήσει ακόμη και να πάρει το κασμίρ τυλίγεται. Η Shonda μπορεί να μην ξέρει τι B-613 είναι καλύτερο από ό, τι κάνουμε, αλλά πραγματικά κοιτάζει έξω για μας όταν αφορά τους άνδρες χωρίς shirtless.

Το μόνο που έμεινε, φυσικά, ήταν για τον Liv να αφήσει τον Παπά Πάπα να γνωρίζει ότι δεν θα πάρει την υπόθεσή του. Της είπε ότι ήταν ευτυχής που τελικά έγινε ένας πραγματικός, άξιος αντίπαλος, αλλά όταν λέει ότι είναι “ευτυχισμένος”, δεν το δείχνει όπως όλοι οι άλλοι. Ο Πάπας Πάπας χαίρεται σε έναν τρόπο που θα γυρίσει-νέος-φίλος-σε-yough-old-boyfriend τρόπος, που ακριβώς συνέβη. Το επεισόδιο έκλεισε με το νέο boo του Liv και με βάση τις προεπισκοπήσεις, αφήνοντας τον νεκρό (νομίζω για τους πραγματικούς νεκρούς, αλλά ποιος ξέρει) στον πίνακα συνεδρίων Pope & Associates. Αγενής.

Αρχικά, η δολοφονία ήταν συγκλονιστική, αλλά αφού το άφηνε να σιγοβράσει για λίγες ώρες, ίσως δεν ήταν. Ο Τζέικ έπεσε στη δράση αδέξια και σπάνια στα τελευταία επεισόδια, και αν οι πελάτες κουράζουν το οικόπεδο B-613 (και είμαστε!), Τότε ο πιο γρήγορος τρόπος για να περάσετε από αυτό δεν είναι να αμφισβητήσετε-είναι να είναι Σκοτώστε ανθρώπους που εμπλέκονται σε αυτό. Ο Τζέικ, παρά τις πολλές υπέροχες παραστάσεις του σε διάφορες εποχές, δεν ήταν πλέον επωφελής ως οτιδήποτε άλλο παρά ένα στήριγμα για να επεκτείνει μια ιστορία που κανείς δεν αρέσει και ότι οι συγγραφείς φαίνεται να μην καταλαβαίνουν τον εαυτό τους. Ο μάγκα έπρεπε να φύγει.

Οι προεπισκοπήσεις για την επόμενη εβδομάδα δείχνουν ότι πολύ περισσότεροι χαρακτήρες μπορεί να είναι στο μπλοκ κοπής, και αν έπρεπε να μαντέψω, η εικασία μου θα ήταν huck. Η επίδειξη δεν έχει ακόμη επιλύσει τους τρόπους με τους οποίους έχει ξεφύγει από τον έλεγχο όλη την εποχή, συμπεριλαμβανομένης της φρικιαστικής, αυθόρμητης δολοφονίας της Lena Dunham και της περούκα της και ο χαρακτήρας του είναι επίσης έντονα δεμένος με το οικόπεδο που όλοι επιθυμούν θα εξαφανιστούν.

Αυτό είναι το πρώτο επεισόδιο που αισθάνθηκε σαν το σκάνδαλο στο οποίο έγινα εθισμένος σε εβδομάδες, ίσως περισσότερο. Είναι καλό να το έχει πίσω.