#Gladiators, you know how the standard symbol for giving zero damns is basically a drunk person smirking in a mugshot after being arrested for starting a fist fight in a Popeyes with one of their employees over a too-dry biscuit? Well, thanks to what happened on last night’s episode of Scandal, there is now a new standard. Shonda Lynn Rhimes does not give a damn about snatching our collective wigs and leaving us with some stringy strands like Gollum. Shonda Lynn Rhimes does not care that us spending all this time trying to process the shocking final moments of her episodes causes us to pay our Visa and MasterCard bills late. Shonda Lynn Rhimes is a boss and we should just all get used to bowing down to the Queen of Giving Zero Damns. Now, before we get into why I’m giving Ms. Rhimes this new title, we need to start at the beginning of “Yes.”
As we all know, last week ended with the moment that has been coming since day one: The Olitz affair became public knowledge. For some reason, both Liv and Fitz were shocked that this happened, which made me react the way Judge Joe Brown does when he’s dealing with an ignorant small-claims case that could be settled in Gchat, a.k.a. I laughed and shook my head at the same time. Anyway, Fitz promises Liv that everything is going to be okay. Riiiiiiiiiight, because everything always works out for mistresses, especially when the white man’s mistress is black. Fitz, get a grip, get some sense, and get out of my face with this. Thankfully, Liv doesn’t believe him and she practically takes the Underground Railroad in order to slip out of the White House. Meanwhile, Fitz is yelling at everyone about who leaked the affair. Ex-squeeze me, but I think the real issue here is that he has been cheating for five years. But just like when a friend tells me she is for real going to stick to her New Year’s Resolution of going to the gym five days week, everyone just nods their heads in agreement at Fitz and is like, “Right. The leak. That’s the problem.”
So where does Liv go? To Quinn’s! Liv wants them to take on a case while she figures out a plan. Unfortunately for the case of the week, it is the Michelle to Kelly and Beyoncé, which is to say, irrelevant, but we root for it anyway because we’re not monsters, right? This week involves a son, Gavin, who may or may not have killed his super-rich dad, at least that’s what his very young stepmother tells Pope & Quinn. Joining these ladies is Huck, whom Quinn is still angry with, and Jake, whose mere appearance on my TV screen has knocked me up with triplets. Someone please tweet at Scott Foley that I will be expecting his child support any day now. Moving on.
Gavin is now on the run, but Liv, in casual clothes — leather jacket, T-shirt, and jeans — in order to go undetected by paparazzi, manages to track him down in record time with the help of Jake. Gavin mistakes her for a prostitute and I’m like, “Boo-boo, prostitutes do not show up to work in their ‘laundry day’ clothes. They always have their boobs and butts on display like Beats by Dre headphones.” Liv and Jake take him with them and try to get to the bottom of this case.
Back at the White House, Fitz says that he’s not speaking to the press unless it’s with Liv and that Abby needs to deflect any and all questions about the affair. He then goes back to not being a good father, president, or husband. So many hours in the day, how does he get it all done? Seriously, Mellie confronts him and the two think the other leaked the story, which means neither of them did. Next, Mellie is now worried about how news of this affair will make her look, but as we see later in the episode, her heart still skips a beat over Fitz. Now, I’m not going to Fitz-bash here. My focus is on Mellie. I know that in my last recap, I was jumping up and down at the possibility of Mellie leaking the affair, but seeing how she is so desperate to do anything to cling to a man who does not want her … Yes, I get that they’ve been married for a long time. Yes, I get that she may have once loved him purely and deeply, but at a certain point, she has to put her big-girl pants on and stop feigning Fitz. She needs to get a divorce, do her political version of writing an Adele scorned-woman album, and bang somebody hot. Because right now, she’s acting like Fitz is the cause of all her problems, and at this point, she is the only one standing in her way. Now, back to the rest of the show.
As furious as Quinn has been with Huck this season, they seem to be reconciling. Just like game recognizes game, damaged person recognizes damaged person, so Quinn kind of realizes they’re both messed-up people, and she cuts him some slack. He tells her he missed her. And I’m lighting every Santa Maria candle and praying to Black Jesus, a.k.a. Oprah, that there will not be any Huckleberry Quinn sex scenes in the future because I’m planning on pulling a Jerry Orbach when I die. But in order to do that, my eyeballs need to not have disintegrated because I watched those two yahoos bone. Only time will tell, I suppose.
Now, let’s talk about my low-key MVP of the episode: Abby. Thanks to Fitz and Liz treating her like week-old schmear, her bestie, Liv, lying to her about Fitz, and no Leo Bergen around to bone her on the weekends, her life is the opposite of fun. So Cyrus throws her a bone and helps her out by saying “Be the adult” and take control of the situation because as much as Fitz likes to huff and puff like he’s the president, he never does his actual job, and this waiting for Liv to return business is only making him a worse deadbeat president. So Abby does what any intelligent person would do: She goes behind Fitz’s back and tells the press that Mellie is still up in da crib. And even though Liz and Fitz are like, “Whoa, bro,” they eventually realize that he needs to sit down with Mellie for a TV interview and say he’s not having an affair. He goes along with this plan and is there for Mellie, so I’m temporarily putting away my #FitzAintS**t memorabilia.
While all of this has been happening, Jake and Olivia were doing their IRL version of the On the Run tour. And yes, I know some of you are going to try and drag me in the comments section for comparing Olake to Jay and Bey, but I don’t care, y’all! I stand in my truth, and you Olitzers just need to deal. For me, Jake is the lover and he is also the friend. He gives her a pep talk about her life the way a black actress would in a garbage-y Zooey Deschanel movie, and he knows to do this without her even explicitly asking:
Y’all. COME. ON. I mean, check out the last GIF in this series. Look at how just snuggling with the love of his life and getting a whiff of the pink oil moisturizer in her hair sets his heart a flutter. I’m telling you, he’s the type of dude who will straight-up buy his half-black daughter a #BlackIsBeautiful T-shirt and help her with her book report on Thurgood Marshall. If Liz doesn’t choose him in the end, I’m done with her. (No, I’m not. I can’t quit Liv.) But for real, he is ALWAYS there for Liv. And just when it seemed like Liv was about to be done with that doo-doo relationship with Fitz, here he comes with some mess that I equally hate him for and commend him for because as I stated earlier, “game recognize game.”
Fitz left her a voice mail about how he finally gets everything and he understands what he needs to do. He says, “I just wanted you to know, I get it … I don’t want you to throw away your whole life just for me. I love you too much.” My lips are pursed as hell right now, like I just ate an entire carton of Lemonheads. This some bull. Because he knows that she wanted him to leave her alone. So what does this trifling heaux do? Not leave her alone by telling her that he’s about to leave her alone. L to the O to the L. This man knows doggone well that just the mere sound of his voice makes her vajeen do involuntary kegels, so this was straight-up some reverse psychology malarkey. He knows that “setting her free” is going to make her eventually want to come back to him. I hate Fitz, but I also commend him because that was a top-level mack-daddy move. You ain’t s**t, Fitz, but I give you all of the props.
Why? Because Liv returns home with courage and is ready to take back her life. The press and paparazzi are waiting outside her door. They ask her if she is Fitz’s mistress. Ah, the million-dollar question. And what does Liv say?
Shonda, you play. Too. Damn. Much. And thanks to you shattering my life with Olivia doing the ONE thing to take her power back, I’m now left to pick up the scraps of my world like a pile of knocked-over Jenga pieces. All hail the Queen of Giving Zero Damns. Matter of fact, let’s amend that. Shonda is not the Queen of Giving Zero Damns. She’s the Queen of Giving Negative Damns. She doesn’t give a damn so hard that she went back in time and took back two times when she did give a damn — going 70 mph in a 55 and RSVP’ing to a wedding and then not showing up. Point is, Shonda don’t care. She’s going to keep the surprises coming, and it seems like this is going to be a damn good season.
All righty, was anyone else shocked by what Olivia did? Discuss in the comment section below.