Wait, so I'll just wish I'm dead?
...taking the lead investigating the case of James Novak's murder. The DC police suspect a carjacking, and David is leading the case, ostensibly because James was the White House Press Secretary. Olivia is busy consoling Cyrus, who must have only just gotten the news after getting into the office. Cy's assistant, Ethan, will spend the episode taking the brunt of everyone's rage and grief. He starts by getting chucked out of Cy's office for crying. Poor Ethan.
We flash back, as we will throughout the episode, to the beginning of Cy and James' unlikely relationship. It starts, as all unlikely relationships do, in a bar. James, with slightly less hair product and a spiffy leather jacket, approaches Cyrus during Fitz's first Presidential campaign. Cy is newly divorced from his wife, still sporting atrocious facial hair, and tries to dismiss James' questions and past work. James points out that Cy remembers his work's title, the magazine it was published in, and the last paragraph. Must have been, at least, a little interesting. Oh, and when you have a neck beard, you don't get to criticize James' leather.
We return to present day, with Fitz insisting that he'll suspend his campaign a few days. After all, his Chief of Staff is a wreck, and respect must be shown. Mellie informs them that the anti-gun lobby will be making hay, and that Fitz can't let an opportunity to woo the gun lobby go by, especially since he was scheduled to be in Texas wooing them. Fitz puts his foot down- he won't politicize James' death. Langston, that conniving bitch, calls to inform Fitz that she too will be suspending his campaign in "solidarity". That word alone should have tipped Team Fitz off. Conservatives don't do solidarity, as that term literally comes from the first days of union organizing.
Adnan and Mama Pope are hitting a rocky patch, when Mama Pope takes Adnan's money for her retainer, and then informs Adnan that she doesn't actually do the dirty work. Mama doesn't make bombs. She makes money. And she does not take the fall. That's some poor sap's job. So, Adnan and Mama will go look for a fall guy. They're not the only ones.
Charlie and Quinn are hard at work, earning their government pensions, by introducing themselves to one Lance Something. They'll make a deal with him: he takes the fall for murdering James, and as a federal inmate, he'll get the new liver he needs to live. The DC cops pick him up on a tip. When he makes himself look ridiculously guilty, they want to arrest. Only David wants to wait. Until ballistics comes in. He wants this done right, no questions asked.
While the replacement Press Secretary completely fumbles a briefing, Olivia notices that one of the reporters is missing- Vanessa Chandler, the reporter she already knew was working with David Rosen. She gets to her office, to be informed by Harrison that Shelby, aka NSA girl, is also missing. So Olivia is on the trail. And who does she call? Jake, who is dressed for gardening. Sure, he'll look into it. As soon as he's done burying the bodies in the woods. Literally.
On it, sweetie
Abby finds David walking back to his office, begs to know if this is more than a carjacking. He stonewalls her, begging her to let him work on this case in peace. Like Cy, he just wants to do his job today.
Poor Ethan. He's done everything he can to keep Cy happy, including letting Cy yell at him over errors. "A simple 'I failed you' will do!" Cy shouts. After kicking out Ethan, Olivia watches as Cy fumes in his office, told to take a break but furious because he's found out that Langston is campaigning after all. He begs Olivia to let him work through this, and she grudgingly does. So they march to the Oval, where he and Fitz decide that Mellie and Andrew will go down to Texas to get the gun lobby's endorsement. But how do they make sure Mellie and Andrew will get there first? That's where Fitz comes in.
Wow, what a great non-maternity maternity shirt!
Langston and Bergen are on their way to Air Force 2. With Langston raving that Fitz has dared, dared! to regulate the purchase of lethal weapons, they find out that AF2 has been grounded. So, Leo Bergen will have to make some phone calls. But Andrew and Mellie will still get there first. Expect to see Langston going to the mattresses, starting next week.
Flashing back to Fitz's Presidential Campaign, we see James creep up to Cy's seat on the bus, and pretty much declare to Cy that he knows Cy is gay. Cy, with a newly shaven face, hushes James and refuses to admit anything. In the next flashback, we see Cy in a state of bliss others take drugs to induce while he listens to yet another repeat of Fitz's stump speech. When James joins him and points out how cute this is, Cy is flustered. He tries to explain that seeing another man is a rare indulgence for him. James counters by telling Cy he's not tiramisu (Of course not. Jake is tiramisu.). James is about to leave when Cy grabs him and they share a passionate kiss.
Huck is instructed to go through the Langston file in Olivia's safe, chasing down loose ends. Instead, Huck realizes that his in-safe camera might tell them more, which it does. Olivia, surprised to learn her safe has its own TV channel, is further surprised to learn that it was Quinn who broke in, and went right for the Langston file. Which means...
That she has to storm to Acme Limited to buy some paper. Jake tries to stay calm while Olivia has a screaming fit in Command's office, which she accessed way too easily. She brushes away his blasé explanation for the deaths, telling him he's making bad things happen to good people, and that's the opposite of what he was supposed to be doing. Still thinking Jake hasn't changed, she demands to know who forced Jake to do this. Jake was supposed to change B-613, keep it from doing evil. But Jake shocks Olivia by standing up and declaring it was his call, he's Command now. He didn't drag someone out of a hole in the ground and put a gun in his hand. He grabbed his own gun, and went and did this himself. That is his new job, and he is now firmly committed to it. He urges Olivia to accept the carjacking theory. Because bad things happen to good people. All the time.
Mama Pope and Adnan meet with middlemen who work for someone named Ivan, who apparently didn't think this meeting was important enough to come himself. Mama Pope gets all "Lean In", shooting a middleman and sending the other back to Ivan, demanding to speak to Ivan himself. Adnan thought crime would be more fun, and less dead bodies in her hotel room. Question- who gets rid of the body? I mean, really, who gets rid of the bodies on this show?
Cy seems a little better, until he walks into his condolence-flowers-filled office. He flashes back to an early argument with James, right before Fitz's inaugural ball. James is crying and angry that Cy won't come out to Fitz and take him to the ball. Literally, James is Cinderella. Cy accuses James of being dramatic and trying to force Cy to come out. James doesn't want to be a dirty secret. He wants to be out in the open, because they are in a real relationship, and love each other, and not having a tawdry affair.
Adnan briefly thinks of asking for help from Harrison in a parking garage. A car taking off behind her convinces her to disappear. Harrison is confused. Jake barges into David's office, offering to literally put James' car in Lance's apartment so David will arrest the guy already. David, with equal parts fear and grief explains that if he rushes the fake investigation, he'll make the case look suspicious. Jake lets him live, but tells him his patience has limits.
Olivia meets Daddy Pope at their usual bench. Like Baby in Dirty Dancing confronting her Dad about her affair with Johnny, Olivia needs her Dad to be real with her for a minute. So he is. Maybe even more real than he should have been. Olivia explains what she knows to him. Daddy Pope says "Oh, that," because he already knows and has no doubt dealt with much worse. Daddy Pope explains the difference between killing on orders and ordering other people to kill. It puts you on a separate plane from the rest of existence, a place called "being the hand of God". And that responsibility, that knowledge of what you can do and what you're supposed to do it for, is punishment enough for Jake's crimes.
Am I done being your Dad? Because I've got revenge stuff to do.
Olivia wants to know why we even have democracy, since powerful institutions have no accountability to the people in the end anyway. Why bother trying to help people, get someone elected who can make a difference- if completely secret, powerful, and unaccountable forces can nix anything you want to do for their own reasons?
Daddy Pope tells her, everyone is worth saving. Even monsters. Even demons. He leaves after telling her that it's her job to save them. After telling her the monsters are really tormented souls, he tells her to go heal them. Daddy Pope always shines in these moments when he's explaining how the shadow world he lives in works.
Mellie and Andrew have target shooting practice, which Andrew isn't good at. Mellie aces it, implying that she's in constant practice for the day when she gets to shoot a real person and get away with it. She is, after all, a Junior World champion in target shooting. Mellie's great accomplishments are from before her marriage. She got married, and had to devote herself to Fitz's accomplishments. Which she does later that day with the actual gun lobbyist, offering a sympathetic speech in exchange for them considering an endorsement. Fitz is pleased with the news, but doesn't need to thank Mellie himself. When Andrew does it for him, the grateful smile on Mellie's face is just painful. No matter how badly he treats her, any little recognition of how useful she is means the world to her.
Junior World Champion
A flashback is paired with present day. Four years ago, Cy found himself unable to come out to Fitz in the Oval Office, telling him only that he was seeing a journalist, and that he was in love, and very happy. Fitz, to his credit, is genuinely happy for Cy. In the completely clueless way he has, Fitz has no idea the journalist is a he, or that Cy is even gay. In the present day, Fitz and Cy go over the gun lobby's terms, and Cy rejects them. Reston has killed an intruder raping his wife (at least, that's the public story), and Langston was born with a gun in her vagina. Why not surprise the world with a pro-gun control speech? The past attempt to shoot Fitz and James' death will give him plenty of room to announce a change in position. Fitz hesitates to use James' death for politics, and tells Cy he still has no interest in it. Cy urges him on. We hear the tail end of Fitz's speech.
Andrew and Mellie must have seen it, too. Back down in Texas, Mellie is dead drunk, comparing firearms to alcohol consumption, and her passion for the packing heat turns Andrew on. Drunk and tired of pleasing a man who openly betrays her help for him, she and Andrew make out right then and there. Mellie is definitely not satisfied with breaking the rules once.
Drunk reasoning is awesome when you're in love!
Huck confronts Quinn in her apartment. He puts the toolbox of pain down so he can pin Quinn to a wall and tell her he won't kill her after all. Huck made her this way. He admits that she's good. He decides that Quinn let herself be seen on that camera, that she wants out of B-613 after all. Quinn spits on him. He kisses her. When they finish, she kicks him out. How do you make out with a man who's got your spit on his face? Ew.
Okay, I prefer Charlie
Abby corners David in their bedroom. She demands to know what's really going on. What happens to him happens to her, and she will share in all his pains, dammit. Is it danger or trouble? Danger or trouble? Danger or trouble? David fearfully tells her the truth.
Abby, Harrison, and Huck all show up and Olivia's office. Abby wants Olivia to help David. Harrison wants Olivia to help Adnan. Huck wants Olivia to help Quinn. Olivia decides to visit the Lincoln Memorial. Where David tells her that Lance the Patsy has a mother and a cat. David tells her he just can't bring himself to arrest the guy. Olivia tells him to do it. Olivia needs David to live and fight another day, because he just got an ally who will help him bring all of B-613 down. David points out that taking Jake down for killing the others is not nearly as dangerous as taking down B-613. Olivia tells him that Jake was only doing his job. His job has to be removed. Not Jake. Removing her father from Command didn't change the job. It ended up changing Jake. And Olivia is going to save him. By destroying B-613 itself. They're an army of two. Does this mean the Gladiators won't be involved?
Does this mean that every other plot line on the show is secondary to this? Sometimes, I don't know what the focus of the show is. Is it Fitz and Olivia's impossible dream of love? Can't be, because Olivia has declared that Vermont is never going to happen. Is it giving Fitz the clean election victory he's wanted to end his Daddy-did-everything-for-me issues? Olivia nixed that too by involving Fitz in the Langston cover-up. So is this the purpose of the show? Olivia will try to save Jake from monster-hood, because she couldn't save her father?
Olivia goes to Cy, to tell him privately that David has arrested James' killer. Cy asks Olivia, are they sure it was a carjacking? Olivia tells him in gooey, soft tones that they're sure, it was a carjacking. Is Cy plagued with the possibility James was killed to cover up Daniel Douglas' murder too? Is Olivia really convincing him it was a coincidence? This is the man who was on to Langston's double dealings. Does he really believe James is dead for no reason? We don't know.
Cy decides to announce to the press himself that the police have arrested his husband's killer. Olivia, horrified, tries to persuade him not to. But somebody's going to have to tackle Cy to keep him from that podium. Where Cy breaks down in front of the press, while remembering how he came out to the world and his boss at a State Dinner, after rescuing James from the outside the velvet rope, marching him out to the dance floor, and having a romantic dance in front of all. Mellie's face says that she knew the whole time. Fitz is just realizing someone could be totally gay right under his nose.
So Langston has now claimed three more lives. Three decent people had to die to cover up her violent, homophobic rage. She gets to go on thinking that God loves her, and it's all Satan's fault. She's no longer even feeling guilty.
Back at James' murder, we see that he was still alive after David scurried away like a mouse. Jake walks up to him struggling to move, and turns him over. Jake apologizes for being so sloppy with James' shot. But Jake needs James' death to look sloppy. The others will just disappear, but James is too well-known for that to happen. So Jake had to make his death hurt and last a bit. But Jake will stay to the end. Because James doesn't deserve to die, so Jake won't let him die alone. Jake reassures James that no harm will come to James' daughter, that she is off limits. There's no way to know if James understands this. As the life fades from James' face and he stops struggling, Jake looks off into the distance. He is Command now.
Can he be saved? Does he even want to be?
No comments:
Post a Comment