If last week's episode was titled "The Lawn Chair", then this week's should have been called "The Sofa Cushion". Instead, the title just happens to be Huck's real, original, legal name. The name his now-sympathetic ex-wife knows him by.
Susan Ross's star rises, and her rise shows Leo Bergen's style versus Olivia Pope's in grooming and motivating candidates. Leo works best with people already dedicated to getting to the top any way they have to. Olivia is a master of motivation as well as strategy. She works with good people to remind them that the game will eventually pay off. Susan Ross's ordeal also shows Abby making the choice to fire her own live-in boyfriend rather than go down with him should Susan fail to be sworn in. Abby's been in the weakest position for too long this season; she's starting to insist that her friends treat her like a friend, and her consultant treat her like a client.
One of the show's major themes is that power and its acquisition erode the sense of right and wrong and separate elected leaders from the people they supposedly wanted to serve and help in the first place. The more power you want, the more you screw over the people whose votes you need. The more power you get, the more you can decide what your constituents really need yourself. The show also stresses that the public image of you can get you power or take it away. So, while voters don't always know what their elected leaders are actually doing on their behalf, voters know how those leaders look and seem.
As Susan Ross demonstrates, if you have an ugly, snorting awkward laugh that emerges while you babble about how impressed you are with your own rise to prominence, naughtily own the laugh and act humble about what the President is actually supposed to do in front of the Senate. If Leo pushes you to memorize every foreign leader's name and every doomsday scenario, walk out until Olivia can step in to remind you that fear of failure is keeping you from helping your fellow Americans.
Susan has gone from this:
Can we get the pointer back?
To this:
Someone discovered conditioner!
With the exile of Josie Marcus back to Montana, Susan Ross has emerged as the candidate Olivia wishes all of America had, But she lacks Josie's self-confidence and calm, Josie was near perfect for an eventual President, if it wasn't for her secret sister-daughter. It's unclear if Susan Ross is really ready to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Especially when the President is a slightly suicidal alcoholic. But, she does learn how to convince a Senate Committee that she can be President.
And Fitz learns that he really made a boo boo invading West Angola. His public reputation is in shatters, which Olivia tries to have Abby and Cy point out to him. Fitz decides that Olivia isn't allowed to skulk across the room. He fought a war for her and if he wants to parade into her personal space and provoke Olivia's deer-in-the-headlights look again, he will, goddammit. Olivia has to spell it out personally for him, shattering both his political and personal hubris. Invading West Angola after telling the world you weren't going to, and then withdrawing right away so everyone knows it was a terrible idea has crippled him more than Andrew's machinations ever could.
When Fitz makes everything right with the opposition party in the Senate, Susan's way is paved, and her kid makes a great stand for a swearing-in book. Is there going to be an episode where she learns how limiting it is to be a politician's daughter, like little Karen Grant had to learn?
While Susan is trying to get a job she didn't actually want, Leo and Abby try to get her there until Susan makes it obvious he's not the guy for the job of prepping Susan. Sure, it was a great idea to make the laugh something the American People could adore about her. But is the Senate really going to grill her on obscure leaders' names? Can't Leo just tell her that the answer to Putin invading Belarus is drone strikes? Susan scurries out, convinced that the Presidency is probably the worst job ever.
Leo and Abby show just how used to each other they are: Leo is just settling into bed and his night retainer when Abby just has to fire him from his coaching gig. He's mad that Abby doesn't trust him to turn around even someone as ill-prepared as Susan. It's not about trust, though. Sometimes the job isn't impossible. Sometimes it just requires someone else's skills, and Leo isn't above acknowledging that, or finding it sexy that his girlfriend can just fire people. Especially if she's wearing some kinky boots while firing him.
Olivia doesn't just get her mojo back helping Susan. Home is where she was kidnapped from in the first place. So, Olivia seeks refuge from a place that scares the shit out of her. Olivia got to return home, where she boozes it up in the fetal position on the floor, avoiding the still wine-stained sofa cushion.
I don't even think that's red wine.
She really should have just checked herself into a spa retreat. Her gun-toting stay-cation is a real bummer. No wonder she interrupts her landlord's attempted eviction and take's on Rose's case of the Neighbor Who Olivia Knows Is Already Dead. Rose seethes at the police's refusal to take her missing person case for neighbor Lois seriously. Olivia, who saw Lois shot in the chest, doesn't just take the case out of compassion for the elderly woman who aided her friends in tracking her kidnappers. She also needs the closure of being able to do the only thing for Lois she still can; get the woman buried.
Huck and Quinn are stunned when she appears at Gladiator HQ power-dressed. But they're willing to track Lois' body down via the ambulance used to whisk her and Olivia away.
Get me some closure, people!
Huck truly meant to aid in the search, but has to hand it off to Quinn, who chirpily agrees to let Huck keep secret that he, Rosen and Jake have to scurry around trying to keep B-613 a secret. Rosen, in a fit of public service, has decided to have the AG's version of office hours. The public can just come in and ask him to prosecute something. It's cranks, and Rosen is wondering if maybe he should just continue to get cases from Olivia Pope. Holly the secretary enjoys both the entertaining crackpots and Rosen's griping about said crackpots.
Holly gets a buck for every conspiracy that involves Reality Television
Rosen would love it if someone came in with a real case for a real injustice. Until, that is, someone does. The voice is familiar at first, and then the face. Kim! With files detailing actions of something called B-613! She explains to Rosen that her ex-husband, Diego Munoz, was an operative there, and is the source of the files. Rosen recognizes his own file folders, especially when Kim explains that they're color-coded. Little tip: when you meticulously organize secret files of heinous crimes, make sure they never end up back on your official desk.
Rosen, to feel safe, runs to the guy who has threatened his life the most: Jake. He hasn't had much to do since Olivia returned to DC at the beginning of the season. He buried his boredom in investigating Rowan, then frantically searched for Olivia when she was kidnapped. He tried to be Olivia's life coach, but she wasn't interested. Now, his new passion in life is declaring that they're all screwed, and trying to figure out who Diego Munoz is. Good thing Diego is right there, going by the name of Huck now. He sheepishly admits to his real name, and that he did, indeed, give Kim B-613 files to prove that he didn't abandon her after all.
The only solution Jake and Rosen can come up with is for Huck to officially perjure himself. Rosen will set up a deposition; Huck, as Diego, will simply tell Rosen he lied. Dinner with Kim and Javi demonstrates just what he'll lose after lying. It's a picture perfect night, a night they should have had together many times. And perjury will ruin his chances of it ever happening again.
It's a consequence that Huck seems willing to live with. Rosen's a good actor, never betraying he actually knows much more in front of Kim at the deposition. With the three of them cozily around a table, Huck tries not to confirm anything in the files, or anything Kim reminds him of. But no one, not even Huck, can keep The Hole to himself. The Hole must be respected. The Hole must be shared. It's The Hole, and it's complete awfulness that compels Huck to blurt out every horrible detail of living in underground, cramped pitch blackness for, what, months?
The key is to have a routine, even if you have no way of telling time. Just repeating your routine over and over again will make it seem like you're counting days. First, measure the hole every time you wake. If it's the same size it was the "day" before, you're still sane. Pretend to eat. Imagination is key, especially the ability to imagine walking and sunsets. The erosion of time must erode hope of release in the future. So each "day's" routine is all there is, and must suffice. Huck can't help crying a little during his recitation. And, Rosen can't help realizing what Huck is telling him to do.
Rosen looks bitterly defeated for a second. But he's taken on hopeless crusades that turned out to be true after all. He's known Huck for a while. He's known Huck was hopelessly damaged from B-613. And he knows now that he can do something about it. For Huck. Jake is furious, and none of them know how to publicly reveal the existence of an agency they clandestinely killed without prison sentences for everyone. But Huck's reveal of just how much he has suffered just can't be ignored.
Thanks to Rose supplying a serial number for a synthetic hip, Quinn eventually finds Lois' body, but only after making Huck reveal why she's got to tell Charlie to destroy any B-613 files he's got. Olivia eventually gets a deeper truth from Rose about her years-long relationship with Lois, realizing that she's really got a grieving lover. Rose can't handle Lois disappearing from her life again. The first separation was hard enough. Which makes any closure she can deliver Rose even more important. Does Rose's story of a a forty-year wait for the love of her life affect how Olivia feels about Fitz? Does Olivia wonder if it's better to have the love who's available now, and wonderful, or wait for the man who's been, at best, a selfish bastard?
Olivia must have made funeral arrangements as well as found Lois' body in a Maryland morgue. But the story she gives is fake. And reassuring. Lois died without pain, on what must have been a quick walk around town. The kind you leave your wallet at home for, because looking at trees on a bench doesn't require one. Lois died looking at trees in a park. She died without pain or suffering, and it was quick. Rose can believe her friend died of natural causes, and start to grieve properly. All questions of property and the apartment can be resolved with respect to the deceased. And Olivia can realize that it's time to get back on her couch. I just hope her sofa cushion hasn't been discontinued so she can order a replacement.
Olivia back with her own besties
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