Scandal Review: “Honor Thy Father” (4×18)

Show of hands: who here still actually cares about B-613? Even a little, I mean. Because do you remember how sorta fun last Scandal was? Well we’re back to B-613 big time now. Everyone get in on a collective UGH with me.

UGH.

To fully explain how lame this episode is I’ll have to give away the twist right at the front. Rosen, Quinn, Huck and Charlie round up a bunch of (former? current but laying low? who knows?) B-613 agents/known associates of Jake, who is decidedly not playing along with their scheme to take down the evil organization once and for all. So all of the agents get killed, presumably by Jake, upon whom Charlie walks in as he’s surrounded by their dead bodies; this causes Rosen’s whole case to fall apart. Except that it turns out that Jake didn’t kill them after all, and Rosen’s assistant Holly is secret B-613 and has been on to them all the whole time. Jake knew that and he’s been working secretly with Olivia the whole time, and Rosen will just have to learn to trust him, which means literally never trusting him.

Folks, this is what I like to call “square one”. The plot of this episode is a misdirect, meant to call into question the audience’s loyalty to, and perhaps affection for, Jake Ballard, before another OMFG twist pulling the rug out from us while simultaneously reaffirming our loyalty to, and perhaps affection for, Jake Ballard. This narrative bait-and-switch is lazy, but we can forgive lazy. But it also assumes an undue amount of interest in Jake, who is such a milquetoast character by now, pliable to whatever needs the plot has of him, that it’s not even that unbelievable or shocking that he would turn coat at the last minute and decide that B-613 is maybe worth keeping around after all.

This is, after all, the man who killed James Novak. A fact that David Rosen fucking knows yet is still ready to pardon Jake for. And yes, everyone is a terrible person, blah blah blah. But given this and given also the fact that Huck still killed an innocent girl two weeks ago and we’re still totally unperturbed by this fact and in fact are cracking jokes about, I’m a little wary of the show’s moral scales vis a vis taking down terrorist organizations and where exactly black and white fall on the landscape. Put more simply: Fuck your white hats.

A slippery moral scale doesn’t damn a show in and of itself, but it can be the final nail in the coffin of an otherwise dull or poorly made episode, and “Honor Thy Father” is both. Never mind the B-613 plot winding us in circle so that we can end up at exactly the damn place we started. Because we also spend the an inordinate amount of time with Mellie’s half-sister Harmony, who is dug up from the bogs of some southern bayou for vetting by the ever-wonderful Lizzie Bear. Harmony is a walking cliché who injects some obvious drama into Fitz and Mellie’s new working relationship, and the upshot is that Ftiz needs to learn to start playing the role of First Gentleman. Never mind that he is an acting president. Never mind that Mellie is planning a Senate run for a state in which she does not currently reside. These are minor obstacles. (At least Cyrus is open about the fact that she doesn’t have a shot in hell—but then Cyrus is openly bitter about most things these days.) Their dinner scene itself is entertaining in the way that we’ve made awkwardness its own form of entertainment in our modern lives, and the central idea of what Mellie’s doing is particularly interesting given Hillary Clinton’s now-official run for the Whie House—but it doesn’t exactly have the makings of a B-plot, especially not in an episode that’s in desperate need of a lively one to anchor the duller season-arc proceedings.

There is also of course the case of the week. This time Olivia works for Congressman Nicholas Reed, whose father is on death row for a murder that Nicholas doesn’t believe he committed. (Spoiler alert: Nicholas did the murder and his father is taking the fall.) There is a moment of unintentional (at least I hope it’s unintentional…) hilarity here, when, despite the fact the elder Reed does not act even remotely like an innocent man, Olivia decides for no good reason that he is and goes HAM on the case. Something something Olivia is trusting her gut. She turns out to be right, but based on literally no information that was available to her, and in service of a perfunctory, Law & Order style twist.

I don’t know, guys. Maybe I’m just burnt out on the network season model. But “Run” was so inventive and engaging, and an indication that Scandal is still capable of some awe-inspiring television. So why am I so bored?

Stray Observations:

With a title like “Honor Thy Father” one expects Rowan, and sure enough he shows up at episode’s end. Here’s hoping Joe Morton gives the show the kick in the ass it needs, a task that he’s generally up to.

Seriously though, Mellie and Harmony’s relationship is dredged right out of some imaginary book called “101 Television Clichés For When You Don’t Know What to Write Next.”