Scandal Review: "Like Father Like Daughter" (4×04)

Scandal’s fourth season may have gotten off to a bumpy start, but this week’s episode is proof positive that delaying certain story developments can have rewards down the line. Fitz and Olivia’s almost-reunion is by far the strongest scene of the episode, and of the season to date, owing almost entirely to the amount of distance they’ve kept from each other. The encounter has real weight to it, especially Olivia’s confession that she did not go away alone. While Fitz mourned his son, he mourned Olivia as well and nearly killed himself. Olivia went and gallivanted on an island with her boy toy. That’s a decision with crushing implications, and now that the cards are all on the table, we get the chance to fully explore the fallout from Jerry’s death, rather than simply show the aftermath and tiptoe around the emotional damage.

“Like Father Like Daughter” takes a fairly traditional story—child of a broken marriage has issues, stepmom intervenes, mom gets angry—and puts a Scandal-style twist on it. The broken marriage is between the President and the First Lady, and the stepmom is the mistress instead. Oh, and the “issue” is a drunken sex tape starring the President’s daughter. Karen Grant’s decision to slip her Secret Service detail, get wasted at a party, and have a threesome on tape has repercussions that ripple throughout the episode. The least of these is the first, which is that it ruins Jake and Olivia’s date night. But it affects the story in two very significant ways: Karen calls Olivia for help, and that brings Olivia directly back into the White House, where Mellie catches a glimpse of her; and the night’s events cause Fitz to order an internal investigation of the Secret Service, which unearths some peculiarities with agent Tom’s schedule.

In other words, Karen’s wild romp has a direct impact on both character and plot. In “Like Father Like Daughter,” it’s the character scenes that hold the most interest. Mellie is still a wreck when we first see her, but as soon as she sees Olivia, some of her old fire returns, and she basically tackles her in a White House hallway to figure out why she’s there. When Olivia won’t say, Mellie crashes into the Oval Office hurling accusations. Of course she immediately assumes that Fitz is having an affair. Fitz takes the opportunity to dress down Mellie (whom he labels “Smelly Mellie” in the episode’s best line of dialogue by a huge margin), and it’s a cathartic scene for him and for the audience. Mellie has been so subsumed by grief that it has excluded every other aspect of her life, including Fitz. But Mellie’s hatred of Olivia is so powerful, though, that it manages to overtake her grief; her response to the news of the sex tape is to comment that Karen takes after her father, and to leave without a further comment.

It’s only natural, then, that Fitz turns to Olivia in this moment, only to learn that Olivia is perhaps not as committed to him as he is to her. Both Tony Goldwyn and Kerry Washington do amazing work this week; I didn’t realize how much I’d missed them together on screen, especially given how infuriating this pairing can be. That’s even more amazing considering that “The Bleep” focuses on the love triangle between these two and Jake, but at least the love triangle is focused more on Olivia’s decision, and less on Jake and Fitz wagging their dicks at each other. There’s no denying the chemistry the actors have, and their big scene this week is more than worth the price of admission.

The plottier aspects of Karen’s shenanigans are slightly less satisfying. I’m not saying that a teen girl having sex needs to be all seriousness, all the time, but I also wonder how tasteful a perky montage to “I’m Coming Out” is, given the context of this teenage girl getting wasted and having a threesome with two strangers who are also not of age. Eiffel Tower jokes seem somehow out of place. This weird tonal problem persists throughout the episode—Quinn shakes down a teenager outside the Gettysburger in a scene that might as well be ripped from a cartoon. The same is true of the boy’s parents, who are so cartoonishly evil that they decide they’d like to extort money from the president in order to keep the video recording of aforementioned Eiffel Tower-ing a secret. The parents exist as an excuse for Olivia to blow up in her own fit of rage, as a mirror to Fitz’s eventual rage with Jake, and her tirade against them is so satisfying that one wonders why the script feels the need to oversell the parents so much.

The other big movement of the week concerns the death of Jerry Grant, as internal investigation of the Secret Service casts suspicion upon agent Tom. That means we spend some more quality time with B-613, and, you guys, I just can’t anymore with B-613. I don’t care. I don’t care about Jake and Rowan’s feud, I don’t care about Tom the hapless Secret Service agent, I do not care about David Rosen’s guilt trip, and I certainly do not care about these preposterous B-613 “files” that will somehow dismantle an entire government. The story twists and turns some more this episode, until finally, Rowan coerces Tom into framing Jake for Jerry’s death. It’s so convoluted that, even after watching again, I have no idea how it actually works—somehow, Fitz contacts Rowan for his assistance—or how on earth Rowan plans to get away with it. But man, the final moments of this episode are incredibly tense and satisfying anyway, and for just a moment, we’re permitted to forget how interminably dumb B-613 is. There’s something to be said for powerful acting and a pulsating score.

“Like Father Like Daughter” is more notable for what it sets up than for what actually happens within it. We finally have a clear focus for at least the next several episodes, as the various plot threads dangling from last season finally converge and give the season some forward momentum. Between the killer ending, the return of the Mellie we know and love, and the surprisingly welcome return of Fitz and Olivia’s on-again, off-again flirtations, we’re slowly getting back into the groove.

Stray Observations:

-Cyrus goes on a rant at Abby about how secretly she’s just jealous of Olivia, and it must be hard being Olivia anyway, so give her a break, why don’t you? It’s really gross, and isn’t followed up on again. I am 100% Team Abby here—Olivia is great at her job and whatever, but she’s also a masochistic narcissist, like, a lot of the time.

-Speaking of, Cyrus is still sleeping with Michael the sex worker, but there’s no further trajectory on that plot—all decks are cleared for Karen’s crisis.

-I just want to praise SMELLY MELLIE again, especially the off-the-cuff way that Tony Goldwyn delivers the insult mid-rant, as though Fitz thinks it up on the spot. Just a fantastic bit of character-based comedy.

-This episode was definitely called “The Bleep” when I watched it on Thursday night, but apparently it is actually called “Like Father Like Daughter,” which admittedly is a much better title.