Scandal Review: “The Testimony of Diego Munoz” (4×15)

Let me start by saying that while I largely enjoyed this episode, I found it to be sort of all over the place. Take the opening shot, a goofy look at Susan Ross (henceforth Artemis) as she’s prepped to become Vice President. Never mind the outlandish cartoonland politics that are behind this appointment in the first place—outlandish cartoonland politics are Scandal’s bread and butter. What is not generally Scandal’s bread and butter is slapstick humor, and this VP plot is laden with it.

Contrast that to a scene like Huck’s deposition, or any of Olivia’s interactions with Rose—all high drama and devastating sadness. I’ve used the term “tonal whiplash” before in my television writing, usually about Showtime’s Shameless, but man, does the term ever apply here, on an episodic level as well as on a more macro, season level. Consider: besides a token reference to Olivia’s kidnapping and planting the seeds of Artemis, “The Lawn Chair” took place in isolation from the rest of the season.

Meanwhile, “The Testimony of Diego Munoz” entirely ignores the events of “The Lawn Chair,” except where it continues the saga of placing Artemis one heartbeat from the presidency. (By the way, I was right last week—that development could absolutely have begun in the episode and brought us to the same exact place, and would have strengthened both episodes.) And within the episode, we are bounced back and forth between Artemis’s wacky hijinks to B-613 Part Two: The Quickening to Olivia and Rose’s veritable sobfest. With this a cast this large and this many plot balls in the air, it’s inevitable that individual episodes may contain more disparate threads than is appropriate, but rarely has an episode of Scandal veered so wildly within itself.

But concerns about the episode’s structure aside, this is actually pretty entertaining. Like, for as outlandish and out of place as Artemis is in the White House, she’s hilarious, and it’s nice to see the White House crew get to have a little fun for once, rather than being mired in constant drama and espionage. Artemis Pebdani is obviously a gifted comedian, and she steals every scene she’s in. Abby and Leo’s fling gets some play this week too, and while it’s a by-the-numbers office romance plot, it’s still a pleasure to watch. In fact it feels right out The West Wing’s playbook, which is not bad at all.

If super espionage-y Scandal is more your speed, then the writers have you covered this week with Huck and the return of the return of B-613. Remember those files Huck left his wife Kim? She takes them to David Rosen and a whole ordeal ensues. Long story short, David Rosen has decided, white hat planted firmly on head, that he’ll be taking down Rowan’s organization once and for all. But the meat of this story isn’t really the titular testimony (which is delivered in the exact same, overdone cadence that Guillermo Diaz uses in every single scene on this show), but the emotional hit of watching him try to lie about B-613 while moments of his life with Kim flash before his and our eyes. It’s heartbreaking, and manipulative? Sure. But it works, and at the end of the day that’s all that matters.

And then there’s Olivia, who is so walled off from the rest of this show still. She spends the episode trying to locate Lois’s body for Rose, the “where’s the black lady?” lady from two weeks back. This is an interesting plot for Olivia—a case of the week to which she already knows the answer. Instead what’s to be handled is finding a body and providing an appropriate lie for poor Rose, who had been Lois’s secret lover across the decades of their lives. Maybe this episode isn’t so removed from last week’s—the more I think about it, the more Olivia’s story with Rose feels like a further examination of her black identity, as well as her feminine identity. This whole idea of Liv as an outsider, in any of the ways one can imagine her as such, is a key component of the back of the season. Rose’s fate is in many ways a glimpse into the future for Olivia—loving someone from a distance only to lose them abruptly and without reason? Check; Olivia can barely even look at Fitz in the White House, until suddenly she’s yelling at him instead. He finally proved he loved her, but he didn’t do it in the right way. He should have let her die, she doesn’t say, but you can tell she wants to. And just as Lois was killed by a random bullet, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so it goes for anyone in Liv’s orbit. With the life she lives, everyone is a potential casualty. It’s not her own safety she fears for, at least not solely; it’s everyone else’s.

So it’s a scattered episode, sure. But it’s one that eases us further into a back half that (hopefully) will permanently rid of us of B-613. More importantly, it’s a back half that’s treating Olivia seriously as a character independent of her romances, something that’s long been missing from the series. We’ve had a bit of a pause; now I look forward to getting back into high gear.

Stray Observations:

• Let me chime in on Lena Dunham’s wig, which is completely insane looking. I’m looking forward to watching her play a character that will hopefully be more separated from herself than Hannah Horvath is.
• Kim is so fucked, you guys. Somehow or some way she is going to be violently murdered before we’re done here. Bets on whether it’s Rowan or Huck himself?