“You Can’t Take Command” is the sort of finale that, as you’re watching it, is pretty damn entertaining. But the second it’s over (and, really, during any commercial break or even just a pause in the episode’s action), and you think about any of its components in any sort of detail, the whole thing threatens to fall apart. It coasts along on momentum, but then, at a crucial narrative peak, the momentum comes crashing to a halt. The show stops and forces you to think about what it’s doing—and all that anyone can be expected to think is, “wow, that was stupid.”
None of that is to say I hated “You Can’t Take Command.” In fact, I found much of it way more tolerable than the past several episodes of the season. (I certainly didn’t hate it as much as The A.V. Club’s Joshua Alston, for instance.) The episode coasts along a lot more smoothly, and in more entertaining fashion because it actually has an endgame to play out. We are past the point of endless table setting for a foregone conclusion, and that helps the show tremendously.
For instance, take the way the episode immediately drops the other shoe. Leave aside that Rowan’s fake name is Damascus; we, at this point, can take for granted that everyone on Scandal is a fucking idiot. The shit-eating grin on Joe Morton’s face as he hands Mellie the photos of her and Andrew, along with the Remington file, is pure gold. And how great that Mellie is finally, if against her will, placed smack center in the middle of all this B-613 shit. In other words, she is finally granted a role in the show proper, rather than shunted off to some narrative offshoot reserved just for her. (Like, just spit-balling here, an extremely improbable run for Senate in a state in which she does not reside.)
The script even does one better by drawing parallels between Mellie and Olivia, a concept that is always extremely welcome. Cyrus and Maya each tell them, respectively, how self-centered they are; how they construct dramas surrounding themselves, and other people are merely actors in those dramas. Never mind that everyone lives in her own drama.
This, ultimately, is the undoing of Olivia’s grand scheme to take down her father. No one knows who Rowan is. You can’t take Command, the logic goes, because there may as well not be a Command. Eli Pope is a doddering curator at the Smithsonian, full stop. “You Can’t Take Command” goes full-on “darkest before the dawn” here, as Rowan, in short order, murders the entire grand jury and even the stenographer too; threatens David Rosen with Abby’s life, leading to Jake and Olivia’s imprisonment (actually Cyrus does this, about which more in the strays); and systematically eliminates every person on earth who can name him as Rowan, even going so far as to offer Maya her freedom in exchange for her silence.
What a setup, right? The CIA is fully aware of B-613, and while Director Lowry seems to have been unaware of how out of hand it’s become, she’s powerless before Rowan and Cyrus to do anything about it. Like that, Rowan appears invincible.
And then Olivia and Jake just kind of win. They trace the money from the Smithsonian that Eli Pope has been funneling to B-613, and they nail the doddering old curator for embezzlement. They even visit him in jail and gloat.
I probably don’t need to explain why this is stupid. This is where the episode screeches to a halt, and it never quite recovers. To the extent that Rowan is actually eliminated here, what an anticlimax! All of this season has led to a financial technicality? He’s in regular-people prison, for a white-collar crime? There isn’t even the decency of a final showdown between Olivia and her father? Maya doesn’t have more of an interesting role to play? From the pretty effective groundwork laid in the first half of the episode comes almost nothing of interest or import, and that’s a bummer. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the finale of this season were a disappointment—but to have it come some close to salvaging something worthwhile, and whiff at the last minute, is the real scandal. (Sorry.)
And then there is of course the fact that Rowan hasn’t gone anywhere at all. So this is a false ending, and a disappointing false ending at that. It’s a matter of when, not if, Rowan returns and this whole sloppy mess rears its head once more. If nothing else, this finale and this season might have been an exercise in deck-clearing, freeing the show of the shackles of the B-613 storyline, but they haven’t managed even that.
That’s a shame, because the new status quo suggested by the episode’s final act is an intriguing one in many places, but it’s significantly less intriguing when all indications are that any shifts are temporary, awaiting reversion to the template. Consider the notion that the two most electric scenes in the finale are only tangentially related to B-613, and in fact grow out of the fallout of B-613’s “destruction.” Quinn’s confrontation of Huck, upon realizing that he (totally nonsensically, it should be noted) is still operating under Rowan’s orders, and killed the grand jury, is a unexpectedly cracking payoff to the season’s most frustrating plot thread. “Of course you have a choice. You always have a choice.” Leave it Quinn of all people to be the moral arbiter on this show. “You’re not thinking anymore, you just want to kill.” Katie Lowes’s performance is gripping here, and it’s about damn time the narrative grapples with the fact that Huck is essentially a monster in the employ of Olivia Pope. Fuck your white hats. The only negative about this scene is that it’s such a small part of the episode, and is left on a cliffhanger—one both hopes that Quinn shoots him dead, and yet doesn’t want to put that burden on Quinn. It would have been nicer to see this one laid to rest.
The other great, great scene is Fitz’s confrontation with Mellie. I think he ultimately is being a bit unfair to her, given all that he has done, but the idea that Mellie gave up that grand jury is too much to take for him. The whole last act of this episode is shit hitting in the fan, and it works on that level, allowing the episode to regain at least a little of the momentum it lost in the resolution of the Rowan business. Tony Goldwyn is on fire here, too, which helps tremendously. – “Do you think I’d let you be President after what you did? Pack your bags and get out of my house. Before I throw you out.” There’s a lot of talk on this show about what a great man Fitz is, and while I hate to see Mellie villainized solely to prove that point, it’s not unreasonable to see this as a breaking point for Fitz. That point is further emphasized by the fact that he summarily fires Cyrus, recognizing him finally for the snake that he is. Fitz has been a pawn for much of his life, this season included; perhaps he just has finally decided, no more.
And then there is, of course, that ending. Olivia Pope and Fitzgerald Grant making out on the White House balcony. (In a truly terrible VFX shot, but nonetheless.) The season has teased out their romance in fits and starts, but really this story hasn’t been the focus of the show for some time, and this seems like an odd time to revisit it. That said, it’s impossible not to get giddy at the sheer energy of the scene, and at the song choice, “Here Comes the Sun,” which evokes the metaphor of Jake and Olivia’s arguably more hopeful relationship just as it is abandoned in favor of Fitz and Olivia’s arguably more epic love. As we prepare ourselves for Scandal season five (and beyond, because as we know, Shondaland shows never end), it’s finally time for Fitz and Olivia to stand in the sun.
How long will it last? Other than “not very” the answer is left vague. For all the show’s talk of being the good guys, wearing the white hats, what “You Can’t Take Command” confirms if nothing else is that the very idea of white hats is unattainable. The bad guys will always have one up on our heroes, which is that no matter what awful things our heroes do, there is still a line that they won’t or can’t cross—and the heroes who do cross that line, for whatever reason, are summarily cast out.
This season was a mess, and the episode was too. But there are strands of good ideas, little ideas here and there to explicate. There is fertile ground for future stories, which is half the job of a finale, and is the half that “You Can’t Take Command” is much more successful at. For now I’ll pretend that Olivia just shot Rowan or something, and deal with him again when he inevitably shows up. Out of sight, out of mind.
Stray Observations:
- Cyrus Beene. What a dick this guy is, right? I don’t even recall if his partnership with Rowan was previously known or not, but it wouldn’t have been surprising anyway. His little quip, “I can’t have a soul. If I had one I would never accomplish a thing,” says so much about what he has become, and to an extent what he has always been. (Suddenly that wedding flashback makes more sense in context of the season.) He’s a monster, which we knew already, but certainly for me his threatening of Abby’s life was a bridge too far. It’ll be curious to see what his role his next year—does he go full black hat? Team up with Mellie? Something else?
- Verbatim from my notes: IS OLIVIA POPE ABOUT TO BECOME THE FIRST LADY
- “Susan is a national treasure.” You’re damn right Vice President Artemis is a national treasure.
- Jake tells Olivia that she’s in love with Fitz and he leaves, hopefully for good. The men on this show are always telling Olivia how in love she is with the other men on this show.
- That wraps another season of Scandal. I’m undecided whether I’ll be writing about it again in the fall—I had previously been reluctant to write about this one weekly simply because I don’t think the show is that fertile ground for weekly criticism, and I still feel that way twenty-two episodes later. But we’ll see. As always, the grade below is for the season. The episode gets an entirely too generous 8/10—the whole is certainly less than the sum of the parts here.
Michael Wampler is a graduate of The College of New Jersey, where he completed both B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature. He currently lives and works in Princeton, NJ while he shops around his debut novel and slowly picks away at his second. Favorite shows include Weeds, Lost, Hannibal and Mad Men (among many more). When not watching or writing about television, he enjoys reading, going for runs, and building his record collection.