Scandal Season Premiere Review: “Randy, Red, Superfreak, and Julia” (4×01)

Scandal's fourth season premiere is something of re-pilot, and it functions that way for the bulk of its running time. When we first meet Olivia again, she's living it up on a private island “a hundred miles off the coast of Zanzibar,” with Jake. She's completely off the grid and pretending to be happy. The entire sequence is completely over the top, the light so bright, the island so idyllic, and it all serves to underscore just how much Olivia is lying to herself. Even when she's actually living her fantasy of freedom, it's still a fake, constructed thing.

The rest of the episode is an exercise in getting Olivia Pope back in the game. She returns to Washington upon receiving news, from Quinn, of Harrison's death. Her desire to plan a funeral for him leads to her re-recruiting the old team one by one. Quinn is still at the office, being awful and spending her time tracking down Olivia. Huck is working as a tech repairman, and going by the name Randy; he's in worse shape even than when we last saw him, as a result of what he sees as Olivia's abandonment of him. And Abby is the new White House Press Secretary.

Honestly, I completely forgot that Columbus Short was being written off the show, and even in an episode devoted to Harrison's funeral, I can't say that I miss the character at all. He never came to life the way the other characters did. The end of the last season was the first real attempt to give him a storyline, but even that fizzled out into anticlimax as a result of the actor's off-screen complications. All the overwrought emotion of sending him off, then, doesn't have quite the impact that the script wants it to, despite the actors' best efforts.

More successful is the show's use of the classic case-of-the-week structure as a device to bring Olivia back into the fold. Season three took many, many steps away from the idea of “white-hatted gladiators,” so now is as good a time as any for both Olivia and the show to emphatically restate their purpose. The case itself is typical Scandal: Olivia gets a call from a senator, who is afraid she has accidentally killed another senator. Instead, it turns out the man attempted to rape her congressional aide. That's all it takes; the firebrand Olivia we know and love is back, even is she is flying solo for the time being.

Olivia is on her own in more ways than one. The team has scattered, yes, but there's also the question of Fitz, still racked with grief over his son's death, and busy trying to salvage his presidency at the same time. Plus he has to deal with Mellie, who is in even worse shape than he, drunk all the time, even more drunk and prone to cruel soliloquy than usual. Bellamy Young sells both the comedic and dramatic aspects of the performance, as always, and when the two have a frank conversation about the past several months, it's Young who shines.

The Grants, and especially the stuff with Olivia and Fitz, can be the most tiring part of any given Scandal episode, so it's nice to see the Grants with some of the best material for once. Jake is still tiresome, a cipher, and he's the one to resurrect the godforsaken love triangle, as well, taking Olivia's obsession with returning to work as a secret signal of her pining for Fitz, because of course. Jake is also a reminder of the show's obsession with B-613, as is David Rosen, and frankly, the less said about evil secret organizations at this point, the better.

So basically, the premiere boils down to Olivia returning after a prolonged absence. She can't function without her world, and it can't function without her, either. The episode, then, becomes an exercise in playing around with everyone's newfound roles, but also setting up the new status quo, which of course is just the old status quo. The more things change, the more they stay the same, or something.

Scandal is as its best when it's at fever pitch, firing on all cylinders. Quiet reflection is not its strong suit, but that's kind of what this episode aims at for much of the time. Still, after the tumultuous run of the second half of season three, a solid palate-cleanser was in order. With everyone back in place, and Olivia where she belongs, expect season four to take off properly in no time at all.

Stray Observation

– Perd Hapley makes another appearance on Scandal! I feel bad for the actor, but through no fault of his own, it takes me out of the moment every single time.

– Olivia's relationship to Huck has always provided a nice emotional throughline for the series, and this week is no exception.

– Portia de Rossi debuts as the RNC chairwoman, and as a rival for Cyrus. She doesn't do much beyond be generically bitchy this evening, but then, neither does Cyrus. Again, once a wrinkle or seven gets thrown in here, everyone and everything is bound to become much more exciting.