'Scandal' Recap: Jake Recruits Huck To Help Him Take Down Command; Liv Defends A Sexting Senator

by UInterviewOctober 25, 2013, 12:00 amNews >

Scandal’s Anthony Weiner-inspired episode “Say Hello to My Little Friend” found the Gladiators working for a sexting-addicted senator while Huck and Jake team up to take down Command.

Jake (Scott Foley) pleads with Liv (Kerry Washington) to help him take Command (Joe Morton), aka her father, down, but she refuses. She’s afraid of her father, and says she’d rather be kept in the dark. Just when Jake kicks his arguments into high gear, Liv gets a call from a dancing Harrison (Columbus Short): they have a client. Senator Meyers is on trial for the murder of his sexting partner, Desiree Oaks. He insists he didn’t commit the crime, and tells his wife and the Pope & Associates team that Desiree Oaks was his only digital mistress.

The trial pits David Rosen (Joshua Malina) against possible-sweetheart Abby (Darby Stanchfield), and at first it looks like David might have the upper hand. Not only does he have the texts to prove the Senator had a dishonorable relationship with Ms. Oaks, but he also has a long line of other women who received inappropriate texts from the senator, each more disturbing and disgusting than the last. To fight back, Abby, Quinn (Katie Lowes) and Harrison construct a case against the victim’s credibility.

They have a problem, however, when their star witness (and the senator’s alibi for the crime), the senator’s forgiving wife, disappears. She didn’t know about all the other women, and, when a story comes out that Senator Meyers had exchanged lewd texts with a woman just the other day, she was out of there. Her husband can burn in hell for all she cares. Liv finds her and convinces her to testify and she can express her real hatred for her husband on the stand – it is the truth, after all. Mrs. Meyer’s scathing testimony gets her husband off the hook, but then Liv realizes: it was her that killed Desiree. She didn’t know there were others, and thought that she could kill Desiree and fix her marriage.

In the White House, Mellie (Bellamy Young) inadvertently gives a democratic candidate for President, Josephine Marcus (Lisa Kudrow) the bump of a lifetime when she makes an offhand remark insulting the woman that gets picked up by every reporter in town. Cyrus (Jeff Perry) sends an aid to go to Marcus’ hometown and dig up dirt on the potential Democratic Presidential Nominee. The aid comes back with cowboy boots and a juicy clue: Marcus walked into a hospital pregnant as a teen, and walked out without a baby.

Fitz (Tony Goldwyn) is shaken when he sees that Pete Foster (the pilot who Command had Huck kill in last week’s episode) was found dead. Fitz is personally affected, obviously the two had ties in Operation Remington, and when he finds out that Foster is being denied a proper funeral, he pulls some strings at Veteran’s Affairs. Huck (Guillermo Diaz) also attends the funeral. After a confrontational visit from Jake, Huck is curious to find out why exactly Command had him kill Foster. When he sees the President at the funeral, he knows something’s up. Jake has an ally after all.

Command, on the other hand, is not having the best day. When Cyrus sees a story about Fitz attending Foster’s funeral, he goes straight to Command. Jake listens in on their conversation, but can’t hear much. What he does hear, however, links Foster and Fitz. He does a little digging and finds out that there is a mission missing from Foster’s file, but when he brings his evidence to Liv, she still doesn’t want to hear it. Huck, however, does. After reading the file and talking to Jake, Huck is all in on Operation Kill Command. By the end of the episode, Liv appears to be on board too (she is also on board to make out with Jake over a glass of wine).

In other couple news, Abby and David are officially back together and Huck confronts Quinn about her obsession with his ‘addiction’ to ‘whiskey’ (his AA codeword for killing). He warns her that she should get out of the torturing business while she still can.

Finally, the episode ended on a huge cliffhanger: after Foster’s funeral, Fitz heads straight for Command. He tells Command it’s high time they caught up.

Scandal airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. on ABC.