There was a point during the third episode of Scandal in which I was almost thistired of how much the show was growing into something formulaic. I mean, how many times can we be told that Olivia Pope has her s— together to only be wrong always? You know what I mean? Like, in episode one she completely trusted the president about his affair. In episode two, she thought the supreme court justice was the one who solicited sex.

I suppose this is more of how the situation isn’t as black and white as Olivia thinks it will turn out to be more than how “incorrect” she is, but still. Somehow that was overshadowed by Olivia’s moral compass in the pilot; in the second episode, there wasn’t much of that. But in this episode, it was brought back full force. Olivia gets the client (from Hidden Palms!) off on his current rape charge but makes sure he does time for his previous rape accusation – which was all too real. “We don’t judge,” said the pilot. Well, it seems Olivia thinks she knows what’s best for her clients. And I like that.

Elsewhere, tension between Gideon and Quinn warms up a bit. It’s actually a favorite storyline of mine for two reasons: (A) We get to see how the working of an investigation of a scandal (read that again, I swear it makes sense) plays out on the media side and (B) Because these supporting characters need some sort of characterization. I mean, seriously. They can’t all just be there to regurgitate information.

But finally, the president’s mistress storyline is ramping up like craaazy. For example, who did Amanda call!? And holy crap, there’s a tape of the President and Amanda going at it like monkeys!? But most of all — Amanda Tanner is freakin’ pregnant, y’all!

If you’ve been reading my reviews, you know that I made a huge gasp at the end of this episode — and that’s why. Now, I didn’t watch week-by-week as most of you have, so I don’t know if it was just really predictable and I’m either oblivious or it’s because of watching back to back or if it was actually shocking. Either way, I gasped. Like I said previously this doesn’t happen often for me. So it was a pretty big deal.

And I like it.

This third episode did nothing but make me want to continue watching. It was a very solid episode with great (if sleazy) twists. And I can’t wait to see what the second half of the season entails.