I stepped away from reviewing Scandal for the past couple of weeks. The reason for that is really clear: I review TVD and have a lot of shows to watch on Thursdays. Time got the best of me. But after watching tonight’s episode, I just had to pop in for just a few, short comments.

In a week that seems riddled with flashback episodes, beginning with the penultimate Secret Circle, then Revenge, tonight’s Vampire Diaries, and now this…I may have been wrong about which show gets the formula correct. I still remain that Secret Circle does it best, but Scandal truly made something very meticulous, very mysterious, and ultimately quite seductive.

I mean that almost too literally, in the coitus scene between Olivia and Fitz. My brain was probably melted from both CW finales, but I did not see that little twist coming. And I certainly did not expect for Amanda Tanner to be working with Billy.

Speaking of Billy, can we mention just how hilarious the scene where he stabbed Gideon was? First, Scandal should stop trying to do scenes like that. It just cannot do them. It’s absolutely awful at doing them, in fact. Downright embarrassingly. Second, I’m kind of disappointed that one of the more intriguing aspects of this series (the media) is out. Personally, I thought it was quite stupid for Gideon to make threats to the boyfriend of the girl who just showed up dead, but whatever. Guess we’ll have to move passed that.

Overall, this episode was actually quite direly needed. I’ve been questioning how we were supposed to take the relationship between Olivia and Fitz seriously in the least, but this episode helped display it beautifully and thusly (and concisely) in terms that make sense. And now that we know how the prez got the sympathy vote, the First Lady is even more cray cray.

Ultimately, this is a series of the craziness that is this mistress (kind of) plot — and I’m extremely excited to see how it all blows up next week, when Olivia and co. might only have one option: to tell the truth.

Besides, how great was it to not have to suffer through a case of the week?

Image source: SpoilerTV