The Breakdown
We start the show with a flashback 5 years earlier. Olivia is at union station talking to homeless Huck, telling him she is going to dinner with her father. Olivia is having dinner with her father (Eli) in turn for him to pay off her student loans. Conversation goes stale and her father calls her out on it and she opens up about her life and her new boyfriend, while he rambles on about the Smithsonian and a new mastodon exhibit. Oliva leaves dinner and is at the train station. Robbers attack Olivia and Huck beats them up, returns her purse and tells her to run.
Present day: Oliva is jogging, more press reports about the president and Jeannie Locke come up. Another jogger hands Olivia a cell phone where the president is on the line.
Oliva and the president talk about a fantasy of them living in Vermont with a boatload of kids and Oliva making jam. At the end of the conversation Olivia tells Fitz that she is representing Jeannie Locke and she is going to take the White House down. Fitz tells her to go for the jugular. Mellie is complaining to Cyrus that Jeannie is gone and to find the bimbo. Eli calls Cyrus and tells him that Jeannie was a present and they need to take action, to have the president to step up and admit the affair took place. Cyrus is trying to figure out where Jeannie is and a staffer tells him that he has found her. There is a press conference outside of the white house where Olivia is telling the press that she is representing Jeannie and that the white house needs to stop these allegations because Jeannie hasn’t slept with the president.
We go back to the flashback and Olivia asks Huck how did he know how to fight like that. Huck states that he was a CIA agent in a classified program called B6-13. They referred to it as wonderland and they took orders from a person called the command.
Oliva has dinner with her father and she tells him the story of Huck and asks her dad to check up on it. Fitz meets with Mellie and Cyrus and wants them to make a statement that he never had sex with Ms. Locke. While Cyrus and Mellie want him to come out and admit he had an affair with Jeannie. Mellie has a plan to match the dates that she wasn’t in the white house with the dates that Jeannie and the president were in the west wing to make it seem as if those were the dates they had an affair. Press reports come out that Jeannie planned the affair with the president when Mellie wasn’t there. Back at Oliva’s office Jeannie is there and Oliva is on the phone with Abby about how to clear Jeannie’s name. Jeannie states that she was at the White house with a member of the staff named Ethan. They talked via IM and this info can be her alibi. Olivia’s dad (Eli) is at her office with her staff.
In the flash sequence. Eli is trying to discredit Huck as nutjob and tells Olivia that he attacked two people, her dad wants her to stay away from him. In the present: At Oliva’s office her dad explains to her that if she doesn’t throw Jeannie under the bus she will never see Jake Ballard again. She asks “how do I know he isn’t dead already” and her dad says that she doesn’t. Olivia asks Huck about B6-13 and what happens if you disobey an order. Huck tells her that they break you and make you wish you were dead. Olivia goes to a morgue to see if the man there is Jake Ballard, it not being him, Oliva calls Fitz to find Jake Ballard.
In the flash sequence; Olivia goes to see David Rosen for the first time. She is asking about Huck who is supposed to have a criminal record for being arrested. Rosen states that Huck was never arrested, his record is clean and someone is lying to Olivia. Olivia is trying to piece together Huck’s story about B6-13 and noticed a pen her father gave her is from ACME limited the place where Huck says he worked for. Olivia goes to the ACME building and finds that is located on Wonderland drive, Wonderland is what Huck said they called B6-13. Olivia asks her dad about ACME Limited at their sunday dinner and he goes off on her telling her she shouldn’t ask questions she doesn’t want the answer to, Olivia gets up and leaves. Quinn is hacking Oliva’s PC and finds out about Olivia and her dad’s sunday dinners and asks Huck why they stopped. Huck advises her to stop trying to be like him and be more like Oliva. At the White House Fitz asks Cyrus to contact B6-13 to get Jake released. Cyrus says that B6-13 doesn’t work that way, they are not under the president’s control and Cyrus tells Fitz that he doesn’t want B6-13 as an enemy. Fitz tells Cyrus to make sure B6-13 keeps Jake alive. Olivia gets Jeannie prepared for the interview and Jeannie breaks down about a meeting she is missing and gets upset that she is not there and that she is preparing for this interview. At Olivia’s house, Oliva steps out to go to the morgue again to identify another body. While out someone calls Jeannie to come downstairs to a black unmarked car. Inside the car Mellie is waiting, wanting to talk to Jeanie about her future.
In the flashback again Olivia goes to Eli’s house for sunday dinner at a shock to Eli. She brings Edison, which she has just accepted his proposal. Olivia asks her dad to give Huck back. Abby goes back to Ethan and asks where are the White House IM’s that he was supposed to get for her. Ethan says that he can’t give them to her. Oliva figured out that someone at the White House has gotten to Ethan and Jeannie. Olivia calls her dad about getting Jake back, she even says that they will start their sunday dinners again, he says he’ll think about it. Olivia speaks with Jeannie before she goes on TV for the interview. Olivia tells her don’t admit to an affair she never had. Jeannie tells Olivia that they are going to give her 2 million dollars tax-free in a Cayman islands account. The interview is being interrupted by the president. He tells Cyrus that he is going on TV. He is either going to tell the country about him and Oliva or admit that he had an affair with Jeannie. It’s up to Cyrus what he tells in his press conference. If Cyrus gets Jake Ballard free he will do what Cyrus’ wants, which is say that he had an affair with Jeannie .
In the flashback, Huck is back at Union Station. Oliva’s phone rings and it’s her dad. He tells Liv that Edison was in a car accident and that Olivia will break up with him and she should let him down gently. Fitz has his press conference and he admits that he did have an affair with Jeannie. Quinn comes to Huck with the last email that Olivia and Eli had. It says that Olivia was robbed and what happened. Quinn asks Huck if he was the homeless man Olivia was speaking about in the email. Huck walks up to Olivia in the parking garage and Huck asks Oliva why did she lie about deal that Oliva made with her dad to get Huck free. Olivia tells Huck she didn’t lie and Huck grabs her by the throat and asks is her dad command. Hesitantly Oliva says that her dad is indeed command. Oliva is at home drinking wine and her dad calls. She picks up the phone screaming that she doesn’t want to talk to him and he tells her to open the door. Oliva open the door and Jake Ballard is there bloodied, beaten and falling on Oliva.
The Analysis
I honestly thought that the episode would end at the start of Fitz’s press conference leaving us hanging on another week. I’m glad it didn’t and that the Fitz and Jeannie story will be put to rest, hopefully. As the show goes on I am intrigued by Olivia’s father, Eli. At the end of the last episode we were shown that he has a lot more going for him than an employee of the Smithsonian, with the information that he is not only tied into B6-13, but the head of it makes his story more interesting. I’m actually loving when we have these sequences of him and Olivia. During every Scandal episode when we hear Olivia and Fitz speak. I always wonder “does Fitz really love Olivia” and I can’t help to think that throughout this one. It seems that throughout the episode Fitz wants nothing more than to tell the press that he is sleeping with Olivia. If that ever happens I wonder where do we go from there. With him admitting to the press the Jeannie affair, I guess we’ll never know. However I feel at some point during this season, If not the next episode, he’ll try and bring it up again.
