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| Photo Credit: ABC |
Let the bodies hit the floor! Battle
lines have been drawn, and with two episodes left for this season,
the epic Pope vs. Pope showdown takes center stage in “First Lady
Sings The Blues,” with often thrilling results.
Last week's episode ended with Jake
getting shanked and left for dead by a masked assailant revealed to
be Russell, who it turns out is not Olivia's hapless, role-playing
boo but a mole for Papa Pope. Shonda and Co. wring out the “is he
or isn't he?” tension of Jake's fate for all its worth; the camera
follows an unsuspecting Quinn as she goes about the normal first
person at the office routine, then comes in the conference room to
find Jake bloody and unconscious. She freaks the hell out until Huck
performs some Pulp Fiction shiznit
(but without the syringe), popping Jake in the chest and bringing him
back from the dead.
Taking
Jake to the hospital isn't an option, as it will create a digital
trail that would lead Papa Pope straight to them, and as Olivia says
several times, their gruesome deaths. So Charlie calls up his guy, an
ex-KGB spy with a knack for patching up agents who find themselves at
death's door (hey he got Charlie a new kidney). However he doesn't
accept money, but favors—in this case, that they help Black Sable,
a notorious agent who puts fear into hearts of even the toughest
Russians spies.
If you
were expecting Sable's abode to be a dank, inconspicuous hideout or
for her to resemble Marc Mero's ex-wife (wrestling geek reference!),
you head likely twisted around on both counts. Instead Huck and Liv
pull up to a crib straight out of a Disney flick and find Mary
Peterson, the cook-baking suburban grandma formally known as Black
Sable.
Mary/Black
Sable runs down some of her personal history. She grew up Russian
poor—meaning her brother died because they literally did not have
food—and jumped at the chance when the KGB offered her stability,
even if it involved killing folks—to paraphrase her, it was fine,
until, as Huck quickly helps her point out, it wasn't. As cold as
Mary initially comes off, confessing the ways she's suffered—the
KGB killed her mother when she attempted to go home and see her, and
her husband and daughter were killed in a crash—softens her chilly
facade. By the time she's explaining to Olivia how her family's
demise left her alone to think about all the people she killed, you
really see why she wants to stay in retirement. However, those days
are over now that mother Russia's started the spy game up again, and
she receives an order from handler. Huck tracks him down, and Olivia
confronts him about letting her go. But the guy, a seemingly
innocuous butcher, is unmoved, and threatens that Mary knows what
happens to traitors.
Speaking of
seemingly innocuous dudes with homicidal tendencies, Papa Pope spends
much of the hour off the front lines. He doesn't do any of the dirty
work himself, instead preferring to do things like berate Russell for
failing to finish Jake off, then shooting him in the arm when
flirting with Liv doesn't pull her out of hiding. Liv shows up to his hospital room, but
brings Russell to their makeshift hospital via Huck drugging him, still
unaware he's working for Eli. However Jake knows, and nearly kills
himself by going against doctor's orders to stay still, trying to
alert everyone to Russell's true identity.
Olivia makes a bold
move, offering the butcher Eli's life in exchange for Mary's
continued retirement. But Liv then goes to her house to find her and
her grandkids shot dead, and the butcher shot dead and laid out in
the trunk. As a coup de grace, Papa Pope leaves a cell phone on his
corpse (which of course rings right when Olivia finds the body), and
when Liv answers, reminds her “Against me. You'll never win.” You
know, Huck may be right about going on the offensive.
The other big story
of the night was the backlash against Mellie's senate run. Sally
Langston spends an entire segment of her show reading Mellie for
filth, calling into question whether it's even legal for her run
while still being first lady. Abby, like everyone else on staff, is
tasked with dealing with the ensuing fallout, asserting her feminist
bonafides to David Rosen that misogyny is responsible for the
legality of Mellie's run (since no man ever thought a little first
lady would do something like run for office), then tossing them aside
by pushing for a man—in this case Cyrus (yes! Showdown!)--to go on
Sally's show and discredit her, knowing more people will respond
positively, sad and sexist as it is.
Cyrus
balks, and can't fanthom that Fitz isn't pushing for Mellie because
he actually wants to support his wife, but Fitz makes it clear this
is happening and to get on board. Cyrus goes on , and chile, the
shade is thick as molasses as these two smize their way through a
chess match of barbed comments and thinly-veiled insults. Sally pulls
out the big guns when she asserts thinks he should be running for
Senate, not Mellie.
It's
an easy answer to his antipathy over her campaign, but not an
unbelievable one. As a woman, Mellie has barriers to the brass ring,
but as an openly gay man in politics, not to mention one working for
a Republican president (lord the cognitive dissonance), Cyrus has
encountered his own glass ceiling—as he once raged to James, his
current position is the highest he's able to climb, and it is what he
has to settle for. But ever the political champ/animal/team player,
Cyrus plays the Daniel Langston card, asking Sally if she would be so
critical if she'd won the presidency and her hubby wanted to work
outside the home. And Sally quickly ends the interview. Checkmate
Cyrus!
The appearance does
some help to Mellie's plight, but many Americans still disagree with
her run; Liz suggest they pretend their marriage is on the rocks, to
position as a sympathetic single mom with her own views, but Mellie
shuts it down, admirably trotting out their partnership.
Fitz calls Liv,
convinced Mellie can't win, but wants to support her to make up for
what he calls, his “sins of the past.” Liv doesn't take the emo
bait her throws out, but eventually tells him to embrace the
criticism and make it a selling point. Which Mellie does with aplomb,
turning on the Southern gal charm to ten and working magic on
Virginia voters with quips about pillow talk with Fitz and having him
wrapped around her finger. Abby's all for it, and Fitz doesn't care
he's crashing in the polls, but Cyrus points out what may be his real
reason for being against this: A win for Mellie means the erasure of
Fitz's legacy, as he'll remembered only as a whipped Commander in
Chief. It's pretty much a given Mellie's campaign will stretch into
next season, so we'll have to wait and see on that.
After finding Mary
and her grandkids dead, Olivia calls off the B6:13 war, reminding
everyone that if they even flinch to make a move against Eli they are
all dead. Or at least she pretends to in front of Russell, who still
laid up in the makeshift hospital. Later though, while she turns on
the Alex charm for him in bed, she pulls her gun on him, explaining
she connected the dots about how Eli knew about her deal with the
Russians, and asking what the hell is Operation Foxtail, which she
overheard him talking on the phone talking to Eli about.
It ain't over. See
ya' in two weeks!
Other Thoughts:
--As great as it
was seeing father and daughter go head to head, I don't see how this
could end any other way than Papa Pope dying or being put away for
life without it all feeling like sound and fury signifying nothing
(and even the latter choice feels a bit disappointing, though it
would provide a chance to see he and Maya share a cell block),
---Eli on Jake's
will to live: “It irritates me to know he's still breathing.”
--Olivia to
butcher/agent on her notorious rep: “Some people have bark, some
people have bite. I have both.”
--Who else (aside
from David Rosen) got a little nervous when Charlie and Quinn
announced they're going on a blood run, which with those two, could
mean literally accosting and withdrawing blood from hapless victims.
However in this case, it meant stealing blood bags from a blood bank.
Phew.
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