S04.E11: Where's The Black Lady?

[JenE4]

I attempted to watch this episode twice and fell asleep both times--missing the same parts each time! I give up. I have all the info I need from the comments in this thread and the recap. Keep me awake next week, show!

[Sidney]

So, I guess if Mellie had told Fitz that he couldn't go to war because of Olivia he wouldn't have; Yeah, right. Mellie already new what he was going to do. LOL. SMH.

[Gemma Violet]

I am just so curious t see how Shonda, et al tries to resolve this. How can Olivia ever go back to being a fixer or command any respect professionally after literally being up for auction and outed as Fitz's concubine? What will be the explanation to the widows and families of the dead and injured veterans from this war? 

 

 

The writers have created a storyline that is so implausible that their only way out of it is to up the ante on the "drama" by adding more absurdities to it.   I love this show but right now it has definitely jumped the shark.  Please make next week's show the conclusion of this nonsense.

 

I figured it out!  In the last episode of the season, it will be revealed that the whole season was a dream!  (And now everyone knows I'm over 50.)   Well, it's as plausible as anything else Shondra will probably come up with. Talk about jump the shark.  I'm hanging on by my fingernails to this show.

 

And I don't like seeing Olivia all disheveled and dirty.  I want her back in her white pant suit, sitting on a white sofa, sipping red wine.

[Happytobehere]

Aside from the absurdity of the storyline, is the fact that it makes no structural sense. By this I mean, if Andrew had that kind of money and power to essentially buy the entire White House staff and hire somebody with the ability to stage this elaborate ruse, then why was he just laying in the cut as a forgotten political entity in California? What was his master plan, to wait for Sally Langston to decide to run against Fitz and hope and pray that Fitz would call upon him to be his new VP? Becuase evidentially that was his plan. There has to be a real mastermind and power player in the midst -- my guess is Hollis, although it could be Papa Pope payback, but it doesn't feel like one of his plans as it is too likely to draw attention.

Another problem with the story, aside from the above and the already pointed out fact that this now has nothing to do with the show we signed up for, is Jon Teney. For me, he just isn't selling it as the mastermind if that is what we are supposed to believe. He comes across as the smug person who thinks his ish doesn't stink because he is being propped but who doesn't think through the real consequences.

Fitz and Mellie actually came across dimmer than usual, because yeah, they couldn't see that the captors are not going to give Oliva back once you have validated her value. The only good thing in the episode was the confirmation of the complete and utter nothing that Fitz is. Seeing how no one around him respected him did more to prove Papa Pope's rant that Fitz is nothing but a boy who can never and will never be a man, than all his drunken, sex-crazed hissy fits of the past four seasons combined.

So unless this arc brings about a major powerful shift that somehow gets us back to the initial premise [and as noted upthread, this is all but impossible now that Olivia is being sold on the open market and her connection to the president and how far he was willing to go has to be revealed, this return is impossible] this storyline will go down as Scandal's official jump the shark moment. If this is the case then all of Shonda's accolades can do nothing to mask the fact that she seems to have no master plan or bible for her shows as she and her writers seem to be making things up as they go along.

Edited February 9, 2015 by Happytobehere

[Guest]

The more I think about it, the worse it is.  

 

I hope next episode ends with Liv being auctioned off, and then Fitz waking up from his post-assassination attempt, calls her and says "I really want to meet your parents, because I just had the weirdest dream" and we can pick up where we were at "Happy birthday, Mr. President."

[Eolivet]

I liked it. I really liked that Liv negotiated what happened to her, using her brain -- which is what I wanted to see in the last episode. She played on Ian's insecurity and got herself out of prison. She used the glass to show a reflection of her captors without them guessing. That's the Liv I know and love. I agree, the auction sounds ridiculous, but I just have to hope Liv has a few more tricks up her sleeve. She looked like the confident Liv of old in the plane window shot, and that was nice to see.

 

I really could've lived without Ian kind of threatening to rape her. Can we please get through one captured!Olivia episode without a rape threat, please?

 

I also thought Mellie's assertion that Fitz had to declare war -- otherwise their marriage was destroyed for a cheap screw and not for love -- was very interesting. It said a lot about how Mellie has compartmentalized Fitz/Olivia. In order to make herself OK with them, she has to make them more important than perhaps they are. Fascinating psychological stuff.

[Chicago Redshirt]

Andrew was the sitting governor of California when he got recruited to replace Sally on the ticket.

 

My impression is that Andrew is not the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Olivia, but just one of the higher-profile co-conspirators. He personally is not going to benefit from this war with West Angola enough to have cooked up this scheme, nor is he smart enough. Hollis is a good guess for who might be in charge, as he has the money, and would have connections to both Andrew and Elizabeth. 

[Julie23]

There was so much wrong with this episode, but everyone above already captured it. The one thing I want to know is, when, did. Tom. start. enunciating. like. Rowan? That entire scene all I could think of was that he took speech lessons from his old boss.

And since when would an entire White House staff and Secret Service detail commit treason? Answer, NEVER, Shonda, NEVER!

I could barely get through the absurdities of this episode, and actually made myself watch it a couple of days after it aired so I could get it off my DVR. I haven't wasted my time watching this live for a while now, and I don't think I'm going to have this show take up space on my DVR anymore either. It's jumped the shark over and over with no signs of getting back to the good show it once was.  

[xtwheeler]

It is usually a pet peeve of mine when viewers say, "I'm done with this show!" (loyalty! Faith!) but holy crap, now I get it. This had nothing that previously made me like Scandal. I was even ok with the Eli stuff to some extent because I could speculate we were seeing what being raised by that man would do to a woman, and what she would be driven to seek out in other men. (A generous interpretation, I know.) But this. This.

My husband looked at me and said, "hon, your show done jumped the shark" and I could not disagree. I may, in fact, be out. Given that this sat on my TiVo for a few days before I got motivated to watch it tells me it has lost the magic. Sad.

[hendersonrocks]

The more I think about it, the worse it is.

 

That is EXACTLY where I'm at. I always read the Fug Girls's recap, because they are generally hilarious with the added benefit of being great writers, and this week's just left me even more hateful at the show.

 

Come back, season one! Come back to me! (Atonement™)

[TheHappinessHotel]

I think I am officially done with this show.  I am over it.  

[iluvobx]

There was so much wrong with this episode, but everyone above already captured it. The one thing I want to know is, when, did. Tom. start. enunciating. like. Rowan? That entire scene all I could think of was that he took speech lessons from his old boss.

And since when would an entire White House staff and Secret Service detail commit treason? Answer, NEVER, Shonda, NEVER!

I could barely get through the absurdities of this episode, and actually made myself watch it a couple of days after it aired so I could get it off my DVR. I haven't wasted my time watching this live for a while now, and I don't think I'm going to have this show take up space on my DVR anymore either. It's jumped the shark over and over with no signs of getting back to the good show it once was.  

I took it off my dvr list.  I could no longer watch this show.  I might change over to it when Blacklist is in commercial but if I don't, I don't care at all.  I do miss what this show used to be.  Why oh WHY Shonda did you let this show jump the shark?  This was my Must See show.  Bring the show back to the first season, then I will be back.  If not, then I will read about it here and be glad that I didn't waste my time on such bullshit.  Hell, this makes the Pam Ewing dream season look good.