Who would’ve thought that a Shonda Rhimes show would endorse the use of torture as a way to get to the truth.
After former White House aide Amanda Tanner was abducted from Olivia Pope’s home, Huck — Olivia’s brooding one-man security team with a brutal CIA background — was dispatched by Olivia to get the details of the location of the president’s former lover’s dead body. Olivia, who likes to say that she wears a white hat, sent Huck out to torture a guy Huck knew. Oh yes she did.
Interesting turn of events … just as intriguing as the fact that Amanda wasn’t pregnant with a presidential love child. It was someone else’s baby. (Do we care whose kid it was? Does that matter at all?) But because the pair did have sex, President Fitz Grant thought it could have been his so he unleashed chief of staff Cyrus Beene and ordered the guy to go to war with Olivia and Amanda.
Also fascinating, the fact that not only was Cyrus callously matter-of-fact about Amanda’s death, but we saw a peculiar response from the first lady to her husband when she theatrically pulled those Secret Service agents over to ask them if they’d take a bullet for the president. (Who’s really going to say, “No” in that situation?) I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Mellie Grant, beneath her sweet-as-pie veneer, is working with Cyrus or egging Cyrus on to ruthlessly eliminate problems like Amanda Tanner in order to preserve the administration’s standing and her own political power.
While I wanted more to be made of Amanda’s death, more concern to be shown — I was surprised, for example, that Olivia would take on the pilot’s union case when her current client, who she was supposed to keep safe, was kidnapped from Olivia’s home — but I suppose this Amanda drama is going to unfold in dribs and drabs, as Olivia’s U.S. attorney buddy David will likely investigate. (Or at least I can hope that he will.) Then there’s Quinn’s reporter boyfriend who will inevitably dig into this story — how could he not? — and I’m guessing that Quinn will encourage him to do so in order to get justice for Amanda, setting up potential conflict with Olivia who appears as though she very well may be hooking up with Fitz again, either that or the trailers for next week’s episode are terribly misleading, a distinct possibility.
Which brings me to that final scene … what to make of the president, Mr. “Loose Fly” Fitz, showing up at Olivia’s doorstep with a lascivious look in his eyes? Surely nothing good can come of this.
On a casting note, it was a delight to see Kate Burton (who played Ellis Grey on Grey’s Anatomy) show up as the vice president. Not only was it ironic to see her in that role because I’d just seen her playing a U.S. senator on the Julia Louis-Dreyfus comedy Veep, but because Jeff Perry, who plays Cyrus, was Burton’s character’s ex-husband, Thatcher Grey on Grey’s Anatomy. But on Scandal, Perry’s character is as ruthless as he was wimpy on Grey’s.
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on May 04, 2012 @ 11:42 EST5EDT
I’m not sure that the president actually slept with Amanda. When he was first told she was pregnant, he said it couldn’t be his. It was one sentence and then moved on. But, I took that to mean that potentially Amanda was lying (which we now know she was). But, I could be reading too much into that denial.
The first lady is involved somehow. She is wickedly manipulative.