Buy Scandal: Everything’s Coming Up Mellie
Welcome to Wonderland.
Mellie finally gets her own flashback episode and it’s a doozy, back to when she & Fitz were young and happy, but James Brolin is back as Fitz’s over-bearing father and that leads us down some dark, dark passages. This episode was controversial when it first aired and I can see why; we get a really disturbing scene of sexual assault. It isn’t graphic, but it’s very disturbing. Although it’s somehow typical of our American mindset that no one had, to this point, complained about all the disturbing and violent torture scenes. Anyway, Bellamy Young is terrific as Mellie, as always really, and it’s nice to see her get an episode focused on humanizing her. And Cyrus with a beard? Best thing ever. The rest of the episode is also really good, save a few really dumb moments with Quinn. The Remington thing keeps getting better and it’s okay that the big reveal at the end of the episode is pretty well telegraphed; it’s still intriguing and keeps working to make Rowan scarier every time we have a scene with him. All in all, really good episode, thankfully, after a couple of real duds. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – Bellamy Young is wonderful in an episode centered on her and her plotline is disturbing and grim; the rest of the show keeps working too. 3 ½ stars.