Buy Scandal: Ride, Sally, Ride
Smile, Olivia. The world is watching.
This is a really, really good episode. In case I haven’t mentioned yet how much I love Paul Adelstein as Sally’s slimy campaign manager, here’s a good opportunity; his scenes with Sally are absolutely brilliant in this episode. The introduction of Jon Tenney as the new running mate is really solid as well; I will confess that his story arc kept me guessing until the very end and I loved the reveal about his character in that climactic scene. There’s some good stuff on the James/Cyrus stuff, but Dan Bucatinsky is saddled with what is unfortunately the single cheesiest moment of the entire show so far. Even he can’t save this one. Bit of a twist in the Andan Salif build-up; I was genuinely surprised even if I’m not sure why. But more on-again/off-again with Fitz & Olivia; I always find this stuff frustrating though it does have a great payoff with Jake. It seems the new bugaboo is trust; and everyone in this episode has a tough time figuring who they trust and how far. 3 stars.
tl;dr – solid episode continues a nice run, though on-again/off-again romances still don’t work for me; just about everything else here does though, and there are actual surprises in the plot twists. 3 stars.