Buy Scandal: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Well, if I was skeptical about the third season, this episode seems dedicated to telling me to relax. It’s an awesome, awesome episode; it is, in many ways, a follow-on to Sev en Fifty-Two and given that episode’s status as my favorite episode of the show by far, that’s a really good thing. Washington gets a lot of really great scenes with Joe Morton; this episode is really driven by the cat and mouse nature of their relationship in the years prior to the start of the show and these are some of the best flashbacks yet. More stellar work from Guillermo Diaz as well. But it’s the way those flashbacks are mirrored in the present day plot of the episode that really help this episode sing; it’s a game of cat and mouse and it’s the same one really in both periods. This one’s a real killer episode and it’s got one of those patented Scandal endings: super-dark and as cliff-hanging as they come. Scandal’s back, baby. 4 stars.
tl;dr – flashback episode delves into a previously unexplored relationship and crackles with tension, suspense and emotional darkness. 4 stars.