Scandal 7×05 – Adventures In Babysitting Review

This was the episode of Scandal that I had been waiting for this season. So far, you could say things have been going decently for Olivia with her time as Command. She’s gotten used to the power and enjoys using it to get what she desires. She now has enemies in the form of Rowan and Fitz, however, if you want to even call them enemies. Their mission is to bring the old Olivia back into the light before she’s forever drowned in the shadows of this new Olivia, but she’s consistently making that mission harder.

The last episode ended with Olivia meeting with Rowan to discuss why exactly he sent FItz back to D.C. to tamper with her. It’s more a one-sided conversation as apparently speaking to Olivia is a privilege. It’s weird seeing Olivia basically treat her father like a child, demanding that he force Fitz to leave to Vermont or else he’ll never get his nice things (Dinosaur skeletons) back. Rowan has no choice but to accept as going against his daughter won’t solve anything, but Fitz doesn’t listen to his pleas and chooses to remain in D.C.

Early responses to the United States going to war in order to reinstate Rashad as President of Bashran don’t go over as well as Mellie hoped, so Cyrus is assigned to convince as many people as he can, while Olivia attempts to see what she can do through the powers of B613. This also requires QPA to keep watch over Rashad’s niece Yasmine until things die down with the coup as she would be an easy target to provoke Rashad. Alongside Jake, Olivia quickly puts together a plan that would involved B613 taking out one of the coup leaders and trying to frame the other, leaving the coup destabilized enough for Rashad to come back in and restore order.

Before this plan is able to be set into action, Olivia finds that Fitz paid a visit to the White House and informed Mellie of everything Olivia had done, including being the head of B613 and killing Luna Vargas. Mellie demands that Olivia never hide things from her again and that she needs to secure the war the old-fashioned way rather than use B613 to get the job done crookedly. To this end, Cyrus has a busy day setting up meetings with senators to try and secure their approvals for the war. He also allows Fenton to shadow his meetings so that he can get a feel for politics, though Fenton seems very disengaged and tapping away at his phone instead.

Olivia pays a visit to Rowan to learn why he was unsuccessful in getting rid of Fitz, but he really doesn’t have anything to say. I agree with him here, he did the job Olivia asked of him and Fitz didn’t go with it, what else was he to do? Rowan yelling “I WANT MY BONES!” was the highlight of the episode though, but he sadly doesn’t get them back as Olivia is disappointed with his performance. Elsewhere, Fitz tries to continue the turning of Olivia’s allies by meeting with Jake, but it doesn’t lead anywhere as Jake is convinced nothing can be done to save Olivia now and she’s become what she was always destined to be.

Using her FWB Curtis, Olivia makes him have Rashad on his talk show in order to gain support for the war and Rashad’s cause. Curtis doesn’t really seem to be alright with this idea, but goes along with it anyway as he probably wants to continue banging Olivia. He even goes the extra mile and lists off a bunch of accomplishments Rashad does unknown to the public as some of his nicer deeds wouldn’t be accepted by his people. Around the same time, Yasmine goes missing at QPA as they are preparing for Quinn and Charlie’s wedding. The short story of this plot which for some reason got the title of the episode is that Yasmine had a girlfriend at school and wanted to be able to say goodbye to her properly before having to return to Bashran with Rashad. She also contemplates leaving with her girlfriend, but Quinn and co. convince her that returning home and keeping love for the future is the right choice.

Cyrus finishes up his meetings with the senators and begins to scold Fenton for being so invested in his phone for most of the meetings. This tune changes when he discovers Fenton was actually crunching numbers and statistics to figure out if the war would be worth following up on and it turns out it won’t. Fenton explains that if things go sideways in the war, the American people will be less likely to want to follow in the future and it’s not like the United States hadn’t already been dragged into pointless wars before, so interest isn’t very high for it again. This makes Cyrus go to Olivia and inform her that the war is no longer an option as even though he successfully made a 50-50 senate divide on the issue, he would vote no thanks to seeing Fenton’s numbers.

This screw in Olivia’s plan tempts her to pay a visit to Fitz and berate him about everything: why he’s still in town, why he’s still trying to fix her, and why he thinks what he’s attempting to do is helping matters when it’s actually making things worse. Fitz just calmly shrugs all of this off and states that he will continue to not leave and he isn’t going to give up on bringing the white hat back to Olivia. A quick talk with Quinn also shows Olivia that she never asked Mellie what she wants out of the war, so in doing so, she gets the answer she needs to pull forward. With Mellie knowing about B613, she basically asks Olivia to take care of things her way, but not get her involved with any details. So, the original plan Olivia and Jake had formed is a-go.

Between all of this, Mellie and Rashad’s relationship starts to get more intense, but she manages to keep it professional for now and keep things between them simple, at least until Rashad solves the problem with Bashran. Fenton’s help in Cyrus deciding what to do about the war also makes him warm to Fenton and they share a kiss, with Cyrus capping it off by stating he really does think Fenton has a knack for the political game. Annnddd in order to finally be rid of Fitz, Olivia asks Mellie to send him back to Vermont as a favor for helping her out with Rashad. The final relationship update of the episode comes with Curtis finally standing up to Olivia and admitting that while he finds her attractive and he at first was interested in her strong personaility, he’s disappointed to learn she doesn’t have much human left in her. Seems they’re possibly done with their FWB ways and I’m honestly fine with that.

Ultimately, the final scene of the episode shows all was for naught as Rashad and Yasmine board the plane to Turkey in order to take back Bashran, only for the plane to explode before it’s even able to take off. There doesn’t look like much of a chance anyone on the plane survived either, so things have definitely escalated from here. The question is: was it someone of the coup that triggered this explosion or someone closer?

We’re starting to get deeper into the essence of what I wanted this final season of Scandal to become, so even though the babysitting plot wasn’t all that engaging to me, I was on board with this episode. The political game was always the most interesting part of the show, so a full episode focusing on whether the war would fly or not was good to see rather than an episode trying to get Olivia focused on missing girls cases or an episode focused on Fitz’s boring 100 days. The mixed receptions of Olivia starting to show their head more also is a welcome change as I’m hoping this theme will be explored further and ultimately have Olivia decide what she really wants out of life, just as she asks all she works for.

Adventures In Babysitting – 4 out of 5

Pros:

• Furthering of the actual good plotlines.
• Rowan’s meltdown over his lost dinosaur bones.
• Asshole Fitz is growing on me, though it seems Olivia got the last laugh for now.
• I hope I never see Curtis again.

Cons:

• The whole Yasmine subplot.
• QPA seems to really be taking a backseat this season, not much to really do now that Olivia is for the most part disconnected from them.
• Also where did Marcus go?