- Title: Scandal – Defiance
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As Olivia (Kerry Washington) helps a U.S. Senator (Grainger Hines) with the fallout from a sex scandal which may in turn help the career of Senator Davis (Norm Lewis), the White House plans the President’s (Tony Goldwyn) birthday party, and David Rosen (Joshua Malina) reaches out to James (Dan Bucatinsky) to share what he’s learned about Cytron and ask for help in continuing the investigation into what he believes what widespread election fraud in the last election to help pass Hollis Doyle’s (Gregg Henry) oil pipeline. Although James doesn’t believe Rosen’s theory he does see a possible connection between the Cytron voting machines and Fitzgerald’s narrow victory in a small Northeast Ohio county which leads James to take a road trip to Defiance County, Ohio.
With Olivia out of reach Harrison (Columbus Short) leads the associates in a case involving a ex-wife (Patty McCormack) and son (Jason London) who need Olivia Pope & Associates to help prove the woman’s former husband (Chelcie Ross), the face of a multi-billion dollar business empire, has lost his sanity before the company goes public in three days time. The crazy old man and his new (and far younger) girlfriend (Kate Lang Johnson) prove far craftier than expected meaning Harrison and Abby (Darby Stanchfield) are forced to stakeout the house until after the IPO or until Harrison can sit down with father and son and work out a compromise.
The episode ends with a series of big reveals, all of which will have serious fallout over the next several episodes. The number of odd questions Quinn (Katie Lowes) asks Huck (Guillermo Díaz) over the course of the episode turn out to all be related to her own abduction as she begins to put the pieces into place and see Olivia Pope’s involvement, and most likely that of Huck as well. After striking out with all the voting machines James finally discovers a single machine with a working memory card which confirms his fears about the scale of election tampering and offers him the biggest story of his career. And, in the episode’s final sequence, Olivia and Senator Davis make their first public appearance as a couple when President Fitzgerald Grant is shot while arriving at his birthday gala.