- Title: Scandal – Snake in the Garden
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When his daughter (Andrea Bowen) is kidnapped and held for ransom Hollis Doyle (Gregg Henry) and his wife (Melinda McGraw) turn to Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) to get her back which is complicated by Hollis’ belief that the entire kidnapping was his daughter’s idea (even after a severed ear is delivered to the office). Olivia also has the unexpected pleasure of the unannounced arrival of the head of the CIA (Kurt Fuller) on her doorsteps inquiring as to who hired Olivia Pope & Associates to have Quinn (Katie Lowes) and Huck (Guillermo Díaz) tail him around Washington D.C. As if that’s not enough for the team to juggle, David (Joshua Malina) begins sleeping in the firm’s offices after his apartment was ransacked.
Continuing her education, Quinn works with Huck to find where the video message from the kidnappers was broadcast, but by the time they arrive the warehouse is empty. Wiring half of the money, a cool $10 million, Olivia and her team schedule a meeting with the kidnappers to complete the exchange and the team is able to return the scared young woman (minus one ear) to her parents. However, Huck’s continued investigation proves Hollis’ original theory that the entire episode was engineered by Hollis’ daughter to get her hands on $20 million of his money and disappear into a glamorous new life.
Cyrus (Jeff Perry) hires Charlie (George Newbern) to dig up more information on the President’s (Tony Goldwyn) new friend Jake Ballard (Scott Foley) who witnesses Osborne threatening Olivia via his feed into her apartment and copies the contents of her flashdrive which he delivers to the President. On the basis of that information the President fires Osborne who later turns up dead of an apparent suicide, but the episode’s final scene tells a different story as Jake meets his boss (Joe Morton) confirming Jake’s job of staging the perfect crime scene to close the case on Osborne and protect the real mole’s identity.
The episode has some nice moments between Huck and Quinn including the former spy finding his friend a stand-in family of her own to watch when he realizes she’s as alone in the world as he is. I like David’s unofficial inclusion in the group in this episode and hope it’s something which is further nurtured over the rest of the season. Given the final scene with Jake it’s apparent that the man’s motivations are even more complicated than it originally appeared, and when Olivia begins poking her nose into the former CIA Director’s murder it will be interesting to see just how far he will go to keep her from learning the truth.
