SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
Team Pope went full steam ahead in combating Marjorie and Payas and actually managed to score a victory along the way; Cyrus was finally freed from prison! But as much as I celebrated and appreciated their fight, I knew that Marjorie and Payas would eventually step in and thwart them.
By freeing Cyrus from prison and clearing his name, Team Pope struck a blow against Marjorie and Payas that had the potential to ruin their plans. His arrest put him in a bad light that could ensure that he would never be elected president, but Liv had a way to fix that; Mellie would concede the presidency, giving the electoral college no choice but to choose Cryus. Unfortunately Liz showed up and talked Mellie into fighting for the presidency instead of conceding. From that moment I had the feeling that Liz was working with Marjorie and Payas and I wasn’t surprised when it was confirmed later in the episode. She’s always been power hungry and ambitious, but her timing was too perfect and her speech too zealous.
I really, really, wanted Mellie to win the election, but I thought it best that she concede. There would have been hell to pay had she done that, but these are not the circumstances under which I wanted her victory to occur. Nor did she. As much as she tried to convince herself that letting the electoral college choose meant it was now fair, the fact remained that the situation was created by Marjorie and Payas and thus her win would still be tainted by them. It would also be giving them what they wanted.
For a while it looked like Mellie wouldn’t need to fight much at all because Cyrus didn’t seem to care about becoming or want to be president anymore.
Liv, in a misguided attempt to try and atone for what she’d done to Cyrus, paid him a visit and apologised, along with trying to inspire him to pick himself up and take his rightful place as president. I don’t blame him for figuratively and literally slamming the door in her face. She was horrid to him all season. She instead changed tactics and – after an argument with Mellie about her changing her mind about conceding – decided to clean up his public image. But really, there’s nothing Liv can do to make up for what she did to Cyrus.
I was really proud of Cyrus for getting himself together and stepping up to claim the presidency. He gave a beautiful and moving speech and I love that Fitz was there supporting him. Fitz threw his support behind Cyrus ever since Frankie’s assassination. Liv’s statement that “we” had abandoned him and left him for dead really only applied to her. Cyrus’ speech convinced me that he would be a good president and preserve Frankie’s legacy.
But just as things were looking up for Cyrus, as we knew they would, Marjorie and Payas swooped in and finally revealed themselves to Mellie, telling her that they swayed the electoral college to vote in her favour. I love that Mellie stood up to them knowing what she know about what they’d done, but we all knew that she’d come under their control eventually. They’d already proven how far they would go to achieve their goal. I knew that they would threaten Mellie’s children. I didn’t expect Marjorie to kill Liz, though.
I was so mad at Fitz at the end. I thought he had gone against Liv’s wishes and had her father arrested instead. But it turned out he had brought Papa Pope under protective custody and was giving Liv a fighting chance against Marjorie and Payas.
I honestly don’t know how Team Pope will be able to defeat Marjorie and Payas. Liv’s plan of getting arrested so that Mellie would never have a chance at the presidency was pretty solid, but it would only have worked if Marjorie and Payas never found out that the FBI planned to arrest her. If they had, they could have easily gone to the director and threatened her to cancel the arrest. With five episodes left, I’m curious to see how Team Pope will take them down.
Random thoughts:
- You don’t want to win this way Mellie.
- Yes! Cyrus is free! Does he even want to be president anymore?
- Don’t listen to Liz!
- Oh yea, they planted that money transfer on Liv.
Scandal airs Thursdays at 9 PM on ABC.
