Pope & Associates is hired by Democratic Congresswoman Josie Marcus (Lisa Kudrow) to not only run her presidential campaign, but also to dispose of a damaging secret she’s hiding: she was a teen mother who gave her baby up for adoption. That kind of a problem is a cake walk for Olivia, of course, but after about five minutes in Josie’s hometown the Gladiators discover that that baby she had? She didn’t give it up for adoption; her family did one of those Chinatown things where they pretended the baby was Josie’s little sister. That never works out! That little sister is now working for Josie and has no idea. Oh boy.

Cyrus and Mellie spend the episode having a hell of a time finding someone to run Fitz’s reelection campaign. They try to get wunderkind Leo Borgen (Paul Adelstein), but he turns them down because he doesn’t work for losers. Zing! But then when Veep Langston approaches him in a men’s bathroom (an old trope, but a good power move nonetheless) about running her campaign as an independent (!), he seems into it for some reason. So, looks like we’ll have a female independent challenging Fitz, as well as Lisa Kudrow on the Democrat side. This is going to be fun!

At Olivia’s urging, Josie Marcus takes the bait from one of her opponents in the Democratic primary debate and comes clean about the baby she had. She claims she gave it up for adoption, but her little "sister" does some simple math and instantly figures out the truth. They fight, Josie irrationally blames Olivia for this, and fires her. She comes to her senses a day later and tries to hire her back, but…

At the White House Correspondents Dinner Mellie summons Olivia to a hotel room and privately begs her to come back to Fitz’s campaign -- he needs her. Guys, I know the internet hates Mellie and I’m not saying they don’t have good reason to, but man, she breaks my heart in scenes like this. Bellamy Young is vulnerable and desperate and contrite and the scene is perfect even though something awful has happened to her hair. Olivia doesn’t answer either Josie or Mellie, but, c’mon -- barring some unforgiveable new betrayal coming out about him she’s picking Fitz. But what are the odds of that happening!

And now for the kicker: Jake and Huck have been investigating why Fitz would lie about flying the Remington mission, and after stealing some files from Rowan’s home (which is insane, because wouldn’t Rowan have every inch of his home on surveillance?) and some classic Huck hacking, they discover that Fitz didn’t fly the mission because he was in Iceland… shooting down a 747 that was carrying Olivia’s mother. So. That’s the weirdness between Fitz and Rowan. Boom. The episode ends with Huck and Jake paying a late night visit to Olivia’s apartment, which will make for some delicious Olivia freak-outs next week. Girl, there’s not enough red wine in the world for drama this big.

Mindy Monez loves Mellie even when she has terrible First Lady helmet hair. She can be reached on Twitter for discussions of all things Scandal @garnisheater.

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