SCANDAL: GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (TV)
Summary
One in this drama/political thriller about the Pope & Associates crisis management firm in Washington D.C.
Five years in the past, Olivia sits down for one of her weekly dinners with her father. Their relationship is strained due to the death of her mother, although Rowan hopes that he can reconnect with her in some fashion. He apologizes for sending her away, calling it a “mistake,” although he believes Olivia is taking advantage of the situation to get him to pay off her student loans for law school. Reluctantly Olivia shares a few details about her current situation with her father, mentioning that she has a “boyfriend;” they manage to share a relatively amiable conversation. Later she returns home and tells Edison about the dinner over the phone; she is currently dating him. He has already proposed to her, but she has not given him an answer despite his persistence. While waiting for her subway Olivia is attacked by muggers, but Huck emerges and swiftly defeats them. In present-day, the media attention surrounding Jeanine continues, and Olivia secretly remains in communication with President Grant. She notes that the situation forces her to “go after the White House” directly since she is representing Jeanine, but President Grant does not begrudge her for doing so.
Rowan attempts to get Cyrus to get the White House to substantiate the claim about the affair between President Grant and Jeanine, but Cyrus believes he can do nothing. Olivia holds a press conference alongside Jeanine in front of the White House lawn, strongly denying any sexual encounters between her and the president. She accuses the White House of engaging in slander against Jeanine and announces that she will be representing her pro bono. In the past, Olivia visits Huck in the subway and thanks him for saving her. She deduces that there is more to him than meets the eye and says he can tell her about his past. He instantly tells her everything about his time in B613. She listens and wishes to help him in some way. She has dinner with her father again, who is concerned that she got mugged and that she is apparently friends with Huck. He believes that Huck’s claims are ridiculous, but Olivia asks him to look in to it by asking his friend in the FBI about it. In the present, Cyrus and Mellie demand that President Grant go on television and admit to having an affair with Jeanine. He staunchly refuses and counters that the White House is to apologize for the accusations against her. In private, Mellie asks Cyrus to use information about her schedule over the last few years to fabricate evidence of encounters between President Grant and Jeanine. He does so and the media latches on to the story, perpetuating the story.
Olivia and her team scramble to respond to the story, trying to uncover proof that Jeanine was never alone with the president. Jeanine claims that she was working alongside her friend Ethan and she can prove it via instant messages the two of them sent to each other. However, the messages can only be accessed on the White House’s server. Olivia returns to her office and finds Rowan there waiting for her. In the past, Rowan tells Olivia that his search turned up nothing on B613, and that Huck is a transient with an extensive criminal record. In the present, Quinn wonders why Olivia never mentioned her father, but Huck and Harrison are not keen to find out. Rowan attempts to blackmail Olivia into getting the public to believe the story about Jeanine’s affair with the president by reminding her that he still has Jake in custody; he notes that for all she knows he could already be dead. Later Olivia sits down with Huck in private, telling him that she has discovered that Jake is being held by B613. She gets him to describe the punishments B613 inflicts on operatives who disobey orders. Olivia calls President Grant and asks him to find out if Jake is alive and to get him released, telling him that he is being held by B613 and that he saved her life from another B613 agent.
In the past, Olivia meets David for the first time as part of her investigation into Huck’s past. David’s findings refute Rowan’s claims, as he discovered that Huck has never been arrested. She is disturbed by the implication that her father lied to her. She also looks into a paper company that Huck claimed was a front for B613, and realizes that her father gave her a pen with that company’s logo on it. She confronts her father about this and asks him to come clean about his true line of work. He grimly tells her that she would not be able to handle the answer and that they should continue their relationship as before, but an upset Olivia leaves. In the present, Quinn hacks in to Olivia’s email account and monitors her conversations with Rowan, noting that at a certain point they inexplicably cease. Huck is concerned that Quinn is becoming more like him and asks her not to do so. President Grant talks to Cyrus about getting Jake released, but Cyrus says they can do nothing due to the organizational structure of B613; they are wholly separate from all legitimate government functions in order to ensure plausible deniability. Cyrus warns that he should not make an enemy of them, as he could be in danger if he should do so. Abby blackmails Ethan into hacking in to the White House servers to recover his instant messaging chats with Jeanine. She and the rest of the team prepare Jeanine for a live television interview to help solidify her position. Jeanine is heartbroken that the scandal around her is preventing her from performing her job at the White House, which she is clearly passionate about. Olivia promises to help her get through the situation.
Olivia periodically visits a local morgue to see if Jake’s body has turned up there. On one such visit, Jeanine receives a text message and leaves Olivia’s apartment to meet with its source: Mellie, who has a proposition for her. In the past, Olivia visits her father for their weekly dinner, but this time brings Edison along with her. She introduces him to her father and explains that Edison proposed to her, and that she accepted. She also explains that Edison was just appointed to the Senate Intelligence Committee, and implies that she could use this appointment to investigate Rowan. In private she uses this as leverage to get Rowan to “get Huck back” to her. In the present, Abby tries to get Ethan to hand over the instant message logs, but he says he cannot, as Jeanine instructed him to destroy the instant messages. Abby informs Olivia of this several minutes before Jeanine’s television appearance, and Olivia realizes that Jeanine intends to admit the affair over live television. At that moment she receives a call from President Grant confirming that Jake is alive, but he says he can do nothing to get him released despite Olivia’s demands. She realizes that she must choose between saving Jake and allowing Jeanine to be “destroyed” and asks Harrison to stall the television crew for time. Olivia reluctantly calls her father and asks him to release Jake, offering to resume communications with him. He says he will “take that under consideration.” Olivia gets Jeanine to admit that the White House offered her a substantial offshore account in return for her admission and implores her not to lie, likening it to “sell[ing] a little bit of your soul.”
However, before Jeanine can go on air, the program is pre-empted by a press conference from President Grant. Before he speaks he offers Cyrus an ultimatum: he either admits to his affair with Olivia and that Cyrus created a cover-up to target Jeanine instead, or he claims to have slept with Jeanine in exchange for Cyrus getting B613 to release Jake. Cyrus points out that he has no influence over B613, but President Grant is adamant about his position and says he will not waver from it. In the past, Olivia finds Huck at the subway station again, dazed and recovering from injuries. Rowan calls her and confirms that he arranged to have Huck released, but claims that Edison was in an accident and has been hospitalized; he implies that this was his doing and threatens to kill him unless Olivia refuses his proposal. Olivia is incensed and swears never to speak to him again. In the present, President Grant claims at the press conference that he slept with Jeanine. After the press conference, Vice-President Langston approaches President Grant, disbelieving his assertion that Jeanine was the other woman in his affair. She believes that he is lying about something, but he does not give her any information. Meanwhile, Quinn finds evidence in Olivia’s emails of her asking Rowan about a homeless man, and realizes that she is referring to Huck. She brings these findings to Huck’s attention, and he believes that Olivia engineered some kind of deal about him despite her assertions otherwise. He confronts her about this and nearly strangles her, demanding to know how influential her father is over B613; she admits that her father is “Command,” the figure in charge of B613. Olivia goes home and receives a call from her father asking her to open her front door. A disheveled and groggy Jake is there and collapses; Rowan asks Olivia to keep her promise to resume their weekly dinner meetings. Includes commercials.
Details
- NETWORK: ABC
- DATE: October 10, 2013 10:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:59:56
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 114927
- GENRE: Drama, mystery/suspense
- SUBJECT HEADING: LGBT Collection - Drama; African-American Collection - Drama; Drama, mystery/suspense; Politics
- SERIES RUN: ABC - TV series, 2012-2018
- COMMERCIALS:
- TV – Commercials – AT&T phone service
- TV – Commercials – Alive! multivitamin supplement
- TV – Commercials – Apple smartphones
- TV – Commercials – Bayer aspirin
- TV – Commercials – Burger King restaurants
- TV – Commercials – Domino’s pizza
- TV – Commercials – Esurance insurance
- TV – Commercials – Fiat automobiles
- TV – Commercials – Fisher-Price toys
- TV – Commercials – GE appliances
- TV – Commercials – Glad garbage bags
- TV – Commercials – JCPenney department stores
- TV – Commercials – K-Mart department stores
- TV – Commercials – Kia automobiles
- TV – Commercials – Macy’s department stores
- TV – Commercials – McDonald’s restaurants
- TV – Commercials – Moto smartphones
- TV – Commercials – Nice n’ Easy hair coloring
- TV – Commercials – Nissan automobiles
- TV – Commercials – Party City party supply stores
- TV – Commercials – PetSmart pet supply stores
- TV – Commercials – Pronamel toothpaste
- TV – Commercials – Toyota automobiles
- TV – Commercials – Volkswagen automobiles
- TV – Commercials – Wal-Mart department stores
- TV – Commercials – Windows smartphone
- TV – Commercials – “Captain Phillips” motion picture
- TV – Commercials – “Last Vegas” motion picture
- TV – Commercials – “The Fifth Estate” motion picture
- TV – Promos – “20/20”
- TV – Promos – “Agents of SHIELD”
- TV – Promos – “Betrayal”
- TV – Promos – “Good Morning America”
- TV – Promos – “Jimmy Kimmel Live”
- TV – Promos – “Last Man Standing”
- TV – Promos – “Nashville”
- TV – Promos – “Once Upon a Time”
- TV – Promos – “Revenge”
- TV – Promos – “Scandal”
- TV – Promos – “Super Fun Night”
- TV – Promos – “The Goldbergs”
- TV – Promos – “The Neighbors”
CREDITS
- Mark Wilding … Executive Producer
- Betsy Beers … Executive Producer
- Shonda Rhimes … Executive Producer, Created by
- Tom Verica … Co-Executive Producer
- Peter Nowalk … Co-Executive Producer
- Mark Fish … Co-Executive Producer
- Judy Smith … Co-Executive Producer
- Heather Mitchell … Supervising Producer, Writer
- Scott Collins … Producer
- Merri D. Howard … Producer
- Noah Esvlin … Co-Producer
- Holden Chang … Associate Producer
- Peter Noah … Consulting Producer
- Jenna Bans … Consulting Producer
- Allison Liddi-Brown … Director
- Chad Fischer … Music by
- Kerry Washington … Cast, Olivia Pope
- Columbus Short … Cast, Harrison Wright
- Scott Foley … Cast, Jake Ballard
- Darby Stanchfield … Cast, Abby Whelan
- Katie Lowes … Cast, Quinn Perkins
- Guillermo Diaz … Cast, Huck
- Jeff Perry … Cast, Cyrus Beene
- Joshua Malina … Cast, David Rosen
- Bellamy Young … Cast, Mellie Grant
- Tony Goldwyn … Cast, President Fitzgerald Grant III
- Kate Burton … Cast, Vice President Sally Langston
- Norm Lewis … Cast, Senator Edison Davis
- Brian Letscher … Cast, Tom Larsen
- Steven W. Bailey … Cast, Noah Elliot
- Samantha Sloyan … Cast, Jeanine Locke
- Joe Morton … Cast, Rowan Pope
- Kate McGregor-Stewart … Cast, Mary
- Vanya Asher … Cast, Ethan
- Eben Ham … Cast, Tanner Shaw
- Rachel Smith … Cast, Entertainment News Reporter
- Cecelia Vega … Cast, Local News Reporter
- Kristin Carey … Cast, Brooke Foster
- Keith Sellon-Wright … Cast, Garrett Cole
- Danielle Rayne … Cast, Elaine Day
- Robin McWilliams … Cast, Licorice
- Cecelia Specht … Cast, Saleswoman
- Mel Fair … Cast, Smarmy Cable Host #1
- Diahnna Nicole Baxter … Cast, Smarmy Cable Host #2
- Meghan Maureen McDonough … Cast, Smarmy Cable Host #3
- Wil Bowers … Cast, Male Talking Head
- Bianca DeGroat … Cast, Producer
- James Logan … Cast, Mugger #1