When we last left Capitol Hill, Quinn Perkins was on trial for her life and mysteriously got off, thanks to the White Hat magic of Olivia Pope and associates. The case was open and shut but Olivia made a call to the highest of the high, a Supreme Court justice, to change the verdict. Unfortunately for U.S. District Attorney Joshua Malina, this means he has a huge loss under his belt and is put on a leave of absence.
Meanwhile, things between the First Lady and the President are reaching a boiling point, making the First Lady remember the pre-Olivia Pope days when they actually used to like each other. The First Couple seem to get their spark back for a minute, but in the next episode, we learn the President just can’t let go of Ms. Pope.
In between all of this, is the semi-irrelevant case of one of the nation’s most prominent pastors, having a mistress. The kicker is that he dies on top of her, mid-coitus. Hot damn, Shonda Rhimes is good. The case appeals to the First Lady and Olivia, who knows what it feels like to be the main chick and the mistress to a wayward man.
Episode 3 kicks off with something you can feel. Olivia Pope has an ex-boyfriend. A fine black senator to be exact, and he wants that old thing back. Things just got interesting.
Once President Grant discovers Olivia is working on a current case with her ex-man, a sword fight ensues and of course the most powerful man in the country wins. The ex-boyfriend reveals some national security information to Pope and in days the President has him kicked off of the Senate intelligence committee and investigated for ethics violations.
Olivia has little time to deal with her two lovers squabble, once a deranged National Security Agency employee, barges into her office. The gentleman from the NSA has information on Thorngate — an espionage software the government uses to spy on Americans. Through the software he and the government know about her late night phone calls to the West Wing and much more. He claims his knowledge of the software is going to get him killed and he needs Pope’s help.
White hats on.
Pope’s gut tells her to take him on as a case, but realizes she’s mistaken, once he goes AWOL and disappears with all of the security information her team gathered. He played them and you know what that means. Huck and his box of torture tools are released on the turncoat. It won’t be pretty.
Back in the Oval Office, the First Lady is fired up after she gets word from the Secret Service that her husband is still messing with Olivia. She threatens to blow the whistle on the President’s affair and use it as leverage to sky rocket her career into books, TV deals and possibly a presidential bid. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and the one person who has the ability to reveal the affair is a pregnant woman with raging hormones using gun analogies.
Oh, did I mention that the D.A. and Pope’s teammate, Darby, did the horizontal mambo?
‘ Ish just got real, real. Really quick.
