'Scandal' recap: In the name of love

Warning: Major spoilers ahead

After last week's big revelation that indicated Huck shot President Grant, many fans were trying to come up with theories that absolved him.

Well, we got our wish -- Huck did not shoot Fitz. Whew!

But everyone else thinks he did. In the end, he's led away in handcuffs, and Olivia will have an impossibly difficult crisis to try to manage.

Girlfriend troubles

As the manhunt for Fitz's shooter gets under way, Huck comes clean to Olivia and her team. His girlfriend, Becky, called him from the hotel needing help. When he got to the room, a remote-controlled sniper rifle shot the president. His training kicked in, and he cleared the scene of the crime.

Huck dismisses the idea that Becky set him up. He's worried she could be in trouble somewhere, but Olivia forbids him from leaving the office. It's up to Harrison and Abby to try to track her down.

They try to get the hotel security camera footage, but it's on lockdown. Abby, however, has someone she can ask: David Rosen! When he brings it to her, they stare longingly at each other for a while before he leaves.

The team reviews the footage and Becky's records, which indicate her life started three months ago, when she met Huck. They think she really did set up Huck, but he still refuses to believe it. Despite Olivia's order, he takes off to find Becky.

But when he scours her apartment, he finds a hidden room plastered with his pictures and information. Yep, his sweet, nice, normal girlfriend is no such thing.

Husband troubles

With Sally Langston in the Oval Office, Cyrus is moping at home. He gets a call from his mother-in-law, who reveals that James wasn't visiting his parents last weekend. When James comes home from lunch, Cyrus snoops on his phone. James has called the same person over and over again the last few days. He concludes that James is cheating.

Cyrus shows up to Olivia's apartment with a bottle of wine to moan about his love life. She counters with the fact that Sally is making Olivia plan Fitz's funeral. Cyrus urges her, as the love of Fitz's life, not to give up on him.

Meanwhile, James is still in cahoots with David Rosen. Cyrus soon finds this out when he gets his own agent, Charlie, to tail him. He's relieved at first that James isn't cheating, but then panics when Charlie reveals that James was in Defiance, Ohio, last weekend.

Power plays

It's bad enough that Sally is so smug about her new status as acting president, but she also gets a new ally: Hollis. He gives her ammo against Verna, who's in the hospital battling cancer.

Sally wants that Supreme Court seat back, and tries to blackmail Verna into stepping down. Verna discusses it with Olivia, who thinks she should just resign. Verna notes that the guy the FBI is searching for looks a lot like Huck. Uh-oh.

Meanwhile, a despondent Huck goes to his safe place: the house of a normal, happy family that he likes to make up stories about. Becky surprises him there, and admits to setting him up. She can't tell him why, but she says she was supposed to do more to implicate him -- use his credit card to book the hotel room and leave his DNA there. But she didn't because she's in love with him! Becky wants Huck to run away with her. "We're the same. We're built for each other," she says.

Later, he goes to her apartment. They have sex, and he agrees to leave with her. Oh, Huck, no!

Olivia is livid. She wants him to turn Becky in, and can't believe that he's protecting Fitz's would-be assassin. "Do I tell you who to love? So don't tell me," Huck snarls.

But the argument seems to get to him and change his mind. He calls Harrison and tells him to plant the rifle in Becky's apartment. Good boy (though a very sad one).

No mercy

Cyrus has to stop James from investigating Defiance, so he enacts his emergency plan: getting James a baby. Over a candlelight dinner, he tells James he "pulled strings" to move them up to the top of the list. They can get a baby now, but -- fake sorrow -- James will have to quit his job. An ecstatic James doesn't care and agrees.

But that doesn't completely solve Cyrus's problem. While James is shopping at the baby store, he meets with David and gives him the memory card from the Defiance voting booth. This could be the next Watergate, James says.

Memory card in hand, David goes home to find Abby waiting for him. She jumps on him and they start getting it on. Then, abruptly, she leaves, looking disgusted with herself.

Meanwhile, Huck is waiting in front of the normal family's house to meet Becky, but she never shows up. Something's wrong ... and he notices the house's lights are dim and a passing dog barks at it. When he investigates, he finds a horrific scene -- the normal family members have all been murdered. And a recording of his conversation with Harrison (about planting the gun at Becky's apartment) is playing over and over again. This is truly despicable; Huck is gutted.

Verna meets Sally in the Oval Office with two envelopes -- one is her resignation letter, the other has the name of the man who shot the president (Huck!). "One pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small," a ruthless Verna says.

Sally ends up choosing the name, and the FBI storms Olivia's office to arrest Huck. As a horrified Olivia watches on, he's led away in handcuffs.

Hello, Guantanamo?

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