Scandal Recap: The Dark Side of the Moon

This week on ABC’s Scandal, all that Huck loved — and tragically lost — was revealed, Mellie warned Fitz that time is running out and Jake told actor Joe Morton that the jig is up. (Or is it?)

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KILL, OR BE KILLED | Huck, still cowering in the corner of the OPA office after being locked in a crate by Baseball Cap, starts repeating the number “752″ over and over again, to everyone’s puzzlement. We then flash back 14 years, where PFC Huck returns from a Kosovo tour to surprise his thrilled girlfriend Kim (played by Fringe‘s Jasika Nicole). Alas, Huck is soon pulled into a super-secret job interview and made an offer he literally cannot refuse. “OK, so, we kill people,” his new coworker (Charlie!) says.

Meanwhile here and now at OPA, the gladiators take turns trying to coax Huck back to lucidity (and crack the “752″ mystery), to no avail — though the individual monologues, as each shared their own complex past, made for nice character work if no major reveals. Over at the hospital, Olivia is being held for observation after her skirmish with Jake. Fitz sits at her bedside to admit that he was hurt and “was wrong” to walk away after the Defiance reveal, but she’s having none of it. “You are not forgiven… You can’t treat me like I’m some whore you got off the street.” Fitz professes his love, but Liv shoots back: “I. Don’t. Believe you. Anymore.”

Harrison goes to visit Liv, but gets shut down by a Secret Service detail. During the delay, he spies Baseball Cap (aka Charlie) and gives fruitless chase. “I saw the Secret Service…,” he later reports to Olivia over the phone. She begins to explain, but he cuts her off: “It’s none of my business.”

WE ARE… WERE… FAMILY | Returning to flashbacks, Kim reveals that she is pregnant, and though covert assassin Huck’s first reaction is a concerned, “Oh,” he goes on to assert his enthusiasm and welcome for the child. For good measure, he asks, “Will you marry me?” Kim says yes, and we cue up a sweet-but-twisted montage in which they marry, and birth a baby, all while Huck turns into the jolliest wet work specialist you’d ever have the pleasure of having our toes snipped off by.

One night, Huck comes home to find Charlie there, visiting with Kim and baby Javi. In private, Charlie marvels at his colleague’s chutzpah, keeping a secret family. “You need to fix it or we’ll take care of them for you,” he warns. Later, just as Huck sets in motion a plan to vanish him, Kim and the baby, he is grabbed and thrown in a hole, where he remains until, after many months, he finally “forgets” having a wife and child. Terribly tragic stuff played to the hilt by Guillermo Diaz.

Huck, however, can’t bring himself to continue doing what he did. And when he freezes on his first new gig, Charlie turns to kill his colleague… but instead lets him be “a ghost” and vanish, never to contact his wife and kid — or else. Charlie later reports to Command — aka actor Joe Morton aka the guy Jake has been meeting with in the present, on the park bench — that Huck has been terminated. “A shame,” actor Joe Morton says. “He had potential.”

KISS AND YELL | Back at the hospital, Olivia readies to be discharged when Fitz shows up with another appeal. “You are having me followed…. That’s not love,” Liv insists. As for his vanishing act after the Defiance reveal, she reminds, “You walked away and didn’t even let me explain!” Fitz relates how he wanted to win “because I had the will of the people behind me” and not because of some crafty cabal. “I am angry you fixed the election,” he explained. “I am angrier that you thought you could fix me.” Liv admits she still loves Fitz, but that she can’t do this anymore. He counters, “This past year I have learned one thing: I can’t exist without you. I can’t breathe without you. The man I am without you… I am nothing. And you’re everything.” (Basically, Fitz’s Romantic Bits’ Greatest Hits.) “I demand another chance…. We’re worth another chance.” Olivia falls into a steamy smooch with her scandalous love, but soon tugs herself away. “No, I can’t. I can’t.”

NUMBER’S UP! | Returning to OPA, Liv sits with Huck and reflects on when she first gave his homeless self change years ago. “You always say that I saved you. That’s not even close to true. I’m all alone except for you,” she shared. Harrison, Abby and Quinn “don’t live on the dark side of the moon” as she and Huck have/do, she adds. Echoing Fitz’s words, “You are everything…. You saved me.”

Huck ceases his “752″ chant for good, then opens up to Liv, “I think I used to have a family… but I don’t remember if they’re real or I imagined them.” (Sob.) We then get one final flashback to the subway platform, where toddler Javi gives the hungry-looking man a dollar. As the lad walks back to his mom, Huck notes the time — 7:52.

Elsewhere in the episode….

* Speaking of clocks, Mellie warned Fitz that hers is ticking, and if he hasn’t super-double-secret officially bailed on Liv by the time her alarm goes off, “I’ll be on the front lawn discussing my philandering husband and the whore who has him on a leash.” She then adds, “I hope you choose family… because good luck getting reelected once I start talking!”

* Cyrus tasks Charlie to get the 411 on Jake’s connection to Olivia. By the way, did you know Charlie has killed kings? Like, real ones? True story!

* Thematic parallels alert! Upon gleaning that Olivia is being used as bait to draw out Albatross, Jake tells his boss, actor Joe Morton, that he wants out. But Command just laughs. “Remember who you are, Captain Ballard… There’s no such thing as ‘out’.”

What did you think of “Seven Fifty-Two”? Were any fellow Fringe fans delighted to see “Astrid” living a (more) normal existence? And what’s your latest theory on Albatross?

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