In what started out as a pretty boring episode, Scandal’s “They All Bow Down” turned out to have a few twists hidden behind those drunken insults.
Jessalyn Gilsig returns to the drama as Jake’s (both reluctant and not reluctant) wife who appears to be an alcoholic. Consistent with the rest of the season, this episode jumps through time – election night, x amount of days before inauguration, some other time – and tells the story of what Jake Ballard has been up to as this “Who Shot Frankie Vargas” mystery unfolds.
While I’m a fan of Gilsig’s performances, from drunk to political wife to confused lovesick puppy, I was pretty bored until the final twists were revealed: Jake and Rowan (aka Eli Pope) are back in cahoots, there’s someone above Rowan in B6-13?, and that staffer who it turns out wasn’t having an affair with Vargas is actually alive and her exploding cabin was a ruse planned by Jake himself.
All of these shocks and twists told us basically nothing and it kinds of feels like Scandal is taking a page out of HTGAWM’s playbook with the weekly process of elimination with murder suspects.