What I’m Watching: Scandal

Scandal: Season 1, Episode 5 “Crash and Burn” (B-)

I would have thought that, after last week’s surprising closing moments, Amanda Tanner’s story would continue with her as part of it. It seems that her being alive is not a necessary component, and since things seem to happen extremely quickly on this show, her body has already been discovered after it took Huck all of ten minutes to deduce that she was definitely and undeniably dead. His interrogation and torture of his former colleague Charlie was rather brutal, and it reveals a serious dark side that he has clearly gone to great lengths to suppress. Cyrus demonstrated that he has no compassion within him, barely reacting to the news of Amanda’s death, and upon receiving the video of Nixon’s resignation, he just coolly moved on to figured out who the new threat was. The president clearly has much more emotion, and he’s not against subverting presidential protocol to leave the White House and go see Olivia to talk to her just as she finds out that Amanda was pregnant, but not with the president’s baby. Both Quinn and Olivia managed to find comfort in the men in their lives, whether romantic, like Gideon, or platonic, like David. Amid all this, the plane crash investigation proved quite intriguing, highlighting Harrison’s abilities and eliciting some truly unexpected and unfortunate information about everything that lead to the plane crash. The revelation of Kate Burton as the Vice President was somewhat of a shock since she hadn’t yet actually appeared, and she seems like she’ll be a key player in future episodes as she’s seriously ambitious driven by power.