This was such a long one, five episodes to go through, I split Thursday’s recaps into two. Look for recaps on Suits and the premiere of Surviving Jack soon!
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland
This time, it’s Alice and the Knave who go back in time to tell the story of how they met, how Alice retrieved the Knave’s heart for him the first time around, and how they became friends.
The Knave asked the Red Queen to remove his heart so he wouldn’t feel the pain of having lost Anastasia, but what he didn’t realize was that the Queen (Barbara Hershey) got to order him around by maintaining possession of his heart. So, when she orders the Knave and some of the other soldiers to kill Alice, Alice has to outsmart a man who is not in control of his decisions. At first, she merely eludes him, but after he explains why he keeps coming after her, at the Queen’s order, she proposes to steal back his heart and return it to him so he won’t feel compelled to kill her anymore.
Alice is quite clever, and she works out a way into the vault and which drawer contains this particular knave’s heart, and brings it back, but he still feels like he has to kill her. When she shouts and tells him she wants him to stop trying to kill her, she realizes that since she now has his heart, she can make him help her and give him orders that he has to follow. She demands his help with finding proof of Wonderland to take back to her father, who still believes her to be mad.
The Knave is acquiescent, as Alice is a much nicer “boss” than the Red Queen, but Alice realizes she can’t go through with the whole plan, ordering him to help her, and she gives his heart back to him. But, the Knave likes her–she reminds him of his headstrong, clever younger sister–and he agrees to help her anyway, now that he’s free of the Queen’s service and has his heart back in his possession.
However, back in present time, the Knave has been set loose by Jafar to retrieve his cobra staff from Cyrus and Alice, with Jafar suggesting that his staff might allow him to bring Anastasia back from death. She’s encased in a glass coffin–which I guess has some sort of magic that is preserving her life somehow just enough to be brought back later on–and the Knave, with his heart back in his chest now, clings to the hope that there might be some chance of bringing her back.
But, Cyrus and Alice can’t bring themselves to give Jafar that sort of power, not for any reason. The Knave pretends to go along with them, but takes the staff from them while they sleep. Then, when Alice catches up to him and falls into a river, he can’t just let her drift away, and he jumps in after her. The three of them then devise a plan that may work out in everyone’s favor, and bring down Jafar at the same time, with the aid of the Jabberwocky who has now realized that Jafar doesn’t intend to keep his promise of returning the Vorpal blade to her.
As the Jabberwocky brings in Cyrus, the Knave draws the guards away from the dungeons, Alice sets Jafar’s father loose, and Amara returns back in human form to duel with Jafar. They battle, each with a few tricks up their sleeves, but Jafar injures Cyrus, and Amara agrees to do the spell with the genies to save her son’s life. Just in the last moment, Jafar’s eyes glow silver, and it looks like the laws of magic are about to be changed, and I don’t know what that means for the genies, Alice, or the rest of Wonderland, but it doesn’t look good.
Somehow, I think this show gets better every time I watch it. A lot of them, I could take it or leave it, episode by episode, as the engaging parts are the ongoing threads in the plot, but episode by episode, this is a great show.
Grey’s Anatomy
This was sort of strange episode in which Cristina has two possible futures surrounding one patient and the outcome of his case. In one future she decides to choose Owen and their future plays out together.
Once again, the issue of having children comes up again, and in this future Cristina decides to indulge in Owen’s wishes for perhaps the first time in their relationship and starts giving him children. However, it’s pretty clear throughout this story of that Cristina is not happy with the decisions that she’s made and she worries that she’s sacrificed too much of herself in order to give Owen what he wants.
In the other possible future, Cristina gets to power ahead with her career and focus entirely on that and it leads to her winning the Harper Avery Award multiple times, but this time, it leaves Owen in a state of complete disarray. He’s taken up drinking after they break up, and it gets to be so bad that it affects his work and the other doctors have to intervene.
It seems that no matter what Cristina chooses or what she decides on that day, things don’t end well for her and Owen together, or for either of them separately. But, this was sort of like a simulation or a dream sequence. Neither one has actually happened, and it’s possible that that’s not really how things will play out either way.
For one thing, we found out that both Ross and Murphy will not be returning for next season, not to mention Cristina (Sandra Oh), and we know that a return of Dr. Burke is coming up before the finale so there’s still a little bit left of Cristina’s story that may alter the futures that occurred in these sequences. I still have hope that she and Owen will be able to work things out!
Scandal
This is sort of an interesting one as the president and the first family prepare to make a television interview live. Olivia is trying to make sure everyone is properly prepped for the interview so that no surprises, up, it is a campaign and election year after all.
Charlie is getting super-jealous of Huck after Quinn tells him about her altercation with hock in her apartment. He does seem concerned about her safety, but there is also a romantic element to it and he’s also worried about Huck as a potential competitor for Quinn’s affection. It looks like he may have reason to be concerned, though, after Quinn meets with Huck again and they share another kiss. However, Quinn ends it and it seems like maybe this will be the end of their romantic contact, but probably not.
Both of Fitz’s kids are acting little bit suspiciously, and Olivia is working to try and figure out what the problem is. It turns out that his son has been posting on a Twitter account making fun of the president, and the daughter has just been blaming her dad for her parents’ marriage troubles.
But, when the daughter catches Mellie doing something very inappropriate with “Uncle” Andrew, a.k.a. the vice president running mate, she turns on both of them. Olivia wants to help fix the problem because they’re going on live television in a very short period of time, but this is something that Fitz and Mellie have to work out on their own.
Meanwhile, Jake pays a visit to the president and makes it clear that he’s the one calling the shots and he’s not going to turn over a person that the president wants to interrogate just because the president asked him to.
Also Jake visits Olivia’s father after he finds out that the man has been contacting too many of the people that Jake is supposed to be in charge of, and he lays down the law, saying that perhaps his resignation agreement needs to be reevaluated. Which probably means that he’s going to kill him if push comes to shove. Olivia’s dad still isn’t that sympathetic a character, though he has been helping Liv wherever he can lately, so I can’t say whether I’ll be sad or not sad if that does happen.
Cyrus hears that Jake is meeting with the president and person on them, ready to kill Jake, knowing that he’s the one who killed James. But I think he realizes that he’s not supposed to know about that and everything could be in jeopardy if he tells the truth about it now, including his own liability in Sally’s murder of her husband.
It’s still not clear what Olivia’s mom is up to, but it is clear that she knows what she’s doing and she is afraid to do whatever it takes to get her way. She sends in Harrison’s ex-girlfriend to steal the president’s itinerary and security information off of Olivia’s computer, pretending that she is switching sides on Olivia’s mom, and after drugging Harrison, she gets what she came for. Abby and David come in and find Harrison half-naked and drugged on the floor, but it looks like he’ll live at least for the day.
I’m really frustrated that Jake is no longer quite as good a guy as he used to be. He was sort of a Boy Scout before, and now he’s sort of like a dictator. It’s a little bit frightening, actually. However, I’m still holding out hope that in the grand scheme of things, the decisions that he makes and the actions that he takes will turn out to be for the greater good and actually reveal him to be the good guy that he always was.
In the end, the first family does their interview and it seems to go off without a hitch. I’m not sure where this leaves Fitz and Mellie, or Mellie and Andrew, or Fitz and Mellie and their kids, but for now, there’s peace in the jungle, and however long it lasts is a good thing. I still like Andrew and his role in this saga, but he did come off a little standoffish and like a dick in his interaction with Olivia after she discovered his affair with Mellie.
Fitz is still pissed at both of them, even questioning if it’s been going on for years since they were in California, and it was so frustrating to watch Mellie come so close to telling Fitz the truth about why she couldn’t be with him sexually anymore (because his dad raped her), and then have her not go through with it. I’m sure she still has a good reason for keeping it from him, but since the old man is dead now, I feel like she should come clean.
One last note on the cinematography and the plot: I got a very Coppola/Godfather-y feel this episode with Olivia being an outsider, having doors closed on her, and not being able to do much in regard to the “family” business because no matter what she is to Fitz, she isn’t his wife, she isn’t his family, and blood is thicker than water.
Up next:
More Thursday recaps from Surviving Jack and Suits!
CORRECTION: I originally called Joshua Malina’s character in Scandal “Will” instead of David in this post. Latent subconscious memory of him as Will Bailey in The West Wing. Apologies. It’s fixed now!
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