Gladiators, just like any relationship, Scandal and I have gone through some growing pains. You see, the first two seasons of the show were just like when I first start dating someone and even the tiniest gesture makes me react the way I do when the Macy’s cashier gives me a 10 percent discount even though I’m not a Macy’s card holder:

But last season, I mostly behaved the way I do when I’m having sex in a relationship long after the honeymoon phase has worn off:

Point is that season three was not the series’ best. It was too heavy on the cray-cray—Quinn riding Huck’s baloney pony even though, weeks earlier, he tortured her by removing a tooth from her mouth with a pair of pliers, 96.7 percent of the B613 story line, and the fact that Olivia’s mom was in jail for years and years, yet her permed hair was on point like she’s about to pose for Jet magazine’s Beauty of the Week—and too light on the things that us Gladiators have grown to love: the juicy Olitz romance, Liv behaving like a boss, and the gripping case-of-the-week story lines. As a result, I was eversoslightly over the show, but deep down, I know that if anyone can right this ship, it’s Shonda & Co. Their teaser for season four seems to hint at Scandal getting back on track:

But she complies and tells Mary that Chris was a terrorist. Mary lets everyone go and then closes the office door and detonates the bomb, killing herself.

A drunk Mellie propositions Fitz, but he turns her down. Jake tells Liv that her face is what got him through being in the B613 hole for month. He then warns her about her evil daddy and tries to kiss her. My reaction to all this garbage:

OPA has a new client: Senator Richard Meyers, who is on trial after being accused of murdering his jump-off Desiree Oak after their sexting relationship turned sour. Then we met another politician played by Phoebe from Friends, who tells Fitz that he needs to keep his peen in his pants.

Fitz is fixated on the death of a man named Peter, who was involved in Operation Remington, and Mellie trashes Josephine. It gets picked up on a microphone. Oops! So to fix the situation, Cy digs up some dirt on Josephine. She had a kid at 15 and gave up her child for adoption:

Huck and Jake have finally gotten to the bottom of Op Rem and present Liv with the info, including that Fitz was the pilot, which makes her do this:

She needs to keep on drinking because it turns out that Mrs. Meyers is the one who killed her husband’s side piece. Yikes. Anyway, everything is cray in Liv’s world right now, so when Jake From State Farm kisses her again, she reciprocates:

That’s when the phone rings. It’s Fitz. She answers, so Jake gets slick and says loudly, “More wine?”

I’m not a Jake fan, but that was hilarious and awesome. Fitz doesn’t let JFSF’s shade bother him too much because he’s actually on his way to confront Rowan. Ooh! More on that later.

The next day, Huck and JFSF break into Rowan’s house while he’s out at dinner with Liv and steal computer files. Across town, another duo, Cy and Mellie, are trying to get Leo Bergen to be Fitz’s new campaign manager, but Leo is like:

…and passes on the gig. To make matters worse, Liv is now officially working for Josephine, who has her eye on the presidency and needs Liv’s help with the whole secret baby thing.

While OPA is busy trying to bury Josephine’s past, Huck and JFSF are digging up the past by watching video of the showdown between Rowan and Fitz re: Pete and Op Rem. Not to be outdone, Cy leaks Josie’s baby secret to her Democratic rival, Governor Reston, in hopes he will do the White House’s dirty work:

At the first Democratic Primary debate, it’s clear Josie is going to get blindsided about her teen pregnancy, so Liv advises her to come clean—and it turns out that Candace, who was raised as Josie’s sister, is actually her daughter:

Liv is fired, licks her wounds by taking a phone from Fitz, and he tells her he loves her. She says nothing back and goes to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with Jake From State Farm.

At the dinner, Sally asks Leo to be her campaign manager as she intends to run against Fitz, and Mellie, after calling Liv a heaux, asks her to run Fitz’s campaign because he needs her:

Super awkward, but not as awkward as when later that night, Jake “breaks up” with Liv when she never truly was with him. What. Ever. Jake.

JFSF returns home and Huck tells him about his Op Rem discovery. The plane was shoot down by the government and Maya Lewis, a.k.a. Rowan’s wife, a.k.a. Liv’s momma, was on it! Fitz might have accidentally killed Mama Pope, which is probably the biggest, “Whoops

in history.

Liv confronts Fitz about Op Rem, but he’s tight-lipped on it, so she says yes to Josie’s offer to come back and work for her. Next, she asks JFSF for more evidence re: Op Rem before she will do anything and Fitz tells Cy, who then tells Rowan that Liv knows about that mission.

Liv wants answers about her mother’s death, but Rowan is not particularly forthcoming. Meanwhile, someone from Harrison’s past, Adnan Salif, has returned, so Harrison wants Huck to prevent Adnan from returning to the U.S. and killing him.

Quinn strikes up a flirtationship at the gun range with Charlie, who she doesn’t know is a part of B613 and is secretly grooming her to join the agency. Even though she’s dumb, I don’t blame her. Charlie is cute, has dimps, and was Brian in Father of the Bride I and II, so in short:

JFSF gets a call from a contact that wants to meet him and give him the cockpit recording of the Remington flight. When he arrives, she is about to kill him, when a man shows up and kills her and takes Jake to see Fitz:

The two men fight, but they’re not shirtless while doing, so I’m 72.7 percent less interested in this scene.

Cy and Mellie find out about Sally’s plan to run for President, so they devise a plan to get her philandering husband in a cheating scandal THEN Cy allows Adnan back in the U.S. so now Harrison has to worry about his safety:

Fitz visits Liv and asks her to join the campaign, but she only wants to talk about Op Rem. He’s cagey and can’t say anything. That’s when she tells him her mom was on the flight. He still says nothing and she goes, “I was only 12 when she died.” Which makes him do:

Meanwhile, I’m like:

How old is this dude?! 50? 60? She was barely a tween when Fitz was flying planes and maybe killing her mama. Still, he looks good for his age, so I’ll pass him a Viagra and he can pass me his peen. #ThatsWhatTheUSAFairTradeAgreementIsReallyAbout

We get caught up on Mellie’s past via flashback. She and Fitz were once happily married and trying to make babies. Papa Grant a.k.a. Big Jerry teams him up with Cy in hopes of getting his son elected as the governor of California. Apparently, ABC’s wig budget is smaller than how much I spend on a Payless Bogo sale, so he winds up looking like a broken-down Kenny Loggins:

Anyway, we see that Big Jerry treats Fitz, who doesn’t want to run for governor yet, like trash in front of Liv and Cy. Poor Fitz.

Back in the present, Liv assembles OPA and Jake From State Farm because their new client is her deceased mother. Later on, we learn that all but one person, Omar Dresdin, is unaccounted for on the Op Rem plane crash and that Big Jerry oversaw the case! Across town, Cy and Mellie set their plan in motion to have Daniel, Sally’s husband, sleep with a hooker:

Charlie and Quinn make out and 20 percent of me is like, Quinn:

yet the rest of me is:

We head to a flashback and see that Big Jerry gets drunk and rapes Mellie. This situation becomes even more devastating because she doesn’t tell Fitz about it. Instead, the next morning, she tells Big Jerry to make amends with Fitz, so he will be encouraged to run for governor:

Back in the present, Charlie and Quinn make out more. He gets her to kill a security guard so that he can force her into B613 to escape going to jail:

More ignorant stuff happens: Cy realizes that Daniel is into men, so he decides to pimp out his husband James (without asking James) and Fitz finally figures out that Rowan is Liv’s dad.

We catch up with Rowan who visits “Omar” in jail. Turns out “Omar” is really Mama Pope!

When he tells her that Liv has been asking about her, but he’s not going to let her out of prison, Maya bits her wrists until she bleeds out and gets placed in a makeshift hospital.

Some campaign files and a laptop get stolen from Josie’s house, so Candice goes on TV and says it was Reston. Harrison tells Liv that he will take care of the situation, which basically amount to him having sex with Candice:

Still, OPA manages to find the stolen items at Reston’s and they send it over to FBI for an investigation.

Liv has been avoiding Fitz like the plague, so he sends SS Tom to pick her up in a helicopter and take her to Vermont. She arrives at a house. It turns out Fitz had it built for the two of them to start a life together one day. She’s moved by this and let’s him hit it from the front, the back, and the side:

The next morning, the two vow to take down Rowan. Liv heads back to work and learns that Candice planted the items to make it look like Reston stole them when he didn’t. Liv advises Josie to fire Candice, but Josie can’t do it. Instead, she takes the falls for Candice and drops out of the race.

Cy’s plan is going down. James is interviewing Daniel, when Daniel kisses him because he heard through the grapevine that James and Cy have an open marriage. James realizes that Cy set them up. Next, James arrives home. He gets into the shower. Cy then gets a bunch of pictures sent to his phone. They’re of Daniel and James hooking up:

Quinn also gets home. Huck is there with a photo of Quinn at the scene of the crime where she killed the guard. She won’t say who she’s working for and we see Huck has all his torture tools laid out:

Rowan plans on having Maya sent away, so she ends up killing her attending doctor and escaping:

Huck ties Quinn up and takes a tooth in exchange for information. Meanwhile, Cy is crying salty tears over James cheating on him, and Liv, JFSF, Huck, and Abby have Maya at a safe house. Huck and JFSF then cut a tracking device chip out of Maya’s neck and move to another location:

Just as OPA gets Maya ready to leave the states, the FBI has put her on the Most Wanted List, Sally turns in her resignation letter to Fitz, and James tells Cy that he knew about the plan and threatens to leave him, but Cy says he will ruin his life if he does:

Charlie finds Quinn and saves her. As a thank-you, she has sex with him:

Even though he’s broken, Cy goes to Sally and shows her pictures of Daniel and James. She basically calls his bluff on releasing the photos and he leaves. You know who else is leaving? Maya! OPA figures out how to get around the FBI and put her on a plane to Hong Kong. It’s not until Liv has a flashback that she realizes Rowan isn’t evil, but Maya is:

Cy wakes up to a phone call: Sally killed her husband because she was not going to let him leave her and come out as gay:

Cy feels kind of bad about Daniel’s death. At the same time, he’s shady, so naturally he helps her cover up the murder so that she owes him.

Liv finds out Huck tortured Quinn and then lost her. And then lost track of Eli. This upsets Liv, but at the same time, she opened this can of worms by having him torture for information, which was obviously going to affect his work, so:

Meanwhile, Sally is shell-shocked, so Cy has to handle the autopsy and gets the examiner to cosign that Daniel died of a heart attack without doing a full exam. What the hell?! Did this doctor go the school of “It’s 4:54 P.M. So I Give Zero F*s About Not Doing My Damn Job?”

Turns out that Eli is missing because Fitz kidnapped him because he doesn’t know that Maya is the truly evil one. So the two men are alone in a room. Eli is tied up and Fitz tells him how Olivia tastes:

So Eli counters by reading Fitz to filth and telling him that he’s not good enough to be the stock boy at Walgreens who gets the bottle of Palmer’s from the top shelf and put it in Olivia’s shopping cart, which makes me go:

Across town, Charlie and Quinn are booed up because she feels all alone. He tells her she has pretty hair. I know he’s trifling and tricked her into killing a dude, but if a guy tells me I had cute hair when I was emotionally vulnerable, I’d twirl my ass down to City Hall and fill out a marriage license:

James wants to take down Cy, so he tells David about the affair, but David wants no part of that mess. Meanwhile, Liv finds out where Eli to confront him and Quinn rolls into OPA, demands an apology from Huck, but he tells her to:

James, out of options, listens to Cy’s pleas to say married and James agrees under one condition: He gets made White House Press Secretary.

Jake kiss Liv and says, “I love you.” (BARF!) David gets audio of Sally and Cy’s phone call the night of Daniel’s death. (CRAP!) Fitz makes Jake the new head of B613 because he doesn’t trust Eli. (OH, DAMN!) Maya calls Liv and we see she is back in D.C.:

Sally announces that she’s running for President…and not resigning as VP:

Fitz picks a new running mate: Andrew Nichols, who was Fitz’s lieutenant governor in California.

James doesn’t want David to go after Cy anymore now that James is Press Secretary—This Bitch, the Sequel—and Jake tells Charlie that Quinn is not a part B613 and never will be:

Charlie doesn’t listen and gets Quinn to kidnap a child. WTF?! Thankfully, James later on changes his mind and teams up with David to take down Cy.

More drama unfolds because Leo reopens the Olitz affair rumors and a columnist, Vanessa Chandler, got an anonymous tip about Daniel’s sealed medical records:

The kid that Quinn kidnapped is the child of the coroner who examined Daniel, and she confirms the heart attack story when Abby and Huck question her, so her son will stay safe. That’s not the only shrewd move going down. Liv and Mellie have a very public lunch as a PR move and decide Jake will be Liv’s pretend boyfriend:

This is cray and obvs Fitz will want to snatch his last damn eyebrows out his head.

Harrison gets a surprise at OPA. It’s Adnan Salif—and they immediately have sex. We get a surprise of our own because it turns out Mellie is the love of Andrew’s life:

These two have a special bond because he was there for her after Big Jerry assaulted her and while her marriage with Fitz suffered (she stopped having sex with him), and she tried to OD on pills to take away the pain:

Adnan wants Harrison to do some dirty work for her, but he says no. Jake learns he has an insider at the WH (like all heads of B613 do), but doesn’t know who it is yet. James is the one leaking information to Vanessa Chandler under the code name of Publius. Cy decides to take Publius out:

Liv catches Quinn spying on her and asks her to come back to OPA. Quinn’s response? Pointing a gun in Liv’s face. Harrison changes his mind and takes the cash that Adnan gave him and donates it to Grant’s campaign. David decides to go in James’ place to meet Vanessa in case it’s a trap:

It was! Abby got there in time and saves him. Whew!

After flirting for what seems like 72 years, Andrew and Mellie kiss:

Then we find out that Adnan and Maya are working together, Tom is Jake’s inside guy, and Liv confides in Jake (have hot sex) because she’s stressed out about life:

Sally tells Leo she wants to confess to killing Daniel. Meanwhile, Cy asks Jake to kill Sally and Jake is like:

Then he goes to Liv and says he wants to “stand in the sun” her. He will say this phrase about 3 billion more times during the rest of the season and that makes me want to rip my ears off. I soldier on to watch Liv ask Fitz to throw the debate against Sally:

He does, Sally doesn’t admit she killed Daniel. Meanwhile, Quinn breaks into OPA and steals all the info on Daniel’s death. Cy learns that his office is bugged thanks to Publius:

Surprisingly, Cy forgives James. James goes to meet up with David and Vanessa. All three of them wonder who calls the meeting. It’s Jake!!! He walks up and shoots her and James. They die!

Cy falls apart, but Mellie thinks they should keep campaigning. Liv discovers that someone went into the David files, and Quinn and Charlie are trying to pin James’ death on a random carjacking:

Sorry, y’all, but James’ murder has ruined me. Learning how he and Cy fell in love via flashbacks isn’t helping! Anyway, Jake admits to Liv that he covered up everything and surprisingly, Rowan gives her a a good pep talk.

The Mendrew affair is full swing and guess who else hooks up? QUINN AND HUCK…in the grossest way possible:

OPA works on finding out who funds B613, but quickly abandons that mission. Quinn doesn’t tell Charlie about the kiss. Adnan wants an out from working with Maya as things are getting intense:

Maya won’t let her free, so she goes to OPA and gives up info in exchange for immunity (!) and Mellie’s daughter walks in on Mendrew hooking up:

Adnan and Harrison hook up as well, but then she stabs him with a needle. He passes out, and she steals all of Liv’s files re: the President and gives them to Maya. Charlie decides to move in Quinn’s place without permission:

Liv and Rown team up to take down B613, so Abby is in charge of the Fitz campaign, but no one listens to her. Shocker. Not! Essentially everything is falling apart, but Liv saves the day by having Fitz and Sally make a truce and take down Reston together:

Meanwhile, Huck tells Liv that he can access B613 files if she sleeps with Jake and puts a bug on his phone:

Maya has a boyfriend, who brings her a bomb that she intends on using. Just then OPA shuts down B613. Jake freaks out and storms their office and says they just killed the president:

Olivia, Jake, Fitz, and, surprisingly, Rowan team up to take down Maya. Rowan, after kidnapping her boyfriend, calls Maya and threatens to kill him. Maya’s like:

and hangs up. Rowan kills him anyway because he was Maya’s lover and she never really had real feelings for Papa Pope. Damn!

Later on, there is a funeral for a senator just as Fitz is heading to Defiance High School on the campaign trail. So where the hell is the bomb?

Maya shows up at OPA and stabs Eli. She put the bomb at the funeral, so basically, every other politician in DC is about to die:

Indeed, the bomb goes off, and Leo convinces Sally to help some of the injured people since there are camera crews around. She’s all over the news, so Liv and Cy want to end the campaign. Guys:

Charlie finds out about Huckleberry Quinn. The two break up, but he leaves her an envelope. Inside it, the address to Huck’s former family. Back at the White House, Fitz is writing his concession speech, so he and Liv can ride off in the sunset together. That’s when Liv reveals Mellie’s secret that she was raped. To all of this, I say:

Olitz give up being together romantically. She goes to check in on Rowan at the hospital while Fitz is about to give a campaign speech. Mid-speech, his son collapses—and then dies?!?!?!?!

Fitz thinks Maya is behind this, so he vows to kill her. Rowan, who checks out of the hospital, is also on the hunt for Maya with the help of Harrison, who has learned that Adnan was killed:

Liv and Jake decide to run away together. THIS BULLS**T DOES NOT DESERVE A GIF. Moving on.

Fitz wins the election, but is obviously not happy because his son is dead and his dad is a rapist. Ouch! The only silver lining here? Maya ends up back in the B613 hole:

Any great moments that I left out?

Be sure to watch the season four premiere of Scandal tonight at its new time 9 P.M. ET because I will be live tweeting it. Follow me at @PRobinsonComedy and tweet along with #WatchWithGlamour. Then come back here Friday morning for my recap!