‘Scandal’ Season 3 RECAP/SPOILERS: Episode 5: Deadly Truth Revealed in ‘More Cattle, Less Bull’
"Scandal" Season 3 Episode 5, "More Cattle, Less Bull" RECAP/Spoilers: Dinner Time with Daddy: Olivia and her father's dinner time is not a pleasant one. Caustically, Olivia tells him that accusing him of something leads to more power games, and he making her friends kill people. She sees the dinner as fulfilling her part of the contract and wants to forget about it as soon as she gets home. Rowan is offended that Olivia thinks that she has imbibed her mother's traits and is what she is because of her mother and not because of her father. Olivia tells him it is "in spite of him" she has become the confident person. Rowan adds that if her friends leave him alone, he will leave them alone. He is talking about Huck.
Team Huck and Jack: While Rowan is having dinner with his daughter, Jack checks in his house to copy important data related to Operation Remington. With the help of Huck, Jack is able to get out before Rowan catches him red-handed.
A Loser President: Campaign strategist Leo Bergen (Paul Adelstein) refuses to manage President Fitz's (Tony Goldwyn) campaign as he thinks the President looks jaded and disinterested in the job, and is going to lose the Presidential election. He calls the President a loser and says that the President has got big problem, including character problem, credibility problem, penis problem and marriage problem. "I won't work for loser," Bergen says to Cyrus and Mellie.
Olivia Hired and Fired: Josie Marcus (Lisa Kudrow) hires Olivia to fix her problem, which is abandoning her child at the age of 15. She makes it clear to Olivia that she is not going to use the baby for political gains and does not want the revelation to affect her baby who is now a grown-up woman. Cyrus calls up Olivia and reveals that they are looking for dirt on Josie and offers her to work for the White House. Olivia refuses the offer. Olivia's team finds the father of the baby in Montana who is not interested in opening the pages of the past. Huck digs-up dirt against him when he refuses money to keep his mouth shut. When Cyrus team arrives with a T.V., the father of the baby does not spill the truth and praises Josie's work. Olivia's team find out that the baby was never abandoned as Josie's mother brought her up and she became Josie's sister. Equipped with the new information, Olivia asks Josie to address the issue as it is the only way to take people in the White House head on. At a televised debate, Josie confesses about having a baby at 15 and that her mother put that baby for adoption. She does not reveal that her sister is her biological daughter but the sister figures that out, and is not happy to know about the truth. Josie fires Olivia, blaming her for destroying a beautiful relationship. Watching the debate with the President and Mellie, Cyrus quips that "Josie just won the heart of America."
President Fitz Meets Rowan: Huck sees the video footage of the meeting between the President and Rowan. President is asking Rowan who else has to die to protect a secret that no one is looking for. Rowan tells him that someone is looking for the information related to that secret.
Jack and President Meeting: Jack and the President in a one to one basketball game. President reminds Jack that he was supposed to watch Olivia and tells that he lied to him. Jack refuses to talk about Olivia. Later, the President asks Rowan to lay off Jack, while Jack figures out that the President is hiding something as he was not on the mission, providing air support. Jack tells Huck, President was in Persian Gulf area ten hours after Operation Remington.
What is President Hiding: President wants to get rid of B613 and asks Cyrus, how they can make it go. Cyrus tells President that it is not possible and not to say that again because they will meet a fatal fate if B613 starts seeing them as their enemies. "This is something you cannot control, President," Cyrus tells him. Huck is able to figure out that President was in Iceland during Operation Remington mission. He later tells Jack that he has figured out what the cover-up is. On the day of Operation Remington, there was a plane crash that day, a couple of hundred miles away from Iceland. The President shot it down on the orders of the American government, which killed more than 300 passengers. Olivia's mom was one of the passengers.
White House Correspondence Dinner: Olivia has got her invitation for the dinner but she is waiting for the President's call to write his jokes as he is not exactly a funny man. Jack points that out and Olivia throws the President's phone in the trash basket. Later after getting fired by Josie, Olivia picks the ringing phone from the trash basket and receives the President's call who is calling from his bathroom, hiding from Mellie. He tells her that it was well done. He is talking about how she handled Josie's situation. President calls Josie an idiot for firing Olivia. Olivia gives him tips on how to be funny and be able to crack jokes, President tells her "I Love You." Mellie is outside the bathroom listening to the conversation.
Olivia wants Jack to take her to the correspondence dinner. At the dinner, Mellie asks Olivia to manage the Presidential campaign because he needs her."You're everything to him," Mellie tells Olivia. "He needs you. So, I need you. Come back. Come back to us."