Scandal season 6 episode 8: Is Huck alive? Why did ABC do this?

Thursday night’s Scandal season 6 episode 8 looked to be an interesting one based on some of the promos, especially since we were curious to learn whether or not Huck would end up being okay in the wake of what happened to him at the hands of Meg last week.

Is Huck alive? Well, the show made you wait for an answer to that question given that for the first half of the episode, we were going back in time to Election Day and seeing the story of Abby play out. This felt a la Glenn and the dumpster on The Walking Dead — if you’ve got a cliffhanger this big, it doesn’t really benefit you all that much to not get to some of the key information. Instead, you end up drawing things out and then you don’t have much in the way of answers on anything.

In some ways, we’d argue that the method of storytelling tonight was a big disservice to the Abby character and everything that was going on. The best way to label it is a distraction, and a rather mighty one at that. It was the elephant and the room that made it so much harder to pick up on and be entertained by some of the other things that were taking place in the episode.

In the closing minutes, we did revisit the shooting rather briefly, but that was it … briefly. We saw the shooting again after the buildup from Abby’s point of view. Yet, there was no actual clear answer as to precisely what is going on with the character. The only thing that we saw was a conversation in which Abby got an update on Jennifer Fields. That was it … for now.

This was a very good episode, and Darby Stanchfield’s performance was fantastic. Yet, we’d argue that in structuring the story in such a way, the writers did their own story a disservice and allowed an unnecessary carrot to dangle over viewers’ heads. It does seem as though there will be an answer coming on the show next week, but you are still going to have to wait that long in order to see it.

Do you think that Scandal mismanaged the whole Huck situation, and what should they have done instead? Share now in the comments below!

To preview what’s coming on Scandal season 6 next week, be sure to visit the link here. (Photo: ABC.)