ABC’s ‘Scandal’ season 5, episode 10 review: Jake’s big play; Olivia’s advice for Mellie

For everyone out there who thought that Jake Ballard was starting to flounder on “Scandal” or have very little to do, we’d like to present you with Thursday night’s new episode of proof that this is a guy who still has some serious skills. What we ended up seeing Scott Foley’s character do in this installment was rise high in the ranks, seize a new position, and come close to getting “that view” that he mentioned to Fitz in one of their conversations.

Yep, Jake is definitely becoming Jake the Snake on the show again. To us, this is significantly more interesting than watching him hook up yet again with Olivia, since that whole story just feels tired at this point. These two need to move on and do other things!

Speaking of people who need to move on, Fitz is still feeling the blues, and that includes refusing to talk to Olivia and determining that he wants to spend most of his time hanging out with Abby, who eventually determined that she really doesn’t have the time to fulfill every job in the phone book.

It’s interesting in a way given how we don’t think everything in this winter premiere (which really cannot hold a candle to what we had at this time last year) mattered; yet, at the same time, there were some important developments. Jake plotting his future is one of them, while Olivia giving a little bit of advice to Mellie on her Presidential campaign (via a book) is definitely not something we saw coming weeks ago. Grade: B-.

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