What to Expect from Scandal Season 4, Episode 2: The State of the Union

It’s Scandal Day, so of course it’s time to look at the previews to see what we can expect from the episode tonight .
First, let's do a quick rundown of what happened last week.
Olivia returns from her self imposed exile to bury her fallen gladiator, Harrison. When she arrives, she finds that her associates have all drifted into new life paths. Abby is the press secretary at the White House, Huck is barely keeping it together as a customer service/repair guy at Radio Shack and Quinn still trying to to convince us she’s a bad ass. Good luck trying to get us to believe that schtick this season, girl!
Meanwhile at the White House, Mellie has made a wholehearted commitment to not give a damn about anything other than mourning her dead son. She’s only recently started washing her hair again, people! To say that she’s gone off the rails would be an understatement. We also learn that at some point since we last saw the unhappy first-couple, Fitz attempted suicide. In other news, Cyrus has something growing on his head and it’s looking a lot like a bad toupee. The jury is still out on whether someone will directly address his new growth on the show.
Oh and Olivia handled a case of a rapey senator killed by one of his aides. And Jake was there.
Now that you’re all caught up, let’s check out the previews for tonight’s episode.

Episode synopsis from abc.com: Scandal Season 4 Episode 2 “The State of the Union”- In order for Fitz to make the biggest impact with his State of the Union address on gun control, Cyrus sets out to recruit a power couple (Mary McCormick and Josh Randall) who are influential on the issue. Meanwhile, Mellie’s personal struggle gets national attention.
What we can expect:
Cyrus is back to his old conniving self: In the sneak peek, we see that Cyrus is explicitly blackmailing Olivia to come and work for President Fitz again. This isn’t your basic, garden-variety blackmailing, though. He says that he will tell Fitz that she’s pining for him and calling him everyday. For a woman, like Olivia, who loves to wear her stoicism like an iron mask, this is the ultimate humiliation. Cyrus knows that would cut her much deeper than anything ever could. The question remains: is she really calling the White House everyday and hanging up? I can’t be too clear on that from this preview. But based on her reaction, I’m gonna go with no. We'll see later tonight!
Olivia’s moral compass is going haywire already: If you’re a longtime Scandal fan you know that the colours Olivia wears normally indicate her state of mind. When she wears white or pale colours. it normally means that she’s convinced that what she’s doing is right. You could say she’s her “Pope-iest” when she’s strutting around in all-white: strong, powerful and confident about her decisions. When she veers to the dark side of her shaky moral code or if she’s regretting a decision, she wears dark colours, black mostly.
In the previews she’s mostly wearing grey, though. To me, this means she’s going to be feeling conflicted about her decisions for most of the episode. Maybe a part of her wishes she was back on the beach sucking mango juice off Jake’s fingers. But we all know those days are over, which brings us to the next point.
Olivia and Fitz will be in the same room ….alone!: We all know what happens when Fitz says, “We need the room." and he and Olivia are in said room. Expect lots of passionate revelations or confessions. Heartstrings and articles of clothing are going to get tugged and probably not in that order.
So. are you excited about tonight’s episode? What do you think is gonna happen? Tune in with us on Twitter where we’ll be cackling about Cyrus’ new rug and counting Olivia’s lip quivers all episode.