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Huck prepares to gleefully and creepily torture Quinn to find out who she's been working for, but he's interrupted when Liv calls to report that her mother is alive. Huck abandons Quinn, but not before yanking out one of her teeth.
Sally agrees to become pro-choice to give her Presidential campaign a chance to succeed. Meanwhile, Daniel Douglas is freaked out that James might reveal their sexcapades. Sally tells Fitz that she's resigning and launching her own campaign. James confronts Cyrus about pimping him out and threatens divorce. It's like FINALLY James grows a pair, but then Cyrus reveals that he has photos of the sexcapades and James backs down. Sigh.
The gladiators (no one asks where Quinn is) gather at a safe house with Olivia and Maya, who explains that she discovered her husband's secret life and was about to blow the whistle on him, so he had her imprisoned for twenty-two years until she escaped. Jake and Huck realize that she's probably got a tracking chip implanted somewhere so they dig it out of her body. And then the whole group takes off just before Charlie and company can converge on the safe house. Sure hope they have a backup safe house. A safer house?
With B613 hot on her trail, Liv decides that her mom needs to go to Hong Kong immediately. While securing her ID, Harrison finds out from his contact that Adnan Salif is in the country. Jake and Huck realize that Maya isn't going to be able to stop running unless Eli is dead. Jake goes to Fitz for help, but Fitz claims he can't help -- at least not now -- without really giving a reason.
Liv remembers that her mom talked to a reporter the morning she left, and thinks the reporter can vouch for her mom and thus Maya can live a normal life. Maya says it would put the reporter at risk so she won't do it; she got to see Liv and that's all she wanted. It seems fishy that Maya wouldn't even consider trying to live above ground.
Jake and a squad move in to take out Eli, but he saw it coming and set a trap, a bomb that kills some of the squad members. He asks Charlie to activate Quinn. Oh yeah, shouldn't Charlie be worried about Quinn disappearing too? Eli puts Maya on the FBI's Most Wanted list under a fake name so that she can't leave the country, at least not by commercial airlines.
Fitz calls Cyrus in to the Oval to yell at him for not preventing Sally from leaving the tickets. Cyrus breaks down when Mellie asks him what happened with their sting operation, and Mellie basically tells him to suck it up and follow through with it. Cyrus shows the photos of James and Daniel Douglas to Sally, but she points out the fatal flaw -- if Cyrus releases the photos, James will be humiliated too, and his adultery will reflect poorly on Cyrus and the Presidency.
David Rosen can't get Maya off the no-fly list despite Abby's begging. Liv calls Fitz who says that he'll handle it. He gets a military plane to take Maya to Hong Kong.
Charlie rescues Quinn and instead of running away, she takes a shower and then has sex with him. I don't even. I hope this is all a ploy, like Quinn told Huck what was going on and he arranged to have her seduce Charlie and then kill him or something. Quinn agrees to help Charlie track her former co-workers.
As her mom's plane leaves, Liv remembers getting a phone call on the morning her mother left and someone asking for Marie. Huck reports that Maya's name on the Most Wanted List is Marie, so Liv realizes that her mother really is a terrorist and her father has been protecting her all these years. The only problem is that Quinn really is working for Huck (I swear I typed all that above before this part was revealed) and is about to kill Rowan.
And speaking of dead people, turns out Sally wasn't as sanguine as she pretended to be about her husband screwing James, and she murdered him and then called Cyrus for help.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!So, Huck has Quinn duct taped up on a sheet of plastic, and he’s getting ready to torture her. He’s giving her a creepy monologue about how he normally starts will peeling off skin or removing fingers and toes, but because Quinn is family, he’s going to start with her teeth. I really don’t buy the performance by Huck as creepy torture guy. It feels really showy and fake to me. I get that reality is heightened on this show, but something about Torture Huck is off-putting and takes me out of the scene. Anyway, Huck lies down to her and in a very excited voice says that he’s sorry that he’s so excited about this, but he’s never tortured someone in his family before. And then he licks her face. For a show that has 8 million "Come on!" moments, this was the first one that kind of broke me. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t like Quinn as a character, or because I don’t like Huck’s performance, but that felt like too much for me. I know other people loved this scene, so it’s clearly personal preference.
Huck promises that he won’t kill her, but he is going to rip out her teeth, and he inserts a crank of some sort in her mouth to hold it open. My other problem is that it doesn’t seem like very effective torture, because she’s willing to spill everything before he even starts. So why not just get the information and skip the torture? I guess torturers aren’t big on efficiency. Just as Huck is about to remove a tooth, his phone rings.
He shushes Quinn and answers to Liv whispering, "She’s alive." Liv starts freaking out, "My mother! She’s alive and she’s here in my apartment. What do I do? She’s not dead." Think about what a mind fuck that would be. Huck snaps into B613 mode and tells Olivia to hang up and take the battery out of her cell phone and go to the safe house and wait for him. Olivia has a lot of questions but Huck yells at her to just go because if Maya is alive then Command is coming for her. It should be noted that Liv is hiding in a different room and peeking at her mom through a crack in the door throughout.
Huck hangs up and tells Quinn that he’s sorry he has to go, but Liv needs him. Then he decides they might have time for one tooth extraction, and he takes on as his motto "YOLO" (episode title alert!). He yanks out one of Quinn’s teeth, and she screams. Doesn’t she live in an apartment? With neighbors? Maybe Huck killed them all.
Flash to Sally and Leo, her campaign advisor. Leo presents Sally with two sets of papers: one is to register her candidacy for President, and the other is to resign the Vice Presidency. Leo tells her that he needs a pledge from her first, because he needs her to abandon the Christian Conservatives after they get her into the debates. Sally thinks he’s joking, but Leo says that Sally has to come out as pro-choice or she won’t win. Sally starts to refuse and Leo packs up, saying that he can’t make her first female President unless she changes her abortion stance, because women won’t vote for a pro-life candidate. Then Leo just yells at her, and scolds her like a child. I guess that’s a valid acting choice, but I think it would have been better if he had been calm and cool with zero emotion.
Anyway, Leo says that he’s not really asking her to change her stance, because she doesn’t have a choice if she wants to be President. He forces Sally to practice her new statement on abortion, which is that she doesn’t think she has the right to get in between the relationship of a woman and her doctor. Leo approves and hands her the pen to sign away her entire belief system. I don’t think Sally has been faking the religious thing for votes and as much as I may personally disagree with her politics, at least she had an ethical leg to stand on. No more. Now she’s as dirty as everyone else on the show.
Cyrus and James are in bed, with James typing away on his laptop and Cyrus trying to sleep with visions of James and Daniel Douglas’s tryst in his head. Frankly, I would be more annoyed by someone typing two inches from my head while I was trying to sleep than anything else. He can’t take his laptop elsewhere? James takes pleasure in using double entendres to torture Cyrus, like how he got Daniel Douglas to "go deep." They both dance around the subject but then decide to ignore it for now, as each tries to figure out how much the other knows. That seems like a fun marriage. I’m not sure who I’m supposed to empathize with her; I think they’re both awful, but I guess Cyrus is more awful.
Flashback to Liv eating breakfast while her mom gets ready to get on the plane to London. Liv listens to "Ben" by Michael Jackson and that song has been in my head ALL WEEK and I only know the first two lines. So annoying. Anyway, it’s the same flashback we saw previously, so no new information here. Yet. Cut to present day Olivia huddled in a corner with the gladiators arguing in front of her. Harrison and Abby feel like they’re out of the loop because, as Abby puts it, "Dead Mama Pope" is suddenly alive and well. Jake says they had no idea either.
Abby decides to take matters into her own hands and yells at Maya, "Where have you been for the past 22 years?" (No had asked her that until now?) Maya says that she found out the truth about her husband, that she had "married a man and found out he was a monster," so she stole some files and was going to turn them over to a reporter. Then she was going on the run with Olivia, but Eli/Rowan caught her and threw her in a prison under a fake name, "Omar Something." Well, that jibes with the fake name that the team found out in their investigation. Maya continues that a couple of days ago, Eli/Rowan pulled her out and put her in a warehouse in preparation for moving, so she escaped. Jake and Huck immediately freak out when they find out that she escaped. Seriously, this is all just coming up now? Anyway, they slam Maya on the table and dig out the tracking chip that is implanted in her neck. It’s bloody. The whole time, Liv is just huddled in a corner, looking traumatized. I hope the second half of the season features Olivia Getting Her Groove Back, because I miss confident Liv.
Outside the safe house, Charlie and a couple of goons advance. They burst into the safe house, but Liv and company are already gone. All that’s left for Charlie to find is a tracking device in a puddle of blood on a table. He kicks a chair in frustration. Stupid chair.
As Eli/Rowan gives his version of Tommy Lee Jones’s "Every farmhouse, hen house, outhouse and doghouse" speech from The Fugitive, we also see Jake and Huck taking precautions like swapping license plates and putting a spray on the car windshield so that traffic cameras won’t detect their faces. The OPA group assembles at a different safe house, I guess. A safer house? How many of these do they have? Jake and Huck are trying to figure out a place to send Maya. They explain that they need a friendly dictatorship because free societies are too hard to control and dictatorships are bribe-friendly. They toss around some ideas but finally Liv speaks up and says quietly that they’re sending her to Hong Kong as soon as Harrison’s friend comes through with the new identification and passport. Someone (Abby) finally asks where Quinn is. Guess it shows how unimportant she is to the team that they only now noticed that she isn’t there. Huck just says that Quinn is where she needs to be and he should go check on her. No one questions that weird statement, but Liv says that she needs Huck to stay there, and he nods.
Meanwhile, Quinn is still duct taped up and bleeding from the mouth. I will say that her mascara is holding up really well for someone who presumably has been crying. Must be waterproof. She rolls over and sees her tooth sitting on the floor. Look, I had a tooth extracted with just Novocain, if the dentist knows what he’s doing, it’s not that bad. I guess Huck didn’t pack the wound with gauze, though.
Harrison and Abby are back to OPA offices, which have been ransacked. They bicker over how Liv is handling this whole thing. Harrison thinks she’s fine; Abby thinks there’s no way she could be fine given the events of the past few days. Some lady comes in, and she and Harrison clearly have a history because there is some heavy eye-fucking going on. She’s going to create the new IDs for Maya, and promises to do her best for Harrison. Then they stare at each other for a while until Abby chimes in, "I’m Abby." Heh. As she heads out, the lady tells Harrison, "Adnan Salif says 'Hello'." A worried Harrison responds, "Adnan Salif’s back? Back here?" She just tells him to keep his phone on and she’ll have the ID in a few hours. So I guess they’re still running with that "You in danger, Harrison" storyline.
Mellie catches up with Cyrus in the corridor and has to sprint after him to ask what’s going on with the Daniel Douglas sting. Cyrus wants no part of this conversation and just repeats that they’re holding until he tells Mellie that she must have some fat kids somewhere to motivate. It must be fun to write Cyrus’s dialogue, as he says all the things most people would keep inside. Mellie spits at him to stop holding and play the cards already, then stomps off.
As Huck re-bandages Maya’s wrists (has anyone asked about those injuries?), Olivia walks in with some breakfast food. Maya tells Liv to have breakfast with her, but Liv demurs. Maya insists. Olivia slowly sits down and says that there’s not much to tell about her life. Maya says that she had fantasies while in prison where she imagined Liv married to a dentist named Ray, who came home for dinner every night with their son, Sam. So she doesn’t like seeing what Liv’s become, because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of laughter in her life. Well, gee, could that have anything to do with the fact that in the past few hours Liv has found out that her mother is alive and her father hid her for 22 years? Maya says that she sees what Liv does, and realizes that she’s more like her father than her mother. Ouch. Maya concludes, "Eli raised you in his image, didn’t he?" Liv stares at her mother, disturbed, and says, "I am not anything like him." I’m guessing Liv is starting to be no so sorry that her mother disappeared.
Huck and Jake stand on the balcony outside the safe house/room drinking coffee. Huck notes that Liv seems smaller and slower, and he wonders how long they can run and hide. Huck adds that Maya won’t be safe forever, no matter how well they hide her. Jake says calmly that she won’t be safe as long as Command’s still alive. Huck thinks Command is hard to get to, and Jake says that they’ll need help. Why is Huck such a weirdo after his time in the hole and Jake is so (outwardly, at least) normal? I guess Jake wasn’t in there as long. Or maybe he’s a robot. That would be quite a finale reveal.
Jake decides to ask Fitz for help. He visits the Oval in full dress uniform, but unshaven, so it looks weird. Fitz doesn’t seem super shocked that Maya is alive, and says that they need to get her and Liv to safety. Jake disagrees; they need to take out Rowan. Fitz makes it clear that he knows who Rowan really is, and asks Jake what his problem is. Jake points out that he got royally screwed over on the Remington deal, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got enslaved to B613 while Fitz became President, and Fitz doesn’t care because he only cares about Liv and himself. Fitz doesn’t deny what Jake said and adds that he also wants to get rid of B613 and Rowan, but now is not the time. Fitz says that Jake could stick around and help him figure out a plan to dismantle B613, but only wants to be Liv’s hero. Fitz says with snark, "Word to the wise. She doesn’t need one." Jake bites back, "Must be nice, letting other people fight your battles." I love when someone tells Fitz off, especially when they’re right. I feel like Jake would join my anti-Fitz campaign. We could use a real go-getter like him. Lots of initiative there.
Quinn is still taped up on the floor of her apartment. She looks around for something to help her and sees a glass on a nearby table. She wiggles her way over and knocks the glass off with her feet. It doesn’t break.
Sally sits Daniel Douglas down and tells him that she’s making her announcement tomorrow. Daniel Douglas is pleased and Sally is jubilant as she thanks him for his patience and discipline (uh oh). Daniel Douglas looks down and can only muster a half smile but Sally doesn’t notice.
Cyrus is still looking at the naked pictures of James and Daniel Douglas in his office, which seems like a terrible idea. James walks in and gloats some more about how he’s going to see Daniel Douglas again because he’s fascinating. They have a conversation full of subtext about how James didn’t get everything he needed the first time and they barely scratched the surface. James also says that "Danny" is coming to their place tonight to "finish up." James confirms that Cyrus has a donor dinner tonight or it could have been "a threesome." Ugh, I just want to yell at them to talk to one another because these conversations are annoying.
James leaves Cyrus’s office and runs into Daniel Douglas in the hallway. Daniel Douglas is all cheery and happy and asks if he can look at James’s article before it goes to print, but James says that’s not allowed. So, Daniel Douglas grabs him and growls/whispers that he’s not gay, and issues a bunch of denials about what happened because he loves and is attracted to his wife. Daniel Douglas also calls homosexuality "this sickness" and "a despicable temptation" before reiterating that he’s not gay. He closes by begging James not to embarrass him and his family. Okay, I’m convinced! You’re not gay! Just because you like making out with other dudes and getting naked with them and flirting with them and…okay, that’s where your argument kind of falls apart, Double D.
Liv is standing at a vending machine when she remembers what happened right before the flashback scene we saw earlier. Maya was on the phone with someone and confirmed that he would meet her at the gate and she had everything they needed. Present day Liv runs back into the motel room and asks her mother if she talked to the reporter who was going to expose Rowan that morning. Maya’s not sure because it was so long ago. Liv thinks they can track down the reporter, who will corroborate Maya’s story and then Rowan will have to let her go free. Maya thinks that Rowan will just kill the reporter, and that Liv can’t protect him. She adds that the possibility of a life above ground isn’t worth putting others at risk. Maya says firmly that as long as Rowan is alive, she will have to run, and she’s okay with that now, because she got to see Olivia. Seems a little fishy that Maya shot that plan down immediately, no? Plus some emotional manipulation of her daughter thrown in for good measure? Maybe I’ve watched too much Alias? (No such thing).
Jake and a team of guns-for-hire follow Rowan into a warehouse to kill him. Except Rowan rigged the warehouse with a bomb, which blows up and kills some of Jake’s men. Meanwhile, we see Rowan and Charlie driving away outside in a town car. Charlie is giddy, but Rowan says sharply that he doesn’t enjoy killing. He condones it, but he doesn’t enjoy it. Then he tells Charlie to activate his asset (Quinn). Charlie says he’s been calling her, with no answer, and Rowan says he needs to track her down. I’m no spy, but it seems like a terrible idea to let your hostage roam freely and lose track of her for hours at a time.
Quinn is still trying to break the glass she knocked on the floor. She finally does.
Jake returns to the Safer House and reports what happened to Huck, who decides he needs to take off and deal with some shit. And by "some shit," I mean Quinn. She’s busy using the broken glass to try to cut through the duct tape on her wrists. Before she can make much progress, Huck walks in and slams her against the radiator, preparing to duct tape her to it. He removes the tape from her mouth so that she can whine, "Pleeeeeeeeease, Huck." Why doesn’t she just start telling him shit? Get down to business, girl. Huck tells her that they need to "rip a little, talk a little" and if your head didn’t go right to The Music Man, I don’t even know what to tell you. He prepares to yank another tooth and off Quinn’s scream, we cut to…
…Liv finalizing arrangements for her mother in Hong Kong. Harrison also has the required new ID in hand, but Abby reports that there’s a problem. Huck has alerted them that Maya is on the FBI'S 10 Most Wanted list as a terrorist, so she’s not flying anywhere commercially. As we go to the scene, the camera zooms in on the alert, and we see that Maya is listed under the name Marie Wallace and the charges are espionage, treason, and being an enemy of the state according to the Office of Homeland Security. Figured they wouldn’t show that if it weren’t important. I’m also shocked that Maya isn’t like, "What is this thing? What’s an iPad? And how are you all talking on cordless phones? What’s Homeland Security?" I mean, it’s been 22 years.
Abby goes to visit David to try to get him to take Maya off the No Fly list because the charges are false. David tells Abby that she’s aiding and abetting.
Sally goes to see Fitz and hands him the papers declaring her resignation and intention to run against him as an Independent. She tells him the official announcement is the day and heads out. Fitz is like, "Hold up, partner. WTF?" He asks what she wants and says they can work something out. Sally tells him that he’s brought immeasurable destruction to the country, the party, and his family. Fitz doesn’t think she’ll win, but Sally says he told her to climb through a window, and this is her window, between his infidelity and Josie Marcus’s collapse. Fitz tells her she can stick with him and wait it out to run when his term is up, or she can commit political suicide. (I feel like I’m recapping last week’s Survivor all over again; the same speech was given there). Fitz does that thing where he gets up in her face which feels oddly sexually threatening. Fitz vows that she will regret this day forever, and he won’t stop until he’s sure of that. Sally hisses, "See you on the battlefield." I guess I’m rooting for Sally here?
Cyrus runs into the house, hoping (or not hoping?) to catch James and Daniel Douglas in the act, but James is alone. Cyrus starts yelling at James for having Daniel Douglas in their house with their daughter sleeping in the room. Well, she won’t be sleeping for long if you keep bellowing like that, you old horse. Cyrus finally breaks and admits that he knows that James had sex with Daniel Douglas. James says he’s confused because he thought Cyrus wanted him to do it, or was he supposed to refuse Daniel Douglas’s advances. James says he wasn’t sure what kind of "rent boy" he was supposed to play. Cyrus is quivering. James says he doesn’t know what kind of backroom political crap Cyrus is playing, but can’t figure out why Cyrus didn’t just hire a hooker, and he yells this last part, "Why you would PIMP OUT your OWN HUSBAND!" Yes, James! Finally.
Cyrus somehow tries to take the high road, because James cheated. James admits it and says that Cyrus used him like a cheap whore. They start yelling over one another but I did catch James telling Cyrus he’s the devil (true). He then concludes, "You have ruined us! You have ruined everything! Not to mention that you’re a gay man who has gone out of his way to shame another gay man for being in the closet." Yeah, not to mention that. Although, then that brings up how Cyrus can continue to work for a party that would largely rather he weren’t able to be married and be himself. But that’s a whole other ball of wax. James passes Cyrus his laptop so he can see what James has been working on -- it’s a whole page that just says, "I want a divorce." James says he’s taking the baby and leaving.
Just when I think Cyrus is about to have another heart attack, he gathers himself and tells James that he might as well ask for full custody and surely the judge won’t mind the photos. James didn’t know about the photos. Cyrus screams, "You think I would go through with all this, and not get proof?" James thought he knew how low Cyrus would go, but this is a whole sub-basement level. Cyrus’s phone rings but before he answers it, he tells a stunned James, "You’re not going anywhere. You never do." OH DAMN. James, slap him and takes the baby and leave. Cyrus isn’t going to let those photos become public record, and you have so much other shit on him that you can blackmail him into a custody agreement. Let’s start with how he fixed the election and work from there, hmm?
Anyway, Cyrus’s phone call was from Fitz, and Cyrus is summoned to the Oval, where Fitz and Mellie wait angrily. Fitz says that Cyrus failed to take care of the Sally problem, because she’s announcing her candidacy tomorrow. Fitz lays into Cyrus about how he’s always claiming to do the dirty work, and that he has Fitz’s back, and now Sally has shived him in the back and where was Cyrus? If I were Cyrus, I think I would tell Fitz to fuck off. I mean, seriously.
Fitz stomps out and Mellie asks Cyrus what happened with their brilliant plan. Cyrus can’t answer, because he’s sobbing. Mellie doesn’t even know what to do with that, so she starts to leave the room and give Cyrus his privacy, but she pauses at the door when she realizes that she has some valuable lessons learned in this area. She speaks to Cyrus’s back and tells him that it hurts until it doesn’t, and he thinks it will break him, but it won’t. Eventually he’ll be numb, but fine, and aren’t numb and fine the same things? Oof, Mellie. You are one damaged parcel. Cyrus, collected now, turns to face her and Mellie tells him that he has to see the Sally thing through.
Charlie enters Quinn’s apartment making a joke about calling in sick but then he sees her bloody and duct-taped on the ground.
David tells Abby that he got someone at the FBI to access Maya’s file, but even that set off some alarms, so there’s no way he can quietly take her off the No Fly list. Abby wonders why he didn’t tell her over the phone. Probably so Joshua Malina could get some screen time; haven’t seen him in a while. David says he wanted to see her, so she kisses him and says she’ll call him later.
Abby goes into the Safer House and reports that David couldn’t do anything. Maya, resigned, says that Rowan always wins. Liv promises her that they’ll find another way, because this is what she does, and what she’s good at. Liv leaves the room and calls Fitz, but doesn’t know how to begin explaining the situation. Fitz says he knows that Maya is alive; Jake told him, because they both want to help. Liv says he can’t do anything, because of the nature of Maya’s (fake) crimes; helping her in any way would result in Fitz going to prison. Liv says she just called to hear his voice and talk about jam and Vermont and kids. Ugh, go to Vermont with someone else, Liv. There are plenty of unmarried fish in the sea. Liv just wanted a minute of normalcy, and that I get. I remember when my mom died, and while she was on life support, we spent a terrible night in the hospital and I took a break outside with two of my cousins and one of them told me a hilarious story about constipation (you had to be there) and it felt so good to have a minute of just normal conversation that it made it easier to go back into the hospital room. So, I get it. Anyway, Fitz says he’s taking care of it even though Liv doesn’t want him to, and she is grateful. He tells her he loves her and they hang up, and then Fitz calls the Pentagon.
Quinn comes out of the bathroom, having showered, wearing only a towel. Charlie hands her a glass of straight vodka, both to numb the pain and to disinfect her wounds. This was the point where I wondered if Quinn, knowing Charlie would come looking for her eventually, was going to double cross him. Anyway, Quinn starts crying, which makes Charlie uncomfortable. He tells her to buck up, and then grabs her and yells at her to stop crying. She looks in his eyes and says that Huck was the only person she had, and he hurt her. Charlie hugs her tenderly and says that she has him. I think Charlie’s in loooo-oooove. He kisses her, but she cringes due to the pain, so he backs off. You see Quinn steeling herself for what she knows that she has to do. She looks at Charlie until he looks back, and then she slowly drops her towel. And then they start doing it. I don’t know why he would want to French her. Bloody mouth holes are gross.
Cyrus walks into Sally’s office and after trading insults, drops the photos of Daniel Douglas and James on her desk. Sally doesn’t seem shocked, but she does seem both grossed out and upset as she shuffles through them and then lays them aside. Sally gathers herself, and then asks Cyrus if this is supposed to keep her off the ballot. He says it will, and she retorts that he’ll never go public with them because he doesn’t want to ruin his husband and his marriage, and just in case she’s wrong about that, she adds that the party would never bear the Chief-of-Staff’s husband having relations with a married man. She manages to get a dig in at Cyrus about his "immoral future" with James, in case you thought her husband’s activities made her cool with the gays all of a sudden. Sally tells Cyrus that his empty threats and intimidation won’t work this time; he lost and it’s over. Cyrus has no comeback and walks out. That Sally is a cool customer. A homophobic customer, but a cool one. That said, as he leaves, Sally looks like she’s trying to avoid hurling into her garbage can, so maybe her coolness was all an act.
Cyrus calls James, who answers for reasons I don’t understand. Cyrus says that he’s sorry, that he did a horrible thing, and that no one (including Sally) will ever see the photos. Dude, if you’re going to come clean, come clean. Because even if James does accept your apology, he will probably eventually find out that you lied and then it’s over again. Cyrus asks if James can forgive him, and James doesn’t answer, but we see he’s sitting on the bed to a partially packed suitcase. Come on, James! Leave him!
Charlie and Quinn walk into Rowan’s office. Quinn tells Charlie that she knows the team’s burner signals, so she can track them down that way. Charlie grabs her and tells her that she’s the coolest girlfriend ever. Aw, Charlie. I know you’re a murderer and a bad guy, but I still think it’s sweet that you have such a crush on Quinn, because she’s awful. They kiss and enter the building.
Meanwhile, the OPA team arrives at a military airport where a plane is waiting. Liv explains to Maya that the plane will take her to Hong Kong where she’ll be allowed to bypass customs. If anything goes wrong, Maya has a phone to call for help and a gun for other reasons. Maya says goodbye and Liv promises to keep working to clear Maya’s name. That’s your goodbye to your mother? Maya walks away and Abby scolds Olivia for not giving her mother a hug when they might never see one another again. The opening notes of "Ben" strike up again as Liv mulls over what to do, and finally she calls out, "Mom!" She walks, and then runs to her mother and gives her a big hug as Maya says shakily, "I love you, Olivia!"
That causes Liv to flash back to the last morning with her mother again, the same scene we saw previously. Except this time, Liv remembers what happened after her mother left the house. The phone rang, and a man asked for Marie, Liv’s mom. Liv said her mom’s name was Maya and she wasn’t home and hung up.
Present Liv looks confused by the memory as she watches her mother get on the plane and then wave from the window. The plane starts taxiing and Liv starts gasping with realization. She calls Huck and asks what her mother’s name was on the No Fly list. Huck looks it up and reports that it was Marie Wallace. Liv tells him what she just realized: her father was trying to protect her this whole time, because he didn’t want Liv to know who her mother really was and what she did. She concludes, "He’s not the monster. She is." So shouldn’t someone be stopping that plane from taking off? You know, the plane that the President arranged to help a known terrorist leave the country with fake identification and a gun? It seems like there might be some blow back from that beyond Liv’s emotions.
But Huck is worried about another problem, because right now, Quinn and Charlie are standing in front of Rowan. We flash back to Quinn promising Huck that she will do something if he lets her go. Now Quinn is standing in front of Rowan, demanding every copy of the tape of her killing the security guard. As Rowan leans forward to meet her demands, Quinn pulls a syringe out of her pocket just like the one she used to kill the security guard. I’m not sure how she plans to get past Charlie once she kills Rowan, but maybe she’s got another syringe in the other pocket.
Oh, you think the episode is over? Just because we have a cliffhanger of a terrorist leaving the country with a gun and fake ID on a plane arranged by the President, and Quinn about to mistakenly murder Liv’s father? Oh, there’s more. Cyrus is sleeping on his office couch when the phone rings. It’s Sally, and she’s in her office. She tells Cyrus shakily, "I have committed a sin." Behind her on the floor, we see a bloody and still Daniel Douglas, who appears to have been conked on the head with a heavy lamp, presumably by Sally. Guess she wasn’t such a cool customer after all.