Written by Morenike Balogun & Sarah L. Thompson
Directed by Zetna Fuentes
Olivia: "If you lose this case, it will set criminal justice reform back decades."
Annalise: "You don't think I don't know that?"
Olivia: "Then think about accepting some help. That's all I'm suggesting."
Okay, on a scale of things that were always inevitable at ABC, a crossover special with Olivia Pope and Annalise Keating happening was always going to happen. I think the fact that it took until Scandal's final season and How To Get Away With Murder being truly established perhaps was the best time to do this.
With the former show, I haven't been watching as avidly as I had done in previous seasons but I made an effort to watch both episodes and it seems that Mellie Grant is President and both her and Olivia had a rather public falling out that saw the latter resigned from being the President's fixer while Olivia's former Gladiators (Quinn mainly) seem a little too hell bent on sabotaging her, only for them to have a bit of a change of heart towards the end of the first half of this story.
The nuts and bolts of the first half involves both Annalise and Michaela coming to Washington DC in order to get Olivia on board to help overturn the Supreme Court with the face cases surrounding Nate's father. It would've been a little predictable for Annalise and Olivia to clash and that's exactly what happened throughout the crossover in various parts.
To be honest, I liked that there was some tension with the two of them. Aside from it being a great way for each of them to deconstruct the other before realising they actually work pretty well together. To say both Viola Davis and Kerry Washington play off each other brilliantly would be underselling but damn it, they do and every Annalise and Olivia scene is marvelous to watch over and over again.
As for the face cases itself, there were a few predictable bumps along the way, which was good for putting both Michaela and Marcus to use and we had both Olivia helping an initially crumbling Annalise along with the latter delivering an impassioned speech that certainly helped to postpone things for a bit. While the face cases was the thing to engineer this crossover, there were plenty of other things to keep things ticking along rather nicely.
For Olivia, there was an element of using her team up with Annalise to curry herself some favour and rebuild herself which several characters seemed more than happy to point out while Annalise also had to deal with her ailing mother appearing on the scene, news about Isaac taking an overdose and the episode ending with Simon waking up, which was definitely not the news that Annalise was expecting to hear at the last minute.
- Liza Weil was previously Amanda on Scandal, so it's a bit disappointing that Bonnie didn't get to interact with Olivia.
- Michaela and Marcus had sex with each other and Connor/Laurel/Oliver realised it quickly. I'm also glad that Frank told Laurel about her mother's connection to Wes though.
- Pretty clever of ABC to get an actual re-enactment of the TGIT promo with Olivia and Annalise actually having some wine and popcorn in one scene.
- Chronology: Not long since Ask Him About Stella.
Crossover wise, both Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself and Lahey V. Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania did an excellent job of having both Olivia Pope and Annalise Keating's worlds come together in a rather solid way. I don't know if we need a repeat of this next season but I certainly wouldn't object to one either way though.
Rating: 8 out of 10
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