"Run" kicks off by allowing us to see Olivia’s kidnapping from her point of view, instead of Jake’s. While he was out of the room, prepping for sexy time with Liv, a group of masked men burst in, dragging her into the apartment across the hall.
When (a completely naked) Jake realized she was gone, he immediately rushed out the door and onto the street in search of her. (My entire Twitter timeline winced when he spilled that red wine on Liv’s couch. No amount of OxiClean is going to get that stain out.) Nothing. He starts phoning some people who can help.
Problem is, Liv is still in the building. It’s a possibility I feel like a man who was once Command should have considered, but Jake is distraught, so that warrants a pass. The kidnappers had commandeered her elderly neighbor’s apartment, promising the woman that they would let her go once they had Liv. And they did let her go ... by shooting her in the chest.
They get Liv out of the apartment by calling an ambulance for the elderly woman. For some reason, they don’t bring an extra body bag for Liv, so they just drag/carry her to the truck. Once inside, one of the kidnappers starts to taunt Olivia, asking her why she isn’t begging for her life or offering them money and power at this point.
Olivia haughtily tells him that she only negotiates with the people in charge. She saw him gesture to another man before shooting her neighbor, silently requesting permission to kill. If she’s going to beg anyone for her life, it’s going to be the person who has actually has enough clout to spare her.
Her voice wobbles during this little speech, but it’s still very clear: she may be terrified but she is still Olivia Freaking Pope.
The drug her and when she awakes, she’s in a concrete room with a tiny window, way above reach. There is a dirty cot in the corner and Liv soon realizes that she’s not alone in her prison. Her fellow captive says he is a journalist named Ian who was captured in Egypt, right before he was about to file his final story to return home.
They quickly forge a bond and begin sharing their stories. He is a widower
who longs to get back to the U.S. to be with his daughter.
At that point, Olivia should have gotten suspicious. Why would a single father take a job as an international correspondent? Especially when the country he is covering has been going through turbulent times?
And if his captors had not fed him in three days while they went off to kidnap Liv, why does he not look more sallow? Why is not retching a bit when he tries to eat the rice they finally give him?
Olivia doesn’t notice that anything is amiss. She’s too busy promising to save Ian. His little story about his daughter played right into Liv’s daddy issues. She’s also distracted because she’s trying to figure out more about where they are. Ian believes that they have been taken to a village in the Middle East, because he often hears the Muslim call to prayer outside.
Eventually, it becomes clear that this is going to be a sort of bottle episode, allowing us to feel almost as trapped as Liv does. Liv has Ian search her back for a tracking device that her father may have implanted in her while she was unconscious. For once, she hopes that Rowan did something creepy and controlling.
Ian jokingly asks her if her father is Ike Turner, which ... I get it, but Ike Turner was known for battering women, not surgically placing hardware into their bodies without their consent. That’s taking things to the next level.
Ian gently asks Liv how she thinks she can help him and for some reason, Liv foolishly tells him that she will get out of here because the President of the United States is in love with her and will not rest until she is safely back into D.C.
*face palm*
On a trip to the filthy bathroom, Liv hatches a plan. (During all of the bathroom scenes, my friends yelled at the TV because Olivia kept sitting on that horrible toilet. That thing has not been hit with a spritz of Clorox in years.) There is a tiny window near the ceiling.
She plans to escape and find help.
The next time she goes to the bathroom, she tries to climb through the window but is caught by her kidnappers. Furious, they drag Ian out of the cell, saying that they will kill him to punish her and Liv just breaks down.
The emotional range that Kerry Washington shows in this episode! As someone who has been following her career since “Our Song,” I can honestly say this is some of the best acting she has ever done and that is saying something.
After Ian is taken, Liv dreams that Jake comes to rescue her. She’s returned back to the States where she and Dream-Fitz are living happily in Vermont.
Ugh. She’s making jam and pressuring him to cutesy photo ops. It’s all ridiculous, so luckily, Dream-Abby steps in to shut it down. She asks Liv where Jake is. Why is she here with Fitz like this? Doesn’t she realize that no man is going to save her? She needs to rescue herself.
Olivia wakes and decides to fight. She begins to pull the underwire from her bra, fashioning a weapon for herself MacGyver-style. She asks to be taken to the bathroom and is heartbroken when she finds that the kidnappers have sealed off her escape route. Thinking quickly, she finds a loose pipe in the bathroom and wraps her underwire around it.
When she comes out, one of the men smirks and says that they’ve sealed that window shut. Without hesitation, Liv knocks him out with the pipe and grabs his gun. His partner comes down the hall, confident that if Olivia was going to shoot him, she would have done so already.
Never underestimate a desperate woman. She shoots him and runs down what
looks like the longest hallway in existence, only to find the door chained and locked.
She finally manages to get it open, but her joy is fleeting. The village she’d seen from the window? It was just a backdrop projected onto a large screen. The sounds they’d heard outside were all recordings. Ian, the man she had trusted and confided in, is actually the ringleader and now that he knows just how valuable she is, there is no way he is letting her go.
Olivia Pope, the capable, smart and intimidating woman who is always in control, now has to wait and hope that she will be rescued.
It’s no question that her loyal friends and the powerful men she loves will save her, but at what cost? A war in West Angola? Conceding control to Andrew Nichols and Elizabeth North?
Where will it end and how messed up will Liv be once they get there?
