Scandal Season 5 Wish List

QUINN

No one wishes stagnation on a character. But rewatch the series pilot, as I (again) did the other day, and try to explain how that girl became this one. Season 4 seemed to dial down "Robin's" immoral maneuvers (which had robbed her of any root-for quality), and that is a step in the right direction.

HUCK

We've seen this former B613 operative spiral forever downward over four seasons, and one has to think that his role in the massacre of the bus full of jurors marked the nadir. Assuming Quinn doesn't put him out of his misery, it'd be good to see Huck dispatch with his demons once and for all — maybe via a guest-cast therapist who isn't secretly some rival assassin!

ABBY

While I love that Abby bounced back nicely from her run at gladiating to become the White House press secretary, it often came at the cost of meaningful screen time. We need more confrontations with/counseling of Mr. President, while pillow talk/sparring/banter with Leo is always a bonus.

MELLIE

There's simply no predicting where this historically unprecedented ousting of a First Lady will go. But it'd be refershing to see Mellie — at least for a short while — plant her focus on her senatorship and maybe find some powerful new allies, before lobbying to get back into Fitz's White House.

JAKE

Having declared his "mission" over at the close of Season 4, he selflessly urged Olivia to be with Fitz, the man she loves back. And that she did. Hopefully, that romantic closure sticks, freeing the B613 alum for a compelling, non-romantic storyline.

DAVID

We don't know in what shape or form or from whence it will come, but lord knows the Attorney General needs a big win one of these days, after being forced to throw the career-making case against B613. (Seriously, whatever gives Joshua Malina better things to tweet about than feet.)

CYRUS

Is it too pat — or too wonderful? — to imagine that Fitz's two castoffs in turn team up, with Cyrus serving as ambitious Senator Mellie Grant's No. 1? Surely someone out there has need for the man who knows where allll kinds of bodies are buried. (In the meantime, can we check in on how married life is going for the former CoS and ex-hooker Michael?)

Upon arriving on the scene, the RNC chair picked fights with Cyrus (outing his staged affair with a rent boy!) and David (questioning his appointment as AG). After being forced to eat crow and help nail VP Nichols for Olivia's kidnapping, she scored a gig as Mellie's campaign manager — only to play a key role in FLOTUS' eviction from 1600 Penn. Now that Portia de Rossi is a series regular, we hope that Fitz has a crack chief of staff he can trust.

Shonda Rhimes has yet to come out and say that new series regular Cornelius Smith Jr.'s community activist is being groomed as a new Gladiator, but we hope against all hope that's the plan. If Olivia's team is headed for a "reconstitution," it'd be extra great if it involved an infusion of new, street-savvy blood.

FITZ

You gotta give POTUS credit: He made some swift, bold moves there in giving both Mellie and Cyrus their walking papers. It almost makes up for the "sending troops to die over a mistress" thing. Now that the path has been cleared for his and Liv's unfettered reunion, we trust the commander in chief has much happier days ahead, freeing brainspace to run the country for another couple of years.

OLIVIA

Bad Dad is behind bars. B613 is effectively neutralized. She survived a kidnapping, and even did some old-school Gladiating along the way. On top of it all, she's got her man, all to herself. Finally. Would it be logical to touch on her lingering PTSD? Absolutely. But with so much woe behind her, it also would seem to be time for the White Hat to return to "fixing" with a fervor.

ROWAN

Those who make TV often forget, when it comes to scene stealers, that "less is more." Now that B613 has been (thankfully, and hopefully irrevocably) shuttered and Papa Pope has been thrown in the clink (if only on embezzlement charges), let's hope his flashes of brilliant badassery are more prudently parsed out.

CASTING 'FRIENDS OF SCANDAL'

Hey, it's great that celebs love Scandal — "Stars: They're Just Like Us!" and all — but sometimes Lena Dunham in a bad wig is just Lena Dunham in a bad wig. (The two-way Jimmy Kimmel "crossovers" can be a bit much, too.)