Image Credit: Richard Cartwright/ABC

Tonight, ABC’s Scandal concludes its first season (10 p.m. ET). After last week’s steamy episode, which flashed back to the start of Olivia Pope’s (Kerry Washington) affair with President Fitz Grant (Tony Goldwyn) during his campaign before showing them officially saying goodbye (again) in the present day, the stakes couldn’t be higher. As we see in the promo below, the Vice President’s chief of staff Billy Chambers (Matt Letsche) takes his accusation that the president abused his power to take sexual advantage of White House aide Amanda Tanner (Liza Weil) public — and the audio sex tape that Billy wants people to think is with Amanda but is actually with Olivia gets out as well. Of course, viewers know that Billy was the father of Amanda’s baby and set her presidential tryst and this brewing scandal in motion. But now that Billy has killed reporter Gideon (Brendan Hines), the only one who’d figured out Billy’s connection, what happens? Will Olivia have to admit it’s her on the tape to save the president? Or will she and Cyrus (Jeff Perry) come up with a brilliant move to save both Fitz and Olivia? “I’m always terrified in interviews that I’m gonna say something that’s gonna really get me in trouble with Shonda [Rhimes],” Washington says, laughing. “I will say that when I read the episode, it was a real roller coaster. The thing about managing a crisis in today’s world [versus] 10 years ago, is that there’s so much more intensity because news is so much more immediate, and you have a sense of that in this episode, which is exciting — how quickly the stories change and evolve, and so how quickly your tactic and plan has to change and evolve.” (That tells us nothing, so Shonda should be happy!) READ FULL STORY »