Where to begin... Let's start with Mellie. After being told her vote is not needed when she questioned a spending bill that placed funding for Planned Parenthood under discretionary funding, Mellie decides to hold the Senate hostage with a filibuster on the last vote before the holidays! That means 16 hours of talking without leaning, eating, or going to the restroom. But thanks to some help from Liv, Mellie gets some relief after VP Ross steps in to ask a lengthy question...allowing Mellie to take a bathroom break. And Mellie is able to successfully keep the bill from passing, while making history for the longest filibuster in modern history.
While Mellie is putting in work for the country, Liv is swapping recipes and picking out china patterns. She is officially the prisoner Mellie once was. Liv has a knack for it, like everything she does, but it is clear that this is not the life for her.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and David continue to mess around. And since it's the holidays, David tries to give Elizabeth a bracelet, but she refuses to take it. Later, VP Ross presents a gift to David, and not having thought to get her a gift, David gives her the bracelet he bought for Elizabeth. When VP Ross gifts Elizabeth with a scarf for Christmas, Elizabeth notices the bracelet and comments on VP Ross' good taste. And any doubts about whether it was the same bracelet David offered Elizabeth vanquished when Ross proclaimed it was a gift from David. And so the love triangle officially begins! Well when the season starts back up.
Tom is still alive, and Jake is following him. Tom meets with FRANKLIN RUSSELL, and Jake learns that Tom was supposed to help Franklin complete his plan to kill Rowan. So, Huck indeed saved Rowan.
At the warehouse, Rowan seems to be trying to get Huck to revert to his old ways and get him to kill him. But Huck says he is getting more pleasure out of knowing Rowan wants to die than he would get out of killing Rowan. Rowan tries to use Huck's family against him to make him snap, but to no avail. All he got was Huck reading him like I've never seen Papa Pope read before! Huck went in on Rowan's failure as a parent with Liv. Going so far as asking him which White guy he preferred in his daughter, Fitz or Jake! He asks Rowan if he thinks Liv actually loves Fitz or just hates him so much she would be unhappy with Fitz just to spite him. Ouch! But after Jake finds and kills Franklin (despite his plea for Jake to join him in making B613 what it should have been before Rowan), Huck drops Rowan off at home. Jake comes up behind Rowan and tells him he was right, he isn't Lazarus. And then Rowan invites him in. Rowan got his son back, but will he get his daughter back?
Speaking of his daughter...Liv misses the Cabinet dinner, and instead goes to have an abortion performed. When she returns to the White House, she and Fitz have it out big time. And though he screams, "Don't lie to me!" when he asks where she was, she never mentions the abortion to him. The two go back and forth about who's father is the worst, her not wanting to marry him or to deal with the part of his life Mellie used to cover (#GrassIsntGreener), him feeling like she owes it to him to be a housewife in exchange for not killing her father, and so on. And yea...no more Olitz! It's a wrap for these two (at least for now...smh).
Liv goes home and spends Christmas with a new couch. Marcus leaves Quinn to go spend Christmas with his aunt. Charlie surprises Quinn and saves her from a Christmas with just her and her bottle of vodka. Mellie spends Christmas with her children. Rowan is with Jake. And Fitz is home alone...he had to have known Liv wouldn't stay cooped up in the White House for long.