After a three-week break, what an episode of Scandal to return with! This show and its layers never cease to amaze me. My brain and my heart are both still trying to process everything we just saw and I'm finding it hard to believe that that was only an hour's worth of television. So much new information!

"Seven Fifty-Two" took us deeper into Huck's past and revealed his very first encounter with Olivia.

One of the things that I love about Scandal is the way the characters' back-stories have been revealed. Or NOT revealed, as the case still is with many of them. Doing this allows for the weaving of intricate histories ripe with development.

Huck is one of the most interesting people on Scandal and, simply put, tonight's episode pretty much ripped my heart out. 

Before he was Huck, this man had a family. A real family of his own with a wife and son and not just a family he chose and watched through their windows. He was happy.

Oh, my heart. So broken.

Seeing the beginning of Huck's time with B613 and his relationship with Charlie was kind of fascinating. (Tonight also gave new depth to Charlie, what with the "I've killed kings" and all, but he's not really the important one right now.) 

Huck was recruited into B613 as a Private. And recruited is a term to be used loosely since really he was threatened into signing his life away. As a person with no family, no strings to hold him down, he made an ideal candidate. But through the recruitment scene, there was the sense that this new life he was being promised wasn't exactly what he wanted.  He just wasn't in a position to say "no." The weapon in Charlie's pocket made sure of that.

Charlie taught him how to kill and watching Huck come into his own as "Spin" was intriguing, as was Charlie's decision to let Huck go and then say that he was dead. For a little while tonight I almost felt like I was watching an episode of Dexter as he bounced between reveling in his work while also carrying on a normal life with a wife and child. A wife and child he, like Dexter, wouldn't exactly get to keep because of the double life he lead.

When he told his wife, Kim, played by Jasika Nicole, that he was going to the bank, my hand shot up to my mouth. I was prepared for Charlie to go in and kill them both and leave their bodies for Huck to find as a message to him that the government owned him. I'm glad that's not what we got even if the alternative was Huck being thrown into solitary confinement for who only knows how long.

I thought that "752," the number he kept repeating, was going to be the number of days he spent inside the box, or hours, but it turned out to be the last time he saw his son, in the same Metro station where he first met Olivia. The only trouble is that until being put into the box in the storage facility, he didn't recognize the face of his son, and he's still not sure he recognizes it now.

I'm interested to see where this path leads. Will he slowly start to remember and seek them out? What has happened to them in the 13 or so years since Kim last saw him? 

What was fascinating about the present day OPA portions of tonight were the different ways in which Quinn, Abby and Harrison all tried to reach Huck.

Quinn tried to cheer him on by saying that he didn't let her get swallowed up in her misery so she wouldn't let the same happen to him. Abby simultaneously praised and railed against Olivia for saving them but at such a high cost as their love lives. Harrison's bit about how he's a talker but Huck is a "real-deal Gladiator" was a brilliant piece of acting from Columbus Short.

In the end, it was Olivia who was able to reach him. The two of them have a relationship that will never be duplicated by any other pairings within Pope and Associates. That her very first thought after leaving the hospital was to come to Huck is indicative of just how much he means to her. 

Gah. I think I need a tissue. I love Huck so much. Can we please stop torturing him now? And probably also get him a therapist?

Speaking of therapists, Fitz and Olivia need one. Or I need one to talk about all of the ways the Fitz and Olivia relationship jerks me around. I do not want to root for them because I think that he's done and said some incredibly degrading and demeaning things.

He's called her a whore on more than one occasion. He basically forced himself on her in the server room at Ella's christening. I don't like him a great deal of the time. 

And then tonight I...I didn't want her to forgive him so they could ride off into the sunset, but his explanation as to why he shut her out after learning about Defiance made me care about Fitz again. 

He was hurt and angry. But a lot of hurt. The one person he thought was on his side turned out to be aligned with others and that sort of mistrust or distrust just rocked him. I can understand that. 

But? He's still married. At least for now. Mellie's power play to get her husband back might blow up in all of their faces, but hey, I guess I can't blame her for trying? If she's going down, he's going down too. How that story develops over the next few episodes will be a fun ride to watch.

Other tidbits:

• Jake Ballard isn't Albatross. Neither is his boss. So I think that makes Charlie Albatross? Does Cyrus know? I'm still confused on this information leakage and how that's all shaking out.
• Jake needs "out" because he has feelings for Olivia but there is no "out." He's whatever B613 became when B613 was officially disbanded, and the consequences for trying to have a normal life would be the same for him as they were for Huck.
• Charlie is one scary dude. 

Miranda Wicker was a Staff Writer for TV Fanatic. She retired in 2017. Follow her on Twitter.