‘Scandal’ viewers were in an uproar last night when actress/comedienne Marla Gibbs returned to the popular ABC TV drama in her role as “Rose” from episode 11.
Gibbs, who turns 84 on June 14, asked Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) to help her find out what happened to her recently deceased friend, Lois — Olivia’s kindly neighbor who was brutally murdered when Olivia was kidnapped in episode 10.
Olivia helps Rose find Lois and give her a proper burial. Olivia lies to Rose about Lois’s horrific death, saying Lois died of a brain aneurysm “on a warm beautiful day” on the beach. Olivia, who has a drinking problem, has flashbacks of herself being stuffed in a body bag with her dead neighbor Lois on top of her. The sexy Washington PR ‘fixer’ didn’t have the heart to tell Rose why her friend died (in a kidnapping plot to control the president).
Olivia is shocked when Rose reveals the true nature of her and Lois’s intimate relationship. Rose met Lois when she was 16 and the teenagers began a torrid, but brief, affair that ended when Lois’s parents found out about them and moved Lois out of state. This is when the opinionated Internet collective known as ‘Black Twitter’ descended into uncontrolled chaos, with hundreds of ‘tweets’ per second decrying, “SHONDA TURNED FLORENCE INTO A LESBIAN!”
Gibbs played Florence, the feisty maid on the 1970s TV sitcom ‘The Jeffersons’. She also played Mary Jenkins on the 1980s TV sitcom ‘227’.
Word has it that Gibbs accepted the role as a spinster lesbian because, grandmotherly roles are hard to come by in Hollywood.
Embattled actress Lena Dunham makes her first guest appearance in next week’s episode of ‘Scandal’.
Video source: DDotOmen
