With the news that Homeland star Nazanin Boniadi has signed on to appear in the second half of season three of Scandal, and with our favorite borderline-alcoholic fixer returning to our Thursday-night TV screens this month, we started wondering: What if the two shows actually exist in the same universe? It makes sense: No one ever actually meets the President in Homeland, so it’s highly possible Fitz and Mellie are the residents of Carrie and Saul’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Here are some ideas we dreamed up for possible plotlines for season four. You’re welcome, Shonda and Gansa/Gordon.
Carrie and Olivia go to happy hour in the same bougie Adams Morgan wine bar and start commiserating over their married boyfriends. DC promptly runs out of wine.
Peter Quinn discovers Quinn Perkins/Lindsay/Quindsay is actually his long-lost fraternal twin (fraternal Quinn, if you like). To make up for their lack of childhood bonding they go to Six Flags, where P. Quinn wins a teddy bear at the shooting range and Quinn P. tortures a man who cuts her in the line for Dare Devil Dive.
Huck spies on the Brodys in the hope that he can find a new favorite family but gets so bored by all the Wizards games and lasagna he falls asleep in the back of his car and gets accidentally taken for a joyride by Dana.
Saul decides to run for office. He hires Olivia to run his campaign, and she tells him to shave his beard. Saul thinks about it for a couple of hours and then realizes the facial hair is the only thing stopping baby boomer ladies from stalking him like they do NCIS’s Mark Harmon.
Olivia and Carrie decide to meet for lunch to continue their bonding session. They meet at a food truck in Fake Farragut Square or at that fake bench Olivia sometimes sits at by the “White House,” but then they remember neither of them actually eats so they go to a bar instead.
Harrison and Abby team up with Virgil and Max to keep tabs on Mellie, who disappears at the same time each afternoon for a period of exactly 55 minutes. They discover she’s been secretly going to Itsy Bitsy Yoga with Baby Teddy, but she threatens to destroy them all if they tell anyone lest it ruin her reputation.
Dana starts dating Mellie and Fitz’s eldest son, Jerry, who returns from boarding school all grown up, soap-opera-style. Jerry steals the presidential limo and drives Dana to a bar, but she jumps out of the car in disgust when she discovers a Katy Perry CD in the glove compartment.
Cyrus and James move to the suburbs, where James gets bored and starts investigating old videos of Abu Nazir on YouTube. He accidentally gets brainwashed into attempting to bomb a funeral at Arlington Cemetery but is thwarted by Cyrus, who forces him to watch Billy Wilder movies, Clockwork Orange-style, until he loves America again.
Dana tries to sext Jerry but accidentally sends it to her mom instead, who sighs a lot and gets Olivia to set up a televised interview with James about How to Keep Tabs on Your Teen.
Dar Adal and Rowan Pope go golfing together at Congressional, but each tries to have the other assassinated after a nasty dispute over a lost ball. Luckily, neither technically exists as a human being, so the assassins give up and go for ice cream instead.
James finally persuades Cyrus to take a vacation. They fly to a beautiful deserted resort in South America, where Cyrus thinks he sees Brody hawking beer on the beach (let the conspiracy theories commence). Cyrus spends the rest of the week on his BlackBerry trying to persuade Fitz to send SEAL Teams out to investigate. James threatens divorce (again).
Jess starts dating David Rosen, who shares her love of neutral colors, emotional blackmail, and long walks on the beach. David runs for mayor of DC, which means Jess finally gets to wear all the campaign spouse outfits Elizabeth Gaines bought for her at Betsy Fisher.
Huck runs into Carrie at the AA group he attends to keep from murdering people. Carrie invites him back to her place but thinks better of it when he tells her he got really drunk on tequila in college and hasn’t been able to stand it since.
James is kidnapped by a team of terrorists who mistake him for Ira Glass and intend to use him as their mouthpiece to the nation’s liberals on This American Life. Peter Quinn goes to rescue him but gets confused when the real Ira Glass shows up to report the story. The terrorists get confused, too, and Quinn kills them all with a gun disguised as a public radio tote bag.
Fitz gets really mad at never being included in any of the CIA’s top-secret national security meetings, so he spontaneously drives to Langley in his motorcade. The world’s press gets very freaked out by this, and Andrew Lockhart has to give a press conference explaining that Fitz was only stopping by for Meatless Monday in the CIA’s brand new cafeteria. Fitz sulks some more, and the agricultural lobby go nuts.
Papa Pope asks Carrie to dinner. Olivia gets so freaked out by the idea of her new (insane and pregnant) friend dating her dad that she cuts off all her hair in defiance. That’s Defiance, Ohio, where no one knows how to do a cute pixie cut and Liv ends up looking like Charles Manson without the stare.
Harrison and Fara join a Minority Characters Without Real Storylines support group. Also in the group are Winston from New Girl, Mike Chang from Glee, and Kendra from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Fara finds out that Olivia, Mellie, and Cyrus helped rig the election for Fitz after she hacks into their bank and e-mail accounts. She blackmails them into opening new schools and orphanages in Tehran, and Cyrus hides the extra expenditure in an earmark attached to a defense bill. James discovers it but is too busy counseling Carrie about the best way to prepare a nursery to care.
Carrie gives birth, and the baby is miraculously healthy, except it cries 24 hours a day and refuses to ingest anything except Dos Equis. Carrie’s face crumples so much that Mellie takes her for Botox shots, explaining that the first rule of responsible parenting is being camera-ready at all times. Carrie’s sister raises the baby in Arlington, and Carrie sometimes sends Edible Arrangements to say thank you.
