Despite the fact that this is my favorite new show of the year I hadn’t been planning on blogging about Revenge mainly because it’s a serialized show where you basically have to watch every episode in order to understand what’s happening. While I have been watching Revenge every week since it started, I’m not always very good at remembering everything that happens in the previous episode or separating what happens in each individual episode since I’m frequently watching several episodes in a row. However, I found myself absolutely loving this episode for the most part and felt compelled to write a thoughts post on the episode.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a few minor issues with this episode, but they didn’t bring down the level of enjoyment I got in this episode very much at all. One of the things that I loved the most about this episode is the fact that it was a “takedown of the week” episode, which I always think are really great, at least they have been so far. While I love these kind of episodes, I’m kind of glad that the writers took a brief break from doing “takedown of the week” episodes for a little while, because as much as I love them, doing episodes like that every week would definitely get a little repetitive after a while. Also, I definitely think it’s important for the writers to take time to develop all of the characters and the overall plot of at least the first half of the season, leading up to the night of Emily and Daniel’s engagement party and Daniel being shot, at least we’ve been led to believe that it’s Daniel who got shot on the beach in the flash forward they did back in the series premiere. I personally thought that this episode did a great job of progressing the story further, especially in terns of Emily and Daniel’s relationship, while also being a takedown of the week episode.
I have to say that I really loved Emily’s plan to get revenge on Mason Treadwell, a news reporter who became a famous writer after he published a book in which he claimed that her father, David Clarke, was actually guilty of the crime he was framed for even though I did think that the episode was fairly predictable. As soon as Mason told Emily that he doesn’t make copies of his books until after he’s finished writing them, I knew that she was going to do something to the manuscript of his memoirs. I figured that Emily was simply going to steal the copy of his memoirs somehow and then destroy it. I wasn’t expecting Emily to go as far as to burn down his entire cottage at all. That was a much better way to destroy Mason’s manuscript than I had even thought of, especially since Nolan helped Emily carry out her plan by asking him to have dinner with him so they could discuss the possibility of Mason writing his memoirs as a ruse to get him away from his cottage while Emily went to his cottage and set it on fire.
I definitely have mixed feelings about Emily burning down Mason’s cottage and therefore the sole copy of his memoirs. On the one hand, I felt sorry for him as he watched his house burn down to the ground, because he was truly devastated. On the other hand, I thought that Mason was a spineless weasel for not standing up to Victoria and not doing the right thing by confessing to everyone that he thought David was innocent like he told Emily when she was a child. Regardless of how I feel about the character Mason, I thought that Roger Bart played the role perfectly. I’ve been a fan of his ever since he first appeared on Desperate Housewives during the show’s first season.
One of the things that I love the most about this show is that I think that the writers have done a great job of writing the characters in such a way that the viewers can feel sympathetic towards the characters even when they do despicable things. That’s definitely how I feel about Emily, Nolan and Victoria. It’s been really hard for me to choose just one character as my favorite. I know that Emily is supposed to be the main character on the show, but there are also constantly moments when Nolan and Victoria do something that makes me want to consider one of them to be my favorite character on the show. At this point, I would say that it’s a three-way tie between Emily, Nolan and Victoria when it comes to trying to decide which character on the show is my favorite.
They showed in flashbacks that Mason originally wanted to do the right thing and say that he didn’t think that David wasn’t guilty of the crime that he had been sent to prison for and that he had been framed, but Victoria got to him and basically blackmailed him into writing that he thought David was guilty when he wrote his book by saying that he could help advance his writing career. Watching that flashback made really made me want to find out more the relationship between Victoria and David since she played a role in his being framed for treason and sent to prison despite the fact that they had been having an affair.
Victoria and Daniel continued to work together in this episode. Victoria’s divorce lawyer, Ryan, told her that had managed to get the pre-nup declared null and void by forging documents saying that Victoria was pregnant when she signed the pre-nup even though she hadn’t been. However, Victoria found out that Conrad was trying to seize her shares in Grayson Global’s stock now that they are getting a divorce, so she and Daniel tried to come up with a plan to make it so that he would gain access to his trust fund and get his shares in the company. The reason for this being that if the two of them combined their shares in the company; they would be able to take control of Grayson Global.
However, their plan soon hit a snag when Conrad amended the terms of his trust that stipulated that he could get access to the family’s savings account right away, but he won’t get his shares in the company until he either turns thirty or gets married, whichever comes first. It’s obvious that Conrad made this amendment to the terms of Daniel’s trust fund because he was catching on to the fact that Daniel was asking to gain access to his trust fund and his shares in the company because Victoria had asked him to since it’s no secret that Daniel is siding with his mother when it comes to his parents divorce. It’s nice to know that Conrad isn’t a total idiot.
The change in the terms of getting his trust fund caused Daniel to start considering asking Emily to marry him. Of course Victoria wasn’t happy with the idea of Daniel marrying Emily since she doesn’t trust her, which she’s obviously right not to trust her. However, Ryan reminded her that Daniel’s marriage to Emily doesn’t have to be a successful one, he just needs to marry her in order to get his shares of the company, so it sounds like it would be okay for him to divorce him later. We already know that Daniel is apparently going to end up getting murdered the night of his and Emily’s engagement party, so that’s obviously not going to be an issue.
In an attempt to prevent Emily and Daniel from getting engaged Victoria asked Ashley to tell Emily that she had overheard Daniel talking about how he would get his shares in the company if he marries her in an attempt to plan a seed of doubt in Emily’s mind about whether or Daniel’s feelings for her were genuine. It doesn’t look like Victoria’s plan worked, because Emily went over to Daniel’s place to sleep with him at the end of the episode.
Emily had another problem to deal with after Mason asked the real Emily Thorne if he could interview her for his book since he believes that she’s Amanda Clarke, but fortunately Emily and Nolan were able to help Emily/Amanda get through the interview with Mason by having her wear a wire and telling her what to say. I know that technically the person we view as being Emily Thorne is actually Amanda Clarke, but in my mind she’s Emily Thorne and the actual Emily Thorne is Amanda Clarke/Kara Wilkins.
One of the few things that bugged me about this episode was that I personally thought that Emily’s explanation for not wanting to get a place with Daniel was in complete contradiction with her actions in this episode and how she’s handled her relationship with him so far. She told him that she didn’t believe in living with a guy that she was romantically involved with until she’s married to him, because her parents were pretty traditional and by living her life by the values that they had taught her, she’s honoring them in a way. What I’m wondering is if her parents were so traditional, I don’t think they would approve of her sleeping with a guy before she gets married to them, so why does she think it’s okay to sleep with Daniel even though they’re not married? I’m not trying to act like the morality police here, I’m just saying that I thought what she told Daniel was very bizarre given the way she’s been acting with him.
The other thing that bugged me about this episode is Amanda. It’s not so much the character that I don’t like; it’s Margarita Levieva that I don’t really care for. She’s just not clicking with me for some reason. I think that I would probably like Amanda more if they had a different actress playing the part. I just find the way she plays the part very annoying. Amanda tried to persuade Jack to be spontaneous and run off to Atlantic City with her, but he said he couldn’t claiming that he had to take care of the bar. She got mad and told him that she didn’t think he would say no to her if she were Emily. To get back at him, she started flirting with the customers, kissed a girl who had come to the bar and got on the bar countertop and told everybody that she was going to give them dollar shots, which she poured directly into the customers mouths. At the end of the episode, Jack apologized to her and told her that he wished that he could be more spontaneous like she is. He also told her that the bar apparently made five hundred dollars in tips for the week thanks to her and he was going to take her to Atlantic City and use the money that they made in tips to gamble.
Also, with each passing episode I keep thinking more and more that Jack is an idiot for not being able to figure out that he knew Emily when she was a child. I know that he knew her as Amanda Clarke when they were kids, but you would think that he would have been able to figure out that Emily is actually Amanda Clarke. I can’t help but think the same thing about Victoria. Wouldn’t Victoria be able to recognize Emily as Amanda at least a little bit? Although, I’ll admit that there have been times in the past few years where I’ll run into someone that I haven’t seen since I was a child and I don’t recognize them. However, I think that people like Jack and Victoria should at least be able to figure out that the person they all think is Amanda Clarke isn’t the real Amanda Clarke.
One last thing that I didn’t particularly like about this episode is the storyline with Declan being upset with Charlotte for basically acting like being his girlfriend would be something on her To-Do list once she goes away to prep school. At least Charlotte apologized to Declan. Luckily, that storyline only took up two scenes, so that storyline didn’t really bring the episode down for me all that much.
If there’s one thing that I’d like to see on the show is for the writers to give Ashley Madekwe (Ashley Davenport) and Connor Paolo (Declan Porter) more to do, but I especially would like to see the writers give the character Ashley more of a purpose on the show. Right now it seems like Ashley’s only purpose on the show is being Victoria’s assistant. Ashley Madekwe seems like a pretty talented actress, so I’d like to see her get a chance to shine on the show. The only purpose that Declan served in this episode was telling Jack that Amanda is good for him because she’s a “forcer” and that he needs to not be so uptight, otherwise he’ll end up like their dad.
This episode had one doozy of a twist at the end of the episode. Emily was watching one of the video tapes of Mason interviewing her father for the book he wrote that she stole from Mason before she set the house on fire and on the tape Emily’s father basically admitted to being Charlotte’s father. I’m really looking forward to seeing how Emily deals with this revelation since she obviously can’t tell Charlotte that they are half-sisters, because that would completely blow her cover as Emily Thorne. I can see Emily using this information to screw Victoria over if she can find a way to have the truth about Charlotte’s paternity come out without people finding out that revealing this information was her doing. I’m pretty sure Conrad would make sure that Victoria didn’t get anything in the divorce and that Charlotte would hate Victoria even more than she already does if she were to find out that David Clarke is her father.
One last thing that I would like to mention is that Nolan said my two favorite lines in the entire episode, which were “Spineless, seer sucking dilettante. You know, I haven’t been this disappointed since Phantom Menace?” after Mason told everybody that he still thought that Emily’s father was guilty of the crimes he was charged with. My other favorite line of Nolan’s was when he said, “Bad Girl.”, as he watched Mason’s house burn down. It was a very simple line, but Gabriel Mann’s delivery of it was in my mind what made it such a brilliant line. Gabriel Mann is definitely a very talented actor.
All in all, I have to say that I absolutely loved this episode for the most part. Like I said earlier, I didn’t really care for the whole storyline with Declan being upset about Charlotte going away to prep school. That storyline just seemed rather extraneous to me. Also, like I mentioned earlier I find Amanda very annoying. I really hope that the whole storyline with Amanda ends soon and that she just goes away for good.
With that said, I give this episode a rating of A-.
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