I’ve really enjoyed the past few episodes of Revenge, so I decided to write a thoughts post on last week’s episode, and I’ll probably write a post on the season 1 finale, which airs tonight.
I have to say that this episode definitely cemented the fact that I love Revenge more than I love the show Once Upon a Time. Don’t get me wrong, I love Once Upon a Time, it’s just that as I look back on the first season of Once Upon a Time and how I feel about it versus how I feel about the first twenty-one episodes of Revenge’s first season, I can’t help, but admit that I have more complaints about the first season of Once Upon a Time compared to how I feel about Revenge. For starters, Once Upon a Time’s first season had at least five episodes that I didn’t really like compared to Revenge, which only had two episodes that I didn’t like all that much, which would be episode 1x07 “Charade” and episode1x20 “Legacy”. While I wasn’t all that crazy about those two episodes, I still liked them to a certain extent. The fact that Revenge ended up being my favorite of the two shows really surprised me, because before both Revenge and Once Upon a Time started I was fully expecting Once Upon a Time to be my favorite of the two shows.
One of the other main reasons why I love Revenge more than Once Upon a Time is that I think the writers have done a great job of equally distributing screen time amongst the whole cast instead of focusing on just a few of the characters while neglecting the rest of the cast like the writers of Once Upon a Time did. Although, I do think that the writers could definitely develop the character Ashley some more. Up until now, the only purpose that she’s really served on the show is being Victoria’s assistant. She’s one character that I would really like to know more about, so I hoping that the writers will develop the character Ashley some more next season.
As I was watching this episode for the first time, I couldn’t help but think about one of the biggest complaints that I had about Once Upon a Time’s first season, which is how the writers handled Sheriff Graham’s death. Personally, I think it was a big mistake on the writers’ part to kill Graham off in the seventh episode of the series. If they wanted to kill him off, they should have waited until the end of the season to kill him off. By killing Graham off so early, I basically had an “out of sight, out of mind” reaction to his death. Sammy’s death in this episode had much more of an impact on me as viewer than Graham’s death did on me and was much sadder than Graham’s death, and Sammy was a dog.
One of the greatest strengths of this episode was definitely the way that the writers used the whole storyline with Sammy’s health declining and running off to Emily’s beach house before he eventually dies as a way to further develop Emily as a character and Emily’s relationship with Jack. Given the fact that the premise of this show is that Emily is trying to get revenge on the people who framed her father for a crime he didn’t commit, it’s definitely important for the writers to have moments on the show where they humanize Emily, and this episode definitely did a great job of that. Speaking of character development, Emily mentioned that her mother had been sick for a long time before she died when she was a little girl. I’m really glad that they finally mentioned Emily’s mother in this episode, because I’ve always wondered why she wasn’t in the picture when Emily was taken away from her father.
Over the years one thing that I learned a lot about in my English classes when I was in show is the concept of suspension of disbelief when it comes to writing and stories, and it’s obvious that the writers have really expected the viewers to suspend their disbelief about how old Sammy was. After all, Sammy was alive when Emily and Jack were kids and God only knows how old Sammy was in the flashbacks of them as kids, and he was still alive when Emily returned to the Hamptons and she’s in her twenties now. In real life, a dog would never live that long. In real life, if Sammy were a dog that was as old as he was on the show when he died, he would probably go in the Guinness book of world records as the oldest dog that ever lived.
One thing that I’ve found myself thinking about a lot season is that I still can’t believe that Jack still hasn’t figured out that Emily is actually Amanda Clarke. I know that they hadn’t seen each other since they were kids when the show started, but you would think that since it has been months since Emily first moved back to the Hamptons that Jack would have at least started to figure out that he had met her before even if he didn’t figure out that she was actually Amanda and the girl who had claimed to be Amanda (The real Emily Thorne) wasn’t actually Amanda.
When Jack wasn’t dealing with Sammy’s declining health, he was busy dealing with the fact that Conrad was trying to pay him off with a large amount of money in exchange for his silence about what happened on the beach the night that Tyler was killed. Jack didn’t want to take the money at first, but he decided to after all thinking that he could do some good with it after Nolan reminded him that if the Grayson’s’ couldn’t buy his silence, they could always kill him to keep the truth from coming out. I have to say that Nolan and Jack’s friendship is definitely becoming one of my favorite things about the show, because I love the dynamic between the two of them.
If ask me, Emily hasn’t been doing a very good job of not acting suspiciously and has kind of been letting her guard down when it comes to keeping up her facade lately. Daniel is definitely catching on to Emily and is starting to realize that there’s more going on with her than she’s been telling him. While they were meeting with Ashley to discuss the plans for the wedding, she kept texting with Nolan, which upset Daniel, especially when she told him that she didn’t want a big wedding like his family wanted them to have. Victoria and Conrad were hoping that they could use Emily and Daniel’s wedding as a part of an image makeover for the Grayson family after everything that’s happened with Daniel and the trial recently. Although, in Emily’s defense I’ve been finding Daniel extremely unlikable lately, especially after what he said to her about her father, not knowing that she’s David Clarke’s daughter. I can’t say that I entirely blame Emily for pulling back from Daniel emotionally and feeling angry and resentful towards him and his family. When it comes to who I think Emily should be with, I’m definitely rooting for Jack and Emily to get together.
This episode definitely wasn’t all drama and sadness though. It definitely had some good old-fashioned, campy, fun, soap opera moments as well. Victoria’s interaction with Lydia Davis was definitely one of the main highlights of the episode for me. The scene where Victoria sliced open the fake de Kooning painting that she and Conrad had apparently bought together years ago in order to get the money and evidence that they had hidden behind the canvas was amazing, and the note that she left for Conrad in the space where the money and evidence had been made the whole thing even better.
The writers have definitely introduced a very intriguing new mystery into the show, which is the introduction of the white haired man. The writers first introduced the character in last week’s episode, and according to E! Online’s Kristin Dos Santos, the writers won’t be revealing the identity of the white haired man until next season. Although, based on his interactions with Conrad in the episode, he’s apparently a part of an organization called The Initiative. The creator of Revenge, Mike Kelley, has said that season two will involve Emily’s plan for revenge expanding beyond the Hamptons and that other characters will also have their own plans for revenge that they will be trying to carry out, so I’m wondering if the introduction of the white haired man and The Initiative are a part of how Emily’s plan for revenge will expand next season.
The Graysons had a family therapy session, which was a part of Charlotte’s rehab program, and suffice to say it was a disaster. Victoria and Conrad ended up fighting about their marriage and Lydia during the therapy session. That scene was definitely another one of my favorite scenes from the episode.
At the end of the episode Victoria gave Daniel the files that had been hidden behind the painting, which was the evidence of their family’s role in framing David Clarke that she had been planning to turn into the Feds and told him that she was agreeing to the terms of his ultimatum. As soon as she left the room, Daniel called Conrad to let him know that he had the files, but of course Victoria had been listening to their entire phone conversation outside in the hallway. I can’t wait to see how that plays out.
This episode ended with a rather intense cliffhanger. The episode ended with the white haired man sneaking into Nolan’s mansion and strangling him. The white haired man was obviously onto Nolan when he was pretending to be a guy who worked for the cable company in order to plant surveillance equipment in the white haired man’s house earlier in the episode. After watching this episode, I have to say that Nolan seriously needs to get a better security system for his mansion as well as some security guards. After all, this isn’t the first time that Nolan has been attacked in his own home. You would think that he would have gotten a better security system after the incident with Tyler.
It’s been revealed that tonight’s season one finale is going to feature not one, but two deaths. Nolan better not be one of the two characters that are getting killed off the show in the season finale. He’s one of my favorite characters on the show, and he’s a big part of why I love the show so much. Plus, I’m still upset about Lexie’s death on Gray’s Anatomy and Kim Raver leaving the show too. I don’t think I can handle Nolan getting killed off in the season finale.
All in all, I really did love this episode. This episode definite made me officially love Revenge more than Once Upon a Time as far as deciding what my favorite new TV show of the year is. This episode had great writing with the perfect balance of drama, sadness and campiness. The entire cast was great in this episode, and I think this episode did a great job of setting things up for the season finale.
That being said, I give this episode a rating of an A+.
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