Revenge Review: The Best Laid Plans
Miranda Wicker at .Is it just me or was that one crazy packed hour of Revenge? I'm not saying the episode's fullness was bad necessarily, but wow, that felt like a lot. It certainly wasn't a slow hour, that's for sure.
"Sin" filled in a few holes from last week, pushed Emily to a crisis, and, well, fleshed out a new character.
Since the Revenge Season 3 opener left us with a questions galore, "Sin" attempted to answer some of those questions. The first and probably most important answer of them all?
Aiden really is working with Victoria. I think.
It seems that in the time between the Revenge Season 2 finale and the Season 3 premiere, Aiden and Emily had a bit of a falling out. Where "bit" means a big, giant, epic break-up that left him so hurt he would seek to destroy her completely.
There's always a chance he could be Team Emily and leading Victoria on, but the fact that he broke into Emily's house during dinner leads me to think he really does hate her. Or he hates Daniel and he's pretending to take down Emily but Daniel's really the one that he wants. Either way, I'm going to need some answers. A flashback, or a letter or a conversation at their upcoming encounter. Something. Answers. Now please. Thanks.
Just as Jack was last week, Nolan was a bit of a Jiminy Cricket for Emily tonight, imploring her to think about what she's doing and whether or revenge is really worth it. Her own father begged her to forgive, above all, and still she's carrying around her superiority and belief that ruining Conrad and Victoria and anyone even tangentially associated with Grayson Global and her father's framing is the right thing to do.
Two episodes in and it seems like the theme of the season, or at least the first half, is going to be Emily grappling with what it is she's doing and how her attempts to take down Conrad and Victoria are rippling out to everyone else. Innocent people are getting caught in her crossfire and until this point, she's been unable to acknowledge that fact. Slowly, however, she's starting to see that her actions are having serious consequences which she cannot foresee.
Watching her argue with Nolan and be so convinced that she was right - only to be proven wrong - was kind of a nice moment. It's not often that we see Emily's vulnerabilities, but it's those emotional moments that make her sympathetic. Emotional moments make almost all the characters sympathetic.
Yes, even Conrad.
I can't believe I sat here feeling bad for him while he comes to terms with the fact that he's actually not immortal. And he's lonely. He thinks he's dying of a disease as debillitating and devastating as Huntington's and he thinks he'll be doing it by himself because he's run off anyone who might have ever cared about him.
As soon as he finds out he's not dying, he'll go right back to being his usual despicable self, and will indeed continue to be shades of that person in the meantime, but I wanted to sit down next to him and just pat him on the shoulder. He needed a friend. If he still had money he could probably just buy one, but he thinks he's dying alone and he's broke. It's a tough day to be Conrad Grayson.
Even though she's no mother of the year, Victoria's admonishment to her family at the dinner table earned a little bit of a golf clap from me.
Patrick isn't the one at whom the family's ire should be directed. He's done nothing except come back into the picture, and while his true motives for doing so may be unsavory, they don't know that yet. (And neither do we. Also, I demand at least one shirtless Justin Hartley scene per episode. That's totally reasonable.)
What the Graysons do know is that this is a man who was given away twice, once as a baby and again as an adult, by a woman who cared more for her own reputation and station in life than she did her own child. While they're probably used to people coming into their lives attempting to extort them, make a phone call. Check him out. Stop being Grade A jerks, you bunch of jerks!
Two Three random things and I'm done:
- I'm glad Charlotte showed some emotion over the miscarriage. I almost thought she was going to tell Jack she'd had an abortion, and even if they'd gone there with the story, it wouldn't have changed the fact that she's only 18 and she's suffered some huge losses. I'm surprised she's not on drugs or hospitalized again, honestly.
- Margaux's dress-dropping and the sly look on Daniel's face and the way he downed that drink at his parents house almost made me think he cheated on Emily. My first thought was "well, she was with Aiden when she got with him and this was mostly a sham. No big." And my next thought was "CHEATER!!" Glad to see my second thought was right and he's not a cheating cheater who cheats. New Daniel can stay.
- The basket of blueberry muffins bit cracked me up a little.
Miranda Wicker was a Staff Writer for TV Fanatic. She retired in 2017. Follow her on Twitter.