To say that I've been all over the board this season in terms of my eagerness to watch Revenge or catch an extra hour or two of sleep is a bit of an understatement.

I feel like I'm on some kind of carnival ride that keeps jerking me back and forth from side to side so violently I might end up with whiplash.

Revenge Season 3 Episode 20 might be one of the goriest episodes we've seen of this entire series, and it really has proven that there are almost no redeemable characters left.  (I said ALMOST.)

But no one, not even Emily Thorne, deserves "to win at all costs."

I realize that it's problematic to think about shows like Revenge in terms of redeemability of characters or the reality of the situations in which these characters find themselves. I get it. I do. I also know that I can't help that I do this.

I think about these characters and what I'm often left with is the fact that they're all pretty horrible people. Everybody except Nolan, that is.

Nolan Ross is the Jiminy Cricket of the show. He's often the only one who stands up and goes "Wait, what??"

Except me. I'm doing that every Sunday night. Week after week I'm sitting on my couch completely befuddled as to how so many horrible people all wound up in the same place.

Yes, Nolan definitely screwed with Javier's program so that it would embarrass people and he could expose the flaws in the programming, but Nolan didn't push someone into a helicopter and then sort of shrug about it later in conversation.

Conrad and Emily did, though. (Not together. Stay with me.)

Conrad Grayson pushed Pascal LeMarchal into the whirring blades of a helicopter.

I can't get the blood spattering across Conrad's body or the sound of Victoria's shrieks out of my head, and not that I'm glorifying the violence, but I totally didn't see that coming and that's what redeemed this episode (and maybe the last part of this season entirely) for me.

Two points to Madeleine Stowe for her performance tonight, by the way. I hate Victoria Grayson and do not under any circumstance want to see the woman happy, but wow, Stowe played her part brilliantly, right down to the icy stare and recoil she served Daniel and the shocked recognition on her face when she realized they'd all been played and Pascal had died for what might be nothing but which was probably Emily Thorne.

I want to root for Emily to get her revenge. I want to want her to take down the Graysons for good and forever. But then she sees something like Pascal's death--witnesses it with her own eyes--and scoffs it off with Aiden like she's completely unphased by the brutality of it. 

Excuse me, what? It's okay to show her shocked or shaken after witnessing something like that. Instead she just poured a cup of tea and settled into more planning with Aiden like "Oh well. Lead dead. Moving on."

I have a hard time pulling for a character who doesn't at all seem phased by the casualties of war. Even Dexter wrestled with his demons. I know that Pascal killed Aiden's father and she wanted revenge for Aiden, but casualties of war are still casualties. She can still be troubled by what she's seen, but her way of carrying on as if nothing terrible has ever happened is something to which I'm having a hard time relating.

Speaking of that ER-inspired death, much about Conrad's murdering Pascal is sort of a mystery to me.

For instance, did Conrad plan to lure Pascal up to the roof to kill him? Did Pascal think going to the roof to talk would give him the ability to alert Conrad to the fact that he was wearing a wire? Is that what Pascal wanted to do?

Or did Conrad decide to kill Pascal in order to protect Victoria and ultimately himself?

We may never know.

And can Daniel Grayson get any more manipulative and self-serving? He did learn from two of the best, so yes, he probably can. Run, Margaux, run, and get LeMarchal Enterprises far, far away from Daniel Grayson while you're running. The mess he's about to make while taking care of things during Margaux's grieving period is going to be epic. 

Finally, Charlotte's kidnapping might actually have the girl being useful, though for what purpose, it's unclear. 

She received letters addressed to Charlotte Clarke appearing to have been written by David Clarke. She and Jack checked out the cabin Nolan tracked from the return stamp (because the kidnapper was dumb enough to have an at-home stamp printer and tie his letters to his home address??) and Jack tried to convince her that this wasn't David.

But he found a ring that used to belong to David and knows that something is amiss in that cabin. He's not certain David Clarke is still alive, but he definitely knows something is up.

That something is, of course, Charlotte's kidnapping by creepy stalker guy staring into The Stowaway's window like something out of a horror film. 

And that's where we are leading into next week when we've been promised a takedown of Conrad Grayon. My money isn't high on that actually happening given the prologue to tonight's episode mentioned making alliances, but hey, we can always dream she'll finally take one of them down, right?

Right. So let's do that.

What did you think of Revenge Season 3 Episode 20? Were you surprised to see Pascal die so suddenly? On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being not at all and 5 being A TON, how much do you care that Charlotte has been kidnapped?

Miranda Wicker was a Staff Writer for TV Fanatic. She retired in 2017. Follow her on Twitter.