REVENGE RECAP: Lydia on Wheels! Also, Another Awful Poor

In case you didn’t know, I am wholeheartedly on the Revenge bandwagon, and I’m glad I joined when I did. The show is now plunging unapologetically into hardcore soap territory, as evidenced by placing Lydia in a wheelchair with amnesia (Lydia has the amnesia, not the wheelchair — although, don’t get me wrong. I would LOVE a show about a wheelchair that can’t remember things).

Let’s pause to appreciate this: there’s a character named LYDIA, and she has AMNESIA, and she’s being rolled around in a WHEELCHAIR by the woman who sorrrta tried to KILL her. If this isn’t classic, campy soap, I don’t know what is. We’re just one fake, tropical setting away from having Nurse Nan marching into Grayson Manner and saying things like “Hello, mother.”

Truth be told, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lydia’s attending neurosurgeon was in fact Dr. Monica DeMonico (see video above). How else to explain her speedy recovery from having been tossed — well, semi-tossed — from the roof of her penthouse in New York City? Only in a world where Dr. Monica DeMonico exists can such a medical miracle happen too. Don’t you just love this show?

Yes, the big news was that Lydia was now awake from her coma, but she couldn’t remember anything from the past few weeks — you know, the weeks when HER ENTIRE WORLD WAS RUINED (by Emily, natch). It was only natural that Vicky Grayson would take her in. Well, actually, it wasn’t natural at all. Why on earth would Victoria ever decide to provide hospice for her mortal enemy? According to her (and the writers), it was because as Lydia recovered her memory, Victoria wanted to “control” any possible angry reactions. It seemed like a stretch, but whatever. Victoria had Lydia rolled into the downstairs bedroom where she would spend the rest of the episode conveniently remembering inconvenient memories at even more inconvenient times.

One such flickering memory was that of Emily in that society photo she had found just hours before her airborne adventure off her roof. In case you, like Lyds, have been suffering from amnesia, let me refresh your memory: Lydia had discovered a pic of her and Victoria from years ago, and lingering in the background as a waitress was Emily in her late-Amanda period (a.k.a. brooding black hair and bangs). Lydia had seen this and realized that SOMETHING was awry with Emily’s backstory.

Now, as Lydia sat in bed and tried to remember things, she suddenly recalled the photo and knew there was something important in it… something about Emily… but what? She couldn’t remember (damn that peculiar amnesia!!!). Luckily for Emily, she was one step ahead of the game. She’d had Nolan photoshop her face out of the pic, which was cool and all, but why the heck did Emily — super capable mistress of many disguises — need Nolan to do this? I mean, could there have been a more simple photoshop assignment? Are we to believe that Emily can break into a highly secure investment banker firm, but she can’t use Photoshop’s “clone” feature in its most rudimentary form?

Well, by having Nolan make the pic, this afforded Emily and excuse to head over to his glassy manse, which looks less Hamptons and more Malibu (especially thanks to those Southern California mountains that keep creeping into the background). Upon arrival, Emily encountered two of her old friends: Jack (sorry, I just fell asleep for a second) and Amanda (née Emily).

Amanda is our new poor, and like the others, she’s awful. But she’s awful in a different way. Jack and Declan are awful because they’re boring. Amanda is awful because she’s going to ruin EVERYTHING (much like her fellow conniving poor, Tyler, who appears to be in cahoots with his suddenly embittered girlfriend Ashley. She should spend less time grousing about Victoria and more time attending to the caterpillars over her eyes. Meow! The show brings it out in me. Sorry).

Anyway, as you may remember (or not, LYDIA), Emily (aka Amanda) and Amanda (aka Emily) met in juvie years ago and switched identities, and as it happens, good ol’ Frank found Amanda and threatened to expose Emily. But Amanda sort of has this Single White Delinquent lady-crush on Emily, and she wasn’t about to let Frank ruin everything. And so she murdered him with a tire-iron and rushed off to the Hamptons to alert Emily.

Now with a homicidal, vaguely shhhapphic shhtripper (with a shhhpech impediment) on her hands, Emily had no choice but to pawn Amanda off on Nolan for an afternoon while she arranged a new life for her co-conspirator. Of course, Emily refused to answer any of Nolan’s questions about this new girl, which caused Nolan to do some investigating, which led to results that Nolan didn’t like, which led to Nolan almost screwing everything up again as usual (but instead he helped out and redeemed himself for the umpteenth time). You know, I like Nolan, but I don’t understand why Emily always keeps him in the dark with every plan if he inevitably is going to find out the truth about it later.

The other thing I don’t quite get about Nolan is this whole BOAT business. First he buys The Amanda from Jack and says in return he just wants friendship. Then he gives it back and tells Jack he doesn’t have to be his friend anymore. But now Jack wants to be his friend, it seems. What the hell is going on? I always assumed the boat was part of some nefarious scheme, but was it really just that Nolan wanted a friend? This is weak character development.

As for Jack (sorry, just nodded off), it looks like he’s falling for Amanda The Stripper. This will lead to an amusing scenario given that he as a boy was in love Amanda, and clearly when he learns that Amanda is Amanda Clarke, his heart will be going pitter-pat. But Jack, it’s not THE Amanda Clarke. Oh you silly fool. You boring, silly fool.

This, of course, will be an issue because Amanda disobeyed Emily’s orders to fly off to Paris (which we knew would happen). Amanda just wanted to be close to Emily, and so she secretly lingered around town, only to find Emily getting hot and heavy with Daniel (swooon). Pissed off about this, Amanda decided to enact some revenge of her own by seeking out Jack and canoodling at the Stowaway, which perhaps will finally see some action. Poor Declan (I have no pity for him. I’m simply reminding you all that he is not rich) tried to seal the deal with Charlotte upstairs, but thankfully she wasn’t particularly horny after having just learned that her parents would be separating. Yes, good ol’ Conrad had dropped the bomb on Charlotte (at Daniel’s urging), and now Charlotte was in no mood to have Declan put his dicklan in her fuzzy Grayson (WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?). Looks like we’ll have to wait at least another week for Connor Paolo to overact his way through a sex scene. Hey, whatever happened to Charlotte’s asshole boyfriend. I feel like he was disposed of slightly too quickly.

As for Daniel, the writers wisely decided to yank him out of the boringness that is the Stowaway (home of depressing, whiny music that has no place in a bar) and return him to the family business. Yes, Danny boy quit his gig as a barkeep and told his dad that he wanted to be his intern — all as a show of support for Conrad, who’d been kicked out of the house by Ma Grayson. Daniel has decidedly been anti-Vicks lately, especially after he discovered that she had asked Frank to investigate Emily’s background (something Daniel learned when cops questioned Emily on Frank’s disappearance. Of course, Emily had a foolproof alibi that included the exonerating powers of fresh salmon).

In the wake of all this, Daniel told his mother that he had had it up to HERE (imagine him raising his hand over his beautiful, beautiful face) with her and was moving in with Emily, leaving Victoria to chomp down alone on her late night snack plate of fruit and RAGE. Only Madeleine Stowe could make the simple act of snacking appear both scary, angry, and sad. EMMY.

Yes, things were falling apart for Victoria, and at the end of last night’s episode, they appeared to be going from bad to worse. First, she and Conrad had a heated discussion at the front door, which included Conrad saying such incendiary things as “[Frank] even so much as admitted trying to kill Lydia for you.” But oh NO! They totally forgot that LYDS was right there in her downstairs amnesia room, awake and listening in! Now Lydia thinks that Victoria tried to kill her, which is not totally the case, but it’s enough of the case to make this outpatient care VERY awkward.

Amusingly enough, after Victoria finally shut the door on Conrad’s surly ass, she turned around and realized that Lydia’s door had been open a crack all this time. Could she have possibly heard? Well, Victoria sauntered into the room and asked in a BOOMING voice, “LYDIA, ARE YOU AWAKE?” If she hadn’t been awake, she would be now. I mean, Victoria might as well have marched into the room banging two cymbals together and singing the National Anthem for crying out loud. The very fact that Lydia pretended to be asleep through that ruckus should have been indication that she was actually awake.

Nevertheless, Lydia kept her eyes closed, and so Victoria left the room… taking the bedside phone with her. She then went about shredding Lydia’s unread speech (the one that threatened to out the Graysons), but wouldn’t you know it? There was Tyler, freshly annoyed to be supplanted by Daniel in the company, spying from another wing. Next thing we knew, he was reassembling the long strips of the shredded speech, causing me to wonder why a family with such great secrets wouldn’t at the very least have a diamond-cut shredder. $40 at Target. Seriously. Then again, knowing Tyler, he’d probably stay up all night piecing the diamonds together with Ashley yammering on behind him about Kate Middleton and Ginger Spice (that’s what I assume she does when her character’s not on screen).

In other words, can’t wait for next week!

What did you think about this episode?