Revenge returned to the airwaves last night after a brief break, and I’m proud to announce it continues to be a loony, delirious mess. I had nearly forgotten where we were in the Thorne-Grayson intrigue, and an opening scene featuring some martial arts training between Emily and her sansei Satoshi had me seriously scratching my head. Does Emily really have her own private Mr. Miyagi? Are we really going down this road? Yes, we are. I had forgotten that the man had arrived after having received a distress call from Emily in the previous episode (an episode I have scant memory of thanks to having watched it at 3 AM slightly drunk).
Anyway, Satoshi had responded to the klieg light Bat-signal by pretending to be a potential investor in Grayson Enterprises (or whatever the family business is called). What Conrad and hunky aspiring corporate wannabe Daniel didn’t realize was that Satoshi was no investor but in fact Emily’s secret mentor (not to be confused with her OTHER secret mentor, C.C.H. Pounder). Anyway, Satoshi is one of those conveniently super-wealthy people who has $50 million to spare for the sake of a clever ruse. Same goes for Nolan, who managed to drop a cool $20 million investment with Grayson, courtesy of Tyler — Nolan’s main squeeze / rentboy / con-artist target.
Damn, we haven’t even started the episode yet.
Anyway, as the episode began, Emily was out of sorts about the two disruptive presences in her life: Tyler and Amanda. As we all remember, Amanda was really Emily, and Emily was really Amanda — the only catch was that Original Amanda never gave Original Emily rights to her Amanda identity. What a mess.
Well, Amanda 2.0. had been prancing around the Hamptons, relishing the attention from boring Jack as they went and did stupid things like dig for colored glass around the beach. What a fun activity. What’s next? A scavenger hunt for hypothermic needles?
Yes, it seemed as though Amanda had been pulling the wool over the eyes of everyone — everyone except Sammy the dog. How odd that this old dog doesn’t remember Amanda? And yet when Emily walks in the room, it all but humps her leg. THE ANIMALS KNOW ALL, JACK! HEED THE SIGNS!
It’ll all come unraveling for Amanda soon though. Emily gave her an alleged journal of her childhood to help Amanda fill in the gaps of her new identity, but just how authentic was that volume? We saw Emily bending the cover to make it look old, which means it’s NEW, which means there’s some sort of sneakiness afoot! Developing…
Emily: “Daniel, this is Amanda. She’s dating Jack.”
Daniel: “Oh cool. So you’re on the boring part of the show. What’s it like over there?”
Nevertheless, with all of Emily’s complaints about Tyler and Amanda, I grew optimistic that this week’s episode might be a return to early season form. Remember the good ol’ days when every episode resulted in someone being totally DESTROYED? Alas, it was not meant to be this week.
Instead we focused on the vile Tyler, who’s beginning to wear out his welcome as a character. I don’t want to mention Oliver from The OC, but I’ll do it. Tyler is not as bad as Oliver, but the fact that he seems to be increasingly psychotic feels a bit forced. I would accept him as a slowly insidious creature that claws his way to the top, but he’s now becoming a bit too unhinged, what with his anti-crazy pills he’s been popping. Then again, maybe Tyler just needs the pills to get a boner for Ashley since we all know he likes to dip his Harvard lampoon into Nolan’s ivy trusses. Okay, I’m being ridiculous.
Anyway, the saga of Tyler continued to spiral out of control (the next episode appears to be a gun-toting doozy). First he had to clear things up with the aforementioned Ashley, who you may remember caught Tyler locking lips with Nolan. Oops. He explained that he was just whoring himself out so they could have a better life together — see?? Nothing wrong with that!
As if Ashley didn’t have enough on her mind (clearly not bothering her: the wooly caterpillars over her eyes), she then had to contend with her bitchy boss Victoria. Ash cavalierly referred to Victoria as “Victoria,” a power move she made at the end of last episode too, but Vicky was all “It’s Mrs. Grayson, mmmkay?” Power move: DENIED. Two minutes later though, Ashley agreed to persuade Daniel to return to the roost, causing Victoria to smile and be all, “Okay, girlfriend, you can call me Victoria after all! xoxo”
Well, Ashley went off to Casa Thorne and encouraged Daniel to have lunch with his mom, but wouldn’t you know it? In walked Emily, and soon she too was part of the lunch plan, causing Ashley to roll her eyes exasperatedly. WTF? Why the hell did Ashley have such a rod up her ass about this? And why is she hating on Em so much these days anyway? I don’t understand Ashley, and I’ve yet to be impressed with any of her parties. Here’s to hoping she gets run over by a yellow Rolls-Royce, Myrtle Wilson style. Yeah, I just made that reference. Look it up. Look. It. Up.
Anyway, Daniel and Emily then went and met Victoria for lunch, and Victoria happily leveled a Frozen-Glare-of-Contempt at Emily for deigning to be present. This was followed by talk of Tyler, who Daniel hated to no end because of a white lie that Emily had created. You see, she had told Daniel that Tyler had blackmailed Nolan in order to get Nolan to invest with Grayson (thus earning Tyler a sweet commission and a corner office). This obviously was no bueno, and there was no way that Daniel was going to have this creep living at Grayson Manor. But Victoria was adamant that Tyler stay. She liked him, and besides, now that roly poly (a.k.a. Lydia) and Charlotte were gone, Victoria rather enjoyed having Tyler at the homestead. Nothing like the comforting security of a man, even if that man is squirrelly and no match for any intruder.
Oh, and as for Charlotte — she’d left Grayson Manor because she just haaaaated her mother. Her original plan was to move in with Declan, but he nixed that because he wanted to go to college and be the man that she deserved. Plus, I think he was maybe waiting for puberty to finally hit, maybe let that voice deepen an octave or three. The producers thankfully kept our Declan scenes short and minimal. Well done.
With nowhere else to go, Charlotte had to move in with Daddy, who incidentally had just served Victoria with some divorce papers. Yes, things looked bad for Victoria, but her life had two fortunate upticks. First, a dapper lawyer named Ryan Huntley materialized out of thin, beautiful Hamptons air to volunteer his services for Vicky. He claimed that Conrad wanted him first, but he had turned him down. Why? I guess we’ll find out later. All we do know about this guy is that he is somehow involved in the big Conspiracy as a flashback later showed that Emily in her Amanda years once paid him a visit at the office. Oh, and Ryan was also the guy who denied Emily’s dad an appeal. So there’s that.
The other good news for Victoria was that her hunky son Daniel decided ultimately to move back home. How did it happen? Well, after Daniel outed Tyler’s alleged blackmail scheme to his dad, it looked like Ty-Ty would be getting the boot. But the pesky con-man had other plans. The moment that Conrad threatened to ax him, Tyler turned the tables and revealed that he knew about all the shady Grayson dealings, thanks to Lydia’s speech that he had pieced back together after Victoria had shredded it. Still following? In the wake of this nifty blackmail scheme, Conrad folded and let Tyler keep his job. This all angered Daniel, who hated Tyler’s impropriety. When he demanded answers from his dad about why Tyler could ever be kept on board, Conrad blew him off, causing Daniel to huff back to mommy and vow to stay by her side.
Yay, Daniel!
Oh, and as if Daniel didn’t already have enough on his mind (aside from perfecting that adorable lil’ smile of his), he also had that irritating Amanda Clarke to deal with. Yeah, he ran into her digging around for more colored glass (sigh), and after telling her to shoo, he later let it slip to his mother that Amanda was back in town. This petrified Victoria, who let a creepy, nervous smile spread across her face in trademark fashion.
As for Emily, by the time the episode had ended, she wasn’t in the greatest place. Satoshi had given up on her, afraid that she was making decisions with her heart, not her head. And clearly by “heart” he meant “vag.” Nolan was mad at her too because she had snuck onto his USB drive and stolen his own security footage / sex tape with Tyler, and now Tyler didn’t want to knock boots with Nolan anymore. Could it be that Nolan had actually fallen for the “hooker,” as Emily called him? Perhaps. Either way, Nolan made a stink about how Emily had gone too far, and then he tromped off to be annoying elsewhere. This left Emily standing alone and sad, perhaps wishing she had Sammy’s all-knowing nose to nuzzle with. At the very least she could have molested Jack’s porch swing again. That always seemed to bring her happiness.
Meanwhile, Tyler had gotten his hands on that same USB drive (after having tossed Nolan’s laptop into the pool) and was now viewing not only the sex tape, but footage of Lydia outing Conrad’s schemes. The intrigue builds!
I think I got everything. Did I leave anything out? Correct my errors! What did you think about the episode?
You’ve just given “Revenge” some humor which it needs. And I can’t stop watching it.
It seems we have to wait until January for the next episode.
Satoshi dropped her because she was too emotional. Nolan dropped her because she’s not emotional enough. Poor girl can’t catch a break! And they’d better hurry up with the plot. Supposedly, this is all happening between July 4 and Labor Day.
Am I the only one completely bothered by the way Amanda speaks? Or should I say “Amanda” to clarify further? It’s not quite a lisp but she shhhort of shhpeaksshhh like thishhhh from time to time, sounding sort of like a 1940s mobster (mobshter) in a b-movie. I think the character would annoy me anyway but that speech impediment or affliction to whatever it is sends me over the edge.
I noticed that as well…it’s definitely weird. The dog is the smartest one on this show.
It was pointed out on another board that the actress who plays Fauxmanda is Russian and English is her second language. Still, it’s pretty noticeable and distracting, almost like she has a mouth full of water when talking.
I was going to make fun of faux-Amanda’s speech impediment, but then I looked at some videos of the actress who plays her, and it appears that it’s the actress’s impediment, not some strange choice on her behalf. As much as I wanted to start calling the character Shamanda, I felt it might be a little too cruel to make of her like that. I am, after all, a gentleman.
The preview for the next episode was SOOOO good! Can’t wait to see what’s coming up next. I’m totally hooked on this show.