Courtesy of ABC
Well that certainly was an obvious hour of television, was it not?
Let’s bitch it out…I just don’t know what to make our my beloved Revenge. Every time I think the show has rediscovered what makes it fun to watch, it pumps out this kind of episode: it’s not inherently awful, but holy mother, is there anything in there that you didn’t see coming? Because that may have been the most telegraphed, frightfully obvious episode of the series thus far.
Count ’em down:
- Emily (Emily VanCamp) is apparently dead at Aiden’s (Barry Sloane) hands in the cold-open and then we flash back two days. Well gosh, I wonder if this is all part of some elaborate REVENGE! scheme? Jump ahead to the final moments and, yes, that’s exactly what it is. The show doesn’t even try to pretend that it’s anything other than a ruse to trap Initiative Helen (Wendy Crewson), who is – let’s be honest – not a nefarious villain. And what is the point of this? To convince Helen that Aiden is on her side? Umm…I’m not really sure this crazy plan achieved what they were looking for it to do
- Padma (Dilshad Vadsaria) is the mole leaking information to Helen (and, by proxy, Joshua Bowman’s Daniel). Is this a surprise to anyone? It’s pretty clear that poor, dumb, lovestruck Marco (E.J. Bonilla) is telling the truth to Nolan (Gabriel Mann) about the emails. It’s now just an exercise to see how long it takes for Nolan to ditch the bitch and jump back in the sack with the boy
- Jack’s (Nick Weschler) in jail and *shocker* doesn’t want to involve Nolan or Emily (umm….why?). Naturally Faux (Margarita Levieva) interprets his plea not to do anything as a cue to steal a watch from Conrad (Henry Czerny) and sell it to buy a gun. Ugh…Crazy ex-stripper Faux from S1 would have bashed in the Ryan brothers’ (JR Bourne and Michael Trucco) heads with a pipe and dumped the bodies in coffee bags. I miss old-Faux
- Victoria (Madeleine Stowe) deliberately sabotages her son’s financial plans to buy a disaster relief company to “protect him” (like always). In this case she leads on a Grayson Global rival named Jason Prosser (Dylan Walsh), who immediately acts on her “accidental” slip of the tongue. Haven’t we seen this a million times?
In general the whole episode has a “been there, done that” vibe. There’s nothing drastically different in it to establish it as a terrible episode, but there’s not much to praise, either.
Courtesy of ABC
Other Observations:
- It’s kinda fun to see Victoria saunter home, collect a drink from Conrad and then just casually walk away. One of the elements I’ve often wished to see more of is these two working together (since they dispense so much time and energy trying to ruin the other, it’s a rare occurrence)
- Stick another nail in the Aiden/Emily relationship. Not only did he see last week’s kiss, he also clearly no longer trusts Em (as evidenced when he totally c*ck-blocks her after the wine auction/REVENGE-ing is done)
- Something is off about Nolan. Perhaps it’s his three collared outfits or the fact that Gabriel Mann looks super-gaunt, but the eccentric bisexual billionaire isn’t looking his best these days
- With that said, Nolan’s dirty/happy smirk when Aiden thanks him for being part of the team is pretty amazing
- Since apparently I’m determined to turn this into a fashion blog, can we talk about the shorts? Perhaps I’m jealous because it’s snowy and cold out, but between Conrad’s recent “casual Friday” golf shorts, Ashley’s (Ashley Madewke) culottes and Nolan’s blue clam-diggers it feels like the wardrobe consultant on the show has gone blind. Reasonably attractive people wearing ugly, ugly clothes: Sundays at 9pm on ABC
- Speaking of which, Ashley, everyone’s favourite escort, blackmails her way back into a job as Conrad’s PR person for his upcoming *snooze* campaign. So, she’s basically exactly what she was before…only for a single person instead of a giant, multinational corporation. Reach for the skies, sugar!
Best Lines:
- Ashley (to Conrad, re: handling Victoria): “The dragon lady is yours to wrangle”
- Jason: “Victoria, aren’t you a vision?” Daniel (to Emily): “Yeah, among other things.”
So that was disappointing, but hopefully now that the Initiative is being compromised things will start to heat up. Plus there’s the outster of Padma to look forward to (hopefully it won’t take six episodes or anything). What are your thoughts on ‘Sabotage’? Did you see the plot twists coming? Did you like the big penis bidding at the auction for the spoiled wine? Are you glad that Padma is the mole and not Marco? Comment away below
Revenge airs Sundays at 9pm EST on ABC