Revenge - Recap: Bad Romance
Recap and review of Revenge - Season 3 Episode 12 - Endurance:
Is anyone else getting the feeling that Season 3 will be it for Revenge? I just get the sense that the creative forces behind the show went into this season assuming that it would be the show's last, because they keep introducing twists and turns that are going to make it pretty hard for this show to remain sustainable beyond the next nine episodes. It's not that Emily (Emily VanCamp) can't fight her way out of the corners into which she's been written, but rather that for her to continue to be as efficient as she is, her enemies will essentially need to be the blindest/stupidest people on the planet. And really, where's the fun or challenge in beating an unworthy adversary? "Endurance" is a pretty fun episode, but the show is still weighed down by the implausibility of its narrative. Of course, this isn't to say that Revenge hasn't always been a little silly, but at this point, it just feels like the Graysons are pleading with Emily to screw them over. And while that might be fun to watch, it's not good drama in the structural sense. Then again, I suppose this isn't really a drama in which one should be complaining about strained credulity. But if Emily doesn't get her revenge by May, I honestly have no idea what a hypothetical Season 4 would even look like.
Credit: ABC
But I'm burying the lede here, as "Endurance" is serves as a restatement of purpose for Emily. With the awkward amnesia storyline behind us, Emily is all but ready to walk away from her revenge plot and put the past behind her, once and for all. And it's not like she's wrong to contemplate leaving: in just about every respect, she's failed. Daniel (Josh Bowman) and Victoria (Madeleine Stowe) know just how deep her duplicity runs, since they know she's lied about the pregnancy. They also know she's likely some crazed social climber who's targeted their family from the very start. For all anyone knows, it's a stalking plan that goes back years. In fact, the only thing the Graysons don't actually know is the real reason why Emily has targeted them. But that's actually the key to this whole thing. While Emily has, technically, failed in executing her plan, one could argue she's still very much in the game. Hell, one person does end up arguing this: Niko (Stephanie Jacobsen), Aiden's ally whom we learn is actually Takeda's daughter.
Credit: ABC
Niko, Takeda's sole offspring, volunteers at the hospital to be Emily's nurse after Victoria decides to have Emily taken to Grayson Manor to recuperate from her shooting. Victoria does this in order to keep an eye on Emily and make certain they have the shooting situation under control, since her memories could theoretically come back at any moment. It's a potentially dangerous situation, so Aiden (Barry Sloane) convinces Niko to look after Emily and, eventually, get her out of Grayson Manor. But Niko pretty much does the exact opposite, attempting to convince Emily not to give up so easily, and claiming that Takeda would be ashamed if he'd lived to see her like this. She even goes as far as to punch Emily in her still-wounded stomach in a weird attempt to motivate her.
But Emily insists her mind is made up. And so Niko gives up on Emily, particularly once she learns the truth about her relationship with Aiden. I mean, really, you could pretty much fill a book with what Niko doesn't know: for one, she doesn't know that it was Aiden who killed her father (accidentally, sure, but he still killed him); and she also doesn't know that Aiden and Emily are secretly engaged, which makes things awkward once she finds out, since Niko is still very much in love with Aiden, and is doing him the favor of looking after Emily under the expectation that they'll be together once this whole thing is over. And so Niko, more than a little upset with Aiden, tells him that Emily wants to stay and finish her revenge mission instead of running off with him. And while it ends up being the truth by the end of the episode, it's pretty far from reality when she actually tells him.
Credit: ABC
Of course, the Niko stuff isn't really the motivating plot of the episode, as most of it is concerned with Emily rediscovering her thirst for revenge and engineering ways to keep the game rolling. Once Victoria learns from Patrick (Justin Hartley) that Emily's Infinity box is hidden in Nolan's (Gabriel Mann) wall safe, a scheme is hatched to retrieve it and expose Emily's true identity. This leads to a bit of a rift between mother and son, as Patrick learns that Victoria has been lying to him about who really shot Emily, and accuses her of choosing her "blood" over her "bastard". It's a great little scene between Hartley and Stowe, and it informs Patrick's actions later in the episode: apparently, he doesn't know the truth about his father, and wants desperately for Victoria to trust him enough to tell him about his past and where he comes from. And so Patrick takes it upon himself to bludgeon Nolan with a piece of fire wood and steal the Infinity box outright after his initial plan to get Nolan drunk fails spectacularly. Meanwhile, at Grayson Manor, Victoria is enacting some further psychological torture by revealing to Emily that the doctors have said her shooting has left her barren. Emily will never be a mother.
Credit: ABC
Naturally, that reveal could very likely just be a lie on Victoria's part, meant to coax Emily into giving up the "amnesia" charade already, or perhaps just to torture her. But if it is true, I wish the show had done more to establish that motherhood is something Emily wanted to experience. It isn't until Jack (Nick Wechsler) brings Carl around for a visit that Emily even expresses the desire to have a family of her own one day with Aiden. It's a sweet scene, and I kind of wish we'd gotten more like it, as the reveal of Emily's incapability to bear children would have been more impactful. Of course, I say this, but I was still considerably moved by Emily VanCamp's performance when Victoria tells her she can't have kids -- even more so when she details to Aiden just how badly she needs to see this revenge plan through, saying that they've taken away her mother, her father, and the possibility of a future. "This is my future now," Emily tells a distraught Aiden, who is devastated to learn that Emily won't just leave this all behind with him. And so now Emily's revenge agenda goes back to being the business of two people, with Nolan helping out (and plotting to reveal to Patrick the truth about his conception).
Credit: ABC
But I still think I'm burying the lede a bit here, as the really big story is not Aiden leaving Emily, or Nolan resolving to bring down Patrick, or even Jack punching Daniel in the face for shooting Emily. It's Emily's decision to hold a press conference once Victoria discovers what she believes to be the truth about Emily Thorne. You see, Patrick stole the Infinity box, but Nolan switched out its contents at the last moment: some of the photos in the box are authentic, but there's nothing in there that would reveal Emily's true purpose, or her true identity. In fact, the contents of the Infinity box do little more than frame Emily as a grifter -- a low-level con artist looking for social and financial gain. And, in a fairly brilliant strategic move, Emily cops to it! She admits that she targeted the Graysons, and says that she came to the Hamptons to obtain money and status. However, she also claims to love Daniel, and goes about proving it by holding a press conference and confirming that it was Lydia Davis who shot her. And the press laps it up, as they are wont to do. In essence, Emily takes back control of the revenge mission by playing into what they already suspected of her: that she's a gold-digger. It's a lie they're all too ready to believe, and so she serves it to them on a silver platter to bide time and throw them off the scent of her real motives, and her true identity. It's a masterstroke that probably shouldn't have worked, yet it works beautifully.
Credit: ABC
Yet while the press is gullible, Emily, Victoria, and Daniel all know better. They have a meeting in the Grayson sitting room, at which point they air their grievances, with Daniel wanting Emily out of his life, Emily playing the gold-digger role to the hilt, and Victoria softening up to Emily somewhat, if only because she saved Daniel from hard jail time. It's rather eerie how Victoria calms Daniel by offering up evidence of her own loveless, 25-year marriage, pretty much saying, "If I can stomach being married to someone I hate, so can you!" It tells you all you need to know about the twisted values system these people hold dear. It's hard to know where the story is going from here, but it would appear that Daniel is pretty much stuck with Emily, who threatens to go to the press with the story of who really shot her. Poor Daniel, but also poor Emily, stuck in cycle of revenge from which it seems unlikely she'll ever extricate herself. And poor Sara (Annabelle Stephenson), who remains as heartbroken as ever over Daniel. We learn she wasn't actually trying to kill herself, but rather that she simply got drunk in the bathtub while trying to forget about Daniel, and nearly drowned accidentally. She and Daniel make peace, and it seems like they're well on their way to being together, but the whole Emily development makes that more than a little complicated.
Credit: ABC
"Endurance" illustrates the tricky nature of a show like this: yes, it's silly and it strains credulity, but it's also occasionally riveting, and is often a lot of fun; however, there's also a lot of chaos in the plot that makes me worry whether the show will be able to keep itself afloat if it continues at this pace. I have confidence enough in the creative forces behind this show to trust that they have an endgame in sight, but whatever that endgame is, I have absolutely no idea what it could possibly look like. As Revenge throws more and more at Emily Thorne, taking her past further points of no return, I wonder if the show might not be exhausting its premise. And as someone who genuinely loves this show, I really hope the writers know where they're headed with this, because this Revenge is a fundamentally different Revenge than the one to which viewers have been accustomed -- one of greater risks, and of greater consequence. And while that's exhilarating on the one hand, it can be worrisome on the other.