Revenge - Recap: The Hangover
Recap and review of Revenge - Season 3 Episode 13 - Hatred:
So has Revenge done the unthinkable? By the end of "Hatred", the show certainly seems to want us to think that Emily (Emily VanCamp) slept with Conrad (Henry Czerny), as the episode builds up a running narrative in which, as a result of her head injury, Emily has been subject to instances of lost time. It first occurs while she's swimming, blacking out and suddenly finding herself in Nolan's house, fully-dressed, with no memory of the intervening hours or how she came to be there in the first place.
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After Daniel (Josh Bowman) physically assaults her by pinning her down on the bed and holding her by her neck, Emily experiences another blackout, and finds herself in Conrad's bed at the South Fork Inn, wearing his pajamas and wondering how the hell she ended up there, all while Conrad congratulates Emily on being "marvelous" the night before. "Until our next rendezvous," he smugly says as he lets himself out, and we're left to wonder, much like Emily, just what the hell is going on? As it stands now, "Hatred" is one of the best of the season just for how magnificently soapy it gets. It isn't enough that there are affairs and revelations flying left and right. No, there's genuine malice in the portrayals here, giving off the vibe that these are people who truly loathe one another, making the interactions all the more potent, and the episode title all the more apt.
Credit: ABC
So Daniel has brought in Sara (Annabelle Stephenson) to be his live-in mistress in an attempt to drive Emily away. But instead of being cowed by the move, Emily doubles down on her revenging by attempting to intimidate Sara, who refuses to give in to Emily's intimations that she's in over her head. It's reflective of Daniel's similar obstinacy, as Victoria (Madeleine Stowe) tries to warn him that bringing Sara onto the "battlefield" will not end well for the girl. And she's right: Emily brings Sara's mother in to shame her into leaving Daniel, and it works like a charm, as Sara really isn't the kind of person who is cut out to deal with all the drama Emily brings to the party. So she bids Daniel a tearful farewell, and it's the straw that broke the Grayson's back.
Credit: ABC
You see, it's been a crummy week for Daniel, as Conrad gets him ousted from Voulez by paying off an editor at the magazine to insert a libelous sentence into the Lydia Davis piece written by Margaux (Karine Vanasse). To protect her family's empire from a libel lawsuit, she agrees to Conrad's terms and fires Daniel, allowing Conrad to purchase Daniel's shares in the company at double their market value, essentially giving him a powerful role in the magazine. But he isn't really interested in having a 9-to-5. He just wants to bring his son to heel, and that's exactly what happens, as the combined loss of Voulez, Sara, and the continued campaign against him from Emily leads to Daniel snapping, pinning Emily to the bed and threatening her. Emily insists that the twisted nature is what makes them perfect for one another ("You took from me, so I took from you! Don't you see, we belong together!"), but Daniel doesn't want to hear it. "Sterilizing you was my gift to the universe," he tells her, before leaving her alone on the bed to writhe in her own pain and misery. In much the same way stress began her first two blackouts (in the first, she tears out her stitches in her sleep; in the second, she teleports from the pool to Nolan's house), stress brings about a third, as she wakes up in the aforementioned bed of the Grayson family patriarch. I really hope they didn't have those two do the deed, but if that's the direction the story goes, I'm curious to see what possible endgame they could have for it.
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As for the other stories this week, we get more about Victoria and Patrick (Justin Hartley) than we ever have, really. After Nolan (Gabriel Mann) reveals the birth name of Patrick's biological father (in a wonderful scene packed with tension, as the two men seem right on the edge of coming to blows), Patrick confronts Victoria with the truth. However, she is still hesitant to provide Patrick with the story of his background, pleading with him to just take her at face value that it's best for him not to know. Yet Patrick can't let the matter go, tracking down his birth father, a man named Jimmy Brennan, and going to visit him. As they stake out his house from a safe distance, Patrick tells his history to Victoria, saying that his adoptive mother died when he was four. When his adoptive father remarried, the new wife convinced the father to stop giving a damn about Patrick, and so he suffered through years of neglect. Thus, Patrick hasn't really ever known loving parents. For him, this is about finding closure, although both Patrick and Victoria seem to recognize that this is something that is exceedingly difficult to come by. But Patrick pursues Brennan anyway, tracking him to a local pub. But when Victoria attempts to stop Patrick, she's indirectly brought into context with Jimmy Brennan, bumping into him after she drops her purse. He picks it up for her and tells her to "relax, honey" -- a phrase that sends her into post-traumatic stress, as she pleads with Patrick to take her away.
Credit: ABC
What follows is one of Madeleine Stowe's best scenes of the series (really, this has been a great season for her). Back at Grayson Manor, Victoria reveals the truth to Patrick: he is the product of rape. She goes into painfully minute detail about how Jimmy Brennan was an older brother figure living in her hall, who talked her into following him into the basement under the pretenses of fixing a broken lightbulb. Once there, he raped her while whispering "relax, honey" over and over again. Once she gave birth to Patrick, Victoria attempted to keep the child, but Brennan continually stalked her, leaving her with no choice but to give Patrick up to the nuns. It's a harrowing story that's delivered with painful recollection from Stowe, and it's a performance that really illustrates just how Victoria could have become the damaged, conflicted woman she is now. It's tremendous work that would make a wonderful Emmy reel submission for Stowe. Hell, she's already been nominated for a Golden Globe for this role, and that was before she was killing it on a weekly basis like she has been this season (which is not to say she wasn't still great in season one, but this a whole other level). Justin Hartley also does a damn fine job with what he's given, as Patrick is clearly someone who is desperate for the truth, yet he ultimately recoils when he finds out what that truth entails. He kisses Victoria on the forehead after her confession, as if to apologize for assuming the worst of her. If nothing else, it's a sweet resolution.
Credit: ABC
But, of course, that's not all for this week. In storylines that ultimately amount to a series of rough sketches, we have Niko (Stephanie Jacobsen) moving into Nolan's house on the go-ahead from Aiden (Barry Sloane). Without directly saying so, he essentially cops to wanting to keep tabs on her, to prevent her from getting too close to the truth of what happened to her father. Niko is hell-bent on revenge, and wonders why Aiden isn't equally as passionate about catching his mentor's murderer. Naturally, she doesn't know about Aiden's role in the killing, but that doesn't stop her from preparing for battle by cutting mangoes as practice for "separating skin from flesh". Aiden feels he's running out of options, and so he enlists Nolan to doctor up surveillance footage to frame some unknown goon for the crime. Nolan does this, despite admitting to Emily that he's hesitant about still keeping Aiden around, now that he's no longer with Emily. (In this moment, Nolan mistakenly reveals to Emily that Aiden is sleeping with Niko, which adds a whole other wrinkle to the twisted dynamics in play, as we now have jealousy to add on top of all the feelings of betrayal and hostility brewing in the emotional gumbo that is this show).
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However, Nolan doesn't stick to Aiden's plans: he frames the Grayson Global bomber from last season, feeling that it will kill two birds with one stone, allowing Niko to get her revenge while also serving justice to the man who indirectly killed Declan Porter. But Aiden is upset, since the plan didn't involve Niko actually finding the man alive -- but hey, beggars can't be choosers, so he buys Niko a plane ticket to London. And just as she's about to pack up and leave, Niko discovers Takeda's sword under the boards of Aiden's mattress. You see, Aiden is apparently a moron who doesn't know not to keep trophies of his killings in the house, particularly after inviting the murdered guy's daughter to come live with him. So now Niko has presumably put two-and-two together, which means all hell is about to break loose. For Aiden, anyway. I'm really not all that invested in anything having to do with Aiden or Niko (if it's independent of their interactions with Emily, anyway), but at least it's more interesting than the ceaselessly dull adventures of Jack Porter (Nick Wechsler), as he confesses his love to Margaux and asks her to move in with him. I've tried and tried and tried to get into this relationship, but it just doesn't work, in my opinion. Wechsler and Vanasse have the slightest kernel of chemistry, but I'm not sure it's enough. With that said, I like the characters as individuals. Just not together.
Credit: ABC
But don't let that last bum note dissuade you: "Hatred" is among the best of the season. It's an episode that lives up to its title, packed to the brim with contempt and melodramatic loathing. And it all ends with the arrival of the FIRST Mrs. Grayson (Gail O'Grady), who's here to wreck things up, which just sounds utterly delightful. Revenge is just a fun, friction-filled hour of soap opera excess. Revenge won't be back until Sunday, March 9 (at its new 10:00 PM time slot), but this was as solid a way to head into a month-long break as any.