Revenge - Recap: Back on Track
Recap and review of Revenge - Season 3 Episode 16 - Disgrace:
It has taken far longer than it ever realistically should have, yet Revenge has finally done it: Jack (Nick Wechsler) is finally on Team Emily. The show has flirted with having Jack join in on the revenge plot against the Graysons, but has always remained hesitant to actually pull the trigger. However, "Disgrace" officially brings Jack into the fold, and it has a potentially exhilarating effect, since this is basically the first episode in which Emily has been 100% focused since her struggle with amnesia following her shooting. Ever since then, it's just been nothing but one distraction after another, whether blackouts, or Aiden's murderous, vengeance-seeking ex-girlfriend, or Daniel's irksome affair with Sara. It seems her entire plan has been derailed for longer than anyone ever would have expected it to be, and yet, it finally feels like it's back on track. We not only got a fun little caper story with Nolan (Gabriel Mann) and Jack, the episode also offered a greater sense of narrative focus, since Jack is no longer off to the side doing his own thing. He's very much in this now, and it's as good a time as any for him to hop aboard the revenge train, as we heard towards the end of the season. "Disgrace" is classic Revenge, with Emily (Emily VanCamp) operating at the height of her abilities, allowing the Graysons to believe they've won when, really, it's merely another brick in the foundation of her longer scheme.
Credit: ABC
Of course, in some ways, Emily's renewed focus can be chalked up to the presence of Stevie (Gail O'Grady). In Stevie, Emily has found one other person who believes David Clarke was framed, and who is interested in seeing justice done. However, Emily rebuffs Stevie's offer to help, arguing that she's going to be dropping the matter, in accordance with Jack's wishes. And she's not entirely lying either, having promised Jack she wouldn't get Stevie involved. She honors this request from Jack, even after Stevie offers some intriguing intel: she visited David Clarke under her maiden name (Stephanie Pruitt), in order to discuss some new evidence that she'd discovered. Unfortunately, on the way back from the prison, she was busted for a DUI -- despite having been clean and sober. Essentially, Conrad (Henry Czerny) set her up once he found out she was onto him, and arranged to have her arrested, since a DUI is grounds for disbarment. Stevie lost her license to practice law, and all the evidence she gathered in the David Clarke case reverted back to her firm, which locked it away in their archives. Nolan decides to take up the good fight even if Emily won't, and enlists Jack, along with a hacker named Javier whom he mentored in prison, to obtain the lost evidence from Stevie's old firm. It's the most fun Revenge has been in some time, as Jack suits up to infiltrate the building, while Nolan provides a distraction by meeting with the firm's patent lawyers. The playful spirit of the show peeks through here, as Nolan refutes the firm's disbelief at his return to the tech world by quoting LL Cool J. “Don’t call it a comeback,” he says. “I’ve been here for years.”
Nolan and Jack, with the help of Javier, are able to obtain the records and escape. However, when Jack presents them to Emily, she pushes him away, arguing she doesn't want to get him involved. He leaves the evidence anyway, though, and what she finds proves to be a bit of a shocker: the files contain a scan of a handwritten note addressed to Conrad Grayson, in which the author mentions having “handled TWM” for Conrad, before also referencing his “DC plan” (presumably referring to David Clarke, although the meaning of "TWM" remains a mystery). Emily recognizes the handwriting from Voulez's invite to do a story on her: it's the work of Pascal LeMarchal (Olivier Martinez), Margaux's father. When Jack returns to declare his intentions to join Emily's revenge plan, whether she likes it or not, Emily's revelation that Margaux's father is involved does nothing to dissuade him from joining up. He wants justice for Amanda and Declan, and if that means going after Margaux's pops, then so be it. They'll just have to take care not to cause any collateral damage, a statement on which Emily agrees wholeheartedly. They were childhood friends before, but now they're partners in revenge, and right away, this show is better off for that pairing. I could imagine a team of Emily, Nolan, Jack, and even Javier and Stevie could do serious damage to the Graysons.
Credit: ABC
After all, Emily is already doing a lot of damage to them on her own: by doing damage to herself? Yeah, it's weird, but that seems to be Emily's intention when she leaks her own medical records to prove she wasn't pregnant at the time of her shooting. She does this during a ritzy, high-scale opera, no less! In short, the news spreads like wildfire after it lands in the Voulez tipline -- which is observed by Charlotte (Christa B. Allen) because she's apparently the new gossip columnist for the magazine, because of course she is. The whole world now knows that she faked a pregnancy in order to trap Daniel (Josh Bowman) in matrimony, and this move immediately leaves both Daniel and Victoria (Madeleine Stowe) feeling as though they've won. Not only does Emily now have no grounds to contest the divorce, she also lacks her one bit of ammunition against Daniel: if she tries to go to the press to reveal that Daniel was really the one who shot her, no one will believe her since the story of her fake pregnancy has just hit the web. Any accusations she lobbies against Daniel will just come across as the lies of a bitter, jealous woman. And so Emily skulks away from the Grayson home, defeated. Or so she would have them believe. “I needed them to feel like they won,” Emily later tells Jack, arguing that she needed a chance to plot her next move without being hounded.
Credit: ABC
However, it's clear that Victoria still senses something amiss with Emily, and she's slowly putting it all together with the help of Brooks, the private detective Daniel hired to tail Emily last week. Victoria learns from Brooks that Aiden is in Bermuda, which begs the question of why Emily, if she's so in love with the Brit, isn't with him. She also wonders why Emily wouldn't take the generous divorce settlement the Graysons offered, since this means Emily isn't really targeting the Grayson bank account, or even the Grayson legacy, but rather the Grayson family itself. Victoria is slowly connecting the dots, drawing a parallel between Emily and Amanda that falls just short of conflating the two, and it makes for some great tension, since it really does feel as though it's only a matter of time before Victoria puts it all together. Especially since Victoria now knows Emily is far more dynamic than she appears to be: when Daniel and Victoria use the Aiden pics to coax her into signing the divorce papers, she counters by crying on cue, and threatening them with a "preview" of the testimony she'll give when she reveals Daniel shot her. It's an absolutely terrific scene, and I've rarely loved Emily as much as I did then. When the show first started, Emily wanted the "Emily Thorne" persona to pretty much be what it appeared to be on the surface, without anyone assuming anything more about her than what they could see. So no one would immediately assume Emily would be lying or faking her tears, because they'd have no previous reasons to believe she was either a good actress or a great liar. But now, Emily just doesn't give a damn if the Graysons know she can cry at the drop of a hat, or project sincerity with startling effectiveness. In short, she's written "great actress" into the DNA of the "Emily Thorne" persona, and she apparently doesn't care who knows it. And so while Victoria may believe she's "won," she has good enough sense to know the business with Emily Thorne is far from over.
If only the rest of the episode could be that compelling. I'm struggling to find much of interest in Conrad's attempts at merging the American wing of Voulez with Pascal's European counterpart, and the storyline doesn't even pick up once Conrad reveals that Pascal has been cooking the books, allowing Margaux (Karine Vanasse) to believe Voulez is a success when, in actuality, her father is basically using it as a tax write-off. But Olivier Martinez makes the most of his screentime as Pascal, particularly in his scenes with Victoria, who is portrayed as the one thing in his life that he could never have. His onscreen chemistry with Stowe is great, and they're given some wonderful back-and-forth, as Pascal flirts heavily with Victoria, only for her to declare, "This dress may touch my body, but you’ll never be so lucky." It also helps that this seems to be tying back around to making Conrad the source of all villainy, as we're given to infer that Conrad intends to pimp out Victoria to get Pascal to agree to the merger. It's easy to forget how detestable Conrad can be, and while it was wise of the show to go to such lengths to humanize him over the course of the season, it's even wiser to loop us back around to hating him again. Because he really does make such a joyously hateable villain.
Credit: ABC
"Disgrace" is just plain fun, and it recalls the early first season of Revenge, in which Emily would spend each episode bringing down a different target in delectably satisfying fashion. Those episodes featured caper-type stories, with infiltrations, disguises, and distractions. Sure, the narrative model might not have been sustainable for much longer than it lasted, but I'm glad to see it sort of returning here, as Jack and Nolan make for a hell of a pair, and Emily is back to being as calculated as she's ever been. In short, Revenge is back, and in a big way.