Revenge - Recap: Every Rose Has Its Thorne

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So Aiden is basically a massive pain in the ass for Emily, playing all sides of the fence. Last week, he pinned Conrad's near-death on Jack, and it isn't long before he's breaking into Jack's house to threaten him this week. Aiden pretends he's in Jack's house on the orders of Conrad (Henry Czerny), and tells him to leave town for his own good. Emily rushes to the Stowaway, only for Jack to lash out at her once she gets there. Jack poignantly asks Emily what happened to her, where that little girl he once knew went. Se tells her to just finish her damn revenge already, so they can all move on with their lives yet Emily is finding it difficult, given the troubles she's facing, not only from Aiden but also from Daniel, who feels he's the only one fighting for their relationship to survive. Daniel is unsettled by the fact that he's never seen a picture of Emily's late parents before, and worries there might be more he doesn't know about her. Coupled with the fact that Conrad no longer has Huntington's Disease, Daniel figures there's no reason for them to have their wedding at all. He breaks things off, and now Emily has to figure out a way to get Daniel back on her side.

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This is a development indicative of the complicated romantic entanglements of the episode. Take Nolan and Patrick (Justin Hartley) for instance. The two men continue their affair, with Patrick calling Nolan out on paying off his ex-wife to reveal his sexuality. He tells Nolan he doesn't play games, and implies that if their dalliance is going to be something more, there needs to be honesty between them. It seems like a strange choice to have Nolan once again catch feelings for someone who's either doomed (Padma) or suspicious (Tyler), but I like the chemistry between Hartley and Mann, so their scenes have a lot more to recommend them than, say, the scenes between Jack and Margaux, who have the chemistry of a box. The two finally share their first kiss, which Emily sees from afar with a look of longing on her face that illustrates just how much she still cares about Jack. But it's hard to care about Jack and Margaux kissing, or being together, or even just talking to each other. It's just such a random pairing to me. With any luck, this romance has more of a reason to exist than to simply give Jack something to do this season.

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In order to win Daniel back, Emily photoshops a picture to stand-in for a photograph of her with her late parents. She shows the photo to Daniel and utilizes her very real feelings about her father in order to gain his sympathy. She tells him that people think that just because she lost her parents at a young age, she never experienced real life. But she did. And having experienced such assuring, vivid love has caused her to push people away, for fearing of experiencing it just to lose it once again. Sufficiently moved by her speech, Daniel accepts Emily, and the wedding is back on. Sure, it's a bit disappointing how quickly Daniel crumbles, but the scene is the best in the episode thanks to Emily VanCamp's raw, damaged performance. It's a calculated bit of theatricality from Emily, yet underpinned with honest emotion that hits perilously close to home for her. It's a dynamic, nuanced performance from VanCamp, and among the best acted moments so far this season.

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Yet there's more scheming afoot, as Aiden gets to the bottom of the mystery of who cut Conrad's breaks. He takes the information to Victoria and informs her that the culprit was one of her children. It isn't long before Victoria tearfully brings in Charlotte (Christa B. Allen) to confess. Charlotte says she went crazy after learning about her father's involvement in Declan's death, and claims she wanted to make him suffer. She admits she wasn't thinking clearly when she cut the breaks, and she pleads for his forgiveness. In yet another remarkably nuanced scene, Henry Czerny plays Conrad as a man caught between paternal instincts and his own self-preservation instincts. He wants the person who tried to kill him to pay, but he doesn't want to hurt his daughter, and it's an internal conflict that Czerny embodies beautifully, making Conrad an infinitely more complex character than a simple two-dimensional soap opera villain. Of course, the real bombshell of the scene is that Charlotte is actually innocent.

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Victoria put her up to the lie by telling her that Conrad suspected Jack and planned to hurt him, a lie that prompted Charlotte to act out of a desire to protect Jack. Yet that leaves the mystery of who did actually cut the brakes. As Aiden reveals to Emily, it really was one of Victoria's children: Patrick. Aiden found the knife in Patrick's room, corroded with brake fluid, leaving "no doubt of his guilt." And while we don't know exactly why he did what he did, it's not a question that seems to concern either Aiden or Emily. They have more pressing concerns, such as Emily's admission to Aiden that she still loves him. “You’re everything to me,” she says, and they passionately lock lips, yet I wouldn't be a single bit surprised if she was revealed to be playing Aiden by pretending to be in love with him, in order to keep him from screwing up her plans out of a lingering sense of romantic jealousy. It's really hard to know what Emily is up to from one week to the next, and that's partially why she's so compelling. There's an internal logic there, but we're just not being given access to it. Not yet, anyway.

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"Control" is another fun episode that keeps the pace brisk, and the stories engaging. So far, Season 3 is representative of Revenge at the top of its form.