Revenge - Recap: Game of Owns

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The crux of the episode centers on a wedding shower in which Victoria (Madeleine Stowe) looks to complete her plan to ruin Daniel and Emily's engagement. The plan is a two-pronged assault, with the most effective element of the scheme being Victoria's decision to capitalize on the very real feelings developing between Daniel and Sara (Annabelle Stephenson). In fact, I'm not even sure Victoria realizes just how effective it would be to pursue this avenue, as Daniel and Sara continue to bump into each other on the street -- in this case, the local farmer's market. Daniel gets his flirt on, but Sara is hesitant to move forward, worrying about becoming a homewrecker. Coming from a broken home herself, Sara doesn't want to repeat history. However, she does remain open to seeing Daniel again, and tells him so, giving hope to the eldest Grayson child. But Sara's openness toward Daniel is crushed when she encounters Emily, who witnessed the entire flirtation and, in a stunning moment of manipulation, breaks down in front of her fiance's former flame. What's funny about this is that the things Emily says to Sara aren't exactly lies: in explaining her breakdown, she says she's simply been driven mad by the wedding (which is true), and states that at some level she feels threatened by Sara (again, completely true, as Sara represents the greatest threat to her hold on Daniel's affections). Shaken by the confrontation with Emily, Sara backs off from her flirtation with Daniel, to Victoria's irritation.

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But Victoria has another plan up her sleeve. While playing a game of "This Is Your Life" at the wedding shower, Victoria surprises Emily with the arrival of Rohan (Anil Kumar), her first husband, stunning Daniel and all the guests in attendance. And Emily doesn't deny having been married before, admitting to the "marriage of convenience". But, as Emily explains, by "marriage of convenience" she merely meant that she married Rohan in order for him to gain citizenship so he could marry his longtime partner. Victoria is foiled in front of the entire audience, and comes across as a bitter, desperate woman. It's the culmination of the plan set up last week, in which Emily planted the tidbit about her first marriage, knowing Victoria would look into it and try to use it against her (yet it's interesting to note that the first marriage was no lie. Turns out, Emily really did do a solid for Rohan, a fellow student of Takeda's who's already completed his revenge). Victoria refuses to give up, and tries to argue to Sara that Emily can't be trusted, and that she isn't in Daniel's best interests. However, Sara doesn't want to hear it. She declares she's letting Daniel go, and tells Victoria she should think about doing the same. Naturally, part of the reason this works as well as it does, in narrative terms, is because Victoria is actually right. Hell, she's been right about Emily all along. She's just using Daniel, and if anyone is actually perfect for the Grayson son, it's Sara, who's his first -- and perhaps truest -- love. But Victoria's attempts to prove it have painted her as a villain, such that she simply comes across as a paranoid harpy instead of as a concerned mother. It's a wonderfully dynamic characterization that gains further potency once it becomes apparent that Victoria still isn't defeated just yet. Even at her lowest point, she still has one last trick up her sleeve...

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Conrad gifts Daniel with the key to the Grayson bachelor pad, a lodge that has been passed down from one Grayson man to the next on his wedding day. It's a soft place to fall for the Grayson men, a safe spot in which to carry on their affairs and shady dealings in complete and total privacy. (Of course, this begs the question of why Conrad didn't carry on his Lydia affair here instead of at the far more public South Fork Inn back in season one, but that's neither here nor there) In his hubris, Conrad buys into the long-held belief that no Grayson wife ever has, nor ever will, know about the secret lodge. Yet Victoria knows about it all too well. And she uses it in a last-ditch effort to get Emily to call off the wedding. Just as the Grayson men have a tradition of passing down the key through the men in the family, the Grayson women pass down the knowledge of the lodge to any woman who is about to marry into the family. And so Victoria does the same for Emily, telling her that Daniel is meeting with Sara in the lodge as they speak. And Emily quickly learns she's right.

Daniel called Sara to talk about their feelings for one another, as Daniel has finally come to the realization, after the wedding shower fiasco, that Emily is just like his mother. And he has no intention of marrying his own mother. So he all but proposes to Sara, saying that while they don't have to rush into anything, she's the one he wants to be with. She eventually agrees to be with him, but not until he comes clean and breaks things off with Emily. So Daniel returns to Emily to discuss their future...but before he can break off the engagement, Emily enacts her last masterstroke: she shows Daniel a faked ultrasound and happily tells him they're pregnant. A stunned Daniel struggles to smile, realizing that he can't possibly leave Emily for Sara now. Once again, Emily wins another game of One-upmanship against Victoria. "Secrecy" represents a staggeringly awesome battle of wills between Emily and Victoria, and it's genuinely riveting to see these women constantly attempt to outdo one another in grand fashion, like the world's savviest, best dressed game of Spy vs. Spy. I could seriously watch a series of nothing else but Emily and Victoria owning each other week after week -- and really, outside of the whole obnoxious Initiative business from season 2, that's kind of what we've been getting for the majority of the show's run. And it almost always works, which is a big reason for why this episode, in turn, was among the most compelling of the year.

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With that said, there were other storylines deserving of attention, some more than others. Jack (Nick Wechsler) gets into a series of macho standoffs with Aiden, whom Jack just doesn't trust, especially after learning from Nolan that Emily is running off with the guy when her revenge is complete. So Jack confronts Emily and tries to convince her that she can do better than Aiden, implying that she doesn't really know him that well. Emily lashes back that Jack doesn't know her all that well either -- at least not anymore. It's a scene that should probably carry more weight than it does, but something has been off about the chemistry between Wechsler and VanCamp in recent weeks, even as the show has softened Jack's approach toward Emily. Of course, even an underwhelming Jack/Emily subplot is better than anything having to do with Charlotte (Christa B. Allen), who is being blackmailed by Micky Park from 2ge+her, who found her found and all the naked pictures it contains.

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Charlotte sends Aiden to deal with the man, and Aiden gladly handles the matter -- not out of the goodness of his heart, so much as the opportunity it provides him for access to Charlotte's laptop, which will allow him to plant a bogus order from Victoria for the murder weapon intended to "kill" Emily. Once Aiden dispatches the man, and has yet another staredown with Jack, he confronts Nolan -- with whom he's temporarily moved in -- for help on an undisclosed matter. And so the mystery deepens, naturally, which I suppose is nothing new for this show, given how this episode ends. Conrad is still hard at work on his memoir -- which he's titled "The Choices We Make," at Daniel's suggestion -- and in getting it published, he's incurred the wrath of Margaux, who realizes Conrad only used her generosity to start a bidding war for the publishing rights to his book. And so Margaux wants to ruin Conrad every bit as badly as Jack does, meaning she's more than open to hearing out a secretive source who claims she could fill an entire book with dirt on Conrad. I immediately suspected either Victoria or Emily, maybe even Charlotte. But Lydia? THAT was a bombshell. How she survived the exploding plane (or where she's been the last year), is something I don't even have a working theory on, but Lydia is back, and I never thought I'd say this, but I'm happy to see her. It's funny how even the least interesting characters from season one can become welcome presences just by virtue of the sheer chaos their presence can create. Bring on the drama.

Credit: ABC

"Secrecy" is as close to perfect as a Revenge episode can get, and with only one episode left before the big wedding, it looks like the show is more focused than ever, and is set on going full-steam ahead toward the climax of the half-season. And given the show's track record, that level of focus and ambition is good thing. It's a damn good thing.