The Glass REVENGE
So, Emily wakes up, ruminating on how hate burns like the sun and revenge is her only SPF, only to discover that she's bleeding. She apparently picked out her stitches in her sleep. Can a person do that? Lesson No. 1: Don't needlepoint anything for Emily Thorne because it won't survive the night.
Can't Read My REVENGE Face
Emily feels stronger and newly Revenge-y now, so she calls Nico for wound care, then pulls a glowing poker from the fire and asks Nico to stab her with it and scorch her insides to ash, because she'd like to see about a role on another show. DONE. GOODNIGHT! Except, Em actually does ask Nico to use the poker to cauterize her wound. Without drugs, or even a bite guard. She's TOUGH. And because this show is more chicken than anything on Foster Farms, it cuts away without actually sharing the experience of Emily Thorne getting the hot-poker treatment. Talk about a tease.
Full REVENGE Jacket
Nolan isn't enjoying himself right now. You can tell because he didn't take fastidious care in layering multiple shirts underneath this jacket. There is only one collar here. He's irritated with Patrick for stealing the Infinity box, as opposed to being irritated with himself for having something so obvious as a wall safe behind a painting and a box that might as well be labeled "MOVE ON, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, THERE IS NO REVENGE INSIDE, AT ALL, I PROMISE." Fortunately for Nolan, he switcheroo'd the REVENGE so her scheme wasn't busted. But still. He feels violated by Patrick and he's got the mono-collar to prove it.
REVENGE-In-Law
Emily is now seeing Victoria's therapist, which she does only to piss off and freak out Victoria. She is also wearing a cute shirt that's also rather billowy for her, but it makes sense because she DID just get her stomach melted, and this show strives for nothing so much as complete realism.
The French REVENGE's Woman
These two are so happy, taking a stroll with Baby Carl, Margaux in ginormous nude pumps that are totally practical for a romantic walk. She is also red, thinking it's the color of looooove, not realizing it's also the color of the burning hate she's about to feel...
The Devil Wears REVENGE
... when she reads her editorial in the Daniel And Emily Get Married And Then She Gets Shot And Isn't It Awful issue of Voulez, and it's full of words she didn't write. Words about how Conrad premeditated Emily's shooting by giving Lydia the shotgun. Margaux is so angry that she takes off running very adeptly in her massive heels, further cementing her as the most interesting person on the show, leaving Jack behind with the poor newsstand owner whom he's just tipped to put every issue of Voulez out front "because it makes the lady happy," or somesuch. I hope that guy was like, "Yeah, no refunds, sadsack."
National Treasure: Book of REVENGE
Conrad, meanwhile, is moving out of Grayson Manor to The South Fork, where, in my dreams, he meets an off-the-wagon Sue Ellen and she RUINS HIM FOREVER in one quick swoop, proving to Emily that she's the worst at Revenging and that when it comes to dead mentors, Takeda is no J.R. Ewing. Conrad is, as I would, taking all his leather-bound volumes with him. He tells Emily that she, in dispatching Lydia, has ruined his only chance at happiness. Come on now. Conrad Grayson is ARROGANT. He may have loved Lydia, but there is NO WAY that man isn't confident enough to believe he'll date again. And/or find another hot piece of lady. I just am fairly confident he thinks his genitals are gold-plated trophies of excellence in the carnal arts.
9 1/2 REVENGES
Daniel arranges it so that Emily finds him in bed with Sarah, and the two of them flaunt their affair. Emily pretends to be all stone-faced, but then closes the door and looks amused, like, "It's adorable how doomed you two are." This show is a THOUSAND times better when Emily and Daniel hate each other openly, because there is no rooting interest in them as a couple. Not that there is with Sarah and Daniel EITHER, because Daniel is a black hole of zzz, but Sarah is also disposable. As we will see.
REVENGE Intentions
Emily lays on her contempt very thickly for Boring Sarah, too, which is great. Boring Sarah, however, displays some spine, and orders some Champagne by the pool right in Emily's face. REVENGE Champagne is really the best Champagne.
Shattered REVENGE
Daniel -- in an oxblood jacket, because: REVENGE RAGE -- runs through the Voulez offices shouting Margaux's anti-Conrad copy at her, because he's super professional. She tells him it was a plant, and then Conrad's people sue her for slander. Daniel thinks really, really hard and the two peas in his brain accidentally bump into each other and so he realizes Conrad had Margaux's assistant -- who has vanished, and had the issue last -- plant the words specifically SO he could sue them. Is Voulez a monthly? Wouldn't they have had to go to press a while ago? Would a copy on the newsstand REALLY be the first Margaux had seen of the issue? Pop quiz, Daniel: What is your job there and what is the name of the magazine? Do you even remember?
Mommie REVENGEst.
Apologies for the blurryness, but I couldn't get a clear shot of this awesomely teenaged expression of irritation on Patrick's face. He has been given information, through Nolan, that says Victoria blocked his birth father from seeing him and arranged for him to be sent away. Patrick isn't happy about this. He was perfectly happy cruising through life having sex with Nolan and then occasionally sitting strangely closely to his mother and accidentally murdering a priest, and now the show had to go all Heavy Backstory on him. Thank God Justin Hartley can deliver.
The Cradle Will REVENGE
Victoria heard through the Maid Grapevine -- FINALLY! -- that Sarah is sleeping in Daniel's bed. She floridly warns Daniel about pulling Sarah onto the battlefield of Em's psychological warfare, because Sarah is a wuss and Emily is the devil's handmaiden: "I know, because I dismantled Conrad's first wife in a similar manner." Daniel and his Oxblood Tie of Ultimately Impotent Anger insist that he will dismantle Emily his own way. His accent cuts in and out so wildly that he sounds fresh out of The Sopranos.
Portrait of a REVENGE
It's worth noting that being treated with a medicinal hot poker is REALLY good for the hair and the face.
The Mirror Has REVENGE Faces
Daniel sees through the servant gambit, mentioning for our sakes that the Grayson servants all signed NDAs years ago and so he doesn't buy that, all of a sudden, Sarah's mere presence caused one to tattle. So he fired them all, even though he knew Emily was responsible, just to make her feel like crap. He ALSO manages to squeeze out the phrase "I've been ruminating on your powers of deception," because his Word A Day calendar is really kicking in nicely. Emily, confirming that she has Blu Cantrell on her playlists, had gone out and spent a ton of money on new clothes, including this dress which is moderately unattractive from the front and really hella unflattering from the back. The best REVENGE is blowing your awful husband's cash on a dress you don't really want to wear.
The Publisher's REVENGE House
Emily, of course, guiltily writes a check for the servants' salaries and then some. They really should've blocked the date on the check. There's no way this episode is supposed to take place in August, is it? And besides, it takes us way out of the action to see it be last year. Last SUMMER, even. And poor Emily may have learned REVENGEing and killing from Takeda, but he never bothered to teach her cursive. Even Gilderoy Lockhart learned joined-up writing eventually, EMILY, and he's madder than a balloon in pants.
Friday REVENGE Lights
Brett Cullen, a.k.a. The Man Who Is In Everything, plays Patrick's father Jimmy Brennan. Ergo surely we will be seeing more of him than just this idyllic shot, RIGHT as Patrick and Victoria are watching, of him picking up his massive and too-old-for-that son and spinning him around and then throwin' the ol' football around and then wrasslin'.
"No. REVENGE Is Your Father."
Patrick gets misty-eyed about all the twirlin' and throwin' and catchin' and wrasslin' that could have been part of his life. His adoptive mother died and his father ignored him, see, and all he's ever wanted is to get a noogie from a man who really cares.
My Best Friend's REVENGE
Nolan pops by, and this is the best I could do to show you his orange pants and the black hoodie poking out the back of his white blazer, suggesting that the tongue of mischief is lapping at him once again and he's increasingly in the mood for shenanigans. He does, however, let slip -- and it appears accidental -- that Nico and Aidan are sleeping together again, which upsets Emily even though she dumped Aidan because she didn't actually WANT to dump him. The best kind of REVENGE is when you make yourself totally miserable and then also fail to actually get revenge. Right? Yeah.
REVENGEfan
So Emily swims to clear her head. Right now is when I wondered if she's losing her mind, because when you're living in Hate House and you go swimming unsupervised and there are no servants around, this is traditionally when someone waits for you at the end of the pool and then holds you underwater until you die. I am speaking from the personal experience of having watched a lot of TV. That does not happen, BUT Emily does appear to swim straight into the wall and conk herself on the head. So that COULD be the cause of the rest of the episode, or maybe there was already a condition that led her to black out before she hits the wall at all, or maybe someone made her go bonk. That's a risky play, though -- assuming you can conk someone and yield the EXACT desired effect. So I'm inclined to go with A or B.
Also, someone in Fug Nation pointed out that it's insane she's swimming right after having her stomach cauterized with a hot poker, and that's TRUE. Even with her stitches in, she shouldn't have been swimming. Is she bionic now?
REVENGE Vow
Emily doesn't exactly have amnesia, but she does have a brain fog. She regains consciousness in Nolan's house but doesn't know how she got there, and when Aidan finds her, he notices that she's gone wonkus. This is because she's being shifty and weird and her eyes are darting around wildly, and Aidan is observant. He thinks her appearance there is because she's having second thoughts about their breakup, but she spits that he's with Nico and flees and Aidan is a sadfaced revenge clown.
We'll Always Have REVENGE
Margaux puts on sleeves as big as her anger, and agrees to Conrad's plan: She'll buy out Daniel, and sell the shares to Conrad at twice the price. Her family's good name and good business are too important to her to get dragged down in this war between Graysons, so what does she do? Jump sides in the war between Graysons. Honey, selling to Conrad doesn't keep you off the board. It just moves your pawn.
Mango Only Pawn In Game of REVENGE (Yes, I know the quote is "Mongo," but... walk with me.)
Nico is bonkers. Nolan wants her to leave, but he finds her skinning mangos as practice for when she REVENGES all over the person who murdered her father. See, she's been looking at autopsy photos, and she knows the death blow was struck by her father's special sword, which was always on his person but which vanished after he died. She's also pissed because Aidan stood her up. Nolan decides not to cross a madwoman with a paring knife, because he only just got his dressing mojo back and he's already picked out his collars for the next scene and he doesn't want to die before he deploys them.
Roman REVENGEday
Sarah wandered into the kitchen and found no staff, so she whipped up an Italian dinner and dessert, describing it to Daniel in that irritating way where she takes GREAT care to use the exact Italian pronunciation of every word. Like, I get it, and I respect Italy and its food and its language, but when you are not speaking whole PHRASES of Italian, it comes off so smug -- like, you don't need to go all Giada De Laurentis on the word "gelato," Sarah. We get it. Anyway, Daniel has had a boo-hiss kind of day, so he decides he has to get out of this house. Right away. To Italy! Yay! Except, tomorrow, because he needs to give Emily time to ruin it first, and besides, it makes way too much sense to leave at night because then you can sleep on the private jet and arrive in Italy during daylight hours you could actually make USE of, and that's clearly hellfire bananas.
REVENGEdraft
Patrick went to a bar to stalk his father; Victoria doesn't realize this, shows up to talk to Patrick, and bumps INTO said father. He acts like he doesn't recognize her and says, "Relax, honey," and the words cause her to freak out. Patrick takes her home and helps her change into something more comfortable, like her silk nightie set, so they can sit by a roaring fire -- this is a really strangely chosen staging for what's about to happen -- and Victoria can tell him that his father actually raped her: She left home after parental issues, and Jimmy was a brother figure to her, until the night he got her into a dark basement and raped her while coaxing her to "relax" over and over again. It's the best work Madeleine Stowe has done on the show in a long time. Not that she's bad, but the show doesn't usually demand a full range of colors from her and she gets to deploy them all wonderfully here. It's subtle, it's moving, it's very Victoria as she fights for emotional control and occasionally can't keep it.
The House on REVENGE Hill
It's a new day, I guess, and Margaux pops in wearing a white dress and kicking off her same nude shoes. Sigh. Also, what the hell time of year IS it? IS it August? Then why does everyone have roaring fires? Emily's was burning during the height of the day. And yet here is Margaux in the summeriest of summer dresses. It makes sense that Em would have a summer Hamptons wedding, but maybe they should've done a time jump of three months while she was in the coma.
Oh, and Jack wants to buy a house for himself and Carl and Margaux, and she says yes, although she doesn't seem as excited about it as one would expect. Possibly because her relationship with Jack doesn't come with re-naming privileges of Carl. Also, Jack acknowledges this is all Very Fast, but claims he's learned never to waste a second. You'd ALSO think that being conned by Emily/Amanda/Fauxmanda would teach him to look before he leaps, but I guess he's going to interpret things in whatever way gets him a fast track to a family.
"Hello. My name is REVENGE Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
Aidan gives Nico a bunch of files that will point her toward some other dude who might have killed her father, to save his own skin. Nico is wearing a great leather jacket, but that ruched shirt she's yanked down over her bum is really harshing my buzz. Also: Stephanie Jacobsen is actually Australian, and so this is her real accent, and yet somehow simply being on this show makes it sound fake. I don't know what vortex this set is in, but it's madness.
Not Without My REVENGE
Jayne Brook, a.k.a. The Woman Who Is In Everything (and was in fact in TWO other things with VanCamp: Brothers and Sisters, as Scotty's mother, and Everwood, as Hannah's mother), shows up as Boring Sarah's mother. Emily has alerted her to Sarah's treachery with a married man, and Jayne is enraged that Sarah would go down this path again after she patched up Sarah the first time Daniel was in her life. She's super grossed-out that Sarah was going to fly off to Italy with someone else's husband, AND in a dress that she clearly bought at Forever 21. (That actually does make wardrobe sense for Sarah, but still. Steal Emily's clothes! That would be a nice salvo to fire.)
Mother, May I REVENGE With Danger?
See? Terrible dress. The seams hit her chest in weird places and it looks paper-thin. But Sarah decides to hold firm, so Jayne disowns her, while Emily smugly glows in the background in an ensemble as red as the mind-Sharpie she will use to invisibly X out Sarah's face. Because, see, she correctly anticipates that Sarah will go back on her resolve, decide she's not the kind of horrible person who will take up with a married man, FURTHER decide that Emily is too dangerous to let Daniel divorce her without a fight, and thus quietly leave. I don't understand why Emily couldn't just have told everyone Daniel Grayson shot her, gotten him packed off to prison, and then a) quit while she's ahead, or b) figure that a broken Victoria would be a vulnerable Victoria, and finish them off with one less big dumb oaf in the way. Emily = the biggest, dumbest oaf of all. Takeda clearly didn't teach her well after all.
REVENGEtails
Nolan has on two collars again AND bright red pants, so he's obviously back to enjoying the REVENGE game. Here, he celebrates helping Aidan give Nico the fake information; Aidan tells Nolan that Emily seems even weirder than normal and that it's up to him to figure out why, because of course Aidan is going to disappear again so that they don't have to pay the actor for too many episodes.
"HELLO. MY NAME IS REVENGE MONTOYA. YOU KILLED MY FATHER. PREPARE TO DIE." "STOP SAYING THAT!"
Earlier in the episode, when Nico decided to move in with Aidan at Nolan's, the show made a clumsy point of a cutaway shot of Nico's empty duffel getting kicked under the bed. Now, of course, that pays off: Somehow, the handle got caught on A MYSTERIOUS OBJECT that Aidan had pinned under his mattress, because WHY WOULDN'T YOU BURY THAT SOMEPLACE YOU IDIOT. Takeda either taught nobody anything, or didn't notice that they were too busy making out to listen. This means Nico now realizes that Aidan is the six-fingered man of her life.
Starry REVENGE
And Patrick paints, y'all. He PAINTS IN ANGER. HE RAGE-PAINTS. And then he rage-spills his oils and then rage-cleans them. SO MUCH SENSIBLY CHANNELED RAGE.
"Flames... on the side of my REVENGE... It's... it's... heaving... breathle....heaving breaths..."
And so naturally that means he has to set the whole place on fire, because nobody on this show is allowed to do anything sensibly.
Husbands and REVENGES
Emily goes all sickly sweet on Daniel again, in the face of Sarah's rejection. Daniel can't deal with her face, nor with her hideous excuse for a shirt, even if it IS secretly a nightgown. He will not stand for her buying such awful things with his hard-unearned money. So he throws her down on the bed, growls at her, and then spits that sterilizing her was his gift to the world. Nice line, Daniel. He also used the word "malign" earlier in a business meeting and no one gave him credit for it. Daniel is really trying, you guys. He's learnding and stuf.
"Brain fever... or as they say in Austria, 'REVENGE-egeschlagen.'"
Emily's brain suddenly turns itself inside-out, so she rolls over on the bed and tries to focus her eyes, but can't, because of her Kopfegeschlagen. So she closes them...
The Devil's REVENGE
... and wakes up in Conrad's room at The South Fork, watching as he drools that she was "excellent" and he can't wait for a repeat performance, or some such, implying that perhaps they slept together. Now THAT would be a grossly amazing twist. Doubly so if Emily turns out NOT to have been sterilized and she ends up incubating a Baby Con, on multiple levels.
The First Wives' REVENGE
And finally, Gail O'Grady -- whom I almost called Beef O'Brady, ONLY because that is my favorite of the dumb college football bowl game names, and thus is the greatest example of how dumb corporate sponsorship can be, and yet, also EFFECTIVE, because that is also the only reason I know there is even a thing called Beef O'Brady's, so YOU WIN AGAIN, BEEF -- where was I? Oh yes: The Gail O'Grady Bowl is in town, and the team in the REVENGE-y red skirt and flowered uniform has COME TO PLAY. Tighten your chin straps. REVENGE!