After a two week hiatus from the series, Revenge is back and it looks like things are unraveling fairly quickly for Emily. At this point, she won’t have any time for vengeance if she’s too be busy running around trying to cover her tracks.
Amanda vs. Emily
Before we even get into that, for the purpose of avoiding major confusion in this recap, we’re calling Emily (Technically Amanda Clarke, girl on a mission for vengeance) “Emily”, and the unstable, major-problem stripper/murderer “Amanda,” despite the fact that they’ve switched names.
Since we’re on the subject of Amanda, we’ll start with her. She’s proven to be reckless in the way she offed Frank in the parking lot and then dumped his body, and we learned from the flashbacks tonight that she’s prone to violence. We also learned that the Warden at the detention center was kind enough to tip Emily off that she might be better off trying to win Amanda’s friendship than by fighting fire with fire. Sure enough, Amanda’s proven to be extremely responsive to Emily’s affection. We saw Emily sweet-talking Amanda more than once during the episode. This was usually followed by a hug and one of Emily’s signature dead-stares, which indicates that her kindness is all for manipulative purposes. It went a long way in getting Amanda to do what she wanted, but it didn’t go far enough.
Emily tried to get Amanda to leave for Europe, offering her (more) money and the opportunity to disappear. The fact that Amanda stayed shows just how dangerous she is. While someone like Tyler might be persuaded to disappear for the right price, it’s looking like Amanda is too emotionally damaged to respond to money. She wants attention and she might even want to crawl into the life of the name she now claims. Her interest in Jack, whom she says she feels like she knows because of everything Emily once told her about him, leads me to believe she wants him, not (just) because he’s gorgeous, but also because she knows how Emily feels about him. If we’re drawing comparisons to other corny soaps, I’d put Amanda in line with Tara, the girl who stalked Kelly in 90210 after they met in rehab.
Emily leaving Nolan to look after Amanda, which included loaning her a “house bikini” that was at least one size too small, resulted in Nolan getting bored and curious enough to figure out that Amanda killed Frank. All the while, his security guard, whose voice is so deep it sounds like he’s talking in slow motion, stood by to protect Nolan. With Frank out of the picture, I’m wondering if the security guard will stick around.
As for Frank, everyone now knows he’s dead. Two detectives showed up to question Emily, but she had alibis (Daniel and fish). It was a smart choice to stop off at the fish market early in the morning to get herself some time-stamped wild Nova Scotia salmon on her trip back from helping Amanda re-dump the body.
Lydia
Lydia’s awake and a partial amnesiac. She’s stuck in a wheelchair or in bed and wearing minimal make-up, while she only remembers just enough to not totally mess things up for Emily just yet. Just to be on the safe side, Emily had Nolan photoshop her face out of the old photo of Lydia and Victoria. Sure enough, while Lydia barely remembers Emily, she did remember the photo, so it’s a good thing Emily was on top of that.
Victoria’s seriously nervous about Frank’s death (neither she, nor Conrad seem all that grief-stricken over it though), and she shared her concerns with Conrad as the two had an argument right outside of Lydia’s bedroom door, which was partially ajar.
Lydia heard Victoria say something about Frank trying to kill her, and Conrad mentioned that it was Victoria who sent Frank to the loft. With a house that big, there were a million places out of earshot where they could have had that conversation, but what fun would that be? So now Lydia, who’s confused and wouldn’t be able to leave the house without help, thanks to those two pesky steps at the front door, knows Victoria and Conrad were at least somewhat involved in what happened to her.
Ashley and Tyler
Ashley and Tyler sealed the deal, much in the way that Tyler and Nolan sealed the deal during the last episode, except in this case, Ashley doesn’t know that Tyler’s at least a little bit gay and a lot of a liar. The happy couple also seem to be bonding over their frustration toward Emily and Daniel. They’re obviously jealous. Of course, Ashley has no idea that she’s being used and I’m predicting it goes further than just trash-talk in that department before things turn ugly.
On the subject of Tyler, he’s trying to make himself indispensable to Conrad. There’s no major harm in butt-kissing if he were looking to work his way up the ladder and maybe earn a semi-honest living, but his intentions are more sinister than that. He’s trying to collect info on Conrad’s business. This includes piecing together a shredded document and working on his evil-stare in his spare time. Daniel’s return to the internship may throw a wrench in Tyler’s plans.
Porters
We already talked about Amanda buddying up to Jack, so there’s no reason to go into that any further other than to say that I think Jack’s response to Amanda could be a combination of her looks, her name, and whatever behavioral attributes Amanda may be borrowing from her namesake.
Nolan officially returned the boat-Amanda to Jack, which may or may not be relevant to anything. The boat arrangement seemed more like a fast excuse for them to form a friendship. They are sort of friends, now. At the very least, they know each other well enough that it’s not weird to see Nolan stroll into the Stowaway, despite the fact that he has his own bar by the infinity pool in his backyard.
As for Declan, he’s proving to be the shoulder for Charlotte to cry on as she deals with the fact that her parents are separating. Charlotte’s reaction to Conrad leaving seemed a little extreme, only because her parents aren’t exactly Ward and June Cleaver. There’s distance between everyone in the Grayson house. She had to see this coming. Or not. Either way, Declan is there for her and that’s good, considering her parents are too busy being blackmailed and looking after the crippled, amnesiac mistress to pay much attention to her.
Soapy moment du jour:
Amanda: Come with me...
Emily: I wish I could.
Hug.
Dead-stare.
