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Howdy, Gasmii! For those of you whom I haven’t met, I am S-Natch, the miserable old hag incredibly funny and insightful recapper of Dirty Soap. Since Dirty Soap just ended, Flipit suggested I check this show out.
REVENGE is trashy and melodramatic and brings back all of the cheesiness of the 1980’s nighttime soap genre. J’Adore!!
PLUS
EQUALS
(Okay, I know that was a little redundant, but let’s press on.)
This recap is a little different, because the show is 7 episodes in, so I will give you the Readers’ Digest version of those eps to catch us up, and begin with the regular snark and fun next week with episode 8. Each episode comes with its own oh-so-dramatic title, as well!
Ready? Here we go!
PILOT EPISODE -
We open at an engagement party. The lovely Emily Thorne (get it? Because she is sharp and dangerous but beautiful like roses and thorns) is engaged to Daniel Grayson, the charming son of Victoria and Conrad Grayson (see – “Gray”son like their murky souls).
EMILY THORNE
Daniel is trying to overcome his bad boy partying ways, and met Emily during a charity event hosted by his mother. Victoria Grayson is also called “Queen Victoria” by the Hamptons elite. She is tough and powerful and (of course, since she is a woman) bitchy. Turns out that Victoria had an affair with Emily’s dad back in the day.
VICTORIA GRAYSON
With the party going on inside, we see shadowy figures on the beach. One is a dead body. The other figure pulls the body into the dunes right as Victoria’s slutty daughter, Charlotte, drags the boy-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks (Declan Porter) down to the shore for a little sumpin-sumpin.
Emily tries to call her fiancé, and dun, dun, dun, the body starts ringing! The figure pulling the body into the dunes sees that Emily is calling, and the horny teens are alerted, coming upon the body just as the figure escapes.
DANIEL GRAYSON
The dead body is Daniel, and the figure appears to be Jack Porter. Jack is the blue collar, big hearted son of the local bar owner. He is preparing to sail his boat, “Amanda” (remember that), to Haiti to help with disaster relief. (Two years late, but what the hell.) Jack holds a torch for a young girl he met many years ago. Dad’s bar is about to be foreclosed upon, so Jack sells his boat to Nolan Ross so he can bail Dad out.
JACK PORTER
Nolan Ross is a genius software designer who has the greatest net worth of anyone in the Hamptons. Remember that.
NOLAN ROSS
Flashback to months earlier when Emily rents the house next to Victoria’s. The house is for rent because the owners are getting a divorce. Lydia Davis, the home’s owner, is Victoria’s best friend. We see Emily remembering being in the house as a small girl with her widower father. Everything is fab – except he keeps calling her Amanda – dun, dun, dun. Emily Thorne is really Amanda Clarke, and she is coming back to avenge the arrest of her father. He had been set up by the Graysons who claimed he was part of a terrorist plot that cost many lives, was convicted of treason, and died in prison.
Emily/Amanda was released from a juvenile retention center on her 18th birthday, only to be met there by Nolan, who explains that the father she believed to be a killer was framed, and gives her a box of “evidence” her father passed on to her. Nolan also says that her father was the only person who believed in him, so he invested in his company, of which she now owns a 49% share. How convenient. Now she is filthy rich.
Emily keeps a company picture that she found in the evidence box, and is bound to mark off each person as she gets revenge. First is Lydia Davis. Lydia is having an affair with Victoria’s husband, Conrad. Emily follows them to the South Fork Inn (get it – the Dallas mansion was Southfork. Maybe next we will have Knot’s Landing marina and Falcon Crest rest home – fab!). Emily dresses as a waitress and spikes Conrad’s soup, causing him to have heart attack-like symptoms, post-coitus. He is rushed to the South Fork hospital, where Victoria is summoned and figures out he was dipping his wick in a foreign pool. She warns him about Montezuma’s revenge and tells him not to do it again.
LYDIA DAVIS
Later at the charity event, Emily just happens to come up when Victoria is talking to Lydia and says that she saw her in South Fork and asks if her husband is feeling any better. Victoria threatens to kill Lydia with her laser beam eyeballs, then bans her from the Hamptons and announces that her house is for sale.
EPISODE 2 – TRUST
Emily’s target in this episode is hedge fund manager Bill Harmon, whom she used to call “Uncle Bill” when she was Amanda. Uncle Bill testified falsely against her father, saying he financed terrorists and participated in illegal insider trading. Emily tells Bill that she is friends with Nolan, the computer whiz, and that she has information about his company. She feeds Harmon false information which he passes on to his clients, causing them to lose a lot of money. She then calls them all with the client list she has stolen and tells them what a shit Bill Harmon is. Another red “X.”
Lydia’s house goes up for sale, but before Emily can buy it, Nolan does. Emily is furious until Nolan (who knows her real identity) presents it to her as a 30th birthday present. Geez, Louise I wish I had friends like that!
Jack sells his boat, “Amanda,” to Nolan, and agrees to be Nolan’s skipper since he can’t sail. Jack secretly hopes he gets his boat back as a result, and is so busy with Nolan he does not realize that his dad is drinking like a fish.
Emily and Daniel Grayson (remember we are now in flashback so he is still alive) are on their first date, and their first kiss is interrupted by Nolan and Jack who have come to surprise Emily on her birthday. Jack, who does not realize that Emily is his boyhood crush, Amanda, is drawn to her, and it seems as if she is drawn to him as well.
Victoria is having Emily investigated, and her private eye says that Emily Thorne is squeaky clean, but that she was on the board of a company Lydia’s ex-husband was on, and there was a rumor he was sleeping with a young girl there so it may have been her. He also says he cannot find any info on her life as a teenager, so Victoria tells him to follow her.
EPISODE 3 - BETRAYAL
Jack’s father died as a result of falling while he was drunk. His younger brother, Declan, refuses to help him scatter Dad’s ashes at sea. He is caught up in guilt because he ignored Dad due to his troubles with rich bully, Adam. Nolan tells Declan that he knows how to get back at Adam. Nolan has footage of Adam screwing another girl (does anyone keep it in their pants on this show?), but Declan chooses to send Charlotte a video with a heartfelt message from himself instead.
DECLAN PORTER
Next on Emily’s shit list is Senator Tom Kingsly. He was the Federal prosecutor who brought the charges against her father. As Emily, she volunteered during his campaign in order to get close to Tom and learn about him. Together, she and Nolan hack into the Senator’s laptop.
In flashbacks we learn that Victoria tried to give Prosecutor Tom Kingsly evidence that would help exonerate Emily’s dad, but Conrad Grayson encouraged him to ignore it in order to ensure Kingsly’s political future. Emily uses the information on the laptop and mails the Senator a video of himself with a woman who is not his wife.
It turns out that the woman got pregnant with the staunch anti-abortion Kingsly’s baby. Of course, he orders her to get an abortion.
The Grayson’s are having a fund-raiser for Kingsly. Right before Kingsly’s campaign speech he receives a text telling him to look across the room. There stands the woman – her huge belly being obviously abortion-free. Kingsly announces he is retiring from public life. He then learns that “he” has been sending her money for herself and the baby. They discover that the money transfers are coming from a Grayson IP address, so Conrad thinks Victoria did it (but we know it was Emily).
Daniel comes face to face with his past as Emily takes him to lunch at the same place where the brother of the girl Daniel badly injured in a drunk driving accident works. Turns out that Daniel’s folks paid everybody to make it go away, and forbade him to ever see the ex-girlfriend again. Emily encourages him to apologize.
Jack’s dog, Sam (the same name of Amanda’s puppy when she was a child. This guy is kind of a stalker creeping on the memory of a 10 year-old, don’tcha think?), comes to her house. When she returns him, she finds Jack on his boat, and sees that it is named “Amanda.” Jack tells her that Sam the dog came up with the name.
EPISODE 4 – DUPLICITY
Dr Michelle Banks is a psychiatrist. She was young Amanda’s (Emily’s) therapist. She tried to convince her that her father was a killer and had her institutionalized. Dr. Banks’ practice was funded by none other than Victoria Grayson, and Victoria had insisted that Amanda never see her father again. Emily is now a patient of Dr. Banks, along with Victoria.
Dr. Banks is the keynote speaker at a Mother/Daughter charity tea. Victoria drags her daughter, Charlotte, to the event. Dr. Banks is to show a video encouraging everyone to donate when – egads! – the video has been switched! Various clients are shown spilling their most intimate secrets, including a red herring video of Emily. Victoria is shown confessing that she never bonded with Charlotte and that she thinks having a second child was a mistake – causing Charlotte to flee from the event and into thee arms of Declan.
CHARLOTTE GRAYSON
Victoria swears vengeance on the doctor and tries to call her husband to let him know what is going on, but he is shacking up with Lydia whom he is now “keeping,” because the fidelity clause in her pre-nup left her broke.
Daniel accidentally sees Emily and Jack together and recognizes a spark between them, so he allows his “best” friend, Tyler, to talk him off of the wagon and they get smashed alongside Emily’s best friend and Tyler’s date, party planner Ashley. Emily tries to call Daniel, but Tyler erases the messages.
TYLER BARROL
Dr. Banks goes missing, and she is later found in a storage facility owned by Grayson Global. Her office has been ransacked, and her hard drive and external files are missing from her computer. Cut to Emily watching the videos from the hard drive and seeing Victoria confess that she had loved Emily’s dad and was going to leave her husband for him, but she betrayed him instead.
EPISODE 5 – GUILT
Emily arranges for her friend, event planner Ashley, to put together a charity event honoring the people killed in the plane crash that her father allegedly caused by funding terrorists. She tells a surprised Victoria that Victoria is being honored as a pioneer in the effort to help those families.
ASHLEY DAVENPORT
Lydia Davis rides up on her ho-bag high horse just as Victoria discovers that her husband put $10 million in an account for her. Lydia announces that she is contesting the sale of her Hamptons house. What’s more, as Victoria’s “best friend,” she will be introducing her at the charity gala.
Lydia is also gunning for Emily, saying that she is going to dig up dirt on her for busting her little affair to wifey poo.
Emily ships a bunch of stuff from the Hamptons house to Lydia, including an item that contains a hidden camera so Nolan can watch her. It was then that he discovers that Lydia found a picture of Emily waitressing at a charity gala years before. Emily panics, and asks Nolan to hack into the catering company records because she was still Amanda Clarke when she worked there.
Frank, Victoria’s security guard/private eye, is snooping around Lydia’s house when he discovers evidence that Nolan and Emily planted implicating Lydia in the recent shenanigans. Frank reports to Victoria that Lydia was behind all of it. Lydia comes home and finds Frank in her house. They fight, Lydia is thrown from the balcony and lands – Lethal Weapon-style – on top of a cab.
Later, Nolan comes to retrieve the evidence and sees Lydia on the cab. He tries to tell Emily that he thinks Frank killed Lydia, but Emily is bumping uglies with Daniel who apologized for falling off the wagon and asked for a second chance.
EPISODE 6 - INTRIGUE
Lydia, proving she has more lives that a strung-out alley cat, somehow survived the five-story fall, and is clinging to life in a coma. Nolan sends the Grayson’s the surveillance video of Frank and Lydia’s fight, so Conrad fires him and give him a hefty check to get the hell out of Dodge. Of course, he does not.
Frank realizes that Nolan was in Lydia’s building and beats the shit out of him. He also sees Nolan talking to Emily. This causes Nolan to tell Emily that he is outta there and she is on her own with this revenge B-S.
Daniel, rather than take a job with his father, is working at Jack’s bar, the Stowaway. Great job for an alchi – just sayin’. Tyler, the best friend from hell, asks Daniel for a shot and spikes Daniel’s glass. Daniel gets woozy and Tyler tries to bed him. When Daniel refuses, Tyler beats himself off up and runs to tell Mommy Victoria what a bad boy her little Danny is for hitting him. Emily calls B-S on this story.
Declan wants to buy Charlotte fancy stuff, so he poaches lobsters out of some fishermen’s traps – a real no-no. He almost gets his ass handed to him on a platter, but Daniel bails him out by paying the men for their losses.
At the Grayson fourth of July party, Declan confesses to Charlotte that he’s just a poor boy from a poor family (Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the fandango?), but she says she doesn’t care and they both get all tingly. Jack confesses his feelings to Emily, too, but she reluctantly nixes him.
Frank is lurking and watching.
EPISODE 7 - CHARADE
It is the Grayson’s 25th anniversary and they are having an oh-so-cheery party. The local newspaper is sucking up by doing an article on the dysfunctional happy couple. Daniel does not mention Emily’s name, per her request, but Tyler does, so the reporter is clamoring at her door. Tyler tells Ashley his plan is to become invaluable to Conrad Grayson.
CONRAD GRAYSON
Nolan, who now has a bodyguard, learns that Tyler is a bi-sexual hustler whose family lost all of their money. Tyler ditches working class Ashley in order to have a liason with Nolan who records the encounter.
Charlotte and Declan fight, largely over Jack’s hurt feelings over Emily’s response to his heartfelt confession of love.
No one is left at the party, so Victoria kicks Conrad out of the house just in time for him to arrive at the hospital as Lydia awakes from her coma.
Frank visits Emily and tells her that he is going to redeem himself by exposing her. He visits the detention center, but the warden will not answer his questions. He snoops around and takes a picture of Emily/Amanda’s mug shot.
Frank later goes to a strip bar, where he meets the REAL Emily Thorne. She is a dancer who was imprisoned with Emily/Amanda, and they switched identities. Frank tells the stripper all of the details about Emily/Amanda, and they arrange to meet in the parking lot after real Emily’s shift.
Frank calls Victoria and tells her that Emily is not whom she appears to be. He is about to elaborate when Real Emily whacks him over the head with a crowbar and kills his ass. She then heads to the Hamptons to say “hey” to her old cellmate.
WHEW! We are now all up to date! Hope you stayed awake through all of that, Gasmii, because I think we can have a lot of fun with this shit from here on out. Next week, we will recap only one episode, so there will be much more snark, lots of pictures, and fewer words!!!
Say it with me, now – “Re-veeeennnnnnggge!”
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