Revenge

Our first time discussing a plot driven story and one that I actually love, Revenge. Emily Vancamp gets the spotlight that she deserves in this 4 season show. This is an amazing show for a lot of reasons but the fact that it is a plot driven story that only takes the time that it needs to tell its story is the biggest reason. The problem I have with most plot driven shows is that they get popular and renewed by networks and then they are forced to keep going and they try to turn into character driven shows with a heavy plot element and as we have established that doesn’t work. You get one or the other, so here we go with all the reasons Revenge is the perfect plot driven story.

The main character's motivation is clearly established within the first 10 minutes. Emily is after revenge for the framing of her father that led to his imprisonment and ultimately his death.

We are set in the Hamptons and her takedowns of all the people involved are wildly satisfying because we get to see rich people suffer and it's just a beautiful thing.

Now another thing that I love about this show is that our main character is obviously a sociopath but you root for her anyway because the alternative is billionaires. At the beginning it seems like she starts knocking these takedowns out pretty quickly but she just has so many that it never stops being satisfied.

Also casual representation we have Tyler sleeping with Nolan to keep him quiet, Nolan is bisexual and there is not one single line about it they just let him be and that is how most of us what representation done. We don’t need a huge coming out story all the time, we don’t need to see every queer character ever struggling with their sexuality, those stories have a place and they are important but it's also important to just see queer people as people.

And then we have the entrance of “Amanda” who will be referred to as such to avoid any confusion. Our main character is Emily and that's just how we're gonna do this.

I kind of forgot how fast paced this show is, 12 episodes in we find out that Charlotte is Emily’s sister. Amanda and Jack are a whole thing, and Emily and Daniel are getting engaged.

The thing I find funny is that everyone around Emily seems to be questioning whether or not her feelings have gotten in the way, regarding Daniel and Jack. Now it's clear that she has feelings for Jack, her time with him was the last time she was safe and comfortable. However it never occurred to me that she even remotely had feelings for Daniel, he was always just part of her plan. What does seem to soften her is her relationship with Charlotte. As soon as Charlotte comes to her after her dad kicks her out, Charlotte and Emily have this bonding moment and you can see Emily kind of let her guard down.

This show does an incredible job of pissing off the audience so that you root for Emily to take them down. When Victoria tells Daniel that David Clarke raped her and that’s how she got pregnant with Charlotte, I am filled with such a visceral hatred and I want Emily to do whatever she needs to do, collateral damage be damned.

Also Daniel is the dumbest boy in school, he just believes anything anyone tells him ever and it's so pathetic. Declan exists just to run after people. In the dinner scene where Jack runs in and basically blows the lid off of Charlotte’s paternity. Declan runs after Jack, Declan runs after Charlotte. He’s pretty useless.

Tyler comes back into the picture at the end of season 1 giving Amanda the motivation that she needs to turn on Emily, but he severely underestimates Amanda’s need for love and sisterhood and he unknowingly gives her everything she needs to stay loyal to Emily. Which I find hilarious because we know Amanda is highly emotional and we know Tyler is unstable as hell, but he had Amanda on his side and then he just didn’t stop talking. Had he just shut up Amanda would have helped him.

And again Daniel is the dumbest boy in school, he decides that he and Emily are going to run away to Paris away from his family and just be together until they figure out the life they want to lead, and Victoria essentially claims she won’t go for it because she’s a gold digger. But here's the deal, no woman would go for that without being involved in the decision. Emily has friends in the Hamptons, let's forget about her Revenge plot for a minute, she just bought a house, she is also a very strong woman who knows how to run her life the way SHE wants so for her fiance to decide an entire life change for her is just unreasonable. And yet he thinks when she resists that his mother is right because one more time HE'S THE DUMBEST BOY IN SCHOOL.

Tyler threatens Daniel and gets himself killed. Daniel and Emily’s engagement party marks the end of this first summer. And we are ending the summer with Daniel being accused of Tyler’s murder. Emily now has to clean up after Amanda and Jack being at the scene of the murder as well as figure out how she’s going to handle Daniel’s charges.

Daniel is denied bail by the judge because she doesn’t want to give the illusion that rich people are going to get special treatment. So as he is stuck in jail, Victoria is dead set on framing Amanda and Jack. Emily is not having it of course. She admits to Nolan that she would come clean if it would save Jack. Now this is interesting because we already know that she has all the evidence she needs to exonerate her father but she wants these people to suffer the way that her and her father did and I really can’t say that I blame her.

Another thing this show does really well is balance the obviously plot driven story with real character development. Now something I say quite often is that you can’t have both a character and a plot driven story, I can count on 1 hand how many stories exist that do both well. This is one of them. Flashbacks allow us not to just sympathize with Emily but also with Victoria. She gets quite a bit of attention in the flashbacks in the later seasons and we kind of find out why she is the way that she is, not that that justifies her actions but what it does do is show us character development that makes the Grayson take down that much more rich.

Emily finds out that in addition to framing David Clark the Grayson’s also had him killed in prison. It seems that whenever Emily is starting to have a compassionate moment the Grayson’s give her another reason to find her motivation. They continue to fuel her anger and need for revenge.

Yet another thing I love about this show is the fact that even when adhering to network requirements of 22 episodes Revenge was able to tell a story with a tight narrative and a well paced story with no real filler. And the fact that that had to happen through continuing to unfold clues and people that were involved in this cover up is difficult because it could come off as repetitive but that was never really a problem.

Daniel continues to be the dumbest boy in school when he tries to confront Emily about the fact that he thinks that she’s been sneaking around with Jack their whole relationship. Getting himself arrested and back in jail for violating his house arrest. Emily fixes everything of course, she’s brilliant and amazing and I love her.

The interesting thing about the Grayson's is that they are irredeemable I mean their billionaires so fuck um, but they also commit horrible crimes in the name of self preservation. Yet Conrad clearly has love for Charlotte but we get to see just how terrible he is as the series continues. We also see characters develop but get worse. At the start of the series Daniel was just a stupid dumb dumb boy, who was sweet and naive, yet by the end of season 1 his parents' influence has taken a very clear hold of him. Conrad tells Daniel everything about the cover up and Daniel decides to stand by his parents…even more reasons why all of Emily’s actions are reasonable and justified.

Daniel truly going hard for his dad after finding out what he did to an innocent man including having him murdered and asking his mom not to testify against Conrad is actually batshit. I think I might hate Daniel the most out of all these people. The Grayson parents framed and murdered a man and yet Daniel is just the worst one. He’s the stupidest boy and he only gets dumber and more infuriating.

It seems a little like the show wanted to wrap up in a single season if they weren’t renewed because this was a network show. So they led to everyone being taken down by the end of season 1 and Jack and Emily ending up together until the very end of the season when they obviously found out that they were renewed and decided to elongate the series. Now I don’t think they forced a longer series, it continues to play well and be well written but I appreciate that it feels like the series wouldn’t have been left on a cliffhanger had it been canceled.

That said Emily goes to see Jack after their kiss and there is Amanda…pregnant. Emily is clearly very hurt and Jack has always had a connection with Emily like his heart can that she’s really Amanda and he's only with Amanda because he wants his childhood sweetheart. Em’s runs outside and cries and this is really the first time we’ve seen her show any real emotion.

Ashley starts sleeping her way to the top, the little social climber. She jumps into bed with Daniel the night he breaks up with Emily.

Now the first season really feels like it's broken into 2 season which if it was created on a streaming service it would have been, there are actually 3 very clear breaks in the first season like it was written in a three act structure which is great and keeps the pacing at a good clip without it feeling rushed.

The first act we experience is the beginning through Tyler’s death, arguably the episode where Tyler gets shot and we circle back to the first scene of the show we ever saw is the first season. The second act would be Daniels' trial, the third being the white haired man and the evidence to exonerate David Clark. And we have entered the second summer of the series. The last episode of the season does a pretty good job of setting up season two with Amanda’s pregnancy, the entrance of Aiden and the apparent death of Victoria Grayson.