Revenge

There are some beautifully written parallels to the very first episode with Victoria “dead” and Ashley seemingly taking her place as the new queen bee of the Hamptons as we start season 2.

The new major plot point seems to be finding Emily’s mom and finding out what happened to her. So we started with this singular Revenge plot which was really about 10 little mini revenge plots. And now we have this extra side-quest revenge plot. Which you have to have because as we’ve said this was a network show at 22 episodes a season that ran for 4 seasons.

Daniel at least proves that he's a good brother when he opens a new trust for Charlotte and transfers all of his money into it. He is starting to resist his father, but I mean domestic terrorism, fraud, and murder weren’t a deal breaker so not sure what’s stuck up his ass now.

Also with all the lies that Daniel has been told by both of his parents the fact that he still just believes whatever they come up with makes him the DUMBEST BOY IN SCHOOL.

Emily starts using Amanda to turn Charlotte against Victoria, our stupid stupid Daniel realizes ONCE AGAIN that his parents have been lying to him.

Aiden starts getting very involved in this revenge plot, kind of going rogue with his own ideas of how to reach the same goal. Now I’m gonna say that I absolutely love Emily and Aiden together and his death is wildly upsetting to me.

Amanda gets thrown over a ledge by Victoria and we see Emily actually sweat because for the first time for real someone that she cares about is in real danger. Yeah Nolan’s been captured a few times but not a life or death situation like this. But she’s fine and Emily gets hit with another emotional blow when her mother shows up at Amanda’s bedside, not even recognizing her real daughter. Which of course is an emotional blow but it seems like she does end up getting good closure from her mom.

Conrad and Victoria decide to get remarried in order to not be forced to testify against each other should they get taken down. Also this might just be because I am a ballroom teacher but them swaying back and forth during their first dance? Seriously? You’re billionaires and you don’t know how to actually dance? That’s pathetic and boring, if you become a millionaire or billionaire and you don’t immediately get dance lessons you are a boring person.

Mason figures out that Emily and Amanda are lying, but Emily is of course several steps ahead. The Initiative is starting to play a much more tangible role in the series, getting in contact with Conrad including getting him released from prison.

Now the person I feel the worst for in this show is Jack. He's in love with who he thinks is Amanda, and he wouldn’t be with her if she wasn’t his childhood sweetheart. Then she dies, then he finds out Emily is really Amanda and they end up together but this guy's emotions just get yanked back and forth. What I can’t get over is Amanda being so possessive over Jack but he wants Amanda not someone pretending to be her. He's always had a bond with Emily anyway like his heart knows who he belongs to and it isn’t Amanda.

Nolan proves once again that he is a good friend when he jeopardizes the fate of his company to save Emily’s cover. Daniel is trying to take over his father’s company but to do so he is looking into David Clark’s original investment in Nolan’s company.

Emily strikes a deal with Mason, he goes to prison and uses the down time to write down her story while she completes her revenge plot. When threatened with their lives Conrad seems to have softened to Victoria, like he was genuinely worried for her, she seems just as surprised by this as I am.

Victoria’s flashback episode is actually amazing, I want to be clear that trauma never justifies any kind of negative or bad behavior. I genuinely don’t care if you were traumatized the minute you make your trauma my problem, you're the asshole. But this episode makes it clear that Victoria’s mother taught her to be a gold-digger. She is obviously one of those mothers that is jealous of her daughter and sees her as competition. Victoria’s mom shoots a guy and forces Vicky to finish him off knowing she’d get a lighter sentence, she gets raped by mommas boyfriend and then kicked out. This is one moment where watching Victoria be a vindictive bitch as her mother calls her is actually quite satisfying. It's easy to see the angle where Victoria is also a victim in current events and in her life in general but once again trauma doesn’t justify trauma. Turns out everyone has their own revenge plot, the whole scene was orchestrated by Victoria. Conrad targeting David Clark was revenge for stealing her away, the boys that are now partnered with the Porter’s are after revenge for their dad’s death. Everyone wants vengeance for something and that leads to a lot of tension among the characters.

Daniel continues to be just the most annoying little prick. He takes over Grayson Global, basically blackmails Nolan into selling the controlling interest in his company. Pushes Aiden out, tries to cozy up to Emily again…The boy is just so irritating. Also we see nepo baby 101 with him running daddies' company. The man has worked there for a year and didn’t even finish business school. He is in no way qualified to run an investment firm.

Aiden, Emily and Nolan make the cutest little revenge group. They work really well together. The chemistry between the actors is great and Nolan is like the single bestie of the power couple.

I love Emily and Aiden so much so up to this point Emily hasn’t really shown much connection. She obviously cares about Nolan, Charlotte, Amanda and of course Jack but we only see glimpses of it we never see her full guard down. Until she’s with Aiden. She gets to drop everything, we get to see her completely drop her stress and anger and just exist and be in love and it's great.

Conrad decides to run for public office and as such decides to use Jack and Amanda as community pawns for his campaign.

Nolan and Padme: She is also working for the initiative looking for Nolan’s Carrion program, a program that has the ability to cause a city wide power outage.

Watching Emily watch Amanda and Jack get married is so wildly painful because he loves the idea of her and doesn't actually love her while the woman he actually loves is standing 2 feet away from him and it very much feels like she is just a stand in until Emily can be with him which is essentially what she actually ends up being. Now at this point Emily loves Aiden but Jack represents innocence and simplicity and security for her and life in the present day is really tedious and uncertain so she holds onto that friendship.

Amanda dying sucks so hard and not because I care about her because I genuinely couldn't care less, I’ve never felt connected to her character she was just really always annoying and I never really got past that it sucks hard because I love Emily and she’s been through enough loss and pain and Jack who doesn’t ever have any idea what's going on loses his wife the day after they get married. That poor sweet naïve baby. And to have the Graysons basically plotting her death and they all just chill with that? Like we knew we hated Victoria and Conrad but damn Daniel is just digging himself deeper and deeper.

Conrad and the audacity to show up to the hospital after Jack found out Amanda is dead.

Charlotte tracks down Amanda’s foster brother so Emily's foster brother and he really just is a liability; he threatens their secret so he’s nothing more than a roadblock.

Daniel’s morality is very convenient, he loves to take the moral high ground over his parents talking about how he’s not gonna let any more innocent people get hurt but he doesn’t seem to have a problem keeping his family's secrets. Conrad literally tells him that the charity they set up for Amanda was just a shelter for their money and when The Initiative makes their move Aiden is already set up to be framed.

Also I spent a long time trying to figure out how old these characters were supposed to be because Nolan does not look that much older then Emily but apparently he's like 8-10 years older than her and Daniel, Emily and Jack are supposed to be 23!!!! They look mid 30s. What the absolute hell I know we do this to teenagers all the time but why is age appropriate casting so difficult?

So now Jack is on his own kind of revenge quest against the Graysons, running parallel to Emily’s plot but inevitably in the way.

I will say that a lot of shows like this refuse to kill characters that we like because they are too insecure in their story to risk upsetting their audience. But Revenge is not afraid to let you get attached to a character or relationship and then kill someone off.

Emily and Daniel get re-engaged so that Emily can have him as part of her plan to take down Victoria specifically as she has established the best way to get to her is through her children. A realization that also leads to her revealing that Victoria had and abandoned a child before she ever met Conrad.

Aiden and Nolan discuss Emily’s fate, as Aiden got revenge for his family and he didn’t feel the peace and closure he was expecting and he knows the same will be true for Emily. She might accomplish what she set out to do but once it's over there is nothing left for her.

Aiden has a run in with Takeda who seems to have had an agenda of his own this whole time. They sword fight, Takeda lethally loses.

When this carrion aided blackout goes down Conrad definitely knows what's going on, he knows it's the initiative and knows what they are going to do. As such he tells Daniel to steer clear of Grayson Global. Instead he sends Jack there just before a bomb goes off. Now we definitely already knew this by now but we truly see how devoid of any humanity Conrad is. He shows not only no remorse for all the terrible things he’s done so far but he continues to do the terrible things. He still works with the initiative, he sets up Aiden to take the fall, he tries to get Jack killed. And still net a shred of regret or hesitation.

Damn seeing Emily Van Camp in this show makes me so angry at the MCU for just shitting all over Sharron Carter’s character.

These Grayson kids are real stupid, Charlotte just believes her little single white female friend over Declan who she’s literally been dating for like 2 years. Stupidest girl in school. Sure she questions it later, but truly a dumbass knee jerk reaction.

Emily finds out that Aiden is the one that killed Takeda and she has to reconcile with the fact that she was trained as simply a soldier in someone else's war. She clearly feels very betrayed and Emily Van Camp is such a good actress, she is incredible.