Revenge - Plea - Review: "What She Would Have Done."

Victoria set herself up in flames during “Burn,” and, helped by Mason Treadmill, set Emily up to take the fall. In “Aftermath,” Emily was dragged out from the beach house as she realised she had been set up. This week’s “Plea” has Emily, with Nolan and Jack’s help, trying to dig herself out of the grave Victoria managed to dig for her, in an intense, fast paced, action filled episode. It was tense, mysterious, and was a pretty well rounded episode.

“It sounds crazy. You can’t keep saying that dead people are alive.” –David

First it’s with Mason, then with Victoria. Emily seems to be digging herself deeper into trouble instead of crawling back up. She isn’t pleading guilty to any of the charges, and violating the house arrest conditions of her $2,000,000 (pocket change) bail, she sets out to find Mason in a trailer park where she knows he once was. She finds much more than she was expecting in this illegal trip. By questioning his alleged neighbors, Emily comes to the conclusion Victoria was there. She is convinced Victoria is still alive. It only takes the mention of a lady friend, of dark sunglasses and she knows, she realises it, because it’s what she would have done. It’s what she tried to do.

I was so sure that the Queen was dead that expecting them to be playing with Emily’s head. I was convinced they purposefully wanted her to sound crazy. Victoria and Emily have a trouble past related with mental health and mental institutions, and since Queen V was ultimately the one to set her up, I thought Victoria was returning the favor, and trying to send her into psych holding. I was wrong, boy was I wrong, but the strong conviction that she was dead, made for an incredibly shocking conclusion to this episode.

The storyline component of the episode threw it out of the ball park. It had a great pace and really captivating twists and turns, I just had trouble with the characters in this one. I found myself disliking and disagreeing with how they handled the situation, every last one of them, except Charlotte, so that’s saying a lot.

Emily (I can’t be the only one who realised they’ve all reverted back to calling her Emily, and she stopped fighting them on it.) was great and very resourceful, very ninja-y, but she was reckless and kind of stupid. She was hell bent on doing it herself, everything herself. She was hell bent on breaking her bail conditions. Emily did not want to implicate the boys, but there was nothing particularly illegal about going up to the trailer park (except for her). She wasn’t particularly putting them in harm’s way. So it made no sense, in my mind, why she was willing to take this kind of risk. I get that she was desperate and maybe she didn’t want Jack to screw up something else (as he often does). It also makes sense she wouldn’t want her sick father doing it for her, but Nolan, I think he’s proven his worth over the years.

Jack and Nolan, her friends, her co-conspirators, should have done something more to help her, to talk her out of her reckless and illegal behavior. Nolan, if he wanted to, could have simply not turned the power off, and went himself or let Jack go. They didn’t have to let her go. They chose to let her go; they chose to enable her in her house bond jail break and they can’t be mad she got caught and thrown back in jail. She’s not above it all, and they’re all starting to realise it.

I feel Jack, though proven useful, was way too infatuated with her to argue about anything she threw at him, he’s back in her orbit, but at least this time they both seem to want him there. Emily and Jack finally had their moment, (Though I felt awkward during it, and I don’t think that was how I was supposed to feel.) or enough of a moment, more of a moment than they’ve had in a long while, but their imminent kiss was interrupted by Nolan. His reaction of the scene, in background was perfectly hilarious. I will miss you on my television scene in a few weeks, dear friend.

After Emily’s ankle monitor goes back online, while she’s at the trailer park, not even Nolan’s technological superpowers can’t get her out of this one and Emily is arrested by Ben. He’s not willing to listen to her, and he’s not being objective.

“It’s nothing personal, Emily.” –Ben

He’s coming across as the supposed alpha male with a bruised ego. He’s letting his personal life influence his professional life, influence the investigation .(That has to be against some regulations, no?). He knew what he was getting into when he started a “relationship” (Can we really call it that?) with Emily, he was aware of her screwed up past with Jack from the get-go, he’s just sounding whiny. Another thing that didn’t sit right with me was why didn’t Emily show Ben, or at least to her attorney, the picture of Mason is he didn’t believe her. It would have added reasonable doubt. Or did I miss that?

Even if it’s hard to root for Emily when she acts like an idiot, the episode managed to showcase how, even caught between bars and concrete walls, Emily can control people like puppets, and it was awesome. And that’s why we root for her. It had a great prime-time “Revenge” feel to it, but with a darker touch at the end. She’s resourceful, always been resourceful. (You’ve got the keys. Run, girl, run!) She wanted five minutes with Margaux, so she got seven, and within those minutes she got Margaux to spill on what really went down at the manor.

Emily got pretty dark and twisted in Margaux’s cell, but from Margaux’s non bruised cheekbones, we can assume Emily did not have to result to violence to get the answers, and once again, it gets easier to root for her. She’s fundamentally good, even with her messed up moral compass, and we can root for that, or at least, I can.

As I watched the episode for a second time it added another dimension to the episode, which I absolutely recommend, I could feel nothing else for Margaux but pretty intense hatred, more so as the episode progressed. Good thing or bad? Good I guess that I can have such strong feelings about a character whom, only a couple episodes ago, I did not really care for.

Victoria truly took a page out of Emily’s playbook, but she isn’t any better than Emily at it, didn’t do what Emily couldn’t. She didn’t have the gusts either and that levels the plane between the two characters even more, they truly are incredibly alike in their mischief, and that’s why they can read into each other so well. The fact though that both of them are still alive, and that the next episode has for title “Two Graves,” makes me think that the only way they’ll truly get rid of one another is through mutual self-destruction.

I’m not sure if it’s my memory, and I didn’t have time to confirm it, but didn’t the last scene in the manor show her hand flicking the lighter seconds before the blast. Can anyone corroborate or invalidate this statement?

David’s cancer added a race against time to Emily’s liberation, and it’s going to bring out the even darker side of Emily/Amanda, desperate to get out before his time runs out and with nothing left to loose. It wasn’t a shocker, they wouldn’t have added the Lymphoma storyline with only four episodes left only to have him cured by the end. I don’t think they needed the time filler. It all comes into the play that after everything she’s done, he’s done, they will not get their happy ending. It wasn’t a shocker, but I thought they played it out very well, and the acting once again by Emily VanCamp was poignant. I can’t come to care about David, except when Emily does, except when she cries for him, and that’s damn talent.

Charlotte made a brief pop up, acknowledged her mother’s alleged death, when Louise needed her to get into Victoria’s penthouse. Charlotte’s detachment to the situation, to her mother’s passing was fitting, was honest and I think it was well-done to have her in and out. She didn’t need more.

Louise is a pawn in their game and I don’t know if I feel sorry for her or pity. I’m not sure if she’s naïve or just plain stupid, but she frustrated in great lengths this week. I really need someone to explain to me why her bond with Victoria is so strong. She states at one point that she was almost like a daughter to her. Please… it’s just ridiculous. She’s blinded by the idea of Victoria, of what she made her out to be, and nothing seems to be getting to her.

“Well I can’t stand in Emily’s home because your guardian angel blew it up.” –Nolan

This was a great delivery to a great line, Gabriel Mann and Elena Satine do work beautifully together. Louise and Nolan find themselves, at the same time, in Victoria’s penthouse, and in a brief moment of blind hope, I found myself thinking Nolan had finally gotten through to her. I feel like he should remind her of what he did for her, what Emily did for her, maybe that would shift her loyalties a bit. Louise has an incredibly inconsistent place in my heart. I disliked her, then I liked her, now I hate her. For a brief moment had hope in her, then gave up on her altogether. Stop with the yoyos Revenge writers!

Louise, at the penthouse, hidden inside a garment bag, finds the hoodie that could have been worn by Victoria’s attacker, the one that possibly has Margaux’s DNA all over it, and brings it to Ben, in the first sensible thing she’s done in a while. It is this piece of evidence that has Ben considering Emily’s stories. It wasn’t her heartfelt convincing apology, it wasn’t her pleading. But he had listened to her explanations, and started investigating. Just when I started liking him again, (or maybe not hating him) BAM, a knife to the back. That’s just what they do in Revenge. They make us like them, then hate them, then like them again, and then they kill them. It was an incredibly quickened process for Ben, but it worked, with his death, is Emily’s possible liberation in jeopardy or is it looking better?

One thing for sure, I was not expecting that ending. It had the perfect revenge style twist that has me counting the days until the finale. (With mixed feelings, though)



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