'Revenge' 206 Review - The threads of Emily's "Illusion" start to fray

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For the past several episodes it’s been obvious that Emily Thorne hasn’t been her usual self.  So off of her game that things repeatedly happened that wasn't what she planned.  But now that her mother has been found her focus is back on the task at hand.  But how long can she keep it up before the illusion of it all crashes all around her?

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Mason Treadwell was at first a character you’d brush off as some minor road bump Emily had to face on her greater goal to bring down the Graysons.  But Emily has vastly underestimated what you can put past a writer, and an investigative one at that.  The fact that he keeps showing up should have been a red flag, and his attention to detail last week did raise the proper alarm this week.  One that made Emily move her plans up early when it came to framing Conrad for the murder of Gordon.  It’’s clear, however, that Emily couldn’t anticipate how one snide remark from Victoria would put him right back on the scent that she was trying to throw him off of.  As we closed the episode and saw how Emily did it all, (It’s been a while since we’ve seen an in action montage with Emily) we also saw him literally connecting the strings between Amanda Clarke and Emily Thorne.

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We started to see the sparks of Daniel and Emily happening again becoming a possibility in this episode.  I do think Emily holds no love for him, but it looks like Daniel may be willing to forgive and forget.  However we have Ashley standing in the way and she may be more than she seems.  We saw in season one that she was the one who leaked photos to the press, thanks to Nolan, and I assumed then it was the power play she said it was.  However, is she something deeper... is she with the initiative even?  They could have sent someone to infiltrate the Graysons and keep tabs on everything about them from the inside.

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Speaking of the initiative, the creepy initiative lady was back this week and they sprung Conrad from jail.  Of course there was some unseen price to be paid, and it appears it will be to fund another grand terrorist attack like the jet explosion that started this entire saga of Revenge in the first place.  Which also makes me wonder about the flip side of that coin and Takeda’s mysterious revenge bootcamp that Emily and Aidan both attended.  Were they really trained to go up against the initiative on purpose and does this season really remind you of Alias?

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One explosion that we do know is coming is with Jack’s boat, The Amanda, where he has just re-proposed to Amanda on board.  This of course puts him right back on the list of people that the arm might belong to.  If it is Jack was he the only one on the boat?  I’m also starting to wonder if we shouldn’t add Mason to the ‘possibly dead on the boat’ list.  Considering he has just put together who the real Amanda Clarke is, faux-manda remarked earlier in the episode that if he threatened her family again she’d handle it her way.  And you can ask Frank the security guy how Amanda handles things, or you could if he wasn’t dead.

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In other news Kenny Ryan (JR Bourne) is still around as The Stowaway re-opens.  Seriously, what the fuck is up with his character and/or storyline,  does he want the land that The Stowaway is on? Does he want The Stowaway itself?  Or maybe he does want something with Declan as he had a very odd little conversation with him about feeling on the outs.  He might try and pull him into his scheme or this all could be a story that’s just some throwaway thing to give Jack and Declan more drama. Unless Kenny is some kind of recruiter for the initiative, but perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch for right now.  

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As for next week, I don’t think Emily can hide the truth from Mason any longer so she’s going to have to decide how she’ll deal with that.  Will we see that secret leak out beyond him, or is he going to end up like Gordon, just another body in cold storage?