Revenge 207 Review - "Penance"

ABC

This week on Revenge, we get a glance into Emily’s possible end game, a long dead romance may get rekindled, and Emily hands forces some “Penance” onto someone who did her father wrong.


As we saw last week, Mason seemed to have put the pieces all together.  This week however, we find that he’s so close yet so far away.  He seems to think Emily’s bank-rolling her lover, Amanda, in this whole revenge scheme against the Graysons.  I thought it was really amusing because in season one I always wondered if Emily had somehow seduced Amanda into doing their whole name swap.  I appreciate that they didn’t just suddenly give Amanda a gun when she went after Mason, as she promised she would last week if he threatened her family since the girl has a talent for bludgeoning people.  

ABC

I was almost entirely convinced that Mason wasn’t going to be long for this world and was pleasantly surprised that he remains living and breathing.  Not just that, but he seems to be a vital piece in Emily’s end game.  Is her promise to confess to her crimes when she’s finished with her path of revenge one that she’s going to stick to though?  Personally, I could see it as such a lovely bookend and you could almost see Emily’s little intros to each episode as chapters in the book that Mason has now promised to write while he’s in prison.

ABC

So Emily’s mother is gone and I’m honestly happy about it.  I’m sure she’ll show up again in some grand fashion later on as the woman is highly unstable, but she just didn’t quite fit in with the show in the way they’d hoped she would.  She also clogged up Emily’s main goal which has led some fans to cry foul for the part of this second season.  I, for one, can’t stand people who want a show to always be the same thing it was in the first season.  A show needs to evolve to keep the audience, and I think Revenge has handled that task fairly well in its sophomore year, so far anyway.  If you want a show that will give you what you want by the book, then you’re better off sitting down for a procedural.

ABC

We also saw Nolan take quite the fall for Emily this week as he essentially gave up everything he’s dreamed of and worked for in order to protect her secrets from being dug up.  I don’t think Emily wanted him to be in the line of fire, but it’s clear that Aidan will do anything it takes to get to the Initiative.  We don’t know for sure if Daniel has convinced the stockholders that he should be the new head of Grayson Global, but something tells me that’s going to come out in a very uncomfortable way after next week’s blast from the past Thanksgiving flashback episode that sadly airs in two weeks.

ABC

Something else that might also come out soon is that it seems like Victoria and Conrad’s feelings for one another might be coming back in light of the trauma of an almost certain death at the hands of Kara.  I think there were glimmers of it in previous episodes, but when Conrad took the fall to try and spare her from Kara and how he talked about why it was easy for him to throw David Clarke under the bus because he’d taken his wife from him.  With Victoria’s declaration that she fully intends to take down the Initiative, it would be pretty amazing to see them work together above what so far has been on the level of them being catty to each other.

Let’s also take a moment to talk about the little advertising stunt tonight called, “The Gift of Revenge.”  I do think it was cheesy, but it was also fun to see some of the characters outside of the normal show environment.  Also whoever wrote it clearly ships Nolan and Jack as much as we do. The ‘best friends’ hat combo was a giveaway that, inspite of seeing a woman deliver the gifts, it was Nolan behind it all.  I wonder if we weren’t given a small spoiler at the end, as when Nolan said that he almost died this year and was turning a new leaf they could be referring to his close calls last season or perhaps even a new near-death experience yet to come.