Revenge "Duplicity" Review

The writing could doom the series for me.

 Declan and Charlotte have a conversation near the end of the episode. Declan's from a blue collar family with ideas about wealth and comfort. Throughout "Duplicity" he brainstormed ways to earn a decent chunk of cash. His mother abandoned him and Jack early in his life but she left a wedding ring behind. There's great sentimental attachment and meaning to the ring. If Declan pawned the ring, it'd mean he give up the hope that his mother would return to him. And the years he's kept it shows how much the teenager wants his mother in his life. Charlotte, the rich and entitled daughter of the Graysons, inspected the ring and found it to be worthless, though she tells him, "it's priceless to you." What a clunky piece of dialogue and set-up to that moment, and that clunkiness exists throughout the fourth episode of Revenge.

Emily's plans for revenge have run smoothly thus far. The woman took down three individuals responsible for her father's downfall. This week, she took a step back from the people who ruined her dad's life to destroy a woman who ruined not only Emily's life but also the relationship between her and her father. A court appointed psychiatrist turned private practice all of a sudden once institutionalized Amanda Clarke for no good reason at all. Of course, the audience learns Victoria offered the psychiatrist the world to separate Amanda and her family, but Emily's unaware of that particular detail it seems. The psychiatrist isn't much different from Lydia, the hedge fund manager, or the politician. The rich wanted to get richer. In the case of the psychiatrist, the modestly paid wanted to get richer without years of toil within the system, waiting for the opportunity to start a private practice.

This particular woman's more loathsome because of her behavior towards Amanda as a child. The previous three individuals felled by Emily were involved in something we haven't learned enough about. The flashbacks, journal entries, and video evidence don't paint delightful portraits of the people involved--they're all quite damning; however, the revenge-of-the-week stories are as cold and calculated as Emily whereas this story had heart and substance because of the focus on her experiences as a child. I'll point out that the little actress has been better than 95% of the adult actors and actresses on Revenge. Again, the writing's not strong in any scene. The dialogue's not natural. Flashbacks emerge from nowhere without any sort of context. Emily VanCamp's a terrific actress; however, her character's designed as a cold and calculated individual, one whose emotions have been numbed in her quest for revenge. The character's a problem because the viewer should feel as the main character feels, be invested in the interests and motivation of that character, and that's not happening with Emily. Little Amanda's full of emotion--pain, sadness, loneliness, etc--which was refreshing.

Emily merely scares the woman, though. It turned out she was just a piece of the puzzle leading her towards Victoria Grayson. "Betrayal" cast the Queen of the Hamptons in a more favorable light but "Duplicity" stole that light back. Her eventual guilt won't erase the fact that she stole the computer that Conrad used to build the terror plot lie. Emily remembers this because, as a child, she hid behind the kitchen counter and watched Victoria hand the laptop to her chief of security. Indeed, Emily feels hostility towards the psychiatrist (she DID lock her in a storage container for several hours) but the woman recorded every session with her patients--among them Victoria. At a party, the tapes from therapy are shown during a slideshow presentation. The tapes just happened to record Victoria's confessions about her involvement in the Clarke conspiracy.

I don't expect Emily to remain in the position of power because the fifth episode hasn't even aired yet. Tyler, Daniel's Harvard friend, will be a complication. I'm unsure of his agenda but he's focused on separating the new couple from one another. The stuff with the revenge-of-the-week folk the last four weeks should eventually lead Victoria to Grayson. The Hamptons were peaceful before Emily's arrival, and now it's not. I wonder if Emily's planned for the day she's discovered. I'd imagine so considering what I've seen so far.

I don't like the series, to be honest. The acting's bad, the writing worse, and the story the worst. I wrote about No Ordinary Family for an entire season, though, so I'm not going to stop writing about a series because it's terrible. I might stop watching/writing about it once we learn what happened the night of the engagement party, though.

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