Episode Report Card Kelsea Stahler: B+ | 32 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT After the Love is Gone
By Kelsea Stahler | Season 3 | Episode 16 | Aired on 03.23.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Finally, Revenge has actually split up the unhappy couple at its center. It's only taken months, and while some of those months were hiatus, we've still spent too much time watching Daniel try to make an menacing angry face.
But how did we get there? It's a long and winding road, of course.
First, Emily suspects that Stevie knows something about her father's demise, but Jack wants to have a mom for a minute, so Em promises to back off. Later, Stevie reveals that she was a David Clarke supporter, that she found evidence that could help him, and that she thinks Conrad faked her DUI results to get her disbarred and off the case. Jack, Nolan, and Nolan's ex-con buddy who gave the house arrest cops Nolan's address on his own (we can't even open that can o' worms) work a ruse to get Jack into Stevie's old law firm's server, where he nabs the evidence Stevie mentioned. It's a note that to Conrad that says the person “handled TWM” and the “DC plan.” DC is obviously David Clarke, but that's all we know.
At first, Em says she won't look at it out of respect for Jack's previous wishes, but later, when Nolan brings it by and shows it to her, it takes two seconds for her to pick her next target: the note's author, who she thinks is Margaux's father Pascal. So much for cold turkey, Ems.
Pascal is in the U.S. because Margaux wants Conrad out of Voulez. Instead, Pascal spends his time turning down Conrad's offers for a merger and buying Victoria fancy gowns and hitting on her relentlessly. Conrad is furious, so he tells Margaux that her pops has been cooking the books to make it look like Voulez is making money when it actually costs him millions of dollars – didn't this mag just start a few months ago? There's no way it'd be making money yet. Still, Margaux bites and unfortunately for her, Pascal later announces he's here to stay. Great.
But then comes the big finale: When Daniel and Victoria show Emily the photo of her kissing Aidan and offer her a hefty settlement to split, she says she'll cry on the stand and implicate Daniel as the shooter. Victoria finds another way to get her when she sends Daniel's P.I. after Aidan, who appears to be in Bermuda. She uses her brain (no way!) to deduce that if Emily isn't with Aidan, she's in the Hamptons to target the Graysons. Wow, Vic. It only took you three whole years.
At the opera that night – where absolutely everyone we know is in attendance because that's how Revenge rolls – Charlotte gets a tip from the Voulez tip line that says Emily's records of her fake pregnancy are public. (Wait, I thought Voulez was a fashion magazine, not a tabloid rag. And since when is Charlotte a reporter? I guess that magazine and Miss Charlotte do whatever's convenient to the story these days.) Victoria takes this as an opportunity to publicly (and cattily) denounce Emily as a gold digger in front everyone. Emily is caught by paparazzi as she storms out – apparently they got the tip too. The next day she gets divorce papers, moves out, and Daniel tells her the settlement is gone and her threat to out him as the shooter is moot because she already said it was Lydia. See? He's not that dumb.
The whole time, we're assuming that Daniel or Victoria did this – Emily even accuses Daniel when they're at the opera – but later, it's revealed that Emily leaked the records herself. She wanted the Graysons to think they won and she and Jack are about to go after Pascal, who she thinks is the author of Stevie's mysterious note. Huzzah.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open as Daniel triumphantly shows Victoria his P.I.'s photo of Emily and Aidan kissing. This dog-with-a-bone smile is the happiest we've ever seen this kid.
Next, Emily checks into Stevie's prison visit to David Clarke back in 1997. Em found that Stevie signed in using her maiden name, so she assumes that Stevie was concealing her Grayson identity for evil. Nolan -- ever the wise one these days -- suggests that perhaps she was concealing her wrong-doing from Conrad and that she should probably pause the witch hunt before she ruins Jack's mother without knowing what side she was on. But Emily does what Emily wants, so she "runs into" Stevie right outside of her AA meeting, where Jack is waiting to pick his mom up. He begs Emily to leave his mother out of whatever it is she's after now. He only just got the woman into his life, after all.
At Voulez, Margaux's father, Pascal (who doesn't look old enough to have a daughter who runs a magazine), is in town. Margaux asked Pascal there to fire Conrad, but Pascal says he's handling it his own way, which means playing tennis with Conrad and turning down his offer to merge their companies. Conrad insists that he wants in on Pascal's media empire because information is power -- he does know that magazine publishing isn't exactly the most lucrative business these days, right? The Graysons must be a-hurtin'.
Thankfully, Victoria interrupts for no reason other than to let Pascal hit on her inexplicably. We learn that Pascal introduced Victoria and Conrad, and apparently he's regretting that now. His gaze is just about as lecherous as the cartoon wolf from that Paul Abdul video. Straight up.
Margaux returns to the Stowaway to meet Jack and say hello to suddenly older Carl -- seriously, this kid must be eating his Wheaties… with a growth hormone sprinkled in there. She asks to meet Stevie, Jack is into it, especially since Margaux is so upset that her father is being a total cad. At least someone has a sane parent for once on this show.
Since she can't speak to Stevie directly, Emily gets intel from Conrad. She asks why he had her bring Stevie out to the Hamptons -- good question -- and he says that he did think Emily wanted a divorce, but mostly it was to make Victoria insane. She says that Stevie was on her way to rock bottom once and Conrad agrees, and for some reason is willing to mention that she once tried to insert herself into his business before trailing off into his midday scotch. Connie, don't you know that's as good as an admission of guilt on this show?