Episode Report Card Kelsea Stahler: A- | 74 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT The Silver Linings Playbook
By Kelsea Stahler | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.10.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Now that Emily has won him back by revealing everything, Nolan has a need for revenge himself. Spoiler: his revenge makes the world a better place, whereas Emily's ruins miscellaneous lives with her mounting "whoops, sorry your wife died" collateral damage count. Are you surprised? Yeah, me neither.
The target is Conrad's wannabe Olivia Pope called in to fix the Grayson image: Ms. Bizzy Preston (Devious Maids star Ana Ortiz) who's a professional busy body (hyuck, get it?) and secret keeper – she's a PR whiz. Bizzy is also a famous party girl who once outted Nolan as gay just as he was about to repair his troubled relationship with his father. Their resolution dissolved and Papa Nolan died without ever forgiving his son. Naturally, Em and Nolan need to get this horrible woman, whose other crimes include asking Emily and Victoria to pretend to be friends and cheating on her husband.
Team Revenge first plants a (currently) fruitless lie about Emily being married once before so Bizzy can use it to give Victoria an intel-induced orgasm. Then they get into Bizzy's cell and her clients' dirty little secrets. But, when Nolan finally gets the chance to dangle the nuclear option (spilling all her secrets, including her own extramarital affair), he uses his humanity. He ruins all her client relationships, but says he'll spare her marriage if she agrees to stop cheating on her husband. The way he puts it, he wants his revenge plots to have a "silver lining." Are you listening to this wisdom, Emily? Or are you too busy not noticing Daniel falling in love with his ex-girlfriend?
Emily's puppy goes off leash this week. Daniel brings Sarah even closer by asking her to bake his wedding cake, because he's even blind to his own dumb emotions. Emily, knowing full well that the two have a past, is also blinded – by her plan and not loving Daniel – so she agrees to hire Sarah. Em has to see a picture from Nolan that proves Daniel and Sarah almost kissed before the light bulb finally goes off. Can you do anything right, Ems?
Nope, apparently not; she also can't keep Victoria from kicking Aidan out of the Manor. When V asks her man-servant to seduce Emily away from Daniel at yet another lavish party (Jack is too busy with Margaux to be of any help), Daniel barely even notices Aidan's overtures. Seeing that Aidan and his washboard abs are of no use to her (oh good, another case of blindness), Victoria kicks him out and moves on. That's where Charlotte is waiting with the notion that Daniel could rekindle with Sarah. Rather than letting nature run its clear course, Victoria opts to grease Sarah's wheels – and if we know Revenge, this partnership will injure all involved.
Meanwhile, Margaux is still around. First she tells Conrad she doesn't want to put him in Voulez unless she can do an in-depth piece – she's a serious journalist and doesn't want a PR piece, after all – but when he opts to write his own memoir, she's back on his trail.
At the same time, she's very much on Jack's trail. The new couple have a romantic date that ends with Jack playing coy while Margaux's eyes are all Voulez…-vous coucher avec moi ce soir. He won't, so she leaves and Jack is forced to face his feelings, cry, visit Amanda's grave, and decide to move on. He really, truly misses Amanda, but he also misses sex, so he takes off his wedding ring and gets some giuchie, giuchie ya-ya da-da.
In essence, Emily is getting absolutely nothing she wants from this plan of hers. Get ready for a lot more of her ocean-bound glare, folks.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Now that Emily is getting close to actually realizing her plan on Revenge, it’s time for her to fall behind for various extraneous reasons. That should be fine, because when the episode opens, Emily is finally realizing soon, she’ll never see her sister or Nolan again. She needs some set-backs so she has time to process everything, even though Aidan tells her she’ll be okay because he thinks his abs are enough to sustain her for a lifetime of exile.
Over at the Manor, Victoria’s self-inflicted exile is being taken off the table. When she tells Conrad, yet again, that she plans to leave, he threatens to send a team of P.I.s after Patrick for some unknown sinister purpose. After all, he’s hired a PR specialist to fix the Grayson image and lord knows that once a Grayson hires someone, they never disappear by the end of the episode. Still, Victoria seems to be put in check for now.
Cut to our introduction to PR wizard Ms. Bizzy Preston (guest star Ana Ortiz) who’s not-so subtly named for her busybody-ing around the greater New York area. She waltzes into the Manor with an affected tone and praises Charlotte for "slumming it in Montauk," but throws a civilized fit over Emily and Daniel not being more public about their engagement. Emily says they’re not a showy couple, but Bizzy knows Emily’s the one shrouded in secrecy – to be fair, she does hit that nail on the head with that one. Her plan? To make Victoria and Emily look like the best of friends; first, they’ll pal around at Victoria’s big Independence Day party and then, the duo will go on a rigorous good will press tour. Neither party is thrilled because, oh yes, they hate each other about as much as two people who’ve ruined each other’s lives would.
But for now, Emily is focused on Bizzy. If she gets her wish and Emily and Victoria appear to be besties in the media, it will be pretty hard for Emily to frame Victoria for murdering her. That’s a pretty lame reason for sabotage, so luckily, this week, Nolan takes over. He’s got a much bigger beef: a few years back, Nolan was involved with a very un-single pop star, and as her PR whiz, Bizzy released the news that it couldn’t be true because Nolan is gay. (He’s bi, but that didn’t seem to be worth mentioning). Either way, the major fallout was that the news hit just as Nolan was repairing his relationship with his aging father. When Papa heard he was gay, he reneged and the two never made up before Nolan’s father died. Now that is a reason for sabotage. Nolan decides to use what he’s learned from Emily to take Bizzy down, but Emily decides to leak her fake first marriage to Bizzy so that the gossip can slip the knowledge to Victoria for some unknown reason. Useful, Ems. Really useful.