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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.
At the same time, Jack is going on his own good will press tour, visiting Margaux at the Voulez offices to trick us into thinking he’s still got a flame for Emily. While he gazes at the editorial board full of engagement photos of Daniel and Emily, Margaux finds him so he can reveal his true purpose: handing her some macaroons (get it? Because they’re French and she’s French) and asking her on a date. When they do finally get to the date – a romantic evening on Jack’s charming Mumford and Sons-inspired rooftop that he suddenly has now that his boat is gone – they watch cartoons, they giggle, and then they kiss, but this makes Jack very uncomfortable. He asks her if she wants a drink, she replies that she doesn’t but some rooftop nookie would be nice. Jack refuses to acknowledge the Voulez (-vous coucher avec moi ce soir) in her eyes, so she leaves rather indignantly and Jack mopes.
While Jack is clearly working through old feelings for his dead wife, Amanda, Daniel is working through his feelings for his very alive ex-girlfriend, Sarah. Without realizing what he’s doing, Daniel visits Sarah at the Stowaway to ask her to make the cake for his wedding. She thinks it’s weird, but he doesn’t seem to see the issue, because as always, he’s completely blind to everything happening in and around his head.
And because she has no idea about the Sarah issue, Victoria replaces her Jack attack with Aidan, who she asks him to seduce Emily and ruin her engagement to Daniel. Seeing no issue with Sarah coming back into Daniel’s life, Aidan and Ems ignore the tough problem and focus on the one they can control: when and where Emily and Aidan have their jealousy-inducing chat without actually making Daniel jealous.
Emily, satisfied with her plan, continues to miss every longing glance Daniel sends Sarah’s way as she bakes them wedding cake samples in her Betty Crocker apron. Noticing that Sarah hates Victoria too, Emily is more than happy to hire her, so she kisses Daniel goodbye and runs off so the two exes can make googly eyes at each other while she’s gone.
At the Voulez offices, where Margaux is clearly the only one who’s ever actually at work, Conrad is doing his best to intimidate Margaux into a PR fluff piece about the Graysons’ return to glory. She rightly tells him there’s a difference between a society piece and bus ad slapped on the back of the Hamptons Jitney. If he’s willing to tell her an unknown, true story, then she’ll listen. He’s not, so he leaves and Margaux stews with her ever-present sideways smirk.
While Bizzy’s plan for a spread in Voulez isn’t going to work out, she’s still got the ability to force Emily and Victoria to be friends. At their lunch meeting, Aidan comes in right on cue to demand an audience with Emily. Victoria insists Emily go and as Bizzy wrongfully assumes Emily wants Victoria’s approval (come on, she’s not that good of an actress, woman), Bizzy realizes that Emily has more than one ex -- sacre bleu, a late 20-something woman has more than one ex! Never! B tells Victoria about Em’s fake ex-husband as Em, Nolan, and Aidan giggle like giddy schoolgirls in their surveillance Escalade and listen to the whole thing. Too bad none of them know that this is all for naught because it makes no sense and Emily’s romantic hubris is clouding her judgment with regard to Daniel and the Ex.
Luckily, Victoria is experiencing some set-backs herself. She tries to whisper in Daniel’s ear about Aidan and his Emily-facing desires during the Independence Day party, but Daniel tells her to stop reading into everything. She’s disheartened, but not finished. Then Charlotte waves an escape route in front of her face and she barely notices. Charlotte has brought Sarah to the party, but Victoria is furious a poor person is there and can’t resist the urge to fling barbs at Sarah for being born into a family without breeding. Charlotte points out her folly and suggests that pushing Sarah and Daniel to rekindle is the best way to break up his engagement to Emily.
Vicky’s brain wheels start turning, but she still seems to be on the Aidan plan. Of course, when she overhears Emily and Daniel having a civilized conversation about how he’s not jealous of Aidan, she realizes her dear daughter is probably right. That’s all it takes for her to throw Aidan and his steamy, sexy showers out. She sees the parallel to the Independence Day holiday and uses all the references to American History that she can muster to throw her own British collaborator out of her pool house. Someone’s been reading a fifth grade textbook, methinks.
But, this is a Grayson party, so there must be some sabotage actually working out somewhere. Nolan satiates our desires by re-friending Bizzy. She then follows Nolan around the party like a drunk gnat until she needs his reading glasses to look at the texts on her phone. Nolan hands her is Google Glass by Tom Ford (or something fashionable and technological that we’re too bourgeois to understand) pair of spy specs. That’s how he gets her iPhone password and the ability to hack into all of her texts and emails remotely, only he finds more than he bargained for. Not only does he have all the dirty little secrets he’ll need to turn her clients against her, he’s also found that she’s cheating on her sweet, normal husband Jeff. That’s a bingo, ladies and gents.
Margaux finds her own bingo when she sees Conrad at the party. He’s no longer looking for a measly magazine article; he wants to write a memoir. Margaux jumps at the notion. While Conrad is sure to attempt to fill a memoir with a pack of lies, Margaux and her publishing imprint plan to trap him and coax him into letting more information come to the surface. Couple this ambition with the fact that Jack likes her and Margaux’s chances for not ending up in a burning vehicle seem pretty low.
But for now, it’s all sex at the Stowaway and bad coffee in the morning for the editor of Voulez. Before the party, Jack visits Amanda’s grave, cries a little, says goodbye, and then removes his wedding ring. Jack truly misses Amanda, but he also misses sex, so he lets Margaux get his guichie, guichie, ya-ya da-da and shares a sweet little morning-after with her, too.
While Jack is giving up his wedding ring, Daniel is clearly planning to do the same before he ever gets one. Sarah has escaped the party (and Victoria) and is watching fireworks on the beach, so Daniel brings her a coat (like a gentleman in an old movie) and bonds with her over watching the Coney Island fireworks as a kid (like the guy in every rom-com ever). He leans in, tilts his head, and tries to kiss her, but Sarah stops it. She may be poor, but she’s no home-wrecker.
Of course, we’ll have to see how long that sense of principle stands, because the day, Victoria visits Sarah’s humble abode as she hangs sundresses and plaid shirts on a clothing line. We know it’s coming, but she offers Sarah an alliance to help woo Daniel away from Emily. The problem is that Victoria hates poor people, so even if this works, Sarah’s still definitely going to get burned.
For now, the only sabotage that’s really working like a well-oiled machine is Nolan’s plan. He takes all his intel to Bizzy directly, though he makes sure to let her know he’s already sent emails to all her clients and ruined her career. He has one last twist of the knife and he plans on delivering it in person: the knowledge of her affair. But because he’s not a monster and he feels bad for Jeff, the poor, dumb guy who loves her, Nolan decides that as long as Bizzy ends her affair, he won’t tell Jeff what she’s done. She agrees and apologizes for what happened with his father. It doesn’t bring his father back, but it does give Nolan some peace -- and he didn’t even have to burn her house down to get it. Clearly, Nolan is the true master of revenge in his and Emily’s partnership – he’s the one with a heart.
But he’s still got a need to get approval from Ems, so he tells her all about his take down and its "silver lining." He did everything she taught him, except the part where he walks away nothing but rubble behind him. She thanks him for his friendship, and that’s when he remembers he needs to tell her something: He caught Daniel and Sarah almost kissing at the party (in stunning, unrealistic HD, no less). Now Emily gets it and realizes she’ll have to break them up. If only she wasn’t so blind throughout the rest of the episode, she might have been able to nip this in the bud, but at this point, we’ve got a full blown blossom on our hands and there’s no simple way out of it. Sorry, Ems.