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The way things have been looking for the past few Revenge episodes, Emily's goose may be cooked when it comes to Daniel. If he wasn't doing a good enough job of ogling Sarah like she's the Ark of the Covenant, we've now got Victoria stoking his romantic fire. If Sarah's interest was one-sided, Emily's counter-attack would be a cinch, but now Ems is fighting very real emotions that cause Daniel to fantasize about romping in the surf with Sarah in his own personal remake of From Here to Eternity. And when Emily offers shower sex (sexy, dreamy shower sex), she gets a firm "eh, no thanks." That wedding isn't looking so possible for our favorite psychopath.
But it gets worse. After Emily practically begs for lunch with Daniel, he turns her down saying he's "busy," but escapes the office to visit Sarah at the farmer's market. She tells him they need to stop, but Danny charms her right up until Emily shows up and accuses her of being the other woman while she breaks down in tears. Sarah's a sweet girl who buys strawberries from local merchants on a weekday (and changes wedding cake flavors without asking the bride first), so she feels bad and promises to back off.
That would be fine and dandy, but Victoria is hell-bent on destruction so she tells Sarah, with tears just as false as Emily's, that Daniel's fiancé is only looking for social connections and money (which is why she stayed with him when the Graysons were broke too, right?). Sarah believes V and agrees to tempt Daniel at the wedding shower.
But in order to make sure nothing goes amiss, Vicky has a second surprise: a shower game in which she introduces friends from the bride and groom's past. Helluva party game, Vic. What's , estimating the number of Jordan almonds in your 12,000 vase? She brings in Emily's first husband (the story was true, apparently). He's a wealthy immigrant named Rohan, and while Daniel almost loses his mind, Emily explains that it was a green card marriage so Rohan could be with his boyfriend. It's true, but it makes Daniel think Emily is just like his mother. It also makes Sarah renege on the whole break-up plan because, clearly, Victoria is evil.
In the end, Victoria gets her wish, as Daniel can no longer see himself marrying Emily. Sarah visits – supposedly because she wants to quit the wedding cake job (right) – but after a quick speech from Daniel, she kisses him and asks that they wait to do anything until Daniel tells Emily. However, later that night, Victoria gives Ems the number to Conrad's "wife-proof" Grayson cheating suite, where the butler offers the information that Daniel is "settling in with his lady friend." Emily knows she's lost his heart, so does the only thing that can secure his conscience: the crazy girlfriend I'm-pregnant-don't-leave-me card. And it works on Danny like a Beggin' Strip on a new puppy.
While Emily is busy with all that, Jack is finally facing off against Aidan, whom he doesn't trust. When Aidan helps Charlotte get her phone back from an extortionist, he beats the thug to a pulp in front of the Stowaway, causing Jack to raise the alarm with Ems. As it turns out, Aidan's got a few extracurricular activities going on, so Jack may be the catalyst in a soon-to-be-ruptured romance.
And if that doesn't start fireworks, Margaux's own Deepthroat certainly will. After losing Conrad's book deal and being fed a pacifying line from Nolan, Margaux finds her way to a source with nothing to lose: Lydia Davis, who's back from the dead (finally) because apparently, the Revenge writers just now got all of our desperate tweets from a year and a half ago. Better late than never, yes?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Emily may have let her hubris get the best of her last week on Revenge, but this week, she’s pulling out every trick in the book to rectify her mistake, even when Daniel’s pesky emotions get in the way.
And they are very much in the way. The episode opens with a flashback to Daniel rolling around in the surf with his ex Sarah, pretending they’re the romantic leads in From Here to Eternity. As it turns out, Daniel has only a few minutes (and not an eternity) to remember this moment in the shower before Emily comes in and unconvincingly offers a little shower time hanky-panky. Daniel can’t be bothered because he has to go into the office early. He also turns down her offer for lunch, which means Emily’s going to have to work a little bit harder.
Still, it’s not too hard to assume that Daniel has plans to woo his ex at lunch, so Emily follows him to the farmer’s market, where Sarah looks as innocent as a Disney princess, wandering the stalls for cartoonishly beautiful fresh fruits and breathing as if life is so beautiful she can’t stand it. This is where Daniel finds her and convinces her they can be friends, even though Sarah feels awful about the almost-kiss and thinks this is a terrible idea. Just as a smile creeps onto the fair maiden’s face and Daniel drives away, her poison apple arrives in the form of a very distraught Emily. Putting on a perfect show, Ems accepts Sarah’s insistence that nothing happened between her and Daniel right before breaking down in tears. She says she’s losing it over the wedding planning and her suspicion that Victoria is trying to break them up. Sarah realizes she cannot be friends with Daniel and stops returning his texts, but little does she know, that will only make her involvement with Daniel more complicated.
Meanwhile, Jack is worrying himself up a storm. Conrad has pulled the book deal he offered Margaux because he got a better offer (or rather, used her generous offer to get a stupidly generous offer), but that only makes her more interested in uncovering the truth. As Jack knows, her investigation could lead to details about Nolan, Emily, and himself. He begs Nolan to throw her off the scent, and Nolan tries, but it is clear Margaux isn’t going down easily. Nolan is a terrible liar to boot, and Margaux seems to be the only one who notices.
But Jack’s also still worried about Aidan, who he confronts when the beefcake tries to apologize for separating Jack and Carl. But that doesn’t seem to be all Jack is upset about. He suggests that Aidan is jealous over Jack’s past with Emily -- ding, ding, ding! Step right up and claim your prize! . Jack doesn’t seem to realize that this little tiff is making it very obvious that he’s jealous, too… over Aidan being with a woman Jack still has deeply buried feelings for.
At that exact moment, Conrad is making sure his son knows he never has to worry about sorting who he has feelings for and who he should have feelings for (you know, like his future wife). He gives Daniel the tour of a secret clubhouse that’s been passed down through generations of Grayson men so that they could discreetly cheat on their wives. It even comes with a silent(ish) butler who’s sworn to total secrecy -- it’s practically medieval in there. Daniel says he’s not interested, but if this apartment isn’t this episode’s own Chekov Gun, I don’t know what is.
While Conrad is trying to ease Daniel into infidelity, Victoria is of course trying to force him into it. When she learns that Sarah has stopped answering Daniel’s texts, she brings the young woman in to implore Sarah to break up Emily and Daniel. Sarah is more principled than that and says she likes Emily, so Victoria does the only thing she knows will work: she lies and says Emily is after Daniel’s money (you know, that stuff she has plenty of and certainly didn’t use as an excuse to leave him when he was broke). It’s the perfect thing to say to an average Jane like Sarah who deplores wealth hounds and she agrees to act as the planner for Emily and Daniel’s engagement shower so she can tempt him in what is basically a sweet, but sexy maid’s uniform.
But let us not forget Charlotte before we get to all the good stuff. Though she’s supposed to be stuck at Grayson Manor for the shower, Charlotte flits in and out of the party. Earlier, she received a suspicious email asking for $40,000 in exchange for sensitive photos on her long-missing cell phone, so she asked Aidan to fix the situation for her. He calls her away from the party to retrieve her phone right before he beats the extortionist (a man who looks like jumped out of a Sin City comic book, rather than the featured extra casting book) to a pulp in front of the Stowaway. When Charlotte defends Aidan from Jack, who threatens to throw the guy out, Jack’s anti-Aidan fire has gone from flickering to raging out of control.
Victoria’s anti-Emily fire is looking like much of the same. Noting that Sarah’s presence might not be enough to tempt Daniel, Victoria includes a back-up party plan. She’s got a truly thrilling shower game in store; it’s called blindfold the bride or groom and tell them things about a surprise shower attendee who they probably should have invited in the first place. What’s ? "Guess Whose Champagne Flute I’m Holding?" Daniel gets an old college buddy and Emily gets her first husband, who it turns out, is very real and very much an idea planted in Victoria’s head in order to get public proof that Victoria had it out for Ems. You know, for that whole murder plot we’re working towards.
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Victoria looks like a prideful hunter except that as Daniel is howling (you guessed it, like a puppy) at his lying wife-to-be as a wealthy, older immigrant named Rohan comes to meet Emily onstage, Victoria’s plan is thwarted. As it turns out, Emily did marry Rohan when she was young, but it was a green card marriage to help him stay in the U.S. so he could be with his boyfriend, who peeks his head out to verify the story. Seeing the lengths Victoria went to break up a relationship, Sarah quits for good, rightfully noting that Victoria has a "psycho obsession" that is hurting Daniel.
At that same moment, Emily is celebrating her victory with Nolan and Rohan, who was also a Takaeda sempai. He has managed to find his happiness after revenge, and this makes Emily giddy for her future. I’ve got news for you, girlie, Rohan is happy because he’s not the main character of a TV show. You, my dear, are screwed.
With Emily blissfully in the dark, Daniel makes a sudden left turn without her. Somehow, the shower display makes Daniel think Emily is just like Victoria. Would Victoria ever marry a friend to keep him in the country unless Patrick asked her to? Probably not. But okay, rationalize all you want, puppy. He gives Sarah the diamond necklace she had on when they got into a car accident (not so romantic, bud) because he kept it ever since (okay, that’s better). Sarah says she’s just visiting him to quit, but Daniel says he can’t marry Emily and they kiss until Sarah stops it. She won’t go any further until Emily knows the truth, because unlike most people on this show, Sarah’s got ridiculously stalwart principles.
Meanwhile, Emily is receiving an avalanche of bad news. Victoria offers her the phone number for Conrad’s not-at-all-secret sex pad and tells her it is part of being a Grayson. Emily is horribly confident that she’s got Daniel back in her pocket, so Victoria dares her to call the number. When Emily gets on the line, the butler informs her that Daniel is just "settling in with his lady friend" as Daniel calls for more ice. Clearly, Emily didn’t pull out big enough guns in her the first two thirds of the episode, but it seems odd that Daniel and Sarah would be settling in at his Manhattan cheater’s nest. Did Sarah really go all the way into Manhattan (on the LIRR, which would surely be full of drunk teenagers at that hour) just to tell Daniel she quit? And if she didn’t want to do anything until Emily got properly dumped, would she really be settling in? Call me crazy, but something is amiss here.
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Still, it’s not a good situation for Emily, but before she can fix it, she’s confronted with a Jack-related issue. He’s upset about Aidan and the fact that he beat a man to a pulp in front of the Stowaway. Jack doesn’t trust that Aidan is right for her because he thinks she deserves better (he could probably give her a very obvious example, but he won’t). And perhaps Jack is right, because at that very moment, Aidan is pulling some Grayson sabotage without Emily’s knowledge, and he’s using her sister to do it. This could be the last straw for Ems if she finds out…and she will definitely find out.
With the weight of Jack’s disappointment on her shoulders, Emily prepares to trap Daniel once and for all. After going sneaky and clever with every other approach, she does what every crazy ex-girlfriend in a Lifetime movie would do: she tells Daniel she’s pregnant and the expression on his face screams "I’m totally screwed." It was her ace in the hole, but knowing Daniel, it will be all he needs to stay with Emily in what he thinks will be a long, unhappy marriage. It’s also the first time I’ve really felt truly awful for the poor guy. At least when Emily gets fake-murdered, he’ll sort of be off the hook, right?
As the episode draws to a close, we learn a few more shocking truths. First, we find that Victoria was once Conrad’s mistress. It's no wonder he told Daniel to "never marry your mistress" in reference to Sarah. He doesn’t want his son to end up with the second coming of Victoria.
Second (and much more important) is the return of one Lydia Davis, who was presumed dead in the plane crash that almost killed Victoria in Season 1. She’s returned as Margaux’s own personal Deep Throat as she continues her mission to uncover the Graysons’ secrets.
The only problem is that with all this delicious plot set up -- a fake pregnancy, Jack’s feelings, Aidan’s betrayal, Victoria’s rage, Margaux’s expose, and the impossible return of the woman Twitter has been crying out for since Season 1’s finale -- Revenge now leaves us for three weeks without a new episode. What a cruel, cruel fate that is.
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