Episode Report Card Kelsea Stahler: A- | 46 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Death Becomes Her
By Kelsea Stahler | Season 3 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.15.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The Revenge wedding is finally here, as is the big answer to the "Who Shot Emily" question ABC has been asking for months now. But first, Emily's last mission is getting Victoria to come to the wedding. Because Conrad is so resolute in his endless round of the Opposite Game with Victoria, he helps her by bringing Patrick back to Grayson Manor in exchange for Victoria participating in all wedding activities. Victoria agrees when Patrick says the grown-up equivalent of "aw, gee, Mom—can we all be a family again?"
At the same time, Emily and Co. are walking through their diabolical—and not at all dependent on everyone in the Grayson family acting like robots—plan: While the family is distracted with a slideshow, Emily spills champagne on Victoria so she runs to her state room. Aidan locks her in there while Emily runs upstairs, dribbles her own blood on the deck, fires two fake shots, jumps overboard, and grabs the scuba supplies on a nearby buoy for her escape. Aidan lets Victoria out—her lack of alibi ensured—and meets Emily on the beach without being seen by any of the panicked people on the boat.
When the wedding finally comes, there are cameras everywhere and we spend far too much time watching Victoria give canned statements to the media—we get it, the Graysons are more famous than Beyoncé in Revenge's hubristic alternate reality.
Lydia tries to attend the wedding (fashionably late because she's such a pleasant person), but Aidan shoos her away and reminds her that she just traded outing Emily's cater waiter past for the deed to the beach house. She flees to the South Fork Inn, where Conrad comes to apologize for doubting her love earlier in the episode and she looks over his shoulder at Emily's cater waiter photo like she's Swimfan and the picture is Jesse Bradford.
At the wedding, Daniel is getting wasted on a $1500 dollar bottle of really good scotch, because he's thinking about Sarah. Emily tells him to cool it and then dances with Nolan, who says he'll keep Patrick off the boat so he doesn't stay attached to Victoria like a barnacle and ruin everything. He does and it works perfectly, except for the part where Patrick finds the infinity box.
On the wedding boat, things go awry quickly. Conrad brings Lydia as his date and when Victoria goes to her state room as planned, Lydia follows. Aidan can't lock them in and Lydia gives Victoria the New Year's picture in exchange for Conrad's hand in marriage. Victoria confronts Emily and calls out her fake pregnancy; Emily says she borrowed the move from Victoria, who used it on Conrad. Aidan chloroforms Victoria, but Daniel comes around the bend and shoots Emily because he overheard Victoria. When she falls overboard, he throws the gun after her and goes downstairs to act “normal” while the captain calls out “Man overboard!”
Everyone realizes the missing person is Emily. There's blood on the floor and Victoria is missing—so at least the Victoria looking guilty part still worked out—but you have to wonder how no one on the boat heard the gunshots. Was the slideshow that loud?
On shore, Aidan and Jack are waiting for Emily and time is stretching on with no sign of Emily. Her dress, with blood and bullet holes, washes up on shore and the hunt for Emily begins. That would be a classic cliffhanger if we didn't know that the show can't continue without her and the preview of Jan. 5's episode didn't show us scenes of Emily alive with amnesia—you know, that thing every TV show gives an integral character when they've run out of ideas? Who knows what will happen in the next half of the season? Certainly not Emily, because apparently, she doesn't even know who she is. How exciting.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Revenge’s mid-season finale began just like every other wedding episode: With a plot against the bride’s future mother-in-law that somehow involves a sizable vial of blood. Ah, young love.
But first, for some romantic rupturing: Conrad finds Lydia’s journal, handwritten by the local middle school’s brattiest 12-year-old, among their mountains of pre-coital clothing and thinks she’s on a mission to spill all his secrets. Lydia admits that she was working with Margaux, but says that she backed out. (See also: Margaux kicked her to the curb.) Conrad -- the king of instant decisions -- kicks Lydia out, forcing her to leave with nothing but the New Year’s Eve photo of Emily as a cater waiter.
After he breaks Lydia off, Conrad becomes Emily’s mercenary against Victoria, if only because he and V are in a long-term round of The Opposite Game. Emily musters up some glittery tears over the fact that her child may grow up without his or her grandmother, and Conrad vows to help her make her wedding day "perfect." Of course, he also offers up his presence as her replacement father -- a factor that may account for the ease with which she created those effective tears.
Meanwhile, Daniel is at Voulez finishing up a few things before throwing on a tux for the wedding. Ah, the easy plight of the groom. Sarah is there giving an interview on the wedding cake, and apparently something good has come out her ordeal: the publicity is getting her more gigs. Daniel tries to apologize, but she says he can’t fix everything and storms out. Perhaps visiting the love of your life who just dumped you wasn’t such a good idea, girlie.
In order to help out his new "daughter," Conrad brings Patrick back from Manhattan exile. Victoria is ecstatic but soon realizes that Patrick is a carrot leading her to Conrad’s demands. He wants her to attend all wedding-related activities. And for once, Conrad makes a pretty solid point. He’ll support Patrick if Victoria will support her other son on his wedding day. Victoria is resistant because this stubbornness is all she has left, but doe-eyed Patrick begs her to agree to the deal for the sake of the family he just got back. That’d be sweet if we didn’t know he was capable of cutting the brakes on someone’s car because he thinks they’re "mean."
With Victoria’s attendance secured, Emily, Aidan, and Nolan can back to the master plan, so like a villain at the end of a cheesy action movie, he lays it out. They bought a gun in Victoria’s name and got residue on her wedding party bracelet -- the evidence is in place. Once the family gets on the boat to their family honeymoon in Nantucket, they’ll play a slideshow for everyone as a distraction. Emily will spill champagne on Victoria, which will force her to go to her stateroom, where Aidan will temporarily lock her in. Emily will slip out and pour her own blood on the deck, fire two fake shots, jump into the water, and swim to a buoy with scuba gear. Aidan will then let Victoria out, leaving her without an alibi during Emily’s "murder," and without being seen (by a boat of panicking people rattled by gunshots) he’ll escape to meet Emily on the beach. Em and Aidan are sure that Victoria will promptly arrested and that she’ll take down Conrad in her attempt to save her own neck. Wait, is this grand plan really hinging on Victoria doing the Conrad take down? Lazy, revenge-kins. L-A-Z-Y.