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It's amazing how far Revenge has brought us, just to circle back to the place we started.
Though Emily's blackouts from last week provided a potential long-term storyline, they were conveniently cleared up in a jiffy this week. Apparently, the episodes aren't genetic, they're happening because Emily still hasn't come to terms with the fact that her father loved Victoria. Get over it already, woman. When Emily says that her new mission is a rather simple blanket goal – "kill 'em all" – Nolan gets worried. thing we know, Aidan is kidnapping her, tying her up, and repeatedly dunking her in water to shake the blackouts out of her. Eventually, she has an epiphany and decides that everything is her father's fault. Always blaming someone else, Emily. Always.
Aidan tells her the obvious: David Clarke simply has a terrible picker and falls for the wrong women (Aidan might know a thing or two about that). Emily agrees and hops back on the revenge horse that she rode into the pilot episode: clearing her father's name. She's even got a new blast from the past witness – just like she did back in Season 1. She conveniently remembers that her father mentioned knowing an alcoholic lawyer in his journals and she knows it's Stevie. We've just come so far, haven't we?
And we know that Stevie was an alcoholic because in yet another Jack-is-annoyingly-stubborn storyline, Jack is refusing to deal with Stevie and her announcement about her being his mother. She earns some credit when someone tries to buy Jack's dream house out from under him and she fixes it so Jack can have it back, but it's her story about being an alcoholic that really wins him over. She says that the Graysons were her alcohol trigger – least surprising revelation ever – but that she's ready to face them now. That's certainly the way to Jack's barricaded, little heart.
Meanwhile, Victoria's having a rough week. First, Patrick gets in a fight at Brennan's funeral when he's dumb enough to call the guy a rapist in front of his tough guy friends. Victoria is furious, so she teams up with Nolan, of all people, to save Patrick by shipping him off. They pay an artist from Italy to offer him an apprenticeship, which he accepts because he wants to make Victoria proud and stop doing dark things to protect her. At least the expulsion of this storyline means we can stop visiting the weekly "Why do you do everything wrong all the time, Patrick?" moment. Thank God for that.
Of course, that doesn't really help out with Victoria's other headache: Stevie is digging her claws into Grayson Manor. Victoria says she's going to block Stevie's plans by getting the home declared a historical landmark – why? Because it was built before Victoria's first botox injection? Pretty sure there's no real reason this mansion could qualify as a landmark since it was built after Conrad's divorce from Stevie, which I'm guessing didn't happen a century ago. Ridiculous original plan or not, however, Victoria plans to take Stevie down, which is good, because I was starting to think she was going soft with all that Patrick stuff. Okay, not really. She did just watch a man die with glee.
Finally there's the episode's cherry on top: Daniel's obsession with catching Emily doing something wrong leads him to hire a private investigator who shows him proof of Aidan and Emily's romance. They've only kissed on about a million Hamptons beaches without getting caught at this point. It's about damn time.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open on Emily destroying the infinity symbol her father carved on the porch -- the one she rubs her fingers over every time she questions why she does anything. Naturally, we learn that it's the work of another blackout. Only Emily isn't willing to get medical attention; she tells Nolan that she needs to finish what she started. When Nolan is confused, she delivers that one-liner ABC has used on every Revenge promo for months: "I'm gonna kill 'em all."
Meanwhile, Stevie is set on earning her place in the Hamptons back. First, she visits Jack as he gets the news that he lost his house due to an all-cash offer. Stevie begs Jack to hear her out and offers him a box of photos of her with Jack as a baby. She says that Carl Sr. sent her mementos over the years like sailing ribbons and such so that she could bear being away. But when she inevitably chalks her absence up to a "secret" that's too "complicated" to reveal, Jack tells her to leave.
So she then moves on to Grayson Manor, to make sure Victoria is packing things up. Of course, Victoria thinks she can get her lawyers to pull some shady tricks to get her to keep the house. Too bad Stevie is a big-deal lawyer who knows that Victoria's legal team is full of it. How could Victoria be so sloppy?
Somewhere on Long Island, Patrick is attending Jimmy Brennan's memorial service at a dive bar. Because he's got a death wish, Patrick decides this is a great place and time to declare Brennan a rapist and spit on his photo. He gets his ass handed to him quite literally, but for someone who just got "beaten bloody by a bunch of thugs" in the scene, Patrick sure looks good when his mother shows up to reprimand him. Still, it leads Victoria to the right conclusion: Patrick doesn't care if he lives or dies.
Because he's got nothing else going on, Daniel hires a private investigator to follow Emily and find out what she's doing with Conrad. He doesn't need one for the man himself because he's got Charlotte planted in Conrad's office as his intern. Conrad's fake daughter playing his Gal Friday? Not creepy at all.
After Aidan gets a little intervention chat from Nolan, he decides maybe he'll forgive Emily for trying to kill him after all and help her break out of her new self-destructive pattern. When Emily sneaks into Conrad's South Fork Inn room with a choke wire in her hands -- part of the "kill 'em all" plan -- Aidan comes in just as she scurries under the bed. He knows her well, so he reaches under the bed and pulls her out. thing she knows, Emily is tied up in a warehouse with Aidan, who says she's safe from herself and tells her he's going to use Takaeda's favorite memory-jogging technique to get her to see the truth. He grabs her and dunks her in a tank of water. Apparently, this is a gesture of love in this freaky revenge-driven world.
Nolan seems to be king of the ladies who lunch in the Hamptons now that he's running the Hamptons Art Walk. Victoria stays behind after they leave and she tells him that his plan to destroy her relationship with Patrick didn't work, because it only destroyed Patrick. He learned about his father, the rapist, and now he thinks he's unworthy of love. This all piles on Nolan's guilt-logged shoulders and he thinks he ruined the man he loves.
At that moment, Jack visits Stevie because he found out that she changed the minds of the homeowners with an email and he can now buy his dream house. He asks why she never helped when she knew he and his father were on hard times before. She doesn't answer, but insists that she keep helping him. He's a little distracted by the fact that she left him for 30 years, so he calls her heartless like the Graysons. She swears she isn't, but he's unmoved because Jack loves to think everyone's out to get him.
Nolan visits Patrick, who's inexplicably sweaty and working out even though he just got beat up and should be near death's door. Nolan says he knows that Patrick killed Jimmy Brennan and he says that he didn't kill anyone before he moved here. He says that Stefano Leone (the most made-up sounding famous artist ever) is coming to the Art Walk because he set it up when he was dating Patrick and he just wants good things for him. Patrick broods and is clearly about to change his mind.
Emily wants Aidan to stop so she's babbling on about him being an enemy, but he says that her enemies are the Graysons, yet her blackouts are harming her allies -- Aidan and Nolan -- so she's probably most angry with herself. Sounds like someone took Psychology 101 at Takaeda Academy. She tells him to go to hell and he holds her under water again, where she sees a vision of her father running in the rain. She says her father is to blame for everything. Always blaming everyone else, Miss Emily, aren't we?
At the Art Walk, Victoria introduces Stevie to the chairman of the South Hampton historical landmarks committee. Stevie wants to turn Grayson Manor into a halfway house -- which is probably the worst thing Victoria could have ever heard coming out of Stevie's mouth -- but the chairman says they're trying to get the home protected by historical landmark laws because it's an "architectural treasure." Having a great architect and living in a home that's famous being the place where a thousand trashy press conferences have been held aren't exactly grounds for landmark status, yet the chairman insists this is going to court. (To be laughed right out of those picturesque double doors.)
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Aidan unties Emily and she talks to him, finally. She defaced the carving because she blames her father for everything. She remembers back to the night before he was taken -- a supposedly repressed memory. Victoria asked to run away with him, but Emily (then Amanda) saw them and Victoria gave her a menacing look (go figure). Emily remembers further back to the part where she walked in on David and Victoria having sex. He yelled at her to get out and she ran outside crying. He found her and said that she would love Victoria and that they would be a family. Flash forward to today and Emily is crying, saying that David got his wish because she's a Grayson now. She cries and asks why didn't he listen to her, if he had everything would have been different. Aidan does the only thing he can do and caresses and comforts her.
Victoria sees that Patrick decided to bring his work to the art walk after all. But of course, we can't focus on that because Victoria is too busy staring down Stevie across the street. Patrick takes note and that's when Victoria waves something of a steak in front of her son's doggy nose: she says she's going to slay the beast she created -- Stevie -- and Patrick is clearly ready to follow her into battle.
Back in the warehouse, Emily says that the single memory of her father causing her blackouts, because psychology is hard so sure, this sort of holds an ounce of water. But whatever. She thanks him for helping her and says she doesn't deserve it. He says that she does and that her father does too; David Clarke's only crime was falling in love with the wrong woman (something Aidan might be able to relate to). He tells her to finish what she started and make them pay by clearing her father's name. And we're right back to where it all started right before Aidan and Emily share a long-awaited passionate kiss -- that both parties are interested in this time around.
Moments later, Patrick gets a visit from Stefano Leone who asks him about his grown-man finger paintings. Patrick says he was painting angrily that day, which explains the amateur brush strokes. I'm sorry, your art is worse because you were using it to express a feeling? Sure, that makes sense. Still Stefano says he can tell Patrick is talented. He offers him an apprenticeship in his Tuscan studio and Patrick is naturally intrigued. He later leaves Victoria a voicemail, saying that he becomes dark when someone hurts her. He says that his darkness comes from his father and doesn't want others to suffer. He's taking an opportunity that will make her proud. It's sad, but let's be real: we couldn't handle another "Patrick, you did the wrong thing again!" heart-to-heart, no could we?
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Just as Emily is remembering the day after her fight with her father -- when he apologized and began to carve the now-destroyed double infinity on the porch -- Jack interrupts with a question he should be able to answer on his own. He tells her about his mother, Stevie, and says that she's holding something back so he doesn't want to talk her. Man, he loves being stubborn. Emily, the woman with no parents, says that Stevie is Jack's only parent so he should probably give her a chance. And here comes the big, resounding "Duh."
So, Jack visits Stevie and asks why she stayed away -- something he should have done right away. She says that she was trying to protect them from her, because she used to be an alcoholic. She's now 20 years sober, but she found out she was pregnant when she was in rehab and that the Graysons were one of her alcohol triggers so she couldn't stay and trust herself to be a good mother. Especially with all the cookie jars the Graysons have their hands in these days. But she says she's back and ready to face the Graysons -- she's speaking Jack's language now. He invites her over to meet Baby Carl the day, so Jack has learned to forgive a little more quickly these days.
At it turns out, Victoria's Stevie the beast speech was part of a plan with Nolan. They meet by his pool for a glass of wine to mope over Patrick leaving, but knowing that Victoria has to appear to be a monster in order to get him to leave and take care of himself. They make sure to say that Patrick is talented. Watching these two team up kind of boggles the mind, but it looks like this a Patrick-only alliance.
Back in his lair, Daniel finds out from his P.I. that Emily was abducted from the South Fork Inn while she was breaking into Conrad's room. He says he followed Aidan to the warehouse and later caught him and Emily kissing. He's even got the photos to prove it.
Finally, Nolan drops by Emily's cottage, where she is planning to ride out the rest of her revenge plan. He brings her a new infinity box, this time it's a sage and it can only be opened with her own touch. To celebrate, Nolan asks if Emily wants gin martinis and it triggers a memory of her father's journals: he was visited by an alcoholic lawyer who was disbarred for drinking when he was in prison and she's certain that it was Stevie Grayson because there are no other alcoholic lawyers in the tri-state area, apparently. Without any further proof, Emily has picked her new mark: she's going to get all of Stevie's secrets. We can be sure ol' Jackie boy is going to like this.
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