Revenge

Revenge

Episode 1: Destiny

By: Carlos Uribe

Revenge is a show about Emily Thorne and her quest of revenge.

Spoilers Ahoy!

A season premiere for a serialized drama has three functions: resolve any cliff-hangers and plot threads, set up the new season, and keep the viewers hooked. Any season premiere should be judged by these three criteria. Revenge meets the first two but it doesn't really accomplish the third as effectively as it should have. This is why I was disappointed by the Revenge premiere. It's true that it does manage to build up some momentum but it doesn't do enough. I think this is because the premiere was so busy alerting the viewer where each character was when we picked up that very little of actual consequence happened. This premiere acted in part as a pilot: it was a lot of build-up for future storylines. This might end up working for the rest of the season but it hurts the premiere as an actual episode. Revenge delivers a season premiere that is well written and is setting up the pieces but it's disappointing in it's lack of narrative momentum. It's too early to tell if this will be a good or a bad thing for the rest of the season. That's the difficulty of doing episodic reviews: it's hard to tell if it's going to work as a cohesive whole.

Let's talk about this new season of Revenge. Charlotte survived her drug overdose but she's stuck in rehab. This isn't because she's having hard time getting sober but because her father is bribing her doctor in keeping her in. Why is Conrad doing this? He's hoping to gain access to her trust fund because Daniel failed to prove his loyalty and put all of his money in Conrad's company. Charlotte does have an ally in Victoria. Victoria's pretending to be dead and claims that she's being protected by the United States government. She's actually in allegiance with the white-haired man. It was obvious she survived the plane crash but the episode spent half the time pretending she was dead. This made sense because the characters think she's dead but it also felt kind of evident that she hadn't died. The only character who seems to have truly perished is Lydia as she's not mentioned a single time in this episode. She's not brought up at Victoria's memorial and she doesn't seem to be in the safe house. It feels a bit odd that she has completely disappeared like this. She might be dead, but you'd think people would at least remember her like they remember Victoria. It's possible Lydia is still alive but the series hasn't established this and I have some reason to believe she was killed in the explosion.. The series writers have gone on record that someone did die in that finale and Lydia's the only character they could have talked about.

Daniel has moved on from Emily with Ashley. He doesn't seem to be too happy with his current life. Emily is looking for her mother and has reason to believe that Victoria might know where to find her. She opens the episode by forcing herself to bring a memory about her mother to the surface and she heads back to the Hamptons. Nolan joins her side again but this time it looks like he'll be staying with Emily. Considering how the best parts of this show are Nolan and Emily's alliance, this is one of the best things about the premiere. Revenge just isn't the same without Nolan being at Emily's side. Nolan has managed to train himself into a fighting condition to prepare for any circumstance. Emily's journey to find her mother is coming at the risk of losing her alliance with Takeida and he sends a student of his to try and guide her back on the right path. If the student fails then Takeida warns that this is the end of the road for both Emily and the student. It should be noted that they have recasted Takeida. The new actor fills in the role well.

The Porter family has their own drama. Declan spends the episode in the background but Jack's drama does take a significant time of the show. He has to deal with a restaurant that needs repairs if it's going to be open and his girlfriend is pregnant. He's having trouble dealing with the news but it isn't until Emily encourages him to ensure the baby is his that he asks for a paternity test. You would think he has already done this but apparently not. The Porter family drama was probably the least interesting of everything that happened. The best scene that involved them was when Emily was talking with Amanda. Emily isn't sure of Amanda's allegiance and she unsurprisingly tries to push Amanda away. All of this drama is simply so predictable that it's hard to be that interested in what is actually going on. If the series can find ways to be more fresh in future episodes, then this Amanda baby storyline would be much improved.

The episode manages to set the pieces for the next season and resolve the cliff-hangers from the season finale. This is nice and all and it's expected of a season finale but there's a difference between setting up a new status quo and not having any narrative momentum. Look at Once Upon a Time: that season premiere set up pieces and made me excited for it's second season. I'm a fan of Revenge so I want to see what happens next but I'm not actually dying to figure out what's going to happen. Here's hoping that the series will be able to start picking up soon.