Revenge Episode 1-18 Review: “We’ve Found a Scapegoat”

Reviews, Shows

Oh man, I loved last night’s episode of Revenge. There were a lot of moving pieces, contrasting motives, plotting, scheming and executing. It all worked out perfectly, but since this is Revenge things won’t be perfect for long.

My favorite thing about the murder of Tyler and Daniel Grayson’s trial has been how Victoria and Emily are simultaneously trying to clear Daniel’s name in polar opposite ways. Victoria was desperate to pin the murder on Amanda Clarke, and would settle for Jack Porter if need be. But we learned where Emily’s true allegiances lay – I’m quite sure she would have let Daniel take the fall if it were the only way to protect Jack.

Last week we saw Emily make an imprint of the key to Lee’s car. And now we know why – it was so she could plant the incriminating hoodie in his car, thus framing the Grayson’s goon for Tyler’s murder. She protected Jack, exonerated Daniel and brought everything back to Victoria and Conrad.

In the world of the Porter family, Declan was called to the stand to testify that Charlotte was high and drunk the night of the murder, and that there had never been a hooded figure on the beach. That development brought Jack back into town – he’d been on a wild goose chase looking for Amanda, courtesy of Emily and Nolan.

Jack showed his bloodstained hoodie to Declan and tried to convince him to tell the truth on the stand, but Declan wasn’t having it – not even when Charlotte showed up to try and seduce him into doing it, thanks to some icky coaxing from her mother.

Meanwhile, Victoria wasn’t willing to let Daniel’s fate be determined by some blood spatter analysis (I guess it’s not as much of a home run in criminology as Dexter Morgan leads us to believe) and some gushy, romantic testimony from Emily. She instead hired Lee to threaten Juror #3 into making sure they got a hung jury.

She was also still sleeping with her painter boyfriend, a storyline I continue to not love. Conrad made sure he disappeared, but not before discovering that Victoria had spilled the David Clarke beans to him. Really? That seems to unlike Victoria.

So, how was all this wrapped up? Well, Jack told Nolan about the hoodie and Nolan told Emily. So Em broke into Jack’s apartment and ransacked it, taking the hoodie. A slight wrench was thrown into her plan when she arrived home to be greeted by Daniel. The emotional idiot thought she was cheating on him and went to confront her, leaving his home arrest boundaries and getting himself thrown back in the slammer. Emily always has a plan though, and she confided in Gloria that she’d only been trying to get close to Jack so that she could find out where Amanda was. Now there’s a plan Victoria can respect!

But really, Emily had planted the hoodie in Lee’s car and then delivered an anonymous tip to the police. Done and done! If Jack’s blood shows up on the sweater, it’ll merely prove that Lee was the one who carried out the Graysons’ bidding and attacked him that night.

When Conrad found out that Lee had been brought it, he was furious at Victoria and had to clean up her mess by placing a phone call to a goon much higher up within Rikers.

In jail, Daniel was about to change his plea to guilty – and for a minute there, it looked like maybe he’d hung himself. BUT NO! It was Lee who’d ‘committed suicide’, confessing to Tyler’s murder in his suicide note. Looks like Conrad Grayson’s connections go even farther than we’d imagined.

And now Emily knows this. Conrad Grayson arranged with someone within the prison for a suicide to be faked and a man to be killed. Emily’s father hadn’t been killed in a knife fight. That too had been arranged by Conrad.

So now, not only is Lee dead and thus can’t implicate the Graysons and execute Emily’s revenge, but her vendetta just got a whole lot bigger. The Grayson family didn’t just ruin her father’s life, they murdered him. How will Emily seek revenge now?

I love how the Daniel trial was wrapped up so perfectly and thoughtfully, but a whole new can of worms has been opened. I can’t wait to see what happens next. What did you guys think of “Justice”


You can follow Jill at her blog, couchtimewithjill.com, or on Twitter @jillemader Jill has been an avid fan of TV since the age of two, when she was so obsessed with Zoobilee Zoo that her mother lied and told her it had been canceled. Despite that setback, she grew up to be a television aficionado and pop culture addict.