First Impressions
Revenge
Aired on: ABC
Reviewed by Melissa Minners
When I saw the promos for the new ABC drama Revenge, I was intrigued, but I wondered what kind of shelf life a show centered around a young girl’s need for revenge against a family that wronged her would have. I decided to check Revenge out when it premiered 10pm EST on Wednesday, September 21, 2011.
The series opens with a party
for Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp) and her fiancée Daniel Grayson (Joshua Bowman). It’s a big shindig…a loud affair, so no one notices that a murder
Flash back six months to Emily returning to the home she once lived in located in The Hamptons. She hasn’t been there in seventeen years. Back then, she went under a different name and her memories of the house were mixed. She had enjoyed the time alone with her father, combing the beach and having fun, but then it happened - her father was taken from her and she lost the life she loved. Her father had been betrayed by the very people he called friends, sent to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.
On her eighteenth birthday, Emily (then Amanda) learned the truth about her father and vowed to take revenge. Her first action is to rent out the house she stayed in as a child. Her second is to wend her way into the lives of the Graysons, a family who lived across the way. The Graysons played a big part in her father’s destruction and she has big plans for them. She starts off by exposing an affair that Conrad Grayson (Henry Czerny) is having with his wife’s best friend, a woman who just happened to have testified against Emily’s father at his trial. But its Victoria Grayson (Madeleine Stowe), matriarch of the family, that she really wants to hurt. This is only the beginning.
There are a few other twists in this drama - a young boy named Jack who carried a torch for Emily still lives in The Hamptons and owns a boat named after her. Jack owns a dog named Sammy who still remembers his previous owner. Then there’s Nolan Ross (Gabriel Mann). He knows everything about Emily. It was Nolan who revealed the truth to Emily and he would like nothing more than to help Emily take down the elite families
The show was interesting although I was a bit annoyed by flashing back then forward then way back then forward again. I did enjoy watching Emily exact her revenge in little ways throughout the first episode. However, I still wonder about the shelf life of this series. Just how long can it take for Emily to finally broker the revenge she seeks. And what then? When vengeance is taken, how will the story continue? Or will they drag out this revenge seeking over a couple of seasons?
Much as I enjoy Emily VanCamp’s acting, the couple of twists and turns of the plot, and the fact that there are still many secrets left to reveal, I don’t think I’ll be adding Revenge to my already busy schedule. I remember a show I fell in love with called Reunion. I had known that show wouldn’t have much of a shelf life when I started watching it, but I really got into it, only to have my hopes dashed when they wouldn’t even let the show complete its season. Revenge seems to be the same type of show and I don’t want to find myself vested in its outcome, only to find it canceled before the really good plot stuff starts happening.
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