Revenge (Season 1)

Starring: Madeleine Stowe, Emily VanCamp, Gabriel Mann, Henry Czerny, Ashley Madekwe, Joshua Bowman, Connor Paola, Christa B. Allen, Nick Wechsler

Creator: Mike Kelly

Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Serial Drama

Rating: A-

I’m still not exactly sure how I feel about Revenge’s premier season.  I like the basic story, although it’s one that I’ve seen before, but the overall tone of the show kind of got to me after awhile.  After awhile I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching a daytime soap opera instead of a primetime TV series.  As the series wasn’t on the CW this feeling was a bit annoying.

Revenge follows Emily Thorne (VanCamp) as she moves to the Hamptons in order to pursue a plot of revenge against the Graysons - Conrad (Czerny), Victoria (Stowe), Daniel (Bowman), AND Charlotte (Allen) - an elite family that spends every summer at the Hamptons.  Seventeen years prior Emily’s father, David Clark (James Tupper), was framed for a terrorist attack by the Graysons and their colleagues, resulting in David Clark spending the rest of his life in prison and his daughter, then known as Amanda Clark, being shipped off to foster homes, an institution, and later a juvenile prison.  Now with a new identity and a lot of money Emily has a carefully detailed plot against those responsible for her father’s downfall.

I think the series can be kind of divided into two halves; the former where Emily’s beginning to carry out her plot and is a somewhat likeable character, even if she’s also a rather devious bitch, and the latter where Emily’s become rather consumed by her plot and is just an outright bitch.  There are a lot of big reveals – affairs, illegitimate children, multiple identities, murder, and so on – but the more that they happen the more disinterested with the show I became.  At some point the whole thing just seemed to be about everyone in it trying to screw over everyone else in it.  I don’t think there’s a single character in this show who actually has a descent nature – even Jack, who’s the nice guy uncorrupted by money, can be a bit of a dick at times, and when he’s not it’s hard to think of him as anything but a shmuck.  Making things worse is the fact that the more reveals happen the more the show feels like it’s little more than a soap opera – I’m seriously waiting for a character to be randomly recast or a baby to be born and then rapidly aged, or someone’s long lost evil twin to appear.  The show started with an interesting premise, but it just becomes a bit much after awhile.