‘Revenge’ Review: Emily Regains (some) ‘Control’

As promised, Revenge revealed the Hamptons’ killer this week and we are not amused by the culprit…although, we have to praise the episode for how the twist was revealed (we’ll get to that). “Control” was a fantastic episode; continuing season three’s tradition of giving us a fun hour of television with sexy people and soapy twists to keep us intrigued and genuinely sad when the screen fades to black.

Once again things were not going well for Emily. The rift between her and Daniel grew and Victoria relished in it (seriously, how much fun is the snark and dirty looks between these two?). Emily also worried about Jack once she learned he was on Conrad’s radar thanks to Aiden. He insisted that he knew what he was doing and asked Emily to trust him to do his job. Can she trust him? Can she get Daniel to trust her? Let’s talk about it.

Jack realizes that Emily is kind of insane – and kisses Margaux

Unfortunately, Aiden’s job led Emily right into Victoria’s trap. After Aiden gave Jack a friendly warning to leave town and never look back, Victoria ‘innocently’ let it slip to Emily that Jack was in danger – right before she was supposed to go to Margaux’s magazine launch party and support Daniel. Instead Emily ran to Jack and he was not amused when he learned that Aiden was supposedly working for her. Even though he sent Carl away for his safety, Jack was staying put.

While we’ve never been on Team Jack (and never, ever will be), this scene was great because Jack is finally seeing Emily for who she is and just how much the carefree 10-year-old he knew has been broken. To us, it seemed like Jack didn’t know whether he should feel sorry for her or call the men in white coats to take her away, but for the first time, he finally seemed to get that the girl he knew was never coming back. And Emily saw him realize that so it was a big moment for both of them and their potentially doomed relationship (that we won’t cry over).

Daniel breaks the engagement – and stops being the worst (for now)

We’ve been hard on Daniel the past few weeks because he’s grown a little too Grayson-y for our liking, but this was a great episode for Daniel. When Emily showed up late, prioritizing something else over him again, Daniel told her that he was done being a character in a story she was writing and he couldn’t marry her. Thanks to a chat with Margaux earlier, Daniel too was realizing just how little he knew about the woman who is supposed to be his partner in every way.

At first, Emily was more irritated than anything, but some sage advice from Nolan shed some much needed light on the problem: she’s supposed to love Daniel and not only is she not doing a very good job of acting like she can stand next to him without grimacing, Emily hasn’t shared anything real about herself with him and partnerships don’t work that way. So Emily broke into Jack’s (and witnessed him kissing Margaux) and stole a picture of Amanda and her parents.

Emily went to Daniel and opened up to him, explaining that she does know how to love, but she’s been hurt so much, at such a young age, that she can’t help pushing people away. Emily VanCamp and Josh Bowman were both excellent during this scene as Emily and Daniel went through the range of emotions and came to the conclusion that they should still get married. Emily might be faking her love, but the pain was real and it was heartbreaking to watch.

Aiden is still Team Emily – and she’s Team Aiden (maybe)

Each week is a rollercoaster for Aiden fans and haters alike: is he trustworthy? Is he working for or against Emily? Does he have his own motives? We are adamant that Aiden is, and always has been, Team Emily, but that doesn’t mean his jealousy doesn’t get the best of him. He’s cozying up to Conrad and Victoria, mostly Victoria, because that’s what Emily wants, but throwing Jack under the bus was probably a little more self-serving than just simply being a way to win Conrad’s trust. But he did warn Jack and he told Emily that Victoria was playing her.

By the end of the episode, Emily swore that Aiden meant everything to her and their love was real. Since we’re Team Aiden, we loved those scenes, but we also know that Emily’s love for Jack in not going anywhere. We also can’t help but wonder if seeing Jack with Margaux is what ultimately pushed Emily back to Aiden, but whatever, we’ll take what we can get when the triangle bends in our direction (And did you see the previews? Next week looks promising for Team Aiden).

Patrick and Nolan are the best – but Patrick might be evil

Now comes our favorite part of the review where we get to talk about Patrick and Nolan. Things started a little rocky this week when Nolan came to visit Patrick at the gallery. Apparently, Mr. Ross has not called since the night of their kiss and Patrick isn’t okay with that. Nolan does a little fishing to see what Victoria knows and Patrick tells him that his mother knows he’s gay; he doesn’t keep secrets from her.

Unfortunately, Patrick calls out Nolan for going to see his ex-wife and paying her for the goods on him. Patrick is (understandably) not cool with that and wants to know why Nolan would do something like that and makes it clear that he doesn’t play games and he’s not interested in Nolan’s. Later, Nolan goes to see Patrick while he’s painting and offers up a heartfelt apology and explanation of the ways he’s used to being hurt (aw, Nolan). He tells Patrick to come and find him if he’s still interested.

It’s actually a push from Victoria that send Patrick back to Nolan when she confesses to her son that she’s made bad choices and doesn’t want to see him end up making similar mistakes. Patrick heads over to Nolan’s where Nolan is out by the pool (dear show: can we get some daylight scenes? It makes for prettier gifs), announces that he found him and then the two start to get passionate.

All of this is awesome and exactly what we wanted except there’s one gigantic problem….

Earlier, Aiden revealed to Victoria that the person who cut Conrad’s brakes was one of her children. This didn’t surprise us; we guessed as much from Victoria and Conrad’s preview scenes. So when Victoria tearfully confessed to Conrad that she didn’t know what to do and then Charlotte showed up and admitted that she cut the brakes; even producing the knife? We were good with that, but then as Conrad hugged his daughter and Victoria smiled, we knew she was either 1) super proud of Charlotte for trying to off Conrad or 2) covering something up.

It was the latter. Charlotte confessed to the crime because Victoria told her that Conrad was blaming Jack…for an accident. Cue the scene switch and Aiden telling Emily that Patrick was the real killer and he’d found brake fluid and the knife in his room. NO THANK YOU, SHOW. Again, we were impressed with the way the twist was revealed, but why are you doing this to our Nolan and Patrick-loving hearts? We just want Nolan to be happy (and fine, we want to keep Justin Hartley on our screens for as long as possible).

Of course attempting to kill Conrad isn’t really the worst thing in the world, right? Victoria seemed angry in the previews, but Aiden and Emily were hardly bothered by it. Then again, we think Emily might change her mind once she learns her BFF is involved with him and what’s Nolan going to think? Admittedly, we can remove our fangirl blinders and see that Patrick being normal and well-adjusted has been hard to swallow from the beginning, but we’re still hoping what’s happening between him and Nolan is the real deal (please let it be the real deal, writers).

For now, we’re going to remain cautiously optimistic (shh, don’t judge us) that this issue will work itself out (shut up, we’re allowed to love fictional murderers). In the meantime, hit the comments and share your theories on the men in Emily’s life and who you think will be the one to pull the trigger on her wedding day.