“Revenge” and why you should be watching it.
I keep meaning to talk about Revenge, but I am just a flaily, squee-filled mess at the end of each episode, which makes it hard to plug it in an intelligent manner that it deserves. Before I start a list of why this show is making everything else currently on TV seem drab in comparison, I offer the following disclaimer:
Dear World, I have a huge thing for revenge narratives, as long as they're being headed by women. I have been obsessed with Medea since middle school, and my instant love for heroines willing to make the world PAY for what it did to them has never, ever lessened even a bit. And the more I consume fiction where women are supposed to forgive, forget, move on, the more this love grows. Be it the “Roaring Rampage of Revenge” kind or the "Better Served Cold" type, from The Oresteia to Kill Bill, I have probably loved them all.
Revenge opens with the following Chinese proverb, “He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself.” This is a huge part of why I love revenge narratives, because um, HI WORLD, I have a thing for obsessive, self-destructive heroines. I also have a thing for stoic heroines who keep their emotions and issues buried so deeply that you almost believe they don’t have any until everything threatens to come crashing down. And I love morally ambiguous older women in positions of power. This show gives me all of this with Bechdel passing and a pretty solid script.
Based loosely on Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Revenge updates this story and reimagines it with a woman as its protagonist. When she was a young girl, Amanda Clarke’s father was framed for a crime he didn’t commit, a conspiracy that a large number of people in the Hamptons seem to have been in on. In the pilot, Amanda, now calling herself Emily Throne (and referred to as such by the rest of this review), returns to the Hamptons and starts working on making herself an important part of the community so she can take it apart from the inside.
Heading Emily’s list of people who need to be brought down is Victoria Grayson, the queen of the Hamtons’ social circle, the woman her father loved and who betrayed him. However, things aren’t as simple as Emily’s single-minded quest for vengeance has led her to believe, and this show does particularly well with developing multiple points of view and letting us see different sides to the story we initially get from Emily.
Stereotype-breaking complex characterization of morally ambiguous women is especially what makes me love this show. It pulls no punches in Emily’s hardcoreness, and even as I find myself surprised by the depths to which she's willing to sink, I find myself falling more and more in love with her, and just being FLAILY over her awesome, awesome BRAIN. It’s taken Emily years to work her plan into perfection and as more and more of it unravels, it’s fascinating to see the layers being added to her characterization, even as she remains incredibly chilling and creepy in her pursuit.
And then there's Victoria Grayson, who, like Emily, maintains a horde of her own secrets, keeping a perfect façade in place as the decides the fate of others in the community and in her life. She's wonderfully complex, manipulative and vulnerable in turns. She is easily the most sympathetically developed character in the entire series, and I love how this show is spending so much time on developing the complexity of its primary antagonist. We don’t yet know the reasons for which Victoria did what she did, but we’ve been provided with enough information to find her sympathetic and to know that she had her reasons, which is quite a feat. Most importantly, this show is firmly focused on characterization as its primary concern, and while maintaining plot suspense is something it does very well, it never sacrifices characterization to service plot twists/suspense.
The way these two women manipulate their environments and the people around them -- the ones they're using for their own gains and especially the ones they love -- is ridiculously fun to watch. They aren’t the only women in the show, or the only ones central to the arc, but they are, predictably, the ones most pertinent to my own interests. Emily, who has dedicated so much of her life to vengeance that she can’t do anything but finish what she started, and Victoria, who is wonderfully complex, sympathetic, and unwillingly to give up any of her power, are both being developed in complex, parallel arcs, and I can’t wait to see where their journeys lead.
So, in conclusion, WATCH THIS SHOW.
Dear World, I have a huge thing for revenge narratives, as long as they're being headed by women. I have been obsessed with Medea since middle school, and my instant love for heroines willing to make the world PAY for what it did to them has never, ever lessened even a bit. And the more I consume fiction where women are supposed to forgive, forget, move on, the more this love grows. Be it the “Roaring Rampage of Revenge” kind or the "Better Served Cold" type, from The Oresteia to Kill Bill, I have probably loved them all.
Revenge opens with the following Chinese proverb, “He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself.” This is a huge part of why I love revenge narratives, because um, HI WORLD, I have a thing for obsessive, self-destructive heroines. I also have a thing for stoic heroines who keep their emotions and issues buried so deeply that you almost believe they don’t have any until everything threatens to come crashing down. And I love morally ambiguous older women in positions of power. This show gives me all of this with Bechdel passing and a pretty solid script.
Based loosely on Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Revenge updates this story and reimagines it with a woman as its protagonist. When she was a young girl, Amanda Clarke’s father was framed for a crime he didn’t commit, a conspiracy that a large number of people in the Hamptons seem to have been in on. In the pilot, Amanda, now calling herself Emily Throne (and referred to as such by the rest of this review), returns to the Hamptons and starts working on making herself an important part of the community so she can take it apart from the inside.
Heading Emily’s list of people who need to be brought down is Victoria Grayson, the queen of the Hamtons’ social circle, the woman her father loved and who betrayed him. However, things aren’t as simple as Emily’s single-minded quest for vengeance has led her to believe, and this show does particularly well with developing multiple points of view and letting us see different sides to the story we initially get from Emily.
Stereotype-breaking complex characterization of morally ambiguous women is especially what makes me love this show. It pulls no punches in Emily’s hardcoreness, and even as I find myself surprised by the depths to which she's willing to sink, I find myself falling more and more in love with her, and just being FLAILY over her awesome, awesome BRAIN. It’s taken Emily years to work her plan into perfection and as more and more of it unravels, it’s fascinating to see the layers being added to her characterization, even as she remains incredibly chilling and creepy in her pursuit.
And then there's Victoria Grayson, who, like Emily, maintains a horde of her own secrets, keeping a perfect façade in place as the decides the fate of others in the community and in her life. She's wonderfully complex, manipulative and vulnerable in turns. She is easily the most sympathetically developed character in the entire series, and I love how this show is spending so much time on developing the complexity of its primary antagonist. We don’t yet know the reasons for which Victoria did what she did, but we’ve been provided with enough information to find her sympathetic and to know that she had her reasons, which is quite a feat. Most importantly, this show is firmly focused on characterization as its primary concern, and while maintaining plot suspense is something it does very well, it never sacrifices characterization to service plot twists/suspense.
The way these two women manipulate their environments and the people around them -- the ones they're using for their own gains and especially the ones they love -- is ridiculously fun to watch. They aren’t the only women in the show, or the only ones central to the arc, but they are, predictably, the ones most pertinent to my own interests. Emily, who has dedicated so much of her life to vengeance that she can’t do anything but finish what she started, and Victoria, who is wonderfully complex, sympathetic, and unwillingly to give up any of her power, are both being developed in complex, parallel arcs, and I can’t wait to see where their journeys lead.
So, in conclusion, WATCH THIS SHOW.