After a very long seven week hiatus, Revenge is back y’all! And last night’s episode, “Doubt,” got us back into the spirit of crazy-ass, soapy, twisty revenge-getting by having not one, but two events of the week, and introducing a Tall, Dark Stranger, played by James Purefoy, whose IMDB picture does him absolutely no justice. Who is also an artist. A criminal artist. With a British accent that, if you close your eyes or aren’t looking at the TV when he’s speaking, sounds a whole lot like Michael Cain.

But, you guys, what’s really important is that we have the man-pretty that is Joshua Bowman and Gabriel Mann and Nick Weschler on our TVs each week. Man have I missed them. Most specifically Gabriel Manns Nolan and his fabulous socks. And fabulous quotes. And fabulous everything.

What surprised me a little more though is that I realized that I also really missed Miss Emanda Clorne. Even though there are lots of women on TV these days, there’s not a character quite like her anywhere else. (Ok, maybe a case could be made for Scandal’s Olivia Pope, but that is still yet to be seen. Or maybe one of the chicks in Nikita.) I mean, she is seriously kick-ass. The more I watch this show, the more I adore her. I might have to put her up on the shiny shelf of my TV loves next to Buffy Summers and Veronica Mars. Yeah. That’s how serious I am about this.

But enough about that. Let’s talk about the show!

Event of the Week 1: Bust Daniel Out of Riker’s, Rich People-Style

So, Daniel is at Riker’s. He has a picture of his darling Emanda and he writes her a letter begging her to stand by him and believe that he didn’t murder Tyler. And of course Emanda believes him. She’s extremely pissed at herself for losing her focus and allowing herself to get too emotionally involved. But, then again, at this point isn’t it good that she’s emotionally involved? I mean, if her feelings for Daniel are real, then of course they’re going to fuel her along and now she can get DOUBLE REVENGE on the Graysons, first by ruining their lives and then by making their beloved golden child of a son love her and marry her and make babies with her. In a way, the latter is the better revenge, right? Yes, I think so.

So anyway, Victoria is hell-bent on getting Daniel out of Riker’s as soon as possible. To that end, she’s giving her attorneys basically any name of anyone in the Hamptons that she doesn’t like and manipulating sketch artists and her daughter’s drug-addled memory to do so. But Charlotte isn’t so keen on this. She insists that since it was dark she didn’t get a good look at the mysterious hooded figure on the beach that she and Declan saw at the Murder Party. But Victoria, who is looking mighty sexy in her see-through lace top and black bra, uses that to mean that the mysterious hooded figure could have been a woman with her hair tucked into the hood, aka the oh-so murderous Amanda Clarke. Or, in case another name is needed, her obviously equally guilty of committing murder lover/bar-owning hooligan Jack Porter. When Emanda and Ashley see the sketch of Jack, Emanda gives Victoria some serious stabby eyes. But she quickly recovers after Conrad suggests that they find a good spin-doctor to help out with publicity. Emanda knows the perfect person—good ol’ Mason Treadwell. She suggests that his coverage of the Murder Party would be a fitting revitalization of his career.

So Emanda puts Nolan, who brings Emanda a croissanwich (jealous), on the job to go and find Treadwell and talk him into covering the Grayson story once again. But Nolan also knows that their dear friend Jack Porter is going banana-pants crazy over the disappearance of Amily and the mystery of the money wire. He urges Emanda just to come clean to Jack so that they can abscond away together, but she is steadfast in her unwillingness to do that. She suggests that Nolan urge Jack to look into the Montreal bank so that he can possibly get some sort of closure.

So Nolan, who is wearing fancy orange socks, does just as he’s supposed to. He tracks down Treadwell, who has taken up drinking and moping about because he’ll never write again and he just knows that that meanie Amanda Clarke made his house explode. But Nolan informs Treadwell, who up to this point somehow knew nothing of the Murder Party (I bet he’s one of those people who refuses to watch TV.), of the events that have transpired and that the Graysons are trying to pin Tyler’s murder on Amanda Clarke. Treadwell totally takes the bait and heads to Grayson Manor, where he is welcomed with open arms, a website to publish his articles independently (because selling the story to a high-end magazine would take too long to publish.), and use of the East Wing.

Now that Treadwell is on the job and in full-on reporter mode, he heads to the bar, looking a whole lot like a ventriloquist dummy, to interview Jack, hoping that Jack will implicate Amanda Clarke to clear his own name. Instead Jack kicks him out of the bar. But not before Declan agrees to tell his story to Treadwell, including the juicy tidbits about Charlotte being all hyped up on pain pills and champagne. Of course, Treadwell writes a tell-all post about it, making Charlotte look like an unreliable witness, blowing any chance of pinning the murder on Amanda Clarke, and possibly sending her brother to jail FOREVER. Or so Victoria informs her. Then Charlotte throws a fit and calls Declan and breaks up with him and then refuses to go to school and instead gets high AGAIN. This girl is so smart, y’all.

So while all of that is percolating, Emanda goes over to Riker’s to visit Daniel, who is nervous and uncomfortable because he knows he’s far too pretty and rich to bode well in prison. So Emanda gives him some pointers on how to, you know, stay alive and not get raped. But what Emanda doesn’t know is that Victoria is working on some things of her own. You see, Queen Bee V knows what’s up. She calls a fixer and arranges for “a message” to be sent to Daniel on the inside. So then we get a nice scene of Daniel in the dark shower. All naked and soapy. It’s totally gratuitous, but I’m good with it. And then there’s a guy whistling. So Daniel turns off the water and wraps a towel around his face and goes out to investigate. He is then ATTACKED by prison hoodlums! AND THEY GO FOR THE FACE! NOT THE FACE, PRISON HOODLUMS! But somehow Daniel’s towel stays on the entire time.

Anyway, because of the orchestrated attack Daniel gets to go home to recover because he’s too high-profile or some shit and the jail people don’t want him to get killed. V is triumphant, but Emanda follows her to a shady NYC bar to meet with the fixer. Emanda takes photos of him and then leaves.

Which brings us to . . .

Event of the Week 2: Victoria’s Lurid Sexcation

A Tall, Dark Stranger sends a drink over at the bar to a “Vickie Harper.” She looks across the bar at him and then all of a sudden they are making out and he’s, like throwing her against a painting and I’m all WTF IS HAPPENING HERE?! But it turns out that this dude is Dominik West, the guy she was with before Conrad. Apparently he was desperately in love with her and she told him she never thought she could love anyone and then she went and married Conrad. Because she’s a money-grubbing hussy. Meanwhile, Dominik made a life of art forgery, probably hung out with Neal Caffrey, and never became the truly successful artist he could have been. He bemoans for awhile and then he and V get back to banging each other senseless.

And then Conrad calls. And Victoria actually answers and listens to Conrad tell her that Daniel has been processed out of Riker’s and is on his way home while Dominik continues to roughly kiss her neck. It’s actually pretty hot.

But then Victoria tells Dominik she has to leave and he gets all sad and sort of emo. But she leaves and goes back to the Hamptons to see her beat-up son, who is very beat-up and under house arrest, complete with boundary-enforcing ankle bracelet.

So now that Daniel is officially out of Riker’s and Victoria is back from her sexcation, she learns all about Treadwell’s article that made Charlotte look like a drug addict and liar. V yells at Charlotte and slaps her and then lays into Treadwell, telling him that he needs to recant his statement. But Treadwell the Ventriloquist Dummy stands up to V and tells her that he’s done being their media puppet (see what I did there?) and he’s in search of the truth. Then he suggests that it was actually Victoria who blew up his nice Hamptons writing cottage, citing evidence he found in his desk drawer, courtesy of Miss Emanda. And to top it all off, he says that he refuses to further follow the Amanda Clarke side of the story because that poor girl doesn’t need any more bad press. Woooo Treadwell!

From there, Emanda goes back to the shady NYC bar, donning a nice ombre brunette wig, and pumps the Riker’s fixer for info on the Graysons. When she has him nice and drunk, she suggests a change of scenery. So they walk out to the alley where his car is and this happens:

HELLS YEAH! I actually thought the girl might kill him, she was kicking him so hard and so often. But after awhile she composes herself, makes an impression of his key, and then leaves.

Back at Grayson Manor, V and Daniel both apologize to each other and then V tells Daniel that she left out a possible suspect’s name—Emanda’s. V mentions that most of the evidence points toward her: it was her gun and she and Daniel had had a fight on the beach earlier that night and he doesn’t quite remember what happened anyway. Then she points out that that little bit of doubt on his part was enough for a jury to convict him. But Daniel knows his mom’s game and tells her that if she points to Emanda as a suspect that he’ll just confess to the whole goddamn thing. And then he stares up at the moon and after a bit calls Emanda, but gets her voicemail. Then he goes out to test the boundaries of his ankle bracelet and stares in the general direction of her house.

At the end of the episode, Dominik calls V on her cell. Conrad walks in as Dominik asks her if he’ll ever see her again and she hangs up on him. Then Conrad calls her out on having an affair and she coolly says, “It’s not an affair if we’re divorced.” Then tells Conrad that she knows he lead Treadwell to the planted tapes that had been in their safe. Conrad tells her she’s delusional, which is I’m sure exactly what Emanda wants him to think.

Other Things

• I’m really sick of banana-pants crazy Jack. I want Awesome, Perfect, Porch Swing-Fixing Jack back. Please, show?
• I really loved Emanda’s voiceover at the end of the episode. Mostly this part: “In society women are referred to as the fairer sex. but in the wild, the female species can be far more ferocious than their male counterparts.” That is basically the theme of this show, right?
• I’m also really interested in the whole Daniel is suspicious of Emanda storyline that seems to be bubbling up. That’s going to make for some nice Emanda maneuvering, me thinks.
• I want more of the Ashley awesomeness that was sort of starting to happen before hiatus. Because, I know I sound like a broken record, but I think that girl is going to be the dark horse character of the show.
• This photo. It’s too much. It shall now be my desktop background.
  

Whew! So that was the first episode back from hiatus! What did you think of it? What are your thoughts and theories about where all of the roads are leading? Tell me about all of it in comments!