Psych! That’s how I felt (finally) watching the engagement party play out only to find out Tyler was the poor dead schmuck on the beach. It’s not so much that I’d preferred it was Daniel, but it was fairly obvious that it had to be, it was going to be, so the fact that it wasn’t made it a rug pull. Boo!
Aside from that, Jack is rather emboldened by Amanda’s departure, and after he finds one of the Treadwell tapes under his bed, he enlists Nolan’s help to watch it, and is rather wrecked to see the young Amanda he knew and loved so distraught about Victoria. He then goes completely off the rails at the Grayson engagement dinner and vents at Victoria for leaving Amanda in the system (which has been my gripe all along—she abandoned a little girl).
In the midst of that dinner, Charlotte also gets outed as the secret Clarke love child and then falls into a bottle (of booze and then pills) until Declan sets her straight. He offers to help her see a therapist and then stupidly tells her grandpa (William Devane!), who blows into town and essentially tells her to buck up, little camper.
Grandpa Grayson is rather tight with Victoria, and we find out he’d like the whole divorce with Conrad to resolve amicably to save the Grayson name. When that looks unlikely, he’s ready to hand leadership of the company off to Daniel, who is understandably rattled at the idea. He’d rather run off with Emily to Paris, but she puts a pin in that. We also learn that she was at college with him, although she was a mousy, bookish brunette then, and he was loaded, so he doesn’t remember her.
Emily’s in a bit of a pickle when Nolan goes against her to show Jack the tape. She has to finesse things with a very angry Amanda, who gets kidnapped by a nutty Tyler, who also makes the dumbass play of stealing the infinity box from the floorboards at Emily’s and ransoming Amanda for it. That goes sideways when Tyler ends up in cahoots with Amanda and Emily has to work her way around that to a sort of truth (and truce) with Amanda.
Jack, meanwhile, gets an offer to come to Haiti (the trip he derailed when his dad died) and this time, with Declan’s blessing, he decides to go. In a sweet scene, he says goodbye to Emily and leaves Sammy with her. Amanda gets away from Tyler (but not unscathed by gunfire) and shows up at the boat as Jack is packing. She tells him what he’s meant to her and that she wants to go with him, but she needs to go up to the bar and will be right back. That all sounds way too easy, and it is, because when she pulls away from him, he has blood on his hands. He looks up in time to see her jumping into a cab.
Jack follows the cab and winds up at the beach. He hears two shots and hauls ass out to the water where Amanda is crouched over a body with two bullets in the back. He asks her what she did and she stammers a partial answer before he tells her to go. He sends her up to his truck, which she can’t start and then Takeda (who’s somehow also just returned the infinity box to Emily) conveniently drives by and offers her a ride.
Jack drags the body into the dunes and as the phone on the body rings with a call from Emily, he’s spied by Declan and Charlotte. That begets the scene from the pilot where everyone is called to the beach. Only this time, a wailing Victoria flips the body over to find that it’s not actually her son.
We don’t actually see who pulled the trigger but all signs point to a bloody Daniel, who staggers up afterward and who we previously saw confronted on the beach by Tyler offering dish on Emily’s identity. So now it looks like we’re heading into a murder trial (snooze). I hope that’s a misdirect and will only last one episode. We’re in the homestretch so I’d rather we not get off on some side tangent although I am realistic that they have to setup a season two somewhere in there. I’d also like Jack and Emily together sooner than later, but I’m thinking that’s a fairy tale better suited to Once Upon a Time. A girl can dream.
Revenge returns tonight after a one-week hiatus for pre-Oscar programming.
Photo Courtesy of ABC