Credit: ABC
I am mad, for two reasons. First, the whole “Eli started the fire, but not really, he just relit Amanda’s, which I guess counts?” thing that happened. Second, last week “Revenge” promised that the last five minutes of tonight’s episode would be explosive. And while yeah, it was I guess a revelation, but was it explosive? No. Am I peeved? Yeah.
OK, to the recap. Tonight, we meet Meredith Hayward (shoutout to another Meredith), who was Eli and Amanda’s foster mom. Apparently she was a bitch who took government money for herself and locked her foster kids in a Hansel and Gretel-style metal cupboard. Tonight, we take her down.
Aidan tells Amanda that Daniel’s gotten quiet since promoting him. It won’t last forever, Amanda says. Daniel will need someone to confide in about all his problems. Aidan knows that someone will be Amanda. So, Daniel books a table at a small restaurant where no one will recognize them, and even refers to her as “Mr. Taylor” so that his assistant Grace doesn’t catch on.
Elsewhere, Conrad’s political polling numbers are terrible, and Eli has a way of both raising money for the Amanda foundation and restoring Conrad’s good name: donating to Meredith Hayward’s house for foster kids. Amanda, who Eli hired to help out on the committee (much to the chagrin of Victoria), will join Eli to give Meredith the good news.
Padma gets an order that she must drop off the Carrion program in three days. Nolan swears he won’t let her or her dad get hurt, and adds that they’re gonna need backup in the name of Aidan. And huzzah, an animal flashdrive returns! This time as a turtle USB with a removable head that serves as a tracking device. Aidan plans to kill the terrorists going after Padma and her father, but he’s got some bad news: In order to keep Padma safe, she’ll have to take on a new identity, possibly keeping her forever separated from her one true love, Nolan!
Elsewhere, Amanda wants to know Eli’s endgame. Meredith was horrible to him, why do they want to help her? Turns out she saved letters that David Clarke wrote to Amanda, and Eli wants to get them back for her. Eli made a promise to look out for Amanda, you guys! Meredith deserves to be punished, too. OK, Amanda’s down for the mission, but being the control-freak she is, she wants to do things her way.
Speaking of freak, Amanda freaks out to Nolan about the letters. Had she known about them, she would have written back, and maybe her whole life would be different.
Declan walks in on a snoozing Jack, who can’t get any answers about the Ryan brothers and the night Emily died. Declan’s got an idea. He’ll swipe the Nolans’ nephew’s cell phone (remember, Declan “robbed” their house with him over the summer) and text Kenny to meet somewhere — only when he shows, it’ll be Jack meeting him, not his nephew.
Nolan tells Padma about the new identities plan, and they’re both very sad about it. Then they both say “I love you”! How cute. I hope these two stay safe.
At the Hayward House, Amanda sneaks off downstairs to the basement and finds the metal cupboard hidden behind a bookshelf. Cut to Meredith at the Graysons, going over the details of how she’ll get her money the next day. It’ll pay off her mortgage and ensure that future generations of foster kids are taken care of.
At the Stowaway, Conrad asks Jack to be his “Joe the Plumber” — a poor guy asking others to vote for the rich guy. Outside of Montauk, Amanda and Daniel meet, and he confides in her (as expected) that Aidan is set up to take the fall for the Graysons. Yikes! This is bad news to Amanda, though Daniel ensures it’s not about jealousy. Just then, her phone rings: It’s Aidan, and the meet time for Padma has been moved up — they need to drop off Carrion in a half hour, but oh no, there’s no way Amanda will be able to make it because she’s so far away. Nolan and Aidan will have to do this one themselves.
Nolan is panting heavily as they load their guns from the rooftop above Padma, to the annoyance of Aidan. Then comes my favorite line of the night, no surprise it’s from Nolan: “I’m sorry to bother you, Lee Harvey, I guess I get nervous when I’m about kill people.” Their main goal is to keep Padma safe, but that’s not what happens. Trask comes and gets Carrion from her, but when she asks to see her father, they kidnap her in the back of their van. They take her to a warehouse, where she can hear that her dad is still alive, but they put her in front of a video camera instead of reuniting them.
So Jack confronts Kenny at the park about the night Emily died, but of course Kenny has no idea what’s going on, because he wasn’t really the one who saved him. Instead, I think he’s going to help Jack. Jack tells him this is his chance to prove that he’s different from his brother. Kenny tells Jack that Nate taped all of his conversations with the Graysons, and Jack wants to get a hold on those tapes.
At the presser for Hayward House, instead of toasting to Meredith, Eli exposes her wicked ways, and even has other past Hayward kids in the crowd to attest to her criminal behavior. But Meredith turns the tables on him: She’s like, why don’t you tell everyone that you started the fire that burned down the house, not Amanda Clarke?
Well, this is (somehow) news to Amanda? That she didn’t start the fire that she actually did? OK… hmm… a little bit of a stretch here, “Revenge.” Well, anyways, Amanda is beyond pissed (somehow) to learn the truth — again, her whole life could have been different! Eli’s just trying to make things right between the two of them, he says. She wants him to go.
Aw nuts, Aidan and Nolan track the device, but the Initiative is one step ahead of them — they’ve left the turtle head for the two guys, just to show they knew the whole time what they were up to.
Jack and Declan listen to the Grayson/Ryan tapes and yup, it’s pretty clear that Grayson practically ordered a hit on Jack. But what’s the leverage, Declan’s wondering? Jack starts to explain that Amanda was collecting evidence against Conrad for something, and she used it to blackmail him so that she could get the Stowaway back for them. Declan wants to go the police, but Jack says they can’t trust the cops, just each other. Now he knows Conrad was behind Nate being on the boat, and wants some paper proof of a contract. Declan wonders how Jack will get a hold of a contract, but Jack’s got an idea — accept Conrad’s offer to join the political campaign.
Eli gets some alone time with Meredith. They took her kids away from her and are gonna open an investigation. Eli says he owes Amanda, and that’s in fact why he’s here.
Nolan catches up with Amanda, and she expresses remorse for not helping them earlier that day. Nolan assures her it wouldn’t have mattered, that they were ahead of them the whole way, and Amanda says he can’t give up on Padma, and that he’s the only one who can save her, even if it takes weeks of coding. She vows to help him. Eli calls and Nolan insists she take it—he’s got some coding to start.
On the phone, Eli tells Amanda he’s gonna get her letters back. We can hear Meredith howling from the metal cupboard in the background. Revenge! Amanda goes through her revenge box and x’s out Meredith’s picture. When Eli gets to her house, he says he won’t be able to bring the letters after all, because Meredith sold them years ago. He wonders if she will forgive him, and she replies (wearing a serious power suit) that what’s done is done. But she does thank him?
While coding, Nolan comes across the Falcon’s signature. The Initiative must have hired him off the Graysons. Meanwhile, at Daniel’s office, someone mails Daniel a picture of he and Amanda at their clandestine lunch meeting, plus two bullets. Ominous! Who is this note from? Cut to Victoria’s bullet stash (hidden in her jewelry box, because she is a lady) conveniently boasting two open spaces.
Our final scene of the night has Amanda visiting Mason in jail. She wants the letters he bought off of Meredith, but no can do, he says, for they burnt to the ground when she burned down his house last season. Potential roadblock, but Amanda’s sure Mason must remember the content of the letters. But what’s in it for him, Mason wonders, if he shares this juicy info? She reminds him that she’s the only one in charge of whether he stays in jail or gets freed. Well, OK, he complies. He says that David was worried that Amanda was at “some Dickensian foster home,” because he saw someone else give up their kid to a gross foster home — a 16-year-old girl who would eventually become very close to David. Victoria, of course! Yes, that’s right: The big revelation is that Victoria has another son. Another tiny plot twist, I suppose. But where’s the real drama here? Maybe we’ll find out next week (but probably not).
