Revenge season 4 thread (1 Viewer)

The fourth season of ABC's increasingly ludicrous vengance-driven prime time soap premieres tonight.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, star Emily Van Camp notes that the season ending revelation that David Clarke is in fact still alive was a twist that creator Mike Kelly was "absolutely" against. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it might have been a factor in his departure from the series.

It's such a betrayal of the bedrock of the show and the characters as they were presented to us that I don't know if I'll be sticking it out this season. I will, however, be giving the season premiere a shot to see where they take it.

Yeah, I don't like that twist much either, but I'll see how it goes a while. I've been somewhat disenchanted with the show a while, but I like Madeleine Stowe so much that I've hung in there.

I guess some of the characters decided to go to a different hair stylist during the 6-months passed, to varying results.

This show is on life-support with me nowadays after they brought back the dad.

Adam Lenhardt said:

It's such a betrayal of the bedrock of the show and the characters as they were presented to us that I don't know if I'll be sticking it out this season. I will, however, be giving the season premiere a shot to see where they take it.

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Yes. It undermines everything. Without his death, Emily is lost. Her self-destructive path of destruction was pointless. Without his death, David Clarke is a true monster.

Despite my apprehensions, the season started well. I was thankful for the recap, since I was pretty lost at the end of last season; all the more so after the summer break.

The most interesting story forward is the one we were positing last season: Emily becomes the villain and destroys herself. They toyed with that idea last year, but didn't commit to it. Again, they're toying with it, flirting with the idea. But I don't believe the show runner is brave (or crazy) enough to embrace it.

It seems to me that David knows nothing about the Revenge box. In which case, Nolan's got some explaining to do.

Last night's was the worst episode they've ever done - and yes, I saw the ones with Jennifer Jason Leigh. Charlotte has always been a useless character - they should have offed her the same time they got rid of Declan. And while I hold out hope that David is just playing Victoria, right now it appears they have already ruined his character.

OK, now that's more like it. Very intrigued to see where they go from here. And at this point I would be shocked if Conrad was not still alive. That reveal will probably be the fall season finale.

I liked the ending of last night's episode, too. It's always interesting when cold and calculating characters make a purely emotional decision. Interestingly, her outburst probably convinced him of who she was better than any scheme she could have come up with would have.I agree about Conrad. Once David was still alive, it was a single that this show pretty much follows the comic book/daytime soap version of death; nobody's dead unless you see the body, and sometimes not even then.

Back at the end of season 3, I first thought this show "jumped the shark". The original premise seemed to have changed completely.

Nevertheless, season 4 has kept my attention so far.

Wonder how this show will go forward, now that father and daughter are together again. Hopefully this isn't another "shark jumping" moment.

Charlotte Grayson is gone from the show completely?

https://twitter.com/christabrittany/status/532027686223638530

Christa B. Allen was written off of the show and dropped as a series regular, but I wouldn't be surprised to see her turn up again for the last run of episodes.

Another good episode tonight, I thought. While I haven't been very pleased with David's reaction to the truth thus far, I really enjoyed how he got to see his superhero daughter in action.

After ignoring Revenge for several weeks, I finally decided to continue watching the second half of this season. Going into it, I was losing interest. I thought bringing back David Clarke was a terrible idea.


The second half has been a roaring success to me! Maybe I needed some time away, but I feel the plot coalesced into a tightly focused story. Almost everything is working right. And this week's semi-climax was terribly exciting and stressful.


If you've been putting it off, give it a try. It's been a good six or so episode run.

No posts since January? Well, tonight's episode was extraordinary - and a reminder of what made this show so compelling in the first place. Looking forward to finding out whose hand that was in the last scene.

I'm again caught up. But I've been putting Revenge off; it's fallen to second to last show I'll watch, after everything else is watched.

The last two episodes have been very frustrating. The lie about Daniel didn't make sense as a decision originally. All the drama and plot machinations derived from it have subsequently been tedious television.

And the Louise plot, unexpectedly interesting, returned to random actions by a random character. She doesn't make any sense to me.

But last week's episode was a well done retrospective (clip) show. It reminded me of where we've been, and taking advantage of strong emotional moments to draw me back into the show.

And it concludes with Margaux reversing her reversal. I hope the final four end strong. I want to finish this show feeling good, not annoyed.

This episode was very strong in key aspects: the story I've been waiting for for two years is happening: Emily's life is imploding.

It's far too late now to tell the story they set up season 1 - Emily takes down the Graysons for what they did to her father. With all the meandering and fringe characters and then the revival of David Clarke, the series gave us the payoff in bits and pieces, so it wasn't nearly as satisfying as it should have been.


The other issue is how they're trying to make Emily the villlain and Victoria a victim. I liked this last episode and was genuninely shocked at the final scene, but it's just not the show it should have been.

I just hope they don't force Jack/Amanda on us thinking that's what the viewers want. She was going to marry Aiden for goodness sakes; Jack deserves better.


I know the show supposedly won't know their fate until May, but I'm sure they already know. Talk about burning your bridges.

Burn those bridges! I'm hoping the series is fully done this year. I don't want another season. And i do want a story conclusion.

ABC puts "Revenge" out of its misery


The episodes have been piling up on my DVR, but I haven't watched since Margaux revealed she was pregnant with Daniel's baby. The show's sort of been on thin ice since Sunil Nayar replaced Mike Kelley as showrunner. While the show under Kelley was unabashedly a primetime soap, it had greater ambitions with Phillip Noyce as producing director, the Count of Monte Cristo thematic overtones, and the feeling of one story with a definite beginning, middle and end.


I know a lot of people were frustrated by what they felt was an overly convoluted second season but, having binge watched it on Netflix, I thought it played well and ended with a terrific cliffhanger of a finale.


And then when Nayar took over for the third season, the characters lost a lot of their complexity and spark. Most of the game changing cliffhangers were reset so that, with the exception of Declan's death, things returned to the same old status quo.


My interest further waned as they slowly wrote out the original characters who were directly tied into the twisted tale of Amanda Clarke and replaced them with stock soap opera characters that felt very disconnected from Amanda's story. Killing off Aiden, whose retcon introduction was one of the second season's biggest missteps, was a smart move. But I couldn't muster any interest in Margaux LeMarchal (the exotic foreign businesswoman), Ben Hunter (the handsome but psychologically boring police officer) or Louise Ellis-Ross (the unstable Southern belle).


Resurrecting David Clarke, something Kelley pledged never to do, was a big ask of the audience. And nothing they did with the character in the fourth season episodes I watched justified such a betrayal of the show's core premise. The death of Conrad robbed the show of its most formidable antagonist, and robbed Victoria of her highest-caliber sparring partner. As part of a finite five season plan, the loss of the character might have been worth it. But here it just seemed like a means to make room for more of the two-dimensional soap opera archetypes.