After a few too many dire prestige miniseries this past year, I needed some trash television. Trash television has many categories and levels of quality, and when I want trash I want the good trash. And there is perhaps nothing as expertly engineered to deliver cheap melodrama like the prime time network soap opera. Hence, ABC's "Revenge," which is "The Count of Monte Cristo" by way of the Hamptons, with Emily Van Camp in a killer wardrobe standing in for Edmond Dantes. It's been on my "To Watch" list for a long time.
It's been a while since I've watched much network television, and it took a while for me to adjust to the very different rhythms of the writing. Characters are constantly recapping their actions and re-explaining their relationships to each other to bring the slower and more inattentive viewers up to speed. All the performances are very broad, very campy, and totally unrealistic. Of course, this is the point. We want to watch Van Camp's Emily Thorne infiltrate and take down the wealthy Grayson family, who framed and ruined her innocent father (James Tupper). We want to watch her and Madeline Stowe's queen bee, Victoria Grayson, glower at each other in every episode as they maneuver and machinate to get what they want.
While I have little interest in Emily's love triangle with Victoria's son Daniel (Josh Bowman), and the struggling blue collar everyman, Jack (Nick Wechsler), or the even more maudlin puppy love that develops between Daniel and Jack's siblings, poor little rich girl Charlotte (Christa B. Allen) and hotheaded Declan (Conner Paolo) - "Revenge" still offers me plenty. There's the catty girl talk between Emily and her party planner gal pal Ashley (Ashley Madekwe). There's Emily's tentative alliance with the suspicious tech genius billionaire Nolan Ross (Gabriel Mann, who is styled like a young James Spader). There's Victoria's evil bestie Lydia (Amber Valetta), who turns out to have been having an affair with Victoria's husband Conrad (Henry Czerny), and becomes another figure seeking sweet revenge.
The show is so shameless about its melodramatic aims, I'm obliged to let certain things slide, like Victoria and her daughter being made up to look practically the same age, Nolan essentially having tech nerd superpowers, and a certain dog who definitely ought to be dead by now. Nobody in this show talks remotely like a human being, constantly rattling off exposition and repeating the really important information multiple times. To distract from this, there's so much obscene eye candy in the show. The Graysons are constantly throwing or planning fancy parties and nobody ever wears the same outfit twice. There are spats over expensive boats, cars, and real estate. Jewelry frequently carries important symbolism. Even Jack's struggling bar looks picture perfect.
And, of course, there are the affairs, the betrayals, the horrible accidents, the cover-ups, the dramatic falling outs, and the disgusting privileged behavior of people with way too much money. There's the will-they-won't-they of the relationships, the old dark secrets, and the constant waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is a network show, so there are twenty-plus episodes a season to fill, and the big revelations come pretty slow. "Revenge" has been pretty good about managing its filler so far, but we're nowhere close to circling back to the opening scene of the first episode, where a shocking murder appears to take place at Emily and Daniel's engagement party. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't actually get a resolution to that until the second season.
"Revenge" is so easy to watch, I find myself bingeing it almost by accident. This is not a show that I'd bother following every week, but it is absolutely fantastic for filling a chunk of time - especially since it's an older program where I can skip over credits and recaps, zap the commercials, and even fast forward through the boring parts without guilt. I'm glad I waited until now to watch, because the biggest laughs I've gotten so far are from the occasional ten year-old pop culture reference and the fact that everybody is using Blackberry products.
Once I'm done with this show, I'm kind of curious about some of the others in the same genre, like "Scandal" and "How to Get Away With Murder." I feel I've been taking my media too seriously lately, and it wouldn't be so bad to indulge in more trash.
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