Revenge Recap: “Lineage”

by Jessica Grafer:

Revenge Recap: “Lineage”
Original Air Date (ABC): Sunday November 25, 2012
Season 2 Episode 8

After a week off this episode sure threw me for a loop.  We kept jumping between the past and the present.  I found it a little bit hard to follow.  We did learn a lot of information about what made the characters who they are today.

We start in November 2006.  Emily is on a mission and Aiden is working as a bartender.  They don’t know each other yet but they have instant chemistry.  Well, Aiden is definitely drawn to Emily.  She’s pretty focused on the mission at hand.  Getting close to this Dimitri guy to get him to talk about the crash of Flight 197.  Aiden also wants Dimitri but for different reasons.  He tells Emily to get out of there, it’s not safe.  She can take care of herself she tells him.  In this nightclub Emily also meets Ashley for the first time.  Ashley is young and out of money and options.  She figures she can play high price hooker for a night to help make ends meet.  Emily tells her these guys traffic in young girls.  It’s not a night it’s a lifetime.  Emily gives Ashley money and asks her to text her with the time Dimitri is arriving.  Emily then tells Ashley not to come back.  This is how Ashley and Emily becomes friends.  Ashley is in Emily’s debt for saving her from making a huge mistake.  Emily decides to be the young girl Dimitri is looking for when he shows up.  She is keeping in contact with Takedo through an ear piece.  As Dimitri enters Aiden has something for him.  A gun!  A young girl disappeared years ago and Dimitri had something to do with it.  This young girl was Aiden’s sister, Colleen.  Emily needs Dimitri alive so she can question him so he stops Aiden from shooting him.  This puts her in high favor with the Russians.  Aiden however, is taken away to be beaten and questioned.  Emily tells Takedo she can’t leave him like that, she has to save him.  During her rescue attempt however they are caught.  Nice try Emily.

Meanwhile we flash back with the Grayson family.  Everything seems pretty good.  It’s thanskgiving and Daniel is home from college where he’s doing very well in his creative writing class.  He wants to be a poet.  His stuff is really good actually.  Mom and dad are proud, whatever he decides to do.  Somehow this is hard to believe.  Daniel has a surprise for them.  Bam! Victoria’s mom shows up.  Daniel met with her a couple weeks ago and thought it would be nice to reconnect everyone.  Mom wants to mend fences with Victoria.  Victoria holds a brave face.   She tells all at the table, including mom’s newest boyfriend the story of why fences need to be mended.  It’s a doozy.  We flash back even farther to when she was 15.  Mom has a wealthy boyfriend who isn’t ready to settle down with a kid.  He likes Victoria, actually a little too much for mom’s liking, he just doesn’t want to be a dad right now.  He tries to leave and Marion, mommy dearest, shoots him.  She just can’t let him go.  She can’t take the fall for this either.  Marion convinces Victoria who, at this point is a good, non-cynical girl, to take the gun and shoot him again.  Victoria will take the fall.  She’s only 15 and mom will say he came in and attacked her so Victoria shot him.  Everything will be ok.  Except that your child is scarred for life!  Victoria isn’t charged with the crime but she is sent away for 6 months.  When she comes back mom has a new boyfriend.  A pedophile that took to sneaking in Victoria’s room.  When Marion caught him did she kick him out for abusing her daughter?  No, she kicked Victoria out for ruining everything good in her life.  This kind of explains why Victoria is such a brutal hardass.  On her own since 15.  After hearing this it’s no surprise everyone hates Marion.  Her date leaves telling her he wants to get as far away from her as possible.  Marion has nothing and nowhere to go.  Victoria doesn’t give a you know what.  She tells her mom that “pity’s not a quality you’ve taught me” as she shows her the door.  Upstairs Conrad is burning the poems he told Daniel that he would send to an editor.  He wants to make sure he takes over Grayson Global.  Well, you’re getting your wish aren’t you Conrad.

We heard that Carl Porter wasn’t as good a person as his sons and now we find out why.  Back in the day a group was eliciting protection money from all the businesses on the wharf.  Carl says he won’t pay.  He gets a fire bomb through the bar window but that’s put out pretty quickly and hopefully that’s the end of that.  Carl decides to pay them.  He doesn’t want Jack and Declan to get hurt.  His friend Matt Duncan shows up while Carl is paying the guy off.  Duncan shoots and kills the mob guy.  They put his daughter in the emergency room.  Now Carl is stuck helping his friend cover up for this dead body.  I’m thinking that’s why they are after the Porter’s bar and assets now.  It doesn’t matter that dad’s dead.  In fact it probably makes it easier.

Nolan back in the day is happy go lucky and Nolcorp is going public.  Woo hoo!  He also has a boyfriend.  They seem really happy together which makes me wonder, why the switch to Padma?  And he also happens to be the CFO.  Nolan must have a thing for people with good minds for money.  Marco, the boyfriend, asks Nolan about a Cayman account that had $500, 000,000 of the company’s assets in it.  That account is now empty.  Nolan tells him he had that money put aside for David Clarke’s daughter.  Marco flips out because he believes Clarke is a terrorist.  This is the end of Nolan and Marco.  Nolan has remained loyal to the Clarke family since day one.  He’s received a lot of pain and heartache for that.  Unfortunately there’s more to come.

Back in the New York nightclub Dimitri is walking Emily and Aiden out through the crowded club.  I’m kind of surprised they didn’t use the back door.  Being in the club allowed Takedo to come and help Emily and Aiden escape.  Aiden catches up with a fleeing Dimitri outside and shoots him in the leg.  He’s going to kill him but Emily convinces him not to.  That is until Dimitri continues to taunt Aiden about Colleen.  Aiden ends up shooting him in the head.  Emily isn’t mad about this.  She isn’t cynical yet.  She understands how hurt Aiden is.

We end this episode in the present day.  Emily and Aiden are in bed.  Emily looks so happy.  I’m glad.  Finally she doesn’t seem fake.  She tells Aiden he better not disappear on her again.  He says, “I won’t Amanda”.  She doesn’t correct him for calling her that and I love it.  It shows their deep connection.  Daniel is busy working on his take over.  He calls a face from the past, Marco.  Daniel wants some info on the investments of Nolcorp.  Marco has not let the past go and it looks like he might spill everything to Daniel.  This will be huge for Emily/Amanda because Nolan told him that money was for her.  Yikes.

In the morning more surprises as Emily pulls out her wooden box with her whole past in it to show to Aiden.  This is it.  She’s finally opening up.  Aiden looks at the box and at the tattoo on Emily’s wrist.  Double infinity.  A journey with no end.

Jessica Grafer has loved the “darker” things since she was old enough to pick her own books. She is a contributor for DarkMedia who will be covering Revenge and 666 Park Avenue. She loves to walk the book store shelves and pick up whatever catches her eye. She is a movie lover with a great range in her tastes, and appreciation for all genres. Jessica is a writer and has several things in the works. You can follow her quirky Twitter posts at @scarletbe and check out her blog.