Episode 03 | Aired Oct 14, 2012

The Graysons enjoy "pain du mis," we learn madami about Emily and Aiden's past, and the white-haired man gets a name!
sa pamamagitan ng Tara Fowler at EW


"In a race between danger and indecision, the difference between life and death comes down to confidence. Faith in our abilities, certainty in ourselves and the trust we put in others." Those were the opening lines of this week's Revenge. And yet, for all of her preaching, Emily didn't seem all that confident. Now that the possibility of finding her mother is within reach, she seems to be losing her grip.

"Confidence" opens with Aiden and Emily racing through a maze worthy of The Shining. And just what are they running for their lives from? Really adorable dogs. (Were there no German Shepherds available?) They climb up and over the edge of a pader out of the maze where Takeda is waiting. Emily’s in the lead, but then Aiden stumbles, claiming he has a broken ankle. Ems goes all Harry Potter on him and tries to help him up, but unlike Cedric Diggory, Aiden isn’t really injured and he darts past her to capture the flag. Takeda commends this unsportsmanlike move. “Lose your compassion,” he tells Emily. “No hard feelings?” asks Aiden. No such luck. Emily attacks him for cheating and…

Wham! We’re back where last episode ended. Emily shoves Aiden for killing the white-haired man. He insists she needs his help, looking pointedly at the pool of blood at Emily’s feet (literally -- she’s standing barefoot in it).

The scene cuts to Victoria enjoying a drink while creeping on Emily’s home. Daniel steps out onto the porch and tells Mommie Dearest that the lights and activity over at Ems are nothing to worry about. “She’s cleaning. She does that when she can’t sleep.” Sure, Daniel. Victoria can’t sleep either thanks to all the reporters swarming the place, clamoring for her story. (Side note: I feel like having a helicopter do a fly-by over your tahanan in the middle of the night, floodlight on, must be illegal.) “What is your story?” Daniel asks and Victoria flashes back to the plane. So she did get on it! I thought there would have been a body double switcheroo of some sort. Anyways, while on the plane, Victoria received a phone call from the white-haired man, who warned her that the plane would blow up. He went on to say that getting rid of Conrad would be mutually beneficial to them both and that he’d be happy to take care of it for half of Charlotte’s inheritance. (Poor Charlotte. Everyone wants a piece of that pie.)

Back at Emily’s, the two graduates of revenge school are going through the white-haired man’s pockets. Prepare yourself to look behind the veil because… We now know the assassin’s name! Gordon Murphy. Was it all you hoped it would be? Or did you want something madami sinister, like Ernst Stavro Blofeld? They also find Victoria’s fake passport and a bullet-riddled phone. Emily wants the useless phone anyways because she thinks it could lead to her mother, but Aiden says she needs to forget about her, that she’s distracting her from her mission. And then, like an absolute idiot, he turns his back on Emily to pick up the body. “Are you going to take the head or the feet?” he asks Ems. She beans him with a bottle, knocking him out cold. “The head,” she answers.

In a short aside, we see Declan robbing a rich guy’s tahanan with Trey. How the mighty have fallen. We susunod cut to Amanda, who’s wistfully sniffing at a bottle of Jim Beam. I sympathize, girl. I do the same with desserts when I’m on a diet. (Which is sick, I know.) She can’t sleep because she’s worried about the nursery. charlotte gave her and Jack a $5000 certificate to a baby store, but Jack refuses to take her charity, so for now the baby’s sleeping sa pamamagitan ng the bottles.

It’s breakfast time for the Graysons, who are discussing Victoria’s media blitz. Conrad explains to the children: “Your mother is inviting every buwitre in the sky for a feast, attempting to capitalize on the one thing she’s never really had: sympathy.” Ouch. Ashley hands out a listahan of talking points for the press conference and Victoria informs them they’re all housebound. “One big happy family,” Conrad says wryly and then he asks his someone to pass the “pain du mis.” What is that fancy French dish, you ask? Well…

“It’s toast,” Nolan says of Gordon Murphy’s phone. Clever, Revenge! I pag-ibig it. Anyways, onto the phone. Nolan thinks he might be able to get something off it and Emily says she’ll take whatever she can get. Newly appointed CFO Padma wanders in and is shocked to see Nolan at work on time. Emily leaves and Nolan tries to explain his complicated relationship with her to Padma: “We co-habitate, she asked me to ilipat out. It’s extremely complicated.” Padma looks a little crestfallen. Does someone have a crush?

Aiden wakes in the garbage. He’s about to be compacted in a dumptruck, but rolls out just in time. There’s a ticket to Hapon attached to his sando (Ew, could you imagine presenting that dumpster ticket at security?), a not so subtle reminder from Emily to go away. At the Graysons’, Victoria forbids charlotte from seeing Amanda after discovering the $5000 certificate. Vicky then meets with Emily to go over what she should say to the press, which is absolutely nothing. Emily tells Victoria that she’s concerned about Conrad, but Vicky says not to worry, she’ll “take care” of him. “I’m madami concerned about you, Emily,” she says. Uh oh, does she mean “concerned” in the same way she means she’ll “take care” of Conrad?

Aiden recovers from his dumpster dive with aplomb and goes to visit the motel Gordon Murphy was staying at. (I pag-ibig typing his name. Gordon Murphy.) He pries the central air unit off the pader (Someone’s been watching Dexter!) and finds the black box from the flight Victoria supposedly went down on. (Side note: there are motels in the Hamptons?) Outside the room, he encounters the motel owner. She wants to know what he was doing. Aiden busts out an amazing American accent and tells her he’s cop with the South Hampton police department. He drives off, while the motel owner calls the South Hampton office to check if his story was real. It’s a surprisingly smart ilipat for a motel owner and it should have tipped me off as to her real identity, but apparently I am especially dense. Did you figure it out?

Emily gives Amanda a tweaked journal of her father’s to pass along to Charlotte. Victoria banned Emily from the Graysons’ house earlier in the episode, so she can’t do it herself. Amanda initially refuses because Jack told her to stay away from the Graysons, but Emily blackmails her into going sa pamamagitan ng threatening to tell Jack the baby’s not his. (Even though it is. Lies within lies. At some point even Emily Thorne won’t be able to keep them straight.)

Padma definitely has a thing for Nolan. The two heading out to eat when Nolan gets a call from Emily, whose calling in life seems to have become ruining the romantic relationships of everyone she knows. Nolan’s convo with Emily is nothing new to the viewers -- he calls her “hot,” says he’ll see her soon -- but to Padma it must sound like they’re about to, in the words of the great Sir Mix-A-Lot, “um, double uh, um um til the break of dawn.” Elsewhere, Jack and Emily are discussing paint mga kulay -- Yankee blue or Jets green (Yankee blue! Boo, Jets, go Giants!) -- and he thanks her for all the help she’s ibingiay them.

Nolan arrives at Emily’s with Gordon Murphy’s SIM card only to be attacked sa pamamagitan ng Aiden. “Why does this keep happening to me?” he laments. Emily saves him, takes the SIM card, then unceremoniously kicks him out. Aiden is ruining everything between her and Nolan, just like I thought he would. Grr. Aiden tells Ems he wishes she would just let him help, adding that he understands her pain. We flashback to Hapon again. Aiden’s sister was taken and he needed to win that race because it meant Takeda would let him go rescue her. (Where’s Liam Neeson when you need him?) Emily begged Aiden to let her come along and after a passionate kiss, he agreed. pag-ibig is certainly in the air this week on Revenge.

Back in the present, Aiden offers to trade the flight recorder he found for Gordon Murphy’s stuff. He tells Emily that she won’t like what she finds when she does track down her mother. He understands because it was the same with his sister. Emily doesn’t budge though, so Aiden storms off with the black box. Ems tugs Gordon Murphy’s pocket watch out of her pocket and opens it to display a picture of a woman inside. It’s motel lady! And Emily’s mother. (This is when I put the two together.) Later, she tells Nolan about Gordon Murphy’s death and shows him the picture. Gordon Murphy, it seems, was in pag-ibig with Kara Clarke.

Remember Declan? Well Mr. Ryan (aka Allison’s father from Teen Wolf) discovered that Declan robbed him. He confronts Jack and together they reprimand Declan, who insists that he was alone. (Why are you covering for Trey, Declan?) Mr. Ryan says all is forgiven as long as he returns the stolen stuff. Jack thanks Mr. Ryan and says he owes him a favor. Mr. Ryan says he’ll hold him to that… Ominous.

Amanda gives charlotte the journal, where she learns a terrible secret. (That her mother plotted to kill him, perhaps? It’s unclear.) She confronts Victoria mid-interview, then reveals to the reporter that she’s the daughter of David Clarke. Awkward! Meanwhile, Daniel has discovered that Victoria was never really kidnapped after receiving her fake passport in the mail. He confronts Conrad about his mother planning to leave the country, then realizes that basically everybody knew this but him. Conrad tells the family they actually need to leave due to the threat implicit in the return of the passport -- they think that Gordon Murphy is behind the mailing, not knowing he’s already dead -- but Victoria refuses to go. Now you want to stay, woman!

Daniel confesses to Emily -- who’s somehow managed to wrangle her way into the Graysons’ even though she’s persona non grata -- that he’s done with Victoria. Emily councils him to play the game madami wisely sa pamamagitan ng pretending he’s still in Victoria's thrall. Amanda comes down from Charlotte’s room (Was she up there alone?) ready to make a getaway, but Emily blackmails her into staying. Why? We will see…

Victoria gets up in front of her crowd of vultures, throwing out Ashley’s talking points altogether. She admits that charlotte is David Clarke’s child, then invites her whole family, including the pregnant Amanda, on stage in a display of strength. They stand firmly together despite the past and they’re stronger for it (at least on the surface). Did Emily know this would happen? She must have, to keep Amanda there, but it seems like a bit of a reach to me. Jack, of course, saw the whole thing on TV, so he dumps Amanda. He’ll take care of the baby, but he can’t be with her. I’ve never been a huge tagahanga of Amanda, but right now, I feel sorry for her.

At the press conference, Conrad received a phone call from the Initiative, which concerns Aiden, who has no new leads on the shady organization (he hoped to get some from Gordon Murphy’s phone). He reveals to Emily that he sent the passport and tells her that their interests used to be one and the same, so why can’t they work together now? We get a third flashback. Emily heads out to meet Aiden so they can revenge-quest for his sister, but Takeda informs her he is gone. Aiden left her, betrayed her, and Takeda tells Emily once again to learn to close her heart. I can’t help but wonder, though, did Aiden actually leave her behind? Or is this some trick of Takeda’s?

In the present, Aiden leaves and Emily slumps to the floor inside her house, phone in hand. She dials her voice mail and we hear a woman’s voice. It’s her mother, calling Murphy’s SIM card, which is now in Emily’s phone. I can’t tell for sure, but it seems Emily’s been replaying this message over and over -- a message that ends with Kara Clarke telling Murphy that she loves him. Fade out!

All credit goes to EW.com