From the Totally Unimpressive Predictions Department: Real-Emily Thorne will be dead before the season is over. Are we wrong 
here? Isn’t everyone thinking that? It’s like when someone finds out Superman’s secret identity: you know amnesia is only a couple pages down the line. It’s the same thing here. There’s not a chance in hell Real-Emily will ever get away with getting Jack to think she’s actually his childhood sweetheart, Amanda. Our Emily Thorne has always shown a supernatural ability to keep an enormous number of plates spinning in the air, but she can’t possibly continue her con with this big of a wrench thrown into the works.
This tantalizes for several reasons. First off, we don’t think our Emily is capable of cold-blooded murder. Not yet, anyway. But if there’s one person on the planet who’s capable of driving her to it (more so even than Victoria) then Fauxmanda is definitely it. What’s more likely is that, given how outrageously careless and irresponsible she is, someone else in the Hamptons will wind up doing it. Someone who probably doesn’t want Amanda Clarke showing up after all these years. Jack, bless him, is the second-dumbest man in the Hamptons (Declan being the first) so we have a feeling he’ll be shooting his mouth off to the locals about his long lost childhood sweetheart returned to him. This is going to end so badly for the poor guy. Then again, we can’t really stand the character.
Speaking of which, Declan secures his bona fides as a complete fucking moron, getting $25,000 from Victoria (her maids find more more than that in the lint trap and couch cushions every week) to stop dating Charlotte – and then goes right back to dating Charlotte. Victoria’s life is firmly in the shitter and queen bees losing their grip on the hive can be extremely dangerous to any lessers who cross their path. She’ll take out every frustration she has right now on that dumb kid and leave him a smear on the beach. Jack’s coming heartache isn’t actually going to be fun to watch, but if the writers are setting Dumb Declan up to be Victoria’s current punching bag, we’re all for it. That kid grates.
By the way, pay attention to Victoria whenever she talks to anyone about her family. It’s Daniel this and Daniel that. It’s never Charlotte. This, we think, goes beyond any “normal” kind of mother/daughter conflict. We’re telling you: Charlotte’s not a Grayson. She’s David Clarke’s daughter, which means she’s “Emily’s” sister. Victoria is so wracked with guilt over how she destroyed her former lover that she takes it out on Charlotte by treating her as separate from the rest of the Graysons. You can tell she cares for Charlotte, but she’s all but in love with Daniel.
And speaking of being in love with Daniel, Tyler is a low-down dirty whore and apparently, so is Ashley. We have to say, her turn to the dark side doesn’t quite ring true – for instance, what’s her sudden beef with Emily? – but it does tend to make the proceedings more delicious. Any girl who gives her assent to her boyfriend making out with another guy in order to further his career is a lot more interesting than a regular old party planner. We thought Ashley’s confrontation with Victoria also didn’t ring very true. The only reason we can accept Victoria not ripping Ashley’s throat open with her teeth is because she was tired and felt lonely and embattled. She’s found something of an ally in Ashley. Even better, she’s the best sort of ally for Victoria: the naturally subservient kind.
Meanwhile, Nolan keeps getting more and more video evidence on Tyler. Before too long, he’ll have a feature length documentary on his hands. What we’re loving here is the expansion of the show’s original concept in a way that feels organic. There’s still every chance this could all get out of hand from a plotting perspective and the whole thing could collapse, but right now the 
writers are doing a commendable job. With Real-Emily and Tyler deliberately fucking up her best laid plains, the show has grown from the idea of Amanda taking revenge on the people who ruined her life to the idea of Amanda taking revenge on the people who are getting in the way of her revenge on the people who ruined her life. There’s the A group of the Graysons and their cohorts; everyone responsible for ruining her father, and then there’s a B group of people who will eventually have to pay for crossing Emily’s path right now: Tyler, Fauxmanda, and possibly Ashley. The story is getting more complicated, but in a way that makes sense. If every episode ended like the first several of the season, with Emily cooly crossing out another face in a picture, the show would have run out of story by now. Instead, it’s gone off in a whole bunch of other directions, making the show so much more than we think anyone could have predicted from the start. It’s still gleefully a soap opera, and with the hilariously campy introduction of “X,” her apparent Revenge Sensei (the reveal of whom led Tom to shout out “She’s Batman!”), we’re more than comfortable with the idea that the writers are in full control of this concept and know exactly where they’re taking it. Could it still fall apart? Maybe. Nothing’s a guarantee in television. But we get the distinct impression that for the foreseeable future, the story is only going to get more fun.
[Photo Credit: ABC]
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