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We learn that you have to give the character something to fight for, something she craves to down to the wormwood of her soul, even if that's nothing more laudable than revenge. Every week Emily makes one tiny miscalculation after another, out of compassion or arrogance or poor assumption, that leads her deeper into danger. And they keep us breathless, wondering when the crash is coming. The writers keep Emily teetering on the edge of likeability in the greyspace between too cold for sympathy and warm enough to make us less fascinated.
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Because we don't ever see Emily breaking down, being weak, being traditionally, compensatingly kind. Why we should forgive her for being cold period. Why we should ignore her coldly turning down Jack in favor of Daniel. Why we should forgive her being cold to Nolan, the one guy who goes out of his way to help her. But the writers still use Jack (and the dog) shamelessly to show us why we're supposed to like Emily. Brilliant but predictable.Įxcept that Jack isn't who Emily is engaged to. Jack is now grown and gorgeous, and the dog is old and still loyal to Emily. We do know, or at least we quickly come to find out, that Emily had a dog and a best friend, Jack, when she was little. (We're not actually sure that she loves him though.) Then Amanda herself is locked up as the Grayson's bribe and coerce a series of officials to hide her away in the interests of greed and self-preservation. Amanda Clarke is idyllically happy with her father in their huge Hamptons home until the society queen he loves conspires with her own husband to lock him up for crimes he didn't commit. So right off, there's the mystery: who did it? Only then do we get the backstory. The program opens with a literal bang as we discover Emily's fiance, the son of the people most responsible for falsely imprisoning Emily's beloved father, getting shot during her engagement party.
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Or is there? What makes us willing to swim in the cesspool of her head?įirst, there's the glamour and suspense. There is nothing to connect us to this character. Emily Thorne aka Amanda Clarke shows up in the Hamptons intent on revenging herself against the people who destroyed her life, and she does it with a chillingly cold, systematic ruthlessness that leaves us shivering as we watch. The show's writers have a challenge before them. And REVENGE, too, offers all of that.īut talk about likability issues. A high-adventure soap crafted to get people talking about vengeance and mercy, hope and hopelessness, justice and injustice. Genius idea, right? Dumas' classic was originally serialized, presented, one segment at a time, for maximum impact. It's no secret that this season's hot new TV series, REVENGE, is a modern twist on THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO with a female lead.