Revenge

[tarpilot]

A bit late, but has anyone else found themselves succumbing to the considerable melodramatic pleasures of Revenge? The reveals have grown quite a bit more skilful in their sleaze as the season’s wore on, and it’s striking the lengths to which the writers have gone to cram in absurd trope after absurd trope, no matter how disparate or jarring -- multiple false identities folding in on each other, amnesia subplots, PG-13 Women-in-Prison flashbacks, mass terrorist patsies, dense corporate espionage conspiracies, and in the touch that sealed my admiration for its excesses, Pai Mei-esque martial arts masters. Madeleine Stowe surprisingly (though quite deservingly) gained a Globe nom for her marvellously campy queen bee routine, and there are fun turns from Gabriel Mann, William Devane, and Roger Bart as a windbag journalist whom I dearly, dearly want to believe is based on Ray Carney. At its delirious best, it’s like the trashiest bits of Dallas (or Gossip Girl?) run through a filter of vintage De Palma/90s premium cable goodness. It even survives its more-than-occasional stabs at Hitchcock relatively unscathed --

SpoilerShow

in particular, the music cue when Takeda clocks Daniel with the rock was terrific

It's now on hiatus until April, so perfect time to catch up for anyone so inclined.

[domino harvey]

I watched the first two episodes but could not be moved to watch further-- Veronica Mars just did this sort of thing a zillion times better and with more compelling characters and storylines