When you watch as much TV as I do, even if most of it is great TV, at a certain point it becomes very hard to be truly surprised. I'm not sure what I was expecting with the Revenge finale, but I sure wasn't disappointed. Those last five minutes, if not completely shocking plot-wise, were some of the most emotionally surprising moments to air on television this year. But I'm getting ahead of myself -- let's start at the beginning, with Emily (Emily VanCamp) faking a break-in at her beach house.* "In every life their comes a day of reckoning," EmilyOver tells us, "A time when unsettled scores demand their retribution, and our own lives and transgressions are finally laid bare."

*The opening shot of the episode is a close-up on Emily's eye. I like to think this is Revenge's way of paying homage to Lost, which aired its final episode two years ago to the day on this very network. And in case you missed it yesterday, check out this great, candid interview with Damon Lindelof where he opens up about that show's infamous finale.

After having set her determined little eyes on Daniel's briefcase at the end of "Grief," Emily doesn't waste time. She convinces Daniel (Joshua Bowman) that a "white haired man" was in their kitchen, and when he finds that his father's contingency plan is missing, he makes the logical leap (which Emily makes as easy as possible for him -- she knows what materials she's got to work with, and Daniel may be cute, but he's not very smart). Daniel races over to Daddy just like Emily knew he would, and when Daniel tells Conrad (Henry Czerny) that Whitey has the evidence, Conrad assumes that last week's threats were just a ploy to "ferret out evidence I've been keeping" (when really it was just a happy side-effect of Emily's meddling). "That evidence was my only leverage, and without it I'm a dead man," says Conrad. The best part about this show is that he's not even exaggerating.

With Daniel and Conrad flailing around next door, Emily busts out the evidence and tries to examine it, but most of it is encrypted. She calls Nolan (Gabriel Mann) to see if he can help her decrypt it, but he's not answering his phone. (In case you forgot, this is because he is currently being held prisoner by Whitey, but Emily doesn't know that yet.) Jack (Nick Wechsler), still kind of high from his confusing night of dead dogs and making out with Emily, gives Emily a call, but she's out looking for Nolan and doesn't answer. So instead he pulls a million dollar check out of the Stowaway's register and moons over it for a while . . . Do the right thing, or ONE MILLION DOLLARS. While Jack is having a moral crisis, Emily finds a laptop in Nolan's house with a video feed to an unknown location. Taped in front of the camera is a handwritten sign reading, "Call my cell or I die." Emily calls Nolan's cell again, and this time Whitey (James Morrison) picks up. "He's not the one you want. I am," says Emily. "And who are you?" She pauses slightly, and then Inigo Montoyas it: "Amanda Clarke. You murdered my father." BAM. It is so on. The only thing is, she forgot to say, "Prepare to die," but I'm pretty sure it's heavily implied.

"If you came here to rescue me, you might want a do-over."

Conrad sets his creepy sweeper team to work on Grayson Manor, and right away they find three microphones hidden in his study (yet another of Emily's tricks passed off as Whitey's). Queen V (Madeleine Stowe) tries to order Conrad out of her house, but he shouts her back down with insults of stupidity (and other things we can't hear, probably because they're too nasty for TV). This is bigger than us, you idiot woman. They've been listening to us this whole time! Daniel does a sweep of his own over at the beach house, finding the camera hidden in the Orwell. I wonder if it even crosses his mind that Emily might have something to do with all of this . . . probably not. Like I said before, he's not that smart.

And then all of a sudden we're at the critical moment -- or what looks like the critical moment -- and it's only the first ten minutes of the episode. Whitey and Emily meet outside of what looks like an old power plant. She gives him her demands like she does this sort of thing every day. TAKE ME TO NOLAN, A-HOLE, because I know all about you, and I have the evidence to bring you down. When he acquiesces, she calmly chloroforms herself into the back of his van ("for secrecy purposes, you understand"). Then this wonderful thing happens. The instant her head hits the (cushioned) floor of the van, we flash to a memory of young Amanda (Emily Alyn Lind) and her father (James Tupper) moving into the beach house twenty years before. They find an injured baby bird on their doorstep. It's a short sequence, but weirdly moving, even seemingly out of context (but again, if you watch as much TV as I do, you know this kind of thing always makes sense in the end).

"Morning, Sunshine," says Nolan, as Emily comes to. The both of them are handcuffed to a  wall, hands above their heads. Nolan has blood dripping down his face, although it's crusted over a bit. "If you came here to rescue me, you might want a do-over." But Emily isn't fazed in the slightest, even when Whitey saunters in, she's cold and confident, like she has a plan and she knows it's going to work out. And hell, even if it doesn't, trying is the only thing that matters. She is stone cold as she speaks to Whitey. Even as he holds a knife to Nolan's throat, she doesn't flinch. Her confidence shakes him, as does the prospect of not knowing exactly what she's done with that all-important contingency plan. She talks him out of the torture room and out to a train station. She tells him the evidence is hidden in a locker there and directs him to a lock-pick secreted away in her dad's old watch. She tells him he has an hour. "Tick tock." As we cut to commercial, her confidence is reassuring, but just exactly how in control is she? And what the heck is about to happen?

"You are way outmatched by the crazy albino."

Almost as soon as Whitey is out the door, Emily pulls another lock-pick out of her sleeve (I don't think I want to know where else she might have hidden lock-picks) and uncuffs herself in approximately half a second. Nolan just laughs, "I'm not worthy!" Once they're both freed, she tells Nolan he needs to deliver the box of evidence to the Feds, while she stays behind and "takes care of" Whitey. Nolan doesn't want to leave her alone (because he constantly the least crazy person on this show), but she insists, and tells him that if she doesn't make it out of this, she wants him to tell Jack she loves him. Nolan smiles, because he totally ships Emily/Jack.

While everyone else is busy having mental/emotional/financial related crises, Charlotte (Christa B. Allen) is left to her own devices, and is swiftly coming unraveled. At school she walks up to Declan (Connor Paolo) and his study buddy (whose name is Jamie) with a rictus smile on her face. It is creepy as hell, but somehow both Jamie and Declan are fooled by it as she takes whatever sick pleasure in buttering them up for the storm that's to come. Later at home, she pulls out her parents' rolodex and calls a Dan Jenkins (in a truly awful and ridiculous impression of Victoria), saying she would like him to investigate Declan for bullying her poor sweet innocent daughter. She is turning into mini-V, in the same way that Daniel is turning into his father, and I hate it (clarification: I don't give a hoot about Daniel, just so we're clear). The other Grayson clan members are busy ignoring Charlotte: Ashley (Ashley Madekwe) snitches on Emily and Jack's kiss after Jack returns the million dollars, as expected, but she does it in such a way that Daniel can't help trusting her, which is the more important part of that exchange, I think, like just breaking Daniel and Emily up isn't enough -- she needs to keep him around for herself. And Conrad is busy moving his pieces around the board, making sure he has Lydia in his corner in much the same way Ashley just treated Daniel: he gives her a ring as a promise, not of love, but of loyalty and safety, which are qualities much more important to him right now. He doesn't want her to change her mind and turn on him again.

When Whitey returns to the scary torture room, Emily is waiting for him on a chair, a huge axe in her lap, like a beautiful, blonde grim reaper. Where did she get the axe? Who knows! It is such a ridiculous, over the top image that it immediately comes back around to awesome. Emily is a badass. Whitey enters, and the look on his face is priceless, equal parts surprise and amusement. Whitey tells Emily that they planned to frame the Graysons not her father, but Emily doesn't care. She lunges at him, and they fight. It's what she's been training for her whole life, and not even his cracks about how she must have learned to fight from her mother (the implication being that her father just rolled over and allowed his life to be ruined) can faze her. She goes at him with that axe like it weighs nothing, and eventually she beats him down. She holds the handle of the axe against his throat and gets ready to crush him. "I want to be the last thing you see before you die," she tells him, blood dripping down her face. She's really an awful human being sometimes, but in this moment, I love her. And then something stops her, and we flash back to that bird again, only this time she and her father are releasing it, and as it flies away, her father tells her, "You know what I love about the most? Is the way you love." And she can't do it anymore. She pulls the axe away from Whitey's neck and stands up. He chokes and coughs, asking her why she can't honor her father's memory. But she just did -- for the first time. Finally, she gets what Nolan's been trying to tell her all season long: revenge or justice or whatever you want to call it, would not be worth it to David Clarke if it meant his little girl had to become this awful person.

"The truth is I'm not really the person you fell in love with."

Back at the beach house, Daniel comes moping out of the shadows and he jumps right into it, asking if Emily kissed Jack the night before. She looks him square in the eye and says yes. This upsets him, of course, but I think the fact that she tells him the truth surprises him, and he wants to know, what was the point of all of it? Sticking with him through the trial, all that stuff she put up with, if she didn't even love him? Her answer is simple, and for once it's the truth. She tells him that she's not the person he fell in love with, and more importantly, he's becoming the thing he never wanted to be: a Grayson. She gives him the ring back, and it's all civil and mature, the exact opposite of the Grayson marriage-implosion from earlier in the season (which is still imploding, even as I write this).

Things are in motion now that cannot be stopped: the Feds officially have the evidence, and Whitey knows they have it. He confronts Conrad, who thinks Victoria is the one who handed it over (while Victoria momentarily thinks it was Daniel). Whitey makes more scary threats at Conrad, "coincidentally" while looking into the picture frame where Emily has hidden one of her spy-cams. But as far as Emily's concerned, her part is done. The Graysons will go down, the Initiave will be unmasked, and she can finally stop pretending to be in love with Daniel Grayson. Daniel, meanwhile, pays a visit to his mother, begging her not to testify, and then begging turns into yelling and lots of anger. She tells him it's time for the truth to come out (a conviction reinforced when McGowan the Fed let it slip earlier that Conrad was the one who had David Clarke killed) -- he responds, "and to hell with the rest of us! I'm not denying he's done terrible things, so have you." Just look at Charlotte*, he says (while continuing to ignore her). But V has the chance to right an inredible wrong, and that's more important to her than anything else right now. She doesn't take Conrad's threats seriously, and she dismisses Daniel's as nothing more than pandering to his father. As it turns out, she was wrong, but I can't do anything about that, so I'm just going to sit here on my couch and watch the trainwreck, or in this case, well . . . you'll see.

*It was at this point that my cable feed went bonkers and I was treated to twenty minutes of Revenge, sans dialogue. It was like watching The Artist, but with more color and less cute dogs. (Lies, I never saw The Artist.) And yes, I did watch it without sound -- I was curious. Luckily the sound came back on for the last act, but I had to wait until this morning to catch the rest of the episode on Hulu.

"You really are your mother's daughter."

Good ole Queen V can't just accept her win, though; she has to have one last swipe at Conrad, and she gets it through Lydia. Despite Lydia's bitchy demeanor ("Advice from the self-preservation society? I think I'll pass"), she listens closely as V tells her that Conrad is in for a world of hurt, and Lydia would be smartest to get out now while she still can. V doesn't wait for Lydia's answer, just tells her "the plane boards at 8 PM." Lydia must have made up her mind while she was still on the phone -- or maybe she does as soon as she sees Conrad's face -- because almost instantly Conrad walks in the door, and when he asks what's the matter, she lies and tells him her father has had a heart attack and she needs to away for awhile. Conrad's not stupid, though; he knows Lydia is bailing (although I don't think he's aware she's going to testify against him), and when he kisses her on the cheek, he does so with his eyes open. While the Graysons are scrambling around like screaming fools, Nolan and Emily are totally just chilling in his ginormous house with champagne, celebrating the end to their schemes. The Graysons are about to fall, and her father's name will be cleared (which: to be clear, this is not revenge, it's justice). "Now that you've finished storming the castle*, what about Prince Daniel?" Emily's face is all glowy with happiness, and she tells Nolan that she's going to tell Jack the truth, tell him everything.

*A Princess Bride reference! I love you forever, Nolan.

Despite Emily's newfound zen, the scheming continues around her. Charlotte has decided to officially become evil. She exposes the secret past study buddy Jamie has been hiding, that she sleep with her history teacher. Jamie flees the library as laughs and taunts follow her. Charlotte laughs loudest, and she tries to cover it with a cute little "Whoops!", but when Declan comes up to her and tells her that she really is her mother's daughter, and "don't talk to me ever again," you can tell she's not getting any real enjoyment out of it. The mother of the beast -- or the beast herself, if you prefer -- can't resist wandering over to the beach house to rub Emily and Daniel's break-up in Emily's face. Emily lets it wash right over her, but even she has to get some kick out of Victoria's fake engagement box. She has Emily open it after Emily offers to return it, but it turns out to be empty. Or, as V says, "I knew that your future with Daniel was as empty as that box. Now best of luck with your next endeavor." OH SNAP. But like I said, Emily doesn't care. She's going to be with Jack, and all will be right in the world.

Except, OH HELL NO. Just as Emily is about to open up to Jack, Fauxmanda (Margarita Levieva) pops her head in, which is accompanied by her very pregnant body. The one thing she was saving for herself, the one thing she really loved, she can't have. And it's her own fault.

"Then I'll see you in Hell."

Like I said earlier, Ashley has plans for Daniel, but let me take a moment to clarify those plans: SHE WANTS DANIEL. Schmoozing Victoria didn't work out so well for her, but schmoozing not one but TWO Grayson men, that sounds promising. Especially if you can get one (or both) of them to fall in love with you. V comes to say goodbye to Charlotte (who asks her "Has getting retribution ever made you feel better about yourself?" so we already know she feels bad about what she did to Jamie and Declan, or more likely, she realizes like all bullies, that the crap she pulled didn't do anything to make her feel better). It's a nice scene between the two of them, though, and a direct reversal from where these two started out in the pilot. V is almost out the door when Conrad shows up to try and stop her. He is frantic, begging her not to do this, that it will have consequences not just for him, but for their children as well. Either she doesn't believe him and thinks he's being dramatic, or she just doesn't care. I'm voting for the former, but she's in a mood, Victoria is. She's on a mission, to redeem her lost love and try to reclaim some semblance of her formerly intact soul. Conrad's like, WOMAN, WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. And she goes, "Then I'll see you in Hell." Who knew Victoria Grayson was a Star Wars fan?

And this is where things go from an everyday Revenge sort of insanity to WHAT-IS-HAPPENING-CRAZYPANTS (which is a new form of insanity that I just now made up, so let's add it to the DSM-IV). As Florence + The Machine's "Seven Devils" started pounding away, I got goosebumps over my entire body. It's bleak and dark and awful. An incredible song choice that only heightens the WHAT-IS-HAPPENING-CRAZYPANTS going on on the screen. Before you read the rest of this recap, please click on that link, so the apocalyptic tones will put you in the right mood. Ready?

Revenge has always been good at episode ending montages, but this is the ending montage to end all ending montages: V in slo-mo entering the plane with Lydia, the camera panning out to show us Whitey tampering with the plane, Conrad drinking himself into a stupor and throwing a picture of Lydia and Victoria into the fire, Jack touching the rounded bump of Fauxmanda's stomach . . . Charlotte hearing a newscast about a DC-bound plane that crashed with two federal witnesses on board, and one is thought to be Victoria Grayson. Hysterical, in that state of terror that comes when truly terrible things happen to you or to those you love, she calls Declan over and over, but he blows her off. In the background, we can hear the reporter saying that "there appear to be no survivors." Charlotte quietly loses her mind, doing exactly what we've been waiting all year for her to do: she takes a bunch of pills and lies down to die. Emily is also watching the news, silent and horrified. Nolan rushes over after a tense phone call with Emily (""Just stay right where you are and don't do anything revenge-y until I get there"). When he arrives, she says, "Everything that could have exonerated my father was on that plane." But at least they still have the mysterious hard-drive, which Nolan managed to decrypt and copy before he handed it over. He plays the beginning of an old video for her. On it, Victoria Grayson tells Conrad and Whitey that she knows David Clarke trusts her because she knows his biggest secret, what really happened to his wife in 1990. Nolan pauses the video, and Emily doesn't get it -- does this mean the Grayson's killed mer mother, too? No, says Nolan, It means your mother is still alive.

Oh.

"Let it play," she says. Cut to black.

And so the curtain closes on Revenge season one. It's been a blast recapping such a consistently good show week to week for ya'll, and hopefully I'll be able to continue when season two starts up again next fall. If I can make it to next fall without losing my mind over this cliffhanger, that is.