Revenge is a dish best served cold

One of my favorite show on television right now is Revenge. The show focuses on Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp), who has returned to the Hamptons on a  quest for revenge against a family who destroyed her childhood.

Emily, who was born as Amanda Clarke, father was framed for treason when she was a little girl. After a lengthy trial, he was imprisoned for life, and was murdered in prison by agents of the people who framed him. Emily was separated from him after his trial and never saw him afterwards. She has now returned to the Hamptons as an adult to exact revenge on those who wronged her and her father. Her primary target is Victoria Grayson (Madeleine Stowe), matriarch of the Grayson family, who loved and betrayed her father. The show focuses on Emily's plot to destroy every individual who played a role in her father's imprisonment. Along the way, she discovers various facts about her father's past which change her plans many times. As the series progresses, Emily brings in other individuals as allies for her plan.

Though Emily's allies seem to come and go very quickly through the series, the one true friend that always stands by her is Nolan Ross (Gabriel Mann). This is by far my favorite relationship in the show. Nolan is the perfect, comic balance to Emily's more intense and emotional personality. You learn throughout the series that Nolan has always been there for her, even when she didn't know it. He always goes through with her sometimes ridiculous plots, and even when she pushes him away, he aways comes back. This relationship shows true loyalty in that show that centers mostly around deception and revenge.

Gossip Girl

One show I have recently begun binge watching on Netflix is Gossip Girl. The story focuses on a group of privileged teens, Blair Waldorf, Serena van der Woodsen, Nate Archibald, Chuck Bass and Dan Humphrey, living on the Upper Eastside of New York City. The show is narrated by Gossip Girl, a ruthless and mysterious blogger who reveals the teen's deepest secrets. The television series is based on the book series of the same name written by Cecily von Ziegesar.

The series began with the return of Upper East Side "It Girl" Serena van der Woodsen, after a long, mysterious stay at a boarding school in Cornwall, Connecticut. It is revealed that she has had a scandalous past that continues to haunt her throughout the show and she is notorious for her many on-again, off-again relationships with countless male characters as well as for her rebellious drive-outs. Blair Waldorf, who is described as the queen at the center of the chess game, is a longtime friend and occasional rival of Serena's, and the queen bee of Constance Billard School's social scene. The story also follows Chuck Bass, who serves as the show's antihero, being a womanizer and party lover with a troubled life and past that provide a hidden vulnerable side, and “Golden Boy" Nate Archibald, always being fought over by the prominent female characters, and deals with a lot of issues that compromise his "perfect" life. Gossip Girl ran for 6 seasons before they producers decided to end the show with the reveal of who Gossip Girl really was.

One of the things I found most interesting about the show was their advertising methods. The show was notorious for it's mixed reviews, but after receiving horrible criticism from a couple different sources for it's risqué content, they decided to take those reviews and use them as part of an advertising campaign. I found this entirely innovative and to be an interesting twist on typical advertising methods.

Scorpion

Scorpion is a newer show, that premiered on CBS in October 2014. The show centers around, and is loosely based on, the life of Walter O'Brien, a self-proclaimed genius and computer expert. O'Brien and his genius team of outcasts are recruited by the government to be the last line of defense against complex, high-tech global threats. The team includes O'Brien, a genius with the fourth highest recorded IQ of 197, Sylvester the genius mathematician and human calculator, Happy the mechanical prodigy, and Toby who is a Harvard trained behaviorist. The last member of the team is Paige, a former waitress who, in exchange for helping her understand her brilliant son, helps translate the real world for them through human interaction.

The piece that initially drew me to the show was the fact that it was loosely based on the life of a real person. Walter O'Brien was born in Ireland in 1975, and supposedly scored over 190 on an IQ test in primary school, though the recored were not saved. At the age of 13, he accidentally hacked into the NASA database, because he wanted the Space Shuttle Columbia blueprints to hang on his wall. O'Brien later formed Scorpion Computer Services, which is a computer security firm, and still serves as it's CEO. He also developed ScenGen (Scenario Generator), which can generate a number of possible results for any given situation, according to user-inputted variables and relationships. The program is used by multiple industries, including defense and financial services.

One of the best parts about the show being loosely based on the life of Walter O'Brien is that the producers and writers can use old scenarios that have happened during the life of Scorpion Computer Services. Though many could call this uncreative, the writers have a 25-year head start for the stories. Assuming the show is renewed for more seasons, it will eventually become a self-sustainable show.

Scorpion has been renewed for a second season and airs on Sunday nights on CBS.

Once Upon A TIme

Though it might not be my favorite television show, Once Upon A Time is definitely on my top 10. Once Upon A Time is a drama, center around the lives of fairytale characters, who crash-landed in a small present day town called Storybrook, because of a curse by the evil queen. The show premiered in 2011 on ABC, and is now on it's fourth season.

One of the pieces of the show that never fails to amaze me and draw me in, is the costuming. The costumes are extremely intricate and detail oriented. The costumes are also almost always recognizable in comparison to the traditional fairytale characters they are based off of. The costumes for new episodes usually take between 5 days and two weeks to make, depending on the difficulty of the design and the time that was budgeted in the schedule for the costume department.

Edward Castro, the costume designer, woks with a team of 8 to 20 people, depending on the difficulty of the costumes being made for the episode. Not only do they take pride in the difficulty of the costumes they make, but also the durability of the costumes. The costumes have to be able to last multiple seasons, incase later episodes call for flashbacks. Castro told EW.com (2012) that some of the most difficult costumes they've done are designing a fireproof cape, building armor out of 500 metal conchas, and the numerous amount of wedding dressing and ballgowns they've created.

Want to learn more about some of the costumes they've designed and built? Check out this tour of the Once Upon A Time costume department!

Revenge Hasn't Ever Looked So Good

I don't really know why I'm so into ABC dramas this year, but Sunday nights are turning out to be a pretty big deal for ABC. With Once Upon A Time scoring the network a highest rated drama, I think it's safe to say some network dramas are worth watching. But Once isn't the only ABC drama to be doing well. Airing Sunday nights after Once, Revenge is proving itself to be a drama of its own.

Revenge is kind of like Prison Break meets Gossip Girl. Sort of. Set in the Hamptons during the summer, it centers on a fantastically wealthy family who covered up a crime that left the main character, Emily Thorne, without her father. After blaming a terrorist attack on Emily's father when she was a child, Emily was forced to grow up in foster care, as well as a juvenile corrections facility. It is only when she reaches adulthood that she finds out the truth: her father was innocent.

After years of planning, Emily returns to the Hamptons (her real name was Amanda Clarke, she changed it to Emily Thorne to hide her true identity from her fathers employers) and sets out to get her revenge. 

The whole story is amazingly put together. It is somewhat reminiscent of Lost, however not nearly as complex, and the story is mostly told from the perspective of the main character. In flashbacks more and more of Emily's life is revealed and slowly the puzzle of vengeance is put together. 

It's an incredibly addicting show. I've almost finished the first season and its only been a week. I highly recommend it!