'Revenge' Recap: Why Charlotte, Why?

Revenge is making it harder and harder to not wish Charlotte Grayson would just run away from home again already and Sunday night's episode, "Dissolution", wasn't a reprieve. Christa B. Allen's youngest Grayson is becoming excessively more insufferable with each passing episode of ABC's drama series. Charlotte has been trying so hard to scheme and interfere á la her mother, Victoria, and she's just so damn bad at it that it's impossible to watch. She's pretty much cemented herself as equally, if not worse, than the gaggle of emotional men in Emily Thorne's love life who whine their way through the hour-long episode each week.

Charlotte has pretty good reasons for being a bitch and wanting to make everyone miserable:

1) She found out that her dad wasn't actually her real dad. Her real dad is actually convicted terrorist financier, David Clarke.

2) Her boyfriend died and it was her Grayson-dad's fault.

3) She miscarried because of the stress over her boyfriend dying.

4) She pretty much has no friends.

So there's four decently good reasons for Charlotte to want to make everyone's lives a living hell (including ours because we have to watch her try to do it).

Charlotte started out as a rich, little brat, which was really fun to watch because everyone loves rich brats acting bratty (see also Gossip Girl's success). She then graduated to a rich brat with a drug problem (clearly she watched too much Gossip Girl) who started dating a boy from the 99 percent (scandalous), Declan Porter. Charlotte went down the suicide attempt road, landed herself in rehab and then in therapy before turning the page on that chapter. She threw herself into getting to know her biological half-sister Amanda Clarke (the fake Amanda, of course) and rebelled from her fabulously wealthy Grayson family before Amanda's death in the same incident that took Declan's life. And now she's become some strange hybrid of Emily Thorne and Victoria Grayson who's less calculating and nowhere near as cold as ice, so basically... she's just annoying.

Charlotte's spent most of this season hanging around and living at the Stowaway with Declan's older brother, Jack. Good for her for getting out of Grayson Manor. In between her busy schedule of covering for her half-brother Patrick by confessing to the attempted murder of her father and redecorating the Stowaway, Charlotte's been doing everything she possibly can to end Emily and her brother Daniel's engagement. Except she's really not that clever, so there's that. She subtly declared war on Emily early on in the season because she believed that Emily had betrayed her by sharing information with Victoria that was supposed to be held in confidence, so we knew this behavior was coming. Charlotte's basically been trying to feed Daniel insecurity-raising thoughts about Emily's fidelity and intentions and when that didn't work, she resorted to Sunday night's plan.

On Sunday night's episode, Charlotte essentially kidnaps Daniel on the premise of soliciting business advice from him ahead of the Stowaway's grand reopening. Basically, she's distracting him from making wedding plans with Emily (they're recently reunited and very much in love after Emily shared her fake family photo) by dragging him along to run errands with her and carry her shopping bags. She orders a cake from a local bakery that happens to employ Daniel's ex and the girl he paralyzed in a drunk-driving accident way back when, Sarah. Charlotte sent Daniel in to pick up the cake, obviously knowing full well that Sarah would be working. Clever girl, kind of. Sarah flips out, shames Daniel out of the bakery, and later that day Charlotte calls her boss and gets Sarah fired. Is she hoping that Daniel will rekindle his relationship with Sarah? Because it's probably more likely that he'd go for Margot.

Her "scheme" (if you can even call it that) leads Daniel to examine the Grayson family's settlement with Sarah after the accident left her paralyzed with expensive hospital bills and years of physical therapy to look forward to. Surprise, surprise, they screwed her out of thousands of dollars so Daniel feels really guilty. In the meantime, Charlotte hires Sarah to work in the kitchen at the Stowaway, but like, why? Daniel feels bad but it's not like he's carrying a torch for this girl. This situation probably won't break up his engagement to Emily, especially since the wedding won't be happening and Emily's going to fake her own death (big reveal)!

I give Charlotte credit for trying, but leave the scheming and the guilt trips to the professionals. Please. Her eyes also give absolutely everything away since she has the poker face of a squirrel stuck in the middle of oncoming traffic. Charlotte's also just as whiny now as she was when she was still in high school and that doesn't fly when you're trying to play with the big boys. It's really just annoying and makes me feel like this...

Images: ABC, LiveJournal