Will ABC's new drama "Revenge" suffer "Prison Break" fate?

The cast of "Revenge"

ABC’s new drama “Revenge”, which airs on Wednesdays at 10pm, is about Amanda Clarke who takes on the false identity of Emily Thorne and moves to the Hamptons to exact revenge on the people responsible for destroying her family. As a little girl, her father was accused of treason and terrorism and sent to jail where he died.

While the initial premise is scandalous and very entertaining, I wonder how long can the show sustain before it suffers the fate of the former Fox TV show “Prison Break”? I enjoyed watching the first few episodes but I wondered what is going to happen to the show after they break out of prison? How long can keep this up? By the end of the second season, the main characters who escaped in the first season finale went to Panama where they were put back in prison. The original focus of the show had been resolved and the subsequent plots felt like a rehashing of what had once made it great.

“Revenge” makes me wonder how many shows she can go through while getting her revenge before she runs out of enemies. After the first season, the conspirators against her father should have met their fate but what will happen in the second season? Will the offspring of Madeline Stowe’s character come back to haunt Emily or will Emily decide to take out the whole Hamptons for their lifestyle of extravagance and devotion to the social hierarchy.

Another recent show whose plot revolved around a clear goal or premise and lost viewer ship or was cancelled after that goal was fulfilled was ABC’s “Flashforward”. The show that was based on a 1999 science-fiction novel of the same name had a brilliant first episode in which the entire world had a vision of their lives at a specific moment in time 6 months into the future on April 29, 2010.

The show then explored how people dealt with this revelation and searched for answers as to why or how this happened. Almost halfway into the season, the quality of the show suffered as it involved too many sub-plots, the audience learned that the characters were able to change their futures thus detracting the intrigue as it no longer mattered what their vision was as it may not happen the way they had foreseen it. There was one event that the characters did not envision in their future: its cancellation after the first season’s completion.

Now as we watch Emily delve deeper into a scandal that she is creating with the impending danger of falling in love, we can enjoy the drama unfold and just hope that it keeps our interest for next September.