I Am The New York Living Newspaper Section From Revenge

I am the New York Living newspaper section from Revenge.

First, let me say, for the record, that I wasn't even supposed to be here today. There was a time when, if a TV character was going to read a newspaper the content of which was irrelevant to the scene, you knew exactly what it would be. But then Reddit turned that dark-haired girl into an internationally recognizable superstar, so forget it: that old newspaper prop -- so old that Ed O'Neill had occasion to handle it on two different TV series (maybe three, not that anyone probably bothered to look at John From Cincinnati) -- was burnt, so someone had to create me as a substitute.

And look, I know I am a relic of a bygone age. The only people, real or fictional, that you ever see handling a section of newspaper in the year 2013 either works for a newspaper; is old and/or out of touch; is about to cut out a story to add to his or her paranoid stalker's bulletin board; or all of those.

So maybe you should keep that in mind before you get too sniffy about the weird layout on my back page. How is a contemporary prop master supposed to know what a real newspaper even looks like? What, like a prop master's going to send an assistant out to a newsstand to buy one? Where's the newsstand? How much does a newspaper cost? That sounds like a lot of hassle for something whose verisimilitude virtually none of a TV show's audience is going to question.

But if you work for a newspaper, or are old, or are out of touch, or briefly suspended your paranoid news documentation to watch Revenge last night and then got right back to tracking signs the Illuminati is transmitting to you via crossword puzzle clues, then yes! You're right! That back page is ridiculous! There's no reason a back page headline would be set in all-caps, or in quadruple bold, or stacked on two lines, or with all that white space around it, and the fact that all four of those conditions have been met with "FENG SHUI" is absurd. Then there's the matter of "FENG SHUI" as a headline, because...I mean, it's not that informative. If you work for a newspaper, you know that would never fly. At the very least, someone would have thrown a question mark on the end of it.

If Revenge were a different kind of show, the strangeness of that Living section back page might not be a grievous error; it would be a clue that viewers should remember, paying off later in the season as Emily (Emily VanCamp) discovers that part of the conspiracy that led to her father's wrongful incarceration involved the strategic placement of mirrors opposite his fireplace. But Revenge isn't Rubicon, and I am not a clue. I am just the result of sloppy research. Please forgive my terrible Chi.