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“Pretty Little Liars” recap 2.10: Good Touch, Bad Touch

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, A went after Emily like a rabid dog hopped up on canine blow, Hanna lost a boy but gained a dad, Spencer cracked … everyone’s nuts, and Aria couldn’t find the elusive “just right” balance between Ezbianism and Goldilocks DiLaurentis.

It’s college fair day, and at Rosewood High that means school is elective. Unless, of course, you are Emily Fields, for whom excellence is never optional. While Hanna is at home dreaming of vagrants and the things they do with s’mores, Emily is attending swim practice – where she sits by the pool hoping Paige will try to drown her so she’ll have an excuse to get in the water – and procuring herself some breakfast and unsheathing the Mystery Machine log, from which she is now reading the details of her last bit of sleuthing with Spencer:

10:15 p.m. Spencer’s mom leaves for Out of Town. 10:17 p.m. We leave for Jason’s shed. 10:19 p.m. We’re back at Spencer’s because she realizes she wore her Nancy Drew shoes when she meant to wear her Miss Marple shoes. 10:23 p.m. We break into the shed and see you, Aria, peering at us from every dank corner on account of stalker photos plastered everywhere.

Aria’s like, “Well, I guess kissing Jason is the weirdest thing any of us has done with a stalker so far.” And Emily’s all, “Oh, honey, just wait.”

She and Emily stare at each other and shout “Kissing?” “Kissing!” “Kissing?!” “Kissing!!” for ten minutes, or however long it takes the Denim Bandit to attack Spencer. With half her shirt still in tact, she plops down at the table and goes, “Who’s kissing whom?” And Emily’s like, “Not me. Quinn’s got Samara locked in a steamer trunk.”

Aria and Spencer clomp off in different directions, leaving Emily to her bowl of Alpha-Bits cereal, only A has taken out all of the letters except for A, which is hands-down her best trick so far. 

Speaking of best tricks, this is Lucy Hale‘s best-acted episode to date. It says so in my notes about ten times, so it must be a fact.

Have you guys noticed how much more Ashley Marin is smiling these days? When she’s not a-hookin’ and a-robbin’, she’s a barrel of grins. Hanna has agreed to be a bridesmaid in her dad’s second wedding, which she’s not so chuffed about on her mom’s behalf, but the f–ks Ashley gives total zero. She gifts Hanna a gift certificate to gift to Emily for a massage, and then smiles and curtsies and twirls and polishes her entire bookcase of MILF trophies before leaving for her “job” at the “bank.”

At school, Aria tries something no Liar has ever tried before: She marches up to Jason and asks a direct question and waits for a direct answer: “What the actual hell with the stalker photos, brah?” Jason’s like, “Spencer broke into my shed? Should’ve known.” And then he explains that he didn’t take those stalky photos; Alison took those stalky photos, and he was just developing the film so he could frame the prints for Aria. As a gift.

OK, and two things: 1) Jason. Do me a favor and never get me a gift. And 2) Remember when I said Alison was a time-traveling ninja-wizard? Well, this proves it, because a film camera? Really?

(Sometimes, when I really want to scare the s–t out of myself, I imagine that Jason is really Alison after gender realignment surgery or something. Like maybe Alison killed Jason and then took over his body and now she’s pulling some kind of Tom Sawyer s–t in the most psychotic way possible. It explains the face-change operation.)

Aria has grown accustomed to having top secret conversations at top volume, so I’m sure she’s just as surprised as we are to discover that JennaBot was just chilling behind some frosted glass, listening to every little thing she and Jason just said. It’s a shame she couldn’t see his cardigan. What a gem that thing is. Like he robbed Professor Lupin. Or Mr. Rogers.

Guess who’s back in the hallowed halls of Rosewood High? Why, it’s Mr. Fitz! Aria is so happy to see his pookie bear face that she makes a beeline for him, except for guess who else has the audacity to have a face? Jackie Molina, that’s who. Mr. Fitz lumbers over to Aria like the Golden Retriever puppy he is, waving around a Hollis College catalog and talking about, “Miss Montgomery, have you considered Hollis College? Why, I could use a mature, artistic student like yourself on my staff.” Then, in a stage whisper: “Get it? Staff? Like a euphemism for my -” Aria slaps him in the face, all, “I see Jackie Molina continues to exist. It’s no wonder, then, that I was compelled to let the guy who maybe murdered my best friend kiss me on the mouth.”

Annabeth Gish has stopped by school to set up one of those Lucy van Pelt therapy booths for the college fair. She senses Emily’s inner turmoil by the way Emily is writhing around on the floor in a pile of books crying out loud about her inner turmoil, and so she offers her some therapy in the afternoon. Emily’s like, “Thank you. I’ve been stalked and poisoned and murdered in ten new ways since the last time we spoke. I’ll drop by after my massage.”

Spencer isn’t attending the college fair because she was accepted into every Ivy League university after acting her SATs in kindergarten. Instead she’s at home packing up Ian’s s–t before Melissa and her mom get back from Out of Town. It seems like a cruel thing to ask a kid to do – “Hey, remember that guy who used to live in our barn and kill all your friends? How about carting his stuff off to the Goodwill when you have a chance” – but you know Spencer’s been jonesing for an uninterrupted snoop of Ian’s worldly possessions for ages.

While she’s building a bonfire out of Ian’s clothes, Toby digs up one his old yearbooks in the yard, and they discover that he belonged to the N.A.T. Club, which sets Spencer off because maybe she needs to join too. One more extra-curricular would really give her the advantage when she applies to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry over the summer.

But the N.A.T. Club wasn’t a real thing, apparently. Just a hoax between Ian and Jason and Officer Garret. A Latin hoax that means “We See All.” (Jason, for one, is about to See All my fists up in his face if he doesn’t learn that no means no.)

Hanna also isn’t attending the college fair because: a) The money tree. And b) The money lasagna. But she is attending bridesmaid dress shopping with my own personal favorite Angel of Death, Mona Vanderwall. Mona’s legendary sensitivity is on full display today. Observe her comparing her best friend to a water buffalo. Hanna’s like, “Could you try to be a little more supportive? The last time I saw Kate and Isabel, I threatened to drown them in their own tears at a Regatta Gala.”

And of course Mona’s going to be more supportive, especially when Kate herself shows up sporting the finest face transplant this town has seen since Jason stared his way back to Rosewood. Kate invites Mona and Hanna to “The Club” where she’s lunching with “her cousins,” which, frankly, is like going with a hippie to a second location. Never do it.

Apparently, Ashley’s massage gift certificate was to one of those “happy endings” spas, because the masseuse gets real weird with Emily about first times and tenderness. And it’s sad, right, that this is the closest Emily has ever gotten to any real action? I mean, this and the time she changed clothes right in front of Samara’s face. The masseuse leaves Emily to her nakedness, and leaves the door open to the wide world. And by “wide world” I mean “A,” who lets herself in and rubs all over Emily while Emily talks about how awesome it feels. You know, I didn’t think it was that creepy when I was watching it, but writing it down just now made me shudder for real.

See, this is what happens when you lunch at the club with someone else’s cousins: You end up at the stables in someone else’s equestrian pants. And I guess Mona’s off the hook for being A now? I was getting pretty convinced it was her. Who else is going to go for Emily’s jugular as soon as she starts sharing a bed with Hanna? But this episode makes a meal of showing Mona out in the middle of the forest while Emily is getting bad touched by A at the spa.

Hanna wrecks her horse, of course, and rails at Mona about how it was her dumb idea to come riding in the first place. Mona’s like, “Don’t worry, horses always find their way back home. Horses and hobos. And I hope both of yours come back soon because you’re not fun at all anymore. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go shoplifting. By myself.”

And poor Emily. The masseuse comes back into the room apologizing for having been gone so long, and Emily goes, “Wait, what? Those weren’t your professional hands caressing the curves of my buttocks?” And then she sees an “A” in the condensation on the water pitcher. And then she vomits over the edge of the table.

Speaking of hippies and second locations, Aria has followed Jason to his house to get those stalky photos and a box of Ali’s stuff. Spencer knows Aria’s done listening to her Jason Thing hysterics, so she decides to invoke the name of Gilbert Blythe. She tracks down Ezra at school and hops into his car and this is the funniest part of the whole episode. It’s one of the funniest parts of the whole season, actually. She just gets into the passenger seat of his car and he goes, “Spencer. Er. Did you, um, need a ride … or something?” And she’s like, “I need to tell you about six or seven different things, and the first one is that I know you’ve got an Indigo Girls tattoo on your ass. Because Aria told me. Because of how she’s seen your ass. Because of how you’re dating.”

Ella oversees them talking in the car and she shakes her head judgily about, “Oh, if only the Hastings weren’t always in Out of Town, maybe they’d know that one of their kids is a sociopath and that the other one of their kids is having an affair with a teacher.”

Over at the DiLaurentis place, Jason invites Aria inside for some iced tea and a look at his murder room, but she decides to stay outside and wait for Ezra to show up and lose his mind. Which he does. He pulls into the driveway on two wheels and hops out and explains that he is both terrified of Jason as a homicidal maniac, and jealous of Jason as a potential love interest for Aria. It’s the sweetest thing Aria’s heard today, and if Ezra would just agree to wipe Jackie Molina’s memory from the face of the earth and come out to her parents, she’d be the happiest girl in the world.

Jason sees them snogging and immediately makes plans to expand his murder room to accommodate two people. He also gives Aria a box of Ali’s knickknacks.

At Cousins Equestrian Bar & Grille, Hanna says every mean thing she can think of about Kate and her new face. And guess what? Tale as old as time: The PA system is on, so Kate overhears the whole thing. Mona, did you do that on purpose, you sneaky little devil?

JennaBot stops by Spencer’s to warn her to stop sleuthing. She goes, “I know my brother-lover is helping you solve mysteries!” And Spencer goes, “I know your cop-lover is a cop. And a lover. I mean, a lover to you. He’s a cop to everyone.” Unfortunately, they only mean girl at each other this time. No one gets blinded or extra-blinded.

I kind of expected these last three episodes of the season to start wrapping things up, but that was silly of me. The last scene sets up a whole bunch of new things: 1) Ella confronts Aria about Spencer and Mr. Fitz and explains how she would just be devastated beyond the telling of it if she found out Ezra was boning a former student. 2) Kate calls Hanna to explain the many ways she is going to ruin her life. 3) Garrett and Jason sit on Jason’s front porch and get cryptic about all the secrets that have that matter and don’t matter now that Ali is dead but Garrett is still a cop.

It turns out that Emily stood up Annabeth Gish for therapy, but don’t worry – the Risen Mitten happily took her place.

I apologize for the lateness of this recap, and for the fact that I don’t have time to grab your #BooRadleyVanCullen Tweets this week. Real Life is being all life-y. I’ll make it up to you next week. I promise. 

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