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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (2.14): One Dragon at a Time

When I was writing our AfterEllen.com 2011 TV review, I had to go digging through a whole year’s worth reader comments on recaps, lots of which were all, “I can’t believe you said that one thing about Rachel Berry! I disagree with my whole soul! I hope a meteor explodes down from heaven and hits you in the face!” After reading about one gajillon of those furious quips, I was feeling kind of discouraged and kind of disheartened and so my attitude wasn’t very sparkly when I started watching my Pretty Little Liars winter premiere screener. I was just sort of like, Siiiiigh. Here we go again.

Near the end of the episode, though, I was legitimately sitting six inches away from the TV shouting like a lunatic, and my phone rang and I answered it all, “WHAT!” And it was Shay Mitchell calling for an interview I’d scheduled with her. She said, “Hey Heather, it’s Shay!” And I was like, “Oh my God, why are you phoning me at a time like this? You’re about to get stabbed to death by A! Run! RUUUUUUN!”

‘Cause that’s what this show does to me. It makes me forget I’m supposed to be taking notes or thinking of clever things to write. It makes me forget people want to set me on fire if I don’t say nice things about their favorite character or ship. Heck, most of the time it makes me forget I’m watching a fictional story inside a magic box. It’s like I’m eleven years old, just gasping and wringing my hands and hollering at Emily about, “Stop getting murdered, you gorgeous fool!” And Aria and Spencer about, “What the actual hell are you wearing?!” Or gently caressing Hanna’s face on the screen, because what kind of soulless hell-demon would shout at Hanna?

Luckily, Shay Mitchell is forever warm and gracious, so she laughed at me and told me it was (mostly) going to be OK and she didn’t even hang up the phone.

Also, though, Pretty Little Liars isn’t just enormously (addictively!) entertaining; it’s really smart television. But subversively smart. Quietly smart. By this time in Glee‘s second season, the show was already so off the rails that practically everyone on earth was just hanging around hoping for morsels of Naya Rivera to fall like manna from heaven. And even though Veronica Mars turned in one of the best inaugural seasons of murder-mystery television in the history of the world, it also lost its damn mind in season two.

It’s not an easy thing to frame a TV show with a narrative device and then move that frame along while moving each of the characters’ personal lives along inside it. But Pretty Little Liars is doing it brilliantly. In fact, its trajectory is the exact opposite of Glee. I think Marlene King has made the correct decision to offer up the identity of “A” at the end of this season. It takes the stakes to eleven, makes every moment more delicious and sinister. It’s like one of those word problems in physics class. Like we’re the train leaving the station heading to Rosewood and there’s also a train leaving Rosewood station heading toward us. We’re both going fifty-eleven gazillion miles per hour. When will we meet? The finale. What will happen? A colossal explosion. Guaranteed.

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, “A” buried Annabeth Gish alive in her brown Tory Burch boots and then offered a shovel for the Liars to dig her out of her death pit, except for psyche! – Annabeth Gish was really enjoying a delicious cup of coffee with the Risen Mitten and that shovel was the one hundred percent guaranteed no questions asked absolutely irrefutable unequivocal murder weapon that did the murdering of the murdered Alison DiLaurentis. Definitely. Probably. Most likely. Twenty percent sure.

The penalty for being found with a murder weapon in Rosewood – even if the murder investigation is closed due to Ian’s ghost confessing to the killing like ten months ago – is community service. The Liars are sad-sacking around the highway in orange jumpsuits scowling at each other and stabbing empty soda cans with those trash stick things. Spencer is picking up garbage twice as fast as everybody else, of course, because Spencer doesn’t half-ass anything. Probably she’s going to add it to her college applications: Valedictorian of Litter.

Emily tries to talk to her about some techniques for bartering with A the Rattlesnake, which causes Hanna to throw up her hands and run around in circles screaming about “Snaaaaakes!” Spencer tells Emily to stop saying dumb ideas out loud and Emily says she’ll say all the dumb ideas out loud she wants to, thank you very much, and next thing you know they are pelting garbage at each other and rolling around on the ground like a pair of common hoodlums. Aria stomps her foot all, “You guys!” And Hanna’s over there all, “Snaaaaaakes!” And Aria stomps her foot again: “Stop it!” And Hanna’s still: “Snaaaaakes!”

Officer Garrett watches from his squad car with an evil grin and like a giant tub of movie theater popcorn in his lap.

The next morning Ashley Marrin tries to negotiate a truce between Emily and Hanna, but Hanna is only interested in gloating about destroying her dad’s wedding and by extension evil step-sister Kate’s life, and Emily is only interested in making a smoothie and hanging around by the fax machine waiting for some important documents to come through, the way teenagers do in the twenty-tens. Ashley’s like, “Emily, I was hoping for a thaw between the four of you.” And Emily’s like, “Not now, Mrs. Marin. If my fax doesn’t get here before school, I’ll have to take the chaise-and-four down to the Western Union office.”

Mike isn’t spiraling down the path of self-destruction anymore, apparently. On the way to school, he and Aria have a nice chat about how he hasn’t stolen any crafts from a blind person in probably six weeks and she ruffles his hair and says, “I’m so proud of you.” And then an exclamation: “Sweet Sapphic Sunday!” Because Ezra Fitz walks right out of the bike shop and almost collides with them because he’s got his nose stuck in a notebook trying to think of a word that rhymes with “visceral.” He lands on “miserable” – Our paper bag masks give me rage / photos meant for my website page / Your abandoned Big Bird earrings make me miserable / oh, my pain! it is so visceral! – then realizes the subject of his poetical lament is standing right in front of him.

Have you ever noticed how the camera hugs Ian Harding‘s face? I mean, it just gets right up in that guy’s grill like the dreams of every straight girl under the age of 40. It’s good, though, not just because he really does have an angelic face, but also because you get to see Ezra’s thoughts scrolling through his eyeballs like a marquee. He’s all, “Play it cool, Ezbian. Don’t be a homo. Don’t be a homo.” And then he totally homos all over Aria about, “Oh my God where have you been it doesn’t matter I love you no I don’t love you obviously because your little brother is standing right beside you let’s go back to my place and you can share my pajamas I’m just kidding no I’m not I love you please keep my prized possessions forever they’re not worth anything unless I have you I love you.”

Aria sends Mike to throw away her coffee cup so she can stop Ezra from exploding in a combustion of feelings like some kind of gay supernova. She’s like, “If you keep loving me, you will get decapitated.” And he’s like, “I don’t care!” And she’s all, “I’m not kidding, Ezra. Someone will chop out your brain.” And he goes, “LIKE THE WAY YOU CHOPPED OUT MY HEART!” Unfortunately the trash can Mike scampered off to is only like six inches away so he’s back in half a second and they have to go to school. Ezra tucks his head back in that notebook as he walks away and starts writing furiously: Not even a last hurrah / you left me with Jackie Blah Blah.

Guess who’s at Rosewood High? Officer Garrett! Guess why? Because he brought JennaBot a sack lunch or something! It’s amazing! He’s pacing around the hallway in his cop uniform whining into the phone about, “Jennnnnaaaa. You said you’d beeeeee here. I made you a saaaaandwich! I chopped into a thousand tiny pieces, the way you always do when I let you hold a knife!” Spencer walks up and smacks that phone right out of his hand. She goes full on Sphinx on his ass, talking in riddles like some kind of Willy Wonka:

Spencer: Where’s Jenna?

Garrett: Taking a snooze, I guess.

Spencer: Oh, you’d know ALLLL about snoozes, wouldn’t you, Snoozewanker? Snoozewankers and Wangdoodles and Hornswogglers.

Garrett: What?

Spencer: Snozzberries taste like snozzberries!

Garrett: Seriously, what?

Spencer: And murder tastes like murder!

Spencer laughs in that throaty way that makes good girls go bad and Garrett runs away because of terror.

Emily’s fax came through, I guess, because she’s showing it to the swim “coach,” talking about how she’s ready to get back in the water. Do some drowning. Fake some scholarships. The “coach” says Emily can’t be on the team for a while because of how she’s a murderer and stuff. It’s sad for Emily, but not as sad as it is for me because where’s Coachprah? Huh? Where is she?

In Ella’s literature class they’ve moved from To Kill a Mockingbird to something tantric. Or at least that’s what the quote on the blackboard leads me to believe. It’s all, “Say ‘yes’ to life.” Which is actually solid advice for the Liars, all of whom seem to live by the exact opposite motto. Emily bumps into Spencer or Spencer bumps into Emily and their books and things fall to the floor with a Kapow! and then they’re wrasslin’ it out again. Ella breaks it up with that stern look she has, all, “I’ve been going easy on you two because of how you’re constantly getting yourselves killed, but it’s time to get your shit together, ladies.” A texts Em when she’s scooping her stuff up, asking if Emily wants to make a deal. And yes. Yes, she does.

At her locker, Emily opens up her copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; only it’s really Spencer’s copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which they’re using to exchange secret messages because the girls aren’t really icing out Emily at all. It’s just a clever ploy to make “A” think there’s dissension in the ranks so they can trick him/her into getting hit with a car. For real. That’s the plan. And it is awesome.

Caleb, it seems, is enjoying the waves and ways of the left coast, and since Lucas is lonely without his sleeping bag buddy around for spooning, he’s decided to get his foot back in the door with Hanna. Hanna has made the very reasonable request that Lucas track down every single photo on the entire internet of her doing community service in an orange jumpsuit. And so of course Lucas hasn’t slept in like 30 days, just trolling Facebook and Twitter until his eyeballs and fingers are both bleeding. He’s like, “You’re so pretty in orange, Hanna. Like the actual sunshine.” And she’s all, “Oh, do go on. No, seriously: Go on.”

Over at Hollis College, home to every plagiarizer and adulterer east of the Mississippi, Byron and Ezra have a very awkward conversation about how no one ever means to hurt anyone, but sometimes people do some murder and other times people fall in love with their students, but also there are worse things in life. Like how one minute your girlfriend is buying you a pickup truck with the money she got from hawking her sister’s wedding ring, and the next minute she’s refusing to accept the furniture you whittled for her out of an oak tree you felled with your own chin.

Because that’s exactly what’s happening over at Hastings House of Horrors. Toby is waiting in the lane with his gift in tow like a Wise Man of yore, and our Lord and Savior Spencer Hastings is like, “Dude. What now.” Toby reveals to her a rocking chair he made with his own Boo Radley hands and Spencer stares at it like it’s the Cavanaugh-est thing she’s ever seen in her life. Because it totally is. It totally, totally is. I mean, you and I both know the entire Cavanaugh house is decorated with nothing but sinister snow globes and creepy furniture some ancestor or another carved up during a passive-aggressive wood-working fit. Spencer’s like, “I told you to forget about me and focus on the nefarious schemes of your sister Hornswoggle and her skeevy boyfriend Snoozewanker!”

Toby drives away in a huff with his feelings as hurt as that time those kids spit at him and he had to cry alone in the alley.

Night falls and the Liars meet up in the Hufflepuff Greenhouse of Imminent Doom to let us know that they’re still friends. Spencer, I should mention, is dressed like if George Washington discovered skinny jeans. And Emily’s smug face when she says, “‘A’ took the bait” is just about the sexiest thing I have ever seen. And plus she goes, “I’m the weakest link, and the weakest link wants some payback” and then I swooned so hard I fainted and when I woke up it was a brand new day in Rosewood.

Hanna and Lucas return home from the comic shop to find The Dark Knight himself standing in the kitchen all smiles and Bat-gadets. He goes, “Did you miss me?” And Lucas is all, “You have no ide-” But Hanna punches him in the dick to shut him up and then runs full throttle into Caleb’s arms. They mash their faces together, the sun shines, Lucas forlornly strokes the faces of Batman and Robin on his comic book.

At the Sharks’ swim meet, un-Coachprah waves at Emily and Emily thinks about adding her to her growing to-murder list, but Toby shows up to distract her and remind us that he’s just the greatest lesbro. He’s like, “Sucks how Spencer hates my carpentry skills and your face these days, huh?” And she’s like, “Not now, Toby.” Another person at the swim meet is Garrett, and Toby calls him “a trained monkey.”

Aria drops by Hollis to return Ezra’s favorite erotic poetry collection, Slippery When Scissoring, and Jackie Molina tries to set her head on fire due to her breech of contract. Ezra catches them snipping at each other and his eyes ping-pong between the two of them and then his brain finally goes, “Ohhhh.” Presumably Ezra and Aria chop Jackie Molina into tiny bits and stash her in the dumpster, but unfortunately we don’t get to see that part. What we get to see is Aria going, “It sure would have been bad for you, jail-wise, if we’d gotten caught dating, huh? I didn’t realize.” And Ezra going, “Trust me, it’ll all be legal once we come out to your parents. Pennsylvania law is kooky like that.”

Caleb and Lucas have a most patronizing conversation about how lucky they are to have each other to “look after” Hanna, like she’s not perfectly capable of getting shot in the head at breakfast and shoplifting lingerie by lunch time. They circle each other like that way giraffes do before they start wringing their necks around one another, but decide they’d rather cuddle than brawl. Lucas is like, “See you tonight, for a date under the stars!” And Caleb goes, “I think you mean the Star Wars sheets!” And they giggle and high five and chest bump and other acceptable public bro things.

After the swim meet, the Liars have a very fake very public very amazing confrontation about the giant “box” of “evidence” Jason gave Aria. Emily’s like, “GIVE ME IT!” And Spencer is all, “I’LL GIVE YOU A KNUCKLE SANDWICH IS WHAT I’LL GIVE YOU!” They glower and wink and stare and wink and grimace and wink and every dude on earth crowds around is probably A. Emily’s like, “EMILY GETS WHAT EMILY WANTS.” And then she storms away and smirks some more and I am overcome once again with the vapors.

True to his word, Ezra meets Aria at her house and it is everything you could possibly hope for in a coming out scene. The first thing is the dialogue:

Ezra: This isn’t easy for me to say. But for a long time now I’ve been keeping a secret. A big secret. A secret that starts with the letter “L.”

Ella: Sweetheart, we know you’re a lesbian. Everyone knows you’re a lesbian.

Ezra: Right. But I’m in lesbians.

Ella: That’s … descriptive.

Ezra: No, I mean I’m in lesbians – with your daughter.

And the second great thing: Holly Maria Combs‘ reaction faces.

Byron acts like he’s got any kind of ground to stand on when it comes to having relationships with students, but Mike intervenes and punches Ezra right in his perfect little Ezbian head. You can bet your collection of Lucy Lawless trading cards there will be a poem about it later, but for now Ezra needs to drink some scotch and lie down and breathe a sigh of relief that everything’s legal now that he’s said it out loud.

Emily’s on her way to kidnap “A” and the other Liars are meant to be tailing her, but there are some hang ups. Toby Apparates right into Spencer’s living room to give her a talking-to about being mean to Emily: “You don’t like my hand-crafted furnishings? Fine. I mean, Jesus also was a carpenter, but whatever. But I am not going to stand stand by watch you frown at Emily Fields. She’s the second puppiest person on this show after me and it’s just rude.” Hanna’s also got some business to take care of in the form of her jackhole dad dropping by to kick her in the mouth. He’s all, “Hey, remember how the only person worse than me is my new step-daughter? Surprise, both of us are moving next door!” And Aria’s not getting out of the house any time soon either because of how her parents are afraid she’s gonna swing by the old folks home and marry whatever geriatric opens the door.

Emily’s driving into Mordor, though, in that BEAUTIFUL TOYOTA. The music is like, “You’re f—————-ked.” And her face is like, “You have no idea how strong I actually am. 50 percent of my girlfriends have tried to kill me.”

OK, so Emily just walks right into the greenhouse with a box full of nothing and “A” drops down from the ceiling wearing a hoodie that may or may not have been leftover from a glamping trip and a pair of Risen Mittens and probably some chain mail. Emily teases “A” and taunts “A” and monologues like the most gorgeous comic book villain you’ve ever seen. And juuuuuust when she gets up in “A'”s zombie face, Emily goes, “BOO!” And throws back her head and laughs maniacally and is amazing in every way before she stops mid-mwahaha and says, “No, seriously. Prepare to die.”

They scuffle and shuffle and in run Aria and Spencer, and “A” throws a hand grenade into the ceiling and glass shatters and everyone screams and ducks and dives, and “A” goes running for the woods, and then the actual greatest thing in the history of television happens: Hanna hits “A” with her car.

The Liars chase “A” through the woods like hound dogs, baying and sniffing and howling to beat the band. He/she gets away, which bums them out. But also, he/she left behind his/her cell phone, which makes them squeal with glee. ‘Cause guess who is dating not one, but two master hackers? Hefty Hanna.

Sitting on her porch rocking away in a homemade rocking chair is JennaBot. Like the Liars, she, too, has been Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares. Back and forth she sways in a chair meant for Spencer. Back and forth. Back and forth. The dulcet tones of “Amazing Grace” spring forth from her ever-present flute. I once was lost, but now I’m found, she plays. Then slowly, oh so slowly, she pulls off her sunglasses and smiles like the dawn of the Apocalypse. She rocks and rocks and whispers into the night: “Was blind, but now I see.”

And now: Your #BooRadleyVanCullen tweets, which, by the way, TOTALLY TRENDED WORLDWIDE!

Welcome back, my friends!

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