Every Tuesday night until the Pretty Little Liars Halloween special airs, ABC Family will be posting a new episode of their web series Pretty Dirty Secrets. It’s a tie-in to the central sleuthing of the show, so we’re hopping in our Mystery Machine every week to do some detective-ing. You can watch last night’s episode, “TrAde Off,” at ABCFamily.com.
When’s the last time we saw Lucas? At one point, Hanna confronted him about visiting Mona at Radley Institute for the Criminally Insane, and he ran off into the night howling and scratching at his ears and chasing his tail and basically acting like a feral werewolf. And then another time, he threw himself against the storefront of that photography place for an entire episode trying to get his shit back after getting fired. But that was the episode with Paige McCullers and the Coconut Cupcake, so I was too busy falling in love to remember what happened with Lucas. I guess it doesn’t matter except for every time I see him, I hear Hermione Granger’s voice in my head going, “Twitchy little ferret, aren’t you?” Which is happening right now because he is shuffling into Rosewood’s Halloween Expo with some muddy shoes and heavy heart.
He spots Shana reading Fables: Legends In Exile, which he calls “the best in the series,” which is silly socks, but I’ll give him props for recognizing the new trade paperback cover (which only replaced the ten-year run of the original cover like three months ago) from 20 feet away. (Sweet Lord, did I just out-nerd Lucas??) Anyway, Lucas is like, “Have you read the new series by Mike Willingham? The one about the teenage boy who is tortured by a classmate who dies and comes back to torture him from the grave and then he falls in love with the ghost torturer’s best friend but she only dances with him for money and so he teams up with the town’s adrenalized hyperreality-stricken queen bee to destroy everyone?” Shana’s like, “No, but it sounds terrifying.” Lucas is like, “Yes, and the tortured boy, he’s a real hero. Hypothetically, would you have sex with a guy like that?”
Shana shoos him away because even if he’s kind of cute, she’s trying to break the record for Most Days of Staying Alive by a Black Person in Rosewood, PA, and interacting with a psychobabbling nerd probably isn’t the best way to do that.
Lucas wanders around the store, punching masks in the face and mumbling to himself about how he’s Prince Charming. His phone rings and he reaches into his black hoodie(!) to answer it. It’s someone asking if he’s got his ticket and torture devices for the Halloween episode, and yes he does, OK? Rope, revolver, candlestick, knife, lead pipe, and a life jacket (because you never know when Hanna’s going to toss your ass in the river). While he’s talking, a burlap babyface zombie comes to life and whispers sweet nothings in his ear and he doesn’t even flinch. They steal away to the changing room, where the burlap babyface zombie produces some clues on some paper, and Lucas produces some money in a sack.
Shana spots Lucas rushing from the fitting room while the burlap babyface zombie inside zips up its pants, and she’s like, “Man. This town.”
Only three webisodes left until the Halloween special! Do you have your ticket? DO YOU???
