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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (1.16): Vive la Liars!

So, Je Suis Une Amie is “I am your friend” in French-speak, correct? Well I Am Your Friend is “bullshit” in Pretty Little Liars-speak, unless you are an actual PLL or an appropriately-aged fella with a weird-shaped face. But I like the whole French thing because it’s just another excuse for Spencer to prance around in an internationally themed costume, for one thing. And for another, even Holden Caulfield seems bearable when you say it like L’attrape-coeurs.

Aria wakes up somewhere between “gentle tepidation” and “nuclear-level panic” because she’s still not sure if her mother saw her publicly displaying her affection all over Gilbert Blythe at the museum opening last week (last night?). She tells her pops that he needs to pay up for the dance-off from two episodes ago, and he pretends that people still write actual checks. Aria finds a ticket for the museum in his “checkbook,” and he gets unnecessarily weird about it, like, “The sprocket in your mom’s car came loose so I got sprung – er, I sprung her from disaster in Philly where some things happened and other things did not, some things were seen and other things were not, some tickets were stuck into “checkbooks” and other things were stuck into “places.”

At school, Aria’s like, “Mom, did you see anything alarming last night, like your only daughter with her tongue down her literature teacher’s throat?” Piper rolls her eyes and giggles and dances around the issue and says, “Mr. Blythe wants to take your class on a field trip to East Egg, and since the budget is limited, you’ll have to bunk together. You and Mr. Blythe. Which isn’t weird at all. Toodles!”

Hanna’s feelings could best be described as “oppressive guilt” for almost grassing Aria and Gilbert up to Piper Montgomery. She feels way worse about it than that time she literally killed Lucas with her bare hands, and she tries more than once to confess her betrayal to Aria. Aria blows her off on repeat, though, all, “Spencer is French today and the Mystery Machine isn’t going to drive itself. I’ve got a full box of Scooby Snacks and a sneaking suspicion that my parents are making monkey.”

Aria and Hanna follow Aria’s dad to Rosewood High in the middle of the night because, of all the places in all of the town, that is where he and Piper have decided to meet for sex. The high school library. Between the hours of Janitors Leave and Janitors Arrive. At the high school. In the library. Where Piper teaches. And her children attend classes. At the high school.

Aria solves her first case ever (Confirmed: her parents are indeed boning in public), and for her effort, she and Hanna almost get massacred. After her parents leave, Aria decides to go snooping around the library’s ventilation system – as you do – and they discover a whole bird’s nest full of trinkets and toiletries and wads of cash. They assume it’s A’s stash, and so Hanna just takes that money right back and shoves it in her pocket. But not so quick, girls! Who is that hooded figure creeping up on you with menace in his eyes and malice in his heart?!

Hanna and Aria run and shriek and ping against the lockers in the darkened hallway while a zombie chases after them. Only, it’s not really a zombie. It’s Caleb Letto. He lives in the bowels of the school, sometimes using the intercom to wail “Point of No Return” in the middle of the night, and sometimes singing “All I Ask of You.” Depending on what kind of day he had. The money in Hanna’s pocket belongs to him. (Not the wocket, though. The wocket is all Hanna.)

Caleb Letto is really sure Hanna owes him now, so he uses her status as homecoming queen to identify the kids in their class that might be into a ponzi scheme. Or something. It doesn’t really make much sense. Hanna tells Caleb Letto that his prime target is the girl whose grandfather invented the stapler, which means that one of the PLLs’ classmates is like 120 years old (because the very first stapler appeared in King Louis XV’s court in the 18th century. In keeping with the French theme, you see).

All that Scooby snacking is for naught, though, because A texts Aria to say that Hanna is the tattler, and Hanna confirms it, and so they break up. It’s very sad. Hanna is very heartbroken. So heartbroken that she lets the hobo Caleb Letto move into her basement with his savvy tech skills and all the shiny things he’s collected over the years.

Spencer Hastings, Queen of my Heart, has had it uptohere with all the injustice being leveled at Boo Radley Van Cullen. Here is a boy whose only crime was sleeping with his sister-robot, and maybe dipping his favorite sweater into a dead girl’s blood. He’s as innocent as snow, is what Spencer is saying; and has been saying like a lone reed upon the moors of Shibden Valley from the moment he returned to town.

No? That’s not correct? She squawked Boo’s guilt every morning for a year like the Pledge of Allegiance for everyone to hear? Oh. Well, she’s got a jaunty beret burning a hole in her costume box and French is something people should know at juvie. Right? What’s wrong with trying to class up the joint every now and again?

Spencer signs up to tutor Boo in French, but since JennaBot will murder her if she enters his house, and a slayer will stake him if he steps off his porch, they’re forced to study on the front steps while Jenna calls in a SniperBot to lock them both in its cross-hairs. Boo’s like, “You see the curtains swaying ominously behind us – WAIT, DON’T LOOK! Well, that’s JennaBot, and if she suspects even for a second that we’re doing anything more than conjugating verbs, we’re both going to get sniped. Do you hear me?”

She gives him a copy of Catcher in the Rye in French, and he’s like, “How do you even know I’ve read the book that describes half my characterization?” And she goes, “True or false: You are reciting this passage in your head right this second:

I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

He says. “Fine, OK! Oui!” And she says, “Up close your chin dimple isn’t so weird.”

Over at Emily’s, Spencer arranges herself on the bed so as to look like a painting in want of an artist. She’s in love with that Radley boy already, I think, and even if he is a lunatic, that’s two steps up from the d-bag tennis pro who broke up with her because she thought he was talented enough to go to camp in Sweden.

Spencer’s only actual problem revolves around Ian and Melissa, and even if those two aren’t guilty of murder, they ought to be arrested for being so godd–n stupid. Spencer stops by Ian’s office to tell him she won’t be at field hockey practice this afternoon because of her new tutoring responsibility. And he is just indignant. He pulls her into his office and says, “What are you playing at, you filthy bitch?” And she’s like, “Er…” And he says, “Do you mean to tell me you’re not coming to practice?” And she’s like, “Right. I’m not coming to practice.” And he’s all, “So you’re not coming to practice?” And she goes, “That is, in fact, what I said.” And he punches a hole through the wall just as Melissa walks in, and she’s like, “Baby, what’s wrong?” and he points at Spencer and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and says, “Your sister just told me she’s not coming to practice.” Melissa gasps; she’s visibly shaken. And after an intense moment, she says, “Spencer, what the actual f–k?”

It’s weird. But whatever. Ian told Melissa about how he kissed Spencer that one time, and now she’s incubating his child, which they conceived with stupidity and murder-prone sperm.

Emily and Paige. Paige and Emily. Emily and Maya and Maya and Emily and Paige and Emily and Maya and Paige and Coachprah. WHO’S READY FOR A SWIIIIIMMMMM OFFFFFFF?! (Maya isn’t really in this episode, and I don’t think she’s coming back, but I thought we should mention her in the hopes that she’ll one day make it home from Juvie Camp in one gay piece.)

In the early hours of the day, when only the Caleb Lettos are roaming the halls and tending to their nests in the air conditioning vents, the Rosewood High swim team is practicing for their upcoming meet. Paige and Emily tie their practice run, so Coachprah doesn’t know who will anchor the relay tomorrow afternoon.

After Coachprah leaves the locker room, Paige grabs Emily by the hair and holds a knife to her throat and says, “Your death is imminent, and I don’t mean in that cloaked menace way you and your friends almost always get murdered, but then it turns out it’s just a shadow or a homeless teenager. I mean it in this way: I will literally slit your throat.” And then she takes her hands off of Emily’s person and whistles her way to geometry.

Emily tells Spencer that Paige “wants it more” and Spencer says, “Em, it’s OK for you to admit that you want me more. I mean, want it more. ‘It’ being ‘swimming.’ Obviously.”

And then Emily wakes up in the night to a text message. For once, it’s not A with some midnight limerick; it’s Paige, and she wants Emily to come to the front door …

… where she’s just sopping wet from the torrential downpour happening behind her, and she wants Emily to know she’s sorry. So sorry. (Also, I think she wants Emily to see her with her wet t-shirt clinging to her cleavage.) And I gotta tell you, I thought Paige was totally pre-apologizing for something horrible she was going to do. I still think that might be the case. Anyway, after she apologizes she runs off the porch into the rain and hops on her bicycle and for a shining second I thought Lindsay Shaw was going to ram that thing into a mailbox on accident.

At school the next day, Coachprah tells Emily, “YOU’RE THE ANCHOOOOORRRR!” because Paige crashed her bike the night before. See, here’s what I thought. I thought Paige was going to pretend she got hit by a BEAUTIFUL TOYOTA while she was riding her bike to a soup kitchen to help the needy or something, and if Emily was on trial for murder like every other teenager in this town, she wouldn’t have time for swim practice.

But instead, Paige comes to the meet to cheer on Shay Mitchell’s legs. Afterward, Paige says, “I’ve never seen a sports movie about overachiever kids and so I don’t know anything about playing for fun.” Emily says she’ll show her, and they swim in slow-motion and the music says they’re going to fall for each other and Emily comes up out of the water and stares at swimming Paige like she is the most majestic thing.

Over at the home of the actual most majestic thing, Spencer opens up L’attrape-coeurs. Boo gave it back because they can’t study together any more, but really he was just giving her a clue. See, he found some Braille in JennaBot’s room and that made him suspicious because what blind girl has Braille in her room?

In his/her lair, A is unpacking real life pieces from the game of Clue: wrench, rope, candlestick, lead pipe. S/he’s learning French, too, from a record. Je suis, I am, says the record. Je suis, I am. Je suis, I am. Je suis, I am. I don’t know how familiar you are with the Jewish Torah/the first five books of the Christian Old Testament, but when someone says “I am” over and over and over again, it means that person is God.

The Lord in the Billiard Room with the Revolver. Case closed.

Jeepers H. Christmas, you guys crack me up.

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