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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (2.17) — “Dance, you little bastards!”

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, one twin child stabbed another twin child in the heart because of an argument about a Cabbage Patch Doll or something. Or perhaps that was only a story Alison told on the Halloween that she got murdered the first of many times. Also on that Halloween Alison was blackmailed by someone named “A,” who has now whittled the population of Rosewood down to about ten residents. Four of those residents recently nicked “A”‘s cell phone, and handed it over to a gay hobo named Caleb for some of his patented telecommunications sorcery.

The Liars have gathered together in Spencer’s kitchen to see what kind of stuff Caleb was able to recover from A’s cryptographic cell phone. Hanna is acting ferrety about handing over the flash drive because as soon as she does, the sniper outside Lucas’ bedroom window will put a bullet right through Caleb’s brain helmet. Spencer is pawing at the floor and running in circles on all fours around the room and salivating like a rabid thing and finally she just grabs the drive out of Hanna’s hand with a snort. What Caleb has uncovered is that one porno again, the one from the midnight showing in Rosewood Cemetery. But also a video of Ian and Garrett and JennaBot digging through Alison’s things and bitching about why Jason hasn’t joined them to root around in his sister’s bedroom. Spencer just drools all over the keyboard and barks “NAT CLUB! NAT CLUB! NAT CLUB!” over and over until Emily is forced to tranq her.

A mild sedative would not work on Spencer, of course, due to the concentration of caffeine she intakes on an hourly basis, so Emily has to use one of those tranquilizers like from the wild. The kind scientists use to knock over elephants. She hauls Spencer up to her room, tucks her into bed, and then sits by the window waiting for Toby to do his morning Shakespearean monologue. It used to really get Spencer going; not the part about how Juliet is so bright and beautiful, but the part about, “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon!” Obviously that is half of Spencer’s entire deal. Today, Emily answers Spencer’s phone and explains that she can’t chat with Toby due to the opiate-based narcotics coursing through her veins. Toby’s like, “It’s getting harder for me to believe these anecdotes, but OK. I’ll just leave this rocking chair in the pile with all the other rocking chairs and get my tools and go.”

Poor ol’ Boo. Back when he tried to murder Emily at the prom and then dumped her body out at the hospital, I never knew how much I’d end up loving him.

Rosewood High Courtyard. Hanna is, frankly, a little miffed at the ease with which the other Liars are willing to sacrifice her boyfriend as a burnt offering to “A.” Spencer is miffed too, but mostly at herself for the way she keeps making Toby cry in haunted alleys. Aria tries to listen, she really does, but it’s been about three hours since anyone has mentioned Ezra and if her friends won’t bring him up, she’ll just have to do it herself. Emily says maybe he needs some time. And, look, I know I make up a lot of stuff in these recaps, but I just need to be sure you know that this next thing out of Aria’s mouth are the words as penned by the writers of this show. And those words are, “I gave him time. Him sneaking out of the theater? That was time. Now I just really want some answers.”

Aria, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Have you been attacked by Serena van der Woodsen? Did she bite you in the neck and inflict you with Hubristic Verbal Discombobulation? Ten minutes is plenty of time for him to answer me about whether or not I’m worth a lifetime in prison!

Anyway, Holden wanders in looking like everybody’s third-favorite gay guy on this show, and all the Liars start chirping “Gay! Gay! Gay!” But Aria catches him checking out a girl’s ass like a dude from an Axe Body Spray commercial, so she’s just going to keep on thinking he’s straight. (A couple of you #BooRadleyVanCulen guys think he’s Maya’s stalker! Good sleuthing if that turns out to be true! I mean, it’s certainly interesting that the only other black student this show has ever given us is the girl who just walked by and got perved on by Holden.) Aria and Holden make a date to have an imaginary date. 

Does Caleb go to school anymore? Not today, I guess. He’s just sitting outside of Starbucks waving his magic wand over “A”‘s phone and muttering various incantations. DiĆ”bolos Revelio calls up a photo of Officer Garrett standing over a dead body swinging a sword around while bursting forth with a maniacal cackle. The way you can tell is because Garrett is sitting one table over making the same face as in the photo and the noise coming out of his mouth is “Mwahahahahaha” and also he’s polishing a sword. Caleb tries to run far, far away, but Garrett calls him back to talk about how weird it is when you lose your car and your keys. Like Caleb owns a car. Or keys.

I think we’re in Spencer’s bedroom. I think Hanna is dressed like Jenny Hartman from Hand aufs Herz. I think we’re still discussing the value of Caleb’s life. The other Liars are convinced it’s not worth much, the price of a cup of coffee maybe, and not even the good stuff Spencer drinks – but Hanna thinks it’s worth at least once piece of pottery from the Blind Girl Craft Fair. Which is to say: Priceless. During their scuffle, the neck of one of those Chucky dolls snaps in half and some scribbled notes on scraps of paper fall out. After reading them aloud in their most menacing voices the Liars remember that they’ve seen at least one of these notes before, the night of the Burlap Zombie Baby Halloween. Someone wrote the note, stabbed it into a pumpkin face, and left it on Ali’s porch. And that someone was … “A!” (!!!!!)

The Liars ask themselves: “Should we do something with the information that our dead friend was being stalked by the same stalker that is now stalking us?” Then the Liars answer themselves: “No, let us worry some more about our love lives.” And they do.

Also worried about her love life is Mona. She is a mess. I hate to see her like this. First she throws herself into Hanna’s arms and cries about how Hanna doesn’t care about her enough. (Valid.) Then she plucks this necklace out of her locker and tries to give it back to Noel Kahn while dressing him down about impotence or whatever. He just laughs in her face and throws the necklace in the trash can while making that one face he makes. Like The Joker. Then Mona rushes into the bathroom and starts clawing at her reflection and making some honey badger noises. Hanna follows her and tries to comfort her, like, “Seriously? About Noel Kahn?” Mona is all, “Let me highlight for you the various ways Noel Kahn is a serial killer.” She says them all like they’re good things, like how attractive it is that someone can build a murder room in ten minutes using nothing by Ziploc bags, hair ties, and chewing gum. They finally agree to make out later to make Mona feel better and as soon as they leave the bathroom, JennaBot comes bleep blooping out of one of the stalls, grinning like the high-functioning sociopath she is.

While Toby is climbing to his death atop the scaffolding “A” sabotaged last week, Aria is calling Ezra to ask him to climb to his death atop a clock tower in Philly later tonight between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. because that’s how much time she’s reserved with her beard/women of color fetishist.

Little Boo is by himself in the hospital, of course. The boy was literally raised by wolves until his half-human sister kidnapped him and forced him into sex slavery. Spencer comes running in to fawn over him, but trips over Dr. Wren instead and ends up accidentally humping his leg while Toby watches from his bed. He’s in traction, poor thing. He can’t even look away. Wren’s like, “Bloomin’ ‘eck, I missed you, ‘Ermione!” and Spencer keeps on a-humping. It’s gross. I’m grossed out. Go away, Wren. GET YOURSELF TOGETHER, SPENCER.

Once Spencer and Wren decide to exercise a little decorum and take their shit out into the hallway, JennaBot emerges from the shadows. She’s like, “I told you not to go back to Hastings House of Horrors! I told you you were going to get hit over the head with a field hockey stick or a shovel or a fire poker or whatever other candy cane-shaped murder weapons are buried in their backyard!” Toby is like, “I don’t do what you say!” And JennaBot sits herself right down on his bed and like slithers up beside him and fully goes Parseltongue about, “You ussssssseed to do exactly what I sssssssaaaaaid.” It’s like, I want to be as grossed out by this as I was by Wren a second ago, but I can’t look away. I can’t even blink. Just … what is she going to do? Ever, I mean. What is she going to do ever? Today she punches a puppy in the face, tomorrow she teaches a blind knitting class at church, over the weekend she adopts a baby from China, the next day she burns down China. YOU NEVER KNOW. She says some things about family and then pulls her giant pocket watch out of her trench coat and realizes she’s got a date with one of Rosewood’s bazillion supervillians and so she’s got to go.

On the way out, JennaBot sniffs Emily. She tries to start something like she does, but this Emily isn’t the cowering Emily from the days of yore. She gets real close to JennaBot’s ear and whispers, “Talk shit, get hit.” And so Jenna bounces. 

Caleb shows up at Hanna’s with many more murder videos in his hands – “In this one, Alison is killed by Garret. In this one, Alison is killed by Jenna. In this one, Alison is mauled to death by a roving pack of jaguars. In this one, Alison is run over by an ice cream truck. In this one, Barack Obama kills Alison. In this one, you kill Alison. In this one, I kill Alison. In this one, Alison kills Alison.” – demanding some answers. He’s like, “Why are all these people killing Alison if that guy Ian already confessed to killing Alison?” Hanna snatches the flash drive out of his hands and makes a strawberry-banana-homicide smoothie with it.

Back at the hospital, Spencer asks Emily to break up with Toby for her, and Emily agrees. She wakes him up from his sleep and explains about how Spencer one time snogged her sister’s fiance which caused them to break up which caused her sister to get a different fiance which caused Spencer to snog him also which caused her best friend to blackmail her which caused her best friend to get killed and so now maybe dating Toby isn’t such a great idea after all. Toby’s like, “These pain meds are making me groggy, but I’m not sure if I could have followed that even if I was fully alert.” Emily assures him that he could not have followed it, and then she places his bloody heart on his bedside table and leaves.

After making sure that Aria wasn’t planning to use her date with Holden as a cover to meet Ezra, Ella drives them to Philly to some nostalgic restaurant from their days of paste eating. Once she’s driven away, Holden is like, “Just for the record, my gay eyes and the fact that I’ve never tried to kiss you don’t mean I’m gay.” And then her scurries off into the night like the tiny gay squirrel that he is.

There are a lot of things I like about this episode, but the dialogue is kind of clunky sometimes and the pacing is pretty bizarre. Like, Aria is going to go sit on a bench right now to wait for Ezra, and she is just going to stay and stay and stay and stare and stare and stare through several commercial breaks and three full musical montage. Even through a conversation Ezra has with an undergrad who’s like, “Why did I get a B?” And Ezra is like, “Because I am projecting all of my lesbianism onto your story.” The student tells Ezra to follow his homo-shaped heart to Philly, and that’s just what he does. But hang on because: MUSIC.

Everybody does some looks. Emily looks at Spencer to let her know Boo’s heart has now been thraxed to completion. Spencer looks at Emily to let her know that hers has too. Ezra looks at his voicemails. Aria looks at that clock. And then she stands up and looks at that clock. And then she sits down and looks at that clock. Toby looks out the window onto the hospital lawn where Wren is doing something quintessentially British like hunting quail and drinking tea. Caleb looks at Lucas snoring beside him in their shared sleeping bag. Garrett looks at pictures of JennaBot. And JennaBot looks at … NOEL KAHN?

WHAT.

Five hours after hearing a detailed account of his horribleness, JennaBot has decided to f–k Noel Kahn. Of course she has. That’s how she gets her power. For Superman it’s flying toward the sun. For Jenna it’s baring her robo-breasts for psychopaths.

Ezra finally shows up at the clock tower just as the bells are chiming pumpkin o’clock. Aria is about three feet in front of him, but he shouts, “ARIA!!!!!” like he’s gone blind or something. They kiss and twirl in the rain and it’s as gorgeous as it always is when it’s them + weather. Three seasons from now they’ll still be falling apart and getting back together every other episode, but the writers will have upped the natural elements ante to, like, hurricanes and tornadoes. Ezra sweeps Aria into his arms just a twister sweeps them off their feet and he rides that thing like Pecos Bill all the way home, his lasso stitched together with nothing but feelings and estrogen.

In a meeting I do not approve of, Caleb is pulling up a chair in Spencer’s Batcave and explaining to her and Emily how it’s time for the Liars to start lying to each other, starting with the Liars lying to the Liar he loves the most. Spencer’s like, “I’m not really sure if this is the best – actually, why not? It’s not like the dude I love most just plummeted 20 stories, was re-molested by his sister, or had his heart ripped out by a tiny little Englishman because of these exact videos. Let’s do it.”

Ella almost catches Aria and Holden in their bearded lie because Holden is late to the pickup because he was buying milkshakes which made him late to the pickup. Senselessly risky! But also: adorable! Don’t be perving on Maya, you ass!

Aria, Spencer and Emily watch the latest videos Caleb “decrypted.” It’s Ian and Jenna and Garrett hopping all over each other like a bucket of crickets again, but then Ian’s like, “Gotcha! I filmed this whole thing just so you can never leave NAT Club!” Emily wonders if they should take the video to the police and Spencer slaps her in the face without even looking up from the monitor.

The Liars hear a noise outside and it is Toby’s truck, only Toby is nowhere to be found. Inside the truck is a note: “Spencer, I’ll never forget the way you bought me this truck by stealing your sister’s wedding ring during the days when she was mourning for her husband that murdered your best friend and was then murdered by your best friend’s ghost. I’ll always love you, Boo.”

The Risen Mitten has printed out Tumblr and pasted it onto her wall. She grips the Ezbian Tumblr tag, chops it in half, and then sets it on fire. Seventy hundred million Ian Harding fan girls hop from their chairs in solidarity and punch their TVs right in the face.

How about some #BooRadleyVanCullen?

Do you guys think Holden really could be Maya’s marijuana prison hook-up?!

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