Archive

“Pretty Little Liars” recap (2.18) — Dayum, Emaya!

Damn, man. That was one of the best hours of television we’ve ever been given. And I don’t mean “we” as in “Pretty Little Liars fans.” I mean “we” as in “human beings on this planet.” I’m going to recap in a non-linear way this week because I want to focus most of my energy on our intrepid little lesbian sleuth.

So, Emily. Frankly, Emily doesn’t have time to deal with A’s bullshit right now because she and Maya have got stuff. They’ve taken their relationship from occasional footsie to making out like the lesbianest thing you have ever seen. And I mean that in every possible way. They cuddle and pet each other’s hair and talk about their feelings, then hardcore makeout with their faces, and then pause to cuddle and talk about their feelings some more. Emily’s feelings are mostly: Bummed about the swim team, excited her mom is still alive, and nervous as hell to reintroduce her to Maya.

The last thing turns out to be a valid concern. Pam takes Maya and Emily to dinner, and Maya acts like an insane person. She starts every sentence with “Well, in prison …” And, “Back when I was doing hard drugs on the regular …” And, “It’s like that time when my stalker from marijuana camp …” And, “Pam, write your list of heroes down on this napkin and I’ll tell you if they smoked weed.” Pam smiles and tries with all her motherly affection not to tip the vial of poison she brought – just in case! – into Maya’s spaghetti. When she excuses herself from the table to fetch the check/splash cold water on her face/punch a waiter in the face to calm her nerves, Emily is like, “What the actual hell, Maya?!” And Maya’s all, “Are you asking if I want a brownie, because sure!”

The next morning, Emily drives to whatever neighboring town Maya lives in to explain that she kind of is freaked out that Maya is bisexual, but only because it means she has to compete with twice as many people. And Maya rightly explains that Emily Fields doesn’t have to compete with anyone; Emily Fields, by nature of being the most best, auto wins every time. Maya guides Emily to her bedroom, which she has decorated like the Under The Sea dance from Back to the Future, and Emily, who hasn’t been allowed in a pool since she was convicted of using HGH and also murder, is like, “I LOVE YOU!” Actually, Maya says it first and then Emily says it back and then they make out better than any lesbian couple on American network TV ever.

You know this about me by now, but I bristle at the notion that I should love TV shows just because of gay characters or lesbian monkey-business or whatever. Important? Yes. There’s no end to the way queer pop culture visibility changes our lives. But awesome? Not necessarily. That’s why this show is such a pleasure. Because there is no gay stuff; there’s only stuff stuff – and some of it happens to be super homosexual.

Like, Emily and Maya’s relationship development in this episode made my heart sing a brand new song, because it was, you know, actual character growth. It made sense for both of them. But also it wasn’t consecrated as a sacrifice at the altar of GLAAD. Do you know what I mean? It wasn’t set apart, pulled out, spotlighted, announced with a PSA, offered up by ABC Family as some kind of one-time gift to keep the gay community from doing that thing we do with torches and pitchforks. Emily’s whole deal for two seasons has been leading up to this episode, these exact moments, and Heavens to Murgatroyd! Scarcely have I ever been more satisfied with my TV!

This is a girl who, in the pilot episode, slinked away to hide in a dark corner of Spencer’s barn when Ali clowned on her for liking Beyonce too much. And would you just look at her now! She has been – literally, at times – beaten down and pushed around; she’s fallen over other people and fallen over her own two feet; she’s bled the blood only gay teenagers bleed as they’re stumbling into the world like brand new lambs, trying to color in the lines of the drawings they’ve been courageous enough to sketch for themselves.

Marlene King and her incomparable writing staff, they could have given Emily some makeout scenes in the first few episodes for titillation, or they could have had her hook-up to shut us up, or they could have thrown her back together with one of the gorgeous men on this show. But no. No. A thousand hallelujahs for the integrity of no. They grew Emily. And Shay Mitchell grew into Emily. And then – did you know daffodils are my favorite flower? There are a lot of reasons why, but one of the main reasons is because they’re springtime flowers, right? They come out when the winter finally gives way to the promise of the sun. But you don’t plant daffodils in the spring. You dig into the unforgiving winter land and stuff the bulbs into the ground and they live down there through the ice and the sleet and the snow and they wait and wait and wait. And then, when the time is right for them, they peek their little heads up: tiny green, tiny green, taller and taller and taller green, and then – boom! – the most beautiful flowers in the whole wide world. And it’s just so satisfying watching them blossom, because you know what they lived through, you know their story, and you know the winter made them strong enough to thrive.

Emily and Maya’s relationship isn’t gratifying because it’s gay. Or because of whatever shipper thing. Emily and Maya’s relationship is gratifying because Emily lived through the winter, because we saw her falling down and getting up and dusting herself off and falling down some more and getting up some more and growing, growing, growing into this Emily. And so when Emily told Maya she loved her and kissed her like fifteen kinds of hungry, it wasn’t about winning a shipping war or placating a minority; it was about an authentic, well-rounded, complicated, lovable character doing the most natural thing in the world – with another woman.

Just like real life. Emily is Emily is Emily is Emily. And love is love is love is love.

Aria’s got lesbian love tomfoolery going on too, of course. She and Ezra have decided to step fully back in the closet. So much so that Aria isn’t even telling her friends, and she and Ezra are conducting all of their dates inside an actual closest. No windows, see, so there’s less chance of being watched/heard/hit in the neck with blow darts on account of Byron tip-toeing around behind Ezra and ducking behind trees and rolling under cars and just general parkour spy stuff. He even gets Ezra set up with some kind of deanship in Louisiana so he’ll get his gorgeous face and iambic pentameter out of Pennsylvania. Which: Ha! Hahaha! Of all the mental things this show has said out loud, “I nominated you, 24-year-old guy with less than two months of college teaching experience, for a deanship” has got to be the most amazing. Ezra’s like, “I don’t know what to say, guy. And I mean that literally. I’d better sit down here on the floor and talk to my journal about my feelings.”

Aria is none the wiser about Ezra because she’s on an actual date with Holden. Well, they say it’s not a date, but Lucy Hale has insane chemistry with everyone and everything. People. Inanimate objects. You want to ship Aria with, like, her locker? Totally feasible. So they’re out playing air hockey and talking smack to each other and Aria discovers Holden’s secret: He’s in a fight club! I really was kind of hoping he’d be Maya’s stalker. But you know what? Maybe Maya is ALSO in a fight club. What if this show’s big secret is that all of the supporting characters belong to to – oh, man. Listen to this. What if NAT club is really a fight club? Maybe it’s not Latin for “We See All.” Maybe it’s standard American English for “National Association of Terror.” And they own like a warehouse or something, with stadium seating and and Melissa is the ringleader and JennaBot is the reigning world champ because: lasers. That’s how Ali got herself killed, a few swift blows to the head in a cage match with Noel Kahn.

Anyway, I guess that’s what Holden’s got himself tangled up in.

Spencer and Hanna are mostly tangled up in each other this week because Spencer is still leading the charge to recover all the media from A’s cell phone, which means everyone has to keep lying to Hanna so Caleb can do his secret CSI-type magic. Hanna thinks they’re icing her out, which bums her out even more than it normally would – and let’s be honest: being iced out would be worse for Hanna than literally anyone else on earth – because Kate is back in town, riding her pageant horse through the halls of Rosewood High making that ticking noise bombs do. But Spencer is not freezing out Hanna. She feels worse than everyone else about it, worse even than Caleb. Which is the perfect motivator to dig down into her brain parts and figure out how she knows Kate. It’s an amazing subplot because it affords Spencer the opportunity to be insane and menacing in equal measure. Plus also my lifelong dream of seeing Troian Bellisario in a ringer T came true, so if you don’t mind I’m just going to spend the next ten minutes with my head in my hands staring at this photo and sighing dreamily.

Hanna finds out about the duplicitousness when “A” texts to tell her to call off the cyber-dog or else the lasagna money will be the leading story in tomorrow’s Rosewood Gazette. God. The lasagna money. I’d forgotten how much I loved that story. Hanna shouts at Spencer and then comes clean to Caleb more than any Liar has ever come clean to any of their boyfriends/girlfriends. Which makes sense because Caleb’s hobo life has prepared him for this kind of thing in ways Ezra’s MFA and partcipation in The L Word fan forums have not. Caleb jumps to the same conclusion everyone jumps to in the beginning: That JennaBot is “A.” But as soon as he steps foot on the Cavenaugh’s front porch, Officer Garret puts a bullet in his head. He’s very normal and in perfect mental health, that guy.

Spencer tried out a Sherlock Holmes outfit this week. It was a miss. She should have kept that T-shirt on and kept her hair in a messy ponytail forever. But when she wasn’t making my heart boom-boom, she was uncovering the best clue yet: Ali had a thing for Lolita. (Of course.) But she also had a secret identity, Vivian Darkbloom. (Again: Of course.) And Vivian had another secret hiding place where she stashed broken doll parts and sex tapes and who knows what all. Night vision goggles. Gobstoppers. Balls of yarn. Presumably, Spencer will be donning a wig and collecting those knickknacks for further investigation.

In the closing moments, “A” breaks into Peter Hastings’ office and steals a gun from his desk, taking the stakes from eleven to eleventy-million. This show, you guys. This show.

Finally, I would just like to say that I’ve seen a lot of girls kiss on TV and only twice in my life (and never on network TV) have I ever seen anyone go for it like Shay Mitchell and Bianca Lawson. Ladies, we thank you.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button