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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (1.18): Just a rat in a cage

Warning! I am going to make a guess about who “A” is in this recap. Don’t read it if you don’t want to hear my (awesome!) theory.

There is nothing – listen to me when I tell you this, nothing – more satisfying than a teen drama going metaficitonal with the school play trope. Gossip Girl did it with The Age of Innocence and it was one of the best hours of television ever. Serena as May, Blair as Ellen – I mean, come on. And Pretty Little Liars has been flirting with framing itself in various classics all season – To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Gatsby – but did you ever meet a more apt one-to-one than Alison de Laurentiis and The Bad Seed’s Rhoda Penmark? It makes me never want to sleep again!

Also, of course, it’s a chance to dress Spencer up in another costume. The braids were good, but I think they really missed an opportunity to trot out some white patent leather Easter shoes.

So, Mr. Fitz has decided that between teaching at Rosewood’s Center for Incurably Criminal Adolescents and dating a student and working on his short stories, he needs a hobby. And that hobby will be a producing a play about a sociopathic child who goes around killing her classmates for giggles while charming the pants off everyone else in town. In the ’50s it was all Nature Vs. Nurture about The Bad Seed, but Mona’s frames it a little better for the purposes of this show: What’s the difference between being naughty and evil? (Just off the top of my head: Murder is a good dividing line.)

Caleb Letto is still sleeping in Hanna’s basement, and also he is eating all of the dairy products in the Marin household. Cheese, milk, butter. Yogurt, probably. Ice cream. Sour cream. Whipped cream. Eggs. Hanna’s mom is all, “It’s like Alison never even bullied you about carbs.” And Hanna’s like, “She also never warned me that my boyfriend didn’t have a d–k. Hey, can Caleb Letto move in?” Ashley gigglesnorts because Caleb Letto is proletariat, OK? And yes, the Marins are thieves, but who among the bourgeoisie isn’t, really?

Being forced to share a bed/tent/shower is another one of my favorite story tropes, and so I just ate it right up when Hanna was forced to hop in the tub with Caleb when her mom left home and then came back home looking for mascara. Hanna sneaks a peek at his goods, too. You know, just checking to make sure they’re present. And then she can’t make eye contact with him for the rest of the week.

Except for when she’s bullying him to “crack the code” of JennaBot’s blind person phone. See, because Spencer convinces Toby that he doesn’t really need to be alive, and why not just start stealing s–t from JennaBot’s room to prove it. Toby takes her phone because somehow that’s the key to the 214 Braille mystery from last week. (Actually, the key to 214 is in Ian’s pocket, AMIRITE?) But the rocket science of cracking a blind person phone is light years beyond the rocket science of cracking a regular old cell phone of a girl at Juvie Camp, so Caleb can’t do it. Toby limps back home and returns the phone to JennaBot’s room and thinks he is never going to see any action that isn’t animatronic.

JennaBot doesn’t notice her stuff is missing because she’s too busy creepily composing the creepy music for Mr. Fitz’s rendition of the creepiest play ever to ever creep. On her flute. By herself. On her front porch. Creepily. Emily drops by to take Toby to breakfast – hang on a second. I just thought of something. Could the Jenna/flute thing be a Pied Piper reference? With the mice? And she hates Spencer now more than ever, right? Because of how she’s stealing her brother-lover? Oh, man! Is that a clue? Guys, is that a clue?! Spencer’s mouse is dead! Is JennaBot “A”?! It would be just like this show to reveal with a thinly veiled literary reference!

Um. What was I saying? Look, don’t spoil about who “A” is in the comments if you already know, OK? Um … right, so Toby ditched Emily to hang out with Spencer and Emily’s like, “Sheesh, my one girlfriend is off in God-knows-where doing woodland creature therapy and my other girlfriend disappeared into the night after some drowning/self-loathing homophobia foreplay and my other girlfriend is dating my former vampire beard. It’s hard out here for – but then her thoughts get cut off because JennaBot starts in on that flute and Emily drowns herself in a river.

Actually, that is pretty much Emily’s whole story for the week: Look for Toby, look concerned, look innocent when talking about “tossing and turning” with Spencer all night.

What else? Ah, yes. The quarreling marrieds. Aria convinces Mr. Fitz to let her be the stage manager for The Bad Seed which results in some kind of scene. Guys, here’s a tip: If you want to be having sex with someone who wants to be having sex with you, but for whatever reason you’re not having sex with each other, don’t hang out in front of an audience. You’re just going to end up killing each other, f–king in public, or slipping up and calling one another by your first names. It’s embarrassing for everyone. Even pretend-blind robots.

The crux of the episode is a shared memory from the all the PLLs who have finally decided to take Ghost!Alison’s advice to heart and put their noggins together to form some collective flashbacks. Back when Alison was still alive (for some reason) and they were still hanging around with her (for some even weirder reason) they sneaked into one of Ian’s frat parties. There was a drunk girl at this party – shocking! – and Ian, who was dating Melissa at the time, led her upstairs. Later she plummeted to her death at the bottom of those stairs.

They all remember it differently. Emily, for instance, remembers one particular frat boy barking up the wrong lesbian. But in the end they realize that: a) Ian said that Alison was a stalker. b) Alison was nowhere to be found when the frat girl was getting murdered. (RHOOOOODDDDAAAAA.)

After Bad Seed rehearsal, the PLLs find a trophy from a Hilton Head golf tournament in a box of props. The trophy has blood all over it. They warp zone right over to the Rosewood PD and turn over some evidence for the first time in their lives. Only, the next day the coppers come to school and inform them that it wasn’t Alison’s blood on that trophy at all. It was RAT BLOOD. (And P.S. There was no golf tournament in Hilton Head that weekend.) And the PLLs are headed to the precinct.

“A” has four cages that once housed four rats. The Spencer rat is missing now. The Spencer rat is dead. “A,” I have a message for you: If you try to hurt the actual Spencer – or mute her devastatingly perfect voice in any way – there will be a pack of lesbians on you so fast you’ll wish you’d never been assembled at that Cogswell Cogs factory on Gemenon.

Four episodes left, my darlings. Will Spencer dress in a prisoner costume next week? Will Moze and Emily take the plunge? Will Caleb Letto discover one hundred billion dollars the next time he opens up a box of butter? Will Aria’s gay hat trend continue? Who’s got that wocket in her pocket? Who’s going to the grave?

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