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“Pretty Little Liars” recap 2.12: Kiss of Death

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, A kidnapped Annabeth Gish, ran over Hanna with a car, poisoned Emily with some steroids, murdered Ian in a belfry, dug holes in yards all over Roswood like some kind of terrier, chopped off Jason’s old head and sewed back on a new head, picked up some jewelry down at Knockturn Alley Pawn Shop, bought a rat named Spencer, slaughtered a rat named Spencer, played hide-and-seek in the morgue, clowned on Lesbian Poker Night, destroyed Emily’s chance of poke her night, invited Satan to release his new single at Rosewood High’s charity fashion show, robbed the Hamburger Helper pantry over at the Marin’s place, re-murdered Ian with a horseshoe in a barn, opened an Eyeball Replacement Center on the ground floor of Rosewood Hospital for the Criminally Insane, bought some brown Tory Burch boots, and defended his/her hair from the elements with TRESemmé’s Climate Control line of hair care products.

But that was just a warm up. Wait’ll you get a load of this.

Hanna, Spencer and Aria are all dolled up in their wedding finery, but also they are covered from head to toe in gravedigger dirt. Which is to say they look more awesome than they have ever looked in their whole entire lives. Even that time when Spencer was wearing her Gatsby flapper outfit as re-imagined by aliens from the planet Zoltar. Officer Garrett smarms behind a two-way mirror, and lo! from the slithery depths of the dungeon he calls home, Detective Snape – last seen getting his balls chopped off by Mrs. Hastings on SAT day – rises.

He walks into the interrogation room and goes, “Murder may be an acceptable pastime in the other 49 states in this country, but in Pennsylvania it’s a capital offense! And you’re going down!”

Actually, Detective, Ashley Marin is the one who goes down to get you to drop criminal charges. (ZING!)

12 HOURS EARLIER

The Liars are clomping around on Annabeth Gish’s front porch, banging on windows, rattling the door handle, going through her mail. Spencer’s like, “Well, she didn’t come home last night after being kidnapped, that’s for sure.” They talk about how trusting people usually ends up with one of them – or their therapist – getting murdered. Emily’s phone rings and guess who it is? MAYA! Emily’s like, “Well, we could keep solving mysteries, which, frankly, we’re not so good at. Or, I can go get my cuddle on with my new old girlfriend.”

They opt for the second thing.

While sharing a bedroom with Hanna is truly the greatest thing any of us could ever aspire to, there are just a few drawbacks to the set up. For one thing, it probably takes her an hour and a half to pick out her pajamas. And for another thing, there’s no privacy for making out with your girlfriend. Hanna is quizzing Maya about the ins and outs of Juvie Camp: the singalongs, the mosquitoes, the campfire Bible stories. Hanna’s like, “On the one hand, Bible fashion is gross. I mean, year-round sandal-wearing in the desert without a pedicure in sight? [gagging noise] But on the other hand, I’d love to get my hands on a technicolor dreamcoat. I heard it was red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ochre and peach and ruby and olive and violet and fawn and lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve…” Emily finally cuts her off, and Hanna’s like, “Right, I’m going.” But you can just hear, all the way down the hall: “… cream and crimson and silver and rose and azure and lemon and russet and grey and purple and white and pink and orange …”

Maya’s like, “I’ve been away for a long time. We’ve both changed. Rather than jumping back into a relationship and getting married at lunch time, I was thinking maybe we should get to know each other again.” Emily’s like, “That’s not very lesbian of you, but OK.”

Actually, Emily is a superstar in this scene. She speaks about herself in the third person, for starters. Maya goes, “I don’t know this Emily.” And Emily goes, “I think you’ll like her!” And Maya also says she’s the one who should have called Emily, instead of waiting on Emily to call her. And Ems is like, “Right again. But it’s cool. I’ve almost died twenty-seven hundred times this season. I accidentally committed admissions fraud. My parents abandoned me. I was in the presence of Quin on more than one occasion. I’m learning to only sweat the truly horrific stuff.”

Typing of truly horrific stuff, Jason is peeping in on Spencer and Toby with his laser vision. Spencer snatches the curtains closed all, “For one day of my life, I’d like to have a normal conversation about how someone cut the brake fluid line in your truck for the purpose of killing you without Jason staring over here burning a hole through my window.” Toby goes, “Oh, that reminds me, what do you think our babies would look like?” Spencer’s all, “That’s a dumb question. Just do a Punnett Square with our genetic componentry if you really want to know. I’m pretty sure my family’s sociopathic tendencies are a recessive gene, so probably our children will be normal, but our grandchildren will be psychotic. We’ll both be dead by then, though, due to getting murdered, so I’m not really worried about it.”

Hanna is in the kitchen, doing some mock-ups of a technicolor dreamcoat – if she can’t steal one, maybe she’ll just make one – when the doorbell alerts her to the arrival of her special hobo friend, just in from California. She babbles adorably about how her world is crumbling down around her ears, but they decide to shelve it and snuggle for a while. There will be plenty of time for mayhem after breakfast.

A buddy of mine tweeted me last night to ask if I was more jealous of Ezra’s apartment or Ezra’s office, and the answer is: both. I covet both of them more than I have ever coveted any TV rooms – except for the Batcave, obviously. Ezra is lying on the leather couch in his office, chewing on his lip and reading The Remnants of Sappho’s Poetry, probably. Or maybe just Fingersmith. I don’t know, I just feel like a room like that – with all that squashy leather and all those books and all that residual literature energy floating around – would be kind of Narnian, you know? Enchanting. So, I guess it makes sense when The White Witch walks in, wielding two cups of coffee and blathering on about how Ezra’s poetry makes her fall in love all over again.

Aria be-bops around the corner, also bearing coffee. (And props to the set designer for making her coffees one size smaller than Jackie Molina’s. It’s a nice touch.) She overhears Jackie Molina taking off her bra and throwing herself in Ezra’s lap, and also she hears him going, “Jackie, get yourself together. I’m seeing someone, someone who made me realize what it really means to be an Ezbian. Now, if you don’t mind, ‘On the throne of many hues, Immortal Aphrodite’ isn’t going to read itself.” Aria doesn’t get to listen to him recite it from memory – “in your chariot yoked with swift, lovely sparrows bringing you over the dark earth!” – because A is on the texting prowl, sending over an amazing photo of Annabeth Gish holding a newspaper like some kind of hostage.

Aria goes, “She’s still alive!” And the music goes, “… FOR NOW!!!!”

10 HOURS EARLIER

Pizza delivery! Just kidding, it’s not pizza at all! It’s a shipping crate onto which A has stenciled the phrase “OPEN IT OR SHE DIES.” I think it’s written in blood! The Liars mill around for about half an hour, talking about the exact method A used to get the crate inside Spencer’s house and speculating about its contents. They’re guessing it’s full of body parts, but they can’t agree on which parts from whose bodies. Finally, they crack it open to find a ransom note that was pieced together with magazine letters and some dolls that were crafted in the Devil’s own toy workshop. Aria’s doll wants her to get rid of Jackie Molina, Hanna’s doll wants her to stop her dad’s wedding, and Spencer’s doll wants her to keep Toby safe. Emily’s like, “Where’s my doll?” And Aria’s like, “Knowing A, probably inside your uterus.”

Parenthetically, Aria’s earrings look like those balance scales apothecaries used in the olden days to measure their herbs and toadstool skin and stuff. I want to put a couple of pennies on her right earring and some nickles on her left earring to see if her head tilts to the side to show us which one is heavier.

RIGHT NOW

Aria decides to use her one phone call to break down to either Ezra or Jason. I think it’s Ezra, but they both show up at the police station in about ten minutes, so who knows. It’s some good acting from Lucy Hale, I’ll tell you that. She’s been on fire the second half of this season.

While she’s sobbing into the phone, Officer Garrett is explaining to another officer that every copy of page five of Ali’s autopsy report is missing. Every copy. The paper one from the police station, the paper one from the morgue, the paper one from Annabeth Gish’s filing cabinet, the paper one from Spencer’s Trapper Keeper, the paper one from under Jason’s floorboards, the paper on from the cereal box in Hanna’s kitchen, the paper one from Mike’s closet where he keeps his Blind Craft Fair pottery, the paper one from that hole in Spencer’s backyard, the paper one Lucas used for his yearbook tribute, the paper one Jackie Molina plagiarized: They’re all missing. Also the digital ones. From all the computers. In all of the world. The chief is like, “Well, that’s a bummer.”

SIX HOURS EARLIER

Aria drops by Jackie Molina’s office like, “Oh hi, Jackie Molina. Fancy meeting you here. Hey listen, my friend Spencer knows a thing or two about plagiarizing – having once stolen an essay from her sister who was out copulating with Satan – and she’s pretty sure you plagiarized this whole paper you’re about to publish, so maybe you should leave Hollis. I know, I’m as grossed out as you are by the blackmail thing, but someone mailed me one of my therapist’s toes a little earlier. So, you know, I had to do it. OK, then, see you never!”

Hanna’s dad, who I am just going to start referring to as Mr. Worst, stops by her house to say, “I forgive you for ralphing on Isabelle’s dress. Also, I want to tell you I am so happy. The only thing that could destroy my happiness, perhaps forever, is if someone interrupts today’s wedding ceremony to tell Isabelle I bonked your mom in the hallway outside your bedroom a couple of days ago.”

Spencer decides that “keeping Toby safe” means “destroying Toby’s life,” so she breaks up with him under the guise of not trusting him. Wren sees her writhing around in agony in the middle of Rosewood Town Square, of course, and so he offers her some tea and a ride in his 1966 Austin Healey or whatever British thing. A monogrammed handkerchief. He’s like, “Judging by the way I can literally hear your heart shattering in your chest – I am a trained medical professional, you know – this is probably not the best time to make a pass at you. So I’m just going to go ahead and make a pass at you.” They kiss a little. If A is not outside filming the whole thing to use later on to re-break up Toby and Spencer, I’ll eat one of those porcelain dolls.

Jackie Molina stops by Aria’s to tell her she’s not leaving Hollis/Rosewood, and also she wants to give her a lesson in maturity. She goes, “You’re too young to understand what real love is, honey, so let me give it to you straight: Real love is when you care about someone so much that you will sabotage his whole entire life if he refuses to be with you.” (BRB, updating the inspirational quotes on my website page.)

Look who Emily is taking as a date to Mr. and Mrs. Worst’s wedding: It’s her BEAUTIFUL TOYOTA.

Actually, no. She’s not going to the wedding at all. In a move more impressive than hacking a phone so it can call Juvie Camp, A has overridden Emily’s GPS. The doll in the backseat says she should follow the directions (alone!) if she wants to save Annabeth Gish. And so she does, because she does.

RIGHT NOW

The paparazzi have finally shown up at Rosewood PD to flash their flash bulbs and literally shout things like, “WHERE IS THE BODY NOW?!” Spencer is staring through the two way glass at Detective Snape like she’s some kind of Jason DiLaurentis. I mean, just staring and staring and staring and staring. On him, it’s creepy. On her, it’s inexplicably powerful. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she shattered the glass with the sheer force of her mind.

FOUR HOURS EARLIER

At The Worst Wedding, Spencer’s like, “Hey, Aria, I’ll bet you a quadruple espresso Emily’s been kidnapped.” While they hash out their clues, Caleb and step-sister Kate get into a Regina George-off. She’s like, “Cute suit. Vintage.” And he’s like, “That’s the ugliest effing bridesmaid’s dress I’ve ever seen.”

Emily rolls up outside an old barn. It seems to be filled with death gas and menace, and so of course she just skips on in there, and also of course, the door slams shut behind her. Emily bangs on the walls and screams for help and begs A not to kill her, but A’s just hanging around outside playing Angry Birds, probably. Emily is finally overcome by the carbon monoxide; she passes out.

During the ceremony – “Do you, Mr. Worst, take Mrs. Worst to have and to hold in worstness and in worstness, forsaking all bestness, for as long as you both shall live?” “I do.” – Hanna mouths to Spencer, “Where’s Emily?” And Spencer mouths back, “Kidnapped.” Which gives Hanna the shot of courage she needs to burn down the church. My favorite part of the whole episode: Spencer and Aria realize Hanna is going to need a getaway car, so they hop up in the middle of the suspended ceremony and run for the door so they can fire up the Mystery Machine.

Emily, meanwhile, is dying again. This time she’s dying so much she actually lands in purgatory, which is inhabited by shrill pixies – and Alison, their queen. This show always brings the pretty, but this scene is positively ethereal. It is also insane. I wish we had more time to talk about it, actually. Emily wakes up with her head in Alison’s lap, which, at the beginning of this series, is the one thing Emily would have wanted more than anything else in all the whole world. Ali strokes her cheek and tells her she misses her the most, tells her she was her favorite – because Emily loved her best, note – and says Emily can come with her or she can stay and fight A for the rest of forever. Alison even kisses Emily softly, sweetly.

But Emily doesn’t give in to the temptation. If this Emily isn’t an Emily that Maya knows, it’s certainly not an Emily that Alison knows. She’s grown off the height chart, Ali. You’ll have to take your quasi-sapphic dalliances elsewhere. I’ll bet Mona wouldn’t say no to a little experimental dream-snogging.

RIGHT NOW

Things are tense in the Rosewood PD waiting room. Jason stops by to get into an altercation with Mr. Hastings. They get cryptic with each other about, “That thing I told is a thing you shouldn’t have brought to the police station.” And, “That thing you told me doesn’t change the other thing I know.” And, “The other thing you know is negated by the new thing I revealed to you last night.” And, “The new thing doesn’t mean anything when coupled with the latest thing and the oldest thing.” I actually know what’s happening here because I accidentally guessed it in one of my earlier recaps and a reader told me I was right, which makes me TRIPLE EXCITED for the second half of this season.

Also awkward, but more straightforward, is Ella’s conversation with Ezra. She’s like, “I know why you’re here, and you shouldn’t be here.” He goes, “I love her, Ella.” And Ella goes, “So what, Ezra? Everyone on earth is in love with Spencer Hastings. We’ve all heard her voice. We’ve all seen her costumes.” Ezra’s rightly decides to live to fight another day, and so he leaves.

TWO HOURS EARLIER

The Liars find a shovel with some GPS coordinates taped to it. They iPhone their way out into the woods and start digging.

When they unearth those Tory Burch boots the Risen Mitten bought a couple of weeks ago, they go absolutely mental, just clawing at the ground and throwing dirt everywhere and shrieking and rolling around in the mud and just generally being amazing. But Annabeth Gish isn’t under there. It’s a mannequin. Which they find out just in time for the entire National Guard to show up with helicopters and riot shields and tracking dogs. (Murder is a capital offense in the state of Pennsylvania, after all.)

RIGHT NOW

Officer Garrett locks himself into the two-way interrogation room with – wait for it – JennaBot! DUDE! They reveal themselves as 2/1,000th of the black ops group known as A. What they confess to is: Being gross, setting the Liars up with the whole buried mannequin thing, putting that “I know what you did last summer” note in stoner Jason’s pocket the day after Ali died. Also, they’re going to run away together, but only after Garrett goes into some kind of storage locker with the police force.

Nice reveal! Answers some questions! Piles on more!

Detective Snape clomps back into the interrogation room with that shovel and drops it onto the table with this little monologue: “With the exception of Alison’s blood on Toby’s sweater and Spencer’s friendship bracelet fibers on Alison’s dead body and pronographic home videos and confessional suicide notes from Ian and probably a dozen other things I am forgetting, EVIDENCE DOESN’T LIE! We’ve known all along that Alison was killed with the only shovel in the world – and tonight, you were discovered with that shovel. Someone bring me page five!”

Page five, like JennaBot, is just hanging out in Officer Garrett’s pocket. He’s gives it to her and tells her to take it home and burn it. It’s the only thing left to link them to the night that Alison was murdered. (Also known as The Night Time Stood Still.) JennaBot’s mouth literally says, “She deserved to die like that.” Officer Garrett’s face says he’s not so sure.

The Risen Mitten has had a long couple of weeks, so s/he decides to take a break from plotting to have a nice cup of coffee. Oh, hey! Look who else is enjoying a cup of coffee! It’s Annabeth Gish, who isn’t buried alive at all! Apparently the Risen Mitten was blackmailing her to stay away from Rosewood. She scowls so hard her lips actually disappear. And then she bounces.

A waitress compliments the Risen Mitten on his/her beautiful eyes and then pours him/her a cup of coffee, having no idea that by looking upon that Risen face she has sealed her own death warrant. Goodbye, nameless waitress. Give Alison a kiss for us.

And now! For the best part of the midseason finale! Your #BooRadleyVanCullen tweets!

It is a rare pleasure to be able to recap a television show that makes me feel like I’m a little kid again, just hollering at the TV and giggling with delight. And it’s an even rarer pleasure to be able to share that with fans who are as whimsical and wonderful as you guys. Reading your tweets and comments every week makes all the sleepless hours worthwhile. You’re the very best. I mean that. Let’s meet back here for the Halloween episode, OK? I’ll be the one in the Hogwarts robes. Or, as I also like to call them, “my every day outfit.”

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