Hello and welcome to another episode of Pretty Little Liars, winner of a Golden Globe Award for Best Most Flowy Hair in a Television Series, Mini-Movie, Comedy, Musical or After-School Special. This week Hannah ate some cupcakes, wore a weird “fat suit” in a flashback, and found money in a paper towel dispenser. Meanwhile, Noel threatened to out Aria’s relationship with the teacher, who maybe pulled off two additional facial expressions this week. Spencer’s sister wants to have a baby with Ian, who turns out to be the guy on the video with Allison. I keep forgetting what Spencer’s plot-line is.
But more importantly, this week EMILY’S MOM UNLEASHED HOMOPHOBIC TERROR and all the other girls kinda wished they had Emily’s love life instead of their own, which def means that they are two L Word episodes away from scissoring.
Here is it is, episode 113, KNOW YOUR FRENEMIES!
Emily & Maya have been secretly developing their romantic relationship far away from the camera’s intrusive gaze, as is evidenced by their lovey-doveyness exhibited at school.
Maya asks if it’s still okay to come over and study later, and Emily says it is, even though her Dad is gone that her Mom knows how her Dad feels about Maya and it’s okay because her Mom won’t be home.
Hannah: Is that [studying] girl-on-girl code for romance?
Emily: No, Hannah, we’re actually studying.
Maya: But your friend is quite the romantic.
Hannah: Is she?
Emily: Walks in the rain, picnics by the lake, dancing naked in candlelight —
[silence]
Emily: I’m just kidding. we go to dinner and a movie just like you guys!
Maya: She’s only partially kidding — Emily would love to do all of those things.
SEE TEH GAYS ARE JUST LIKE US HURRAH!
Mom is doing her mid-afternoon hallway creeping rounds when she spots four lady-calves all wrapped up in each other as homosexual giggles echo in the sullied homosexual air:
Mom busts in to ask if Emily has ever been toed JUST KIDDING she busts in to be a bitch.
Mom: Emily!
Emily: Mom, what are you doing?
Mom: I won’t live like this.
Emily: Like what, I thought you were gonna be out —
Mom: And that gives you permission — I can’t even imagine where this was headed!
Maya: Pam, I promise we were studying, that’s all.
Mom: Mrs. Fields. I am Mrs. Fields to you.
DID SOMEBODY SAY MRS. FIELDS!!?!?
+
LET’S GO TO THE MALL!!!
Maya obviously realizes she could get yelled at by her own parents if she wants to and doesn’t feel like getting yelled at by someone else’s. Also the actress who plays her is 32, sidenote.
Maya: I should go.
Emily: I’m so sorry Maya.
Maya: It’s okay, you didn’t do anything wrong.
That last bit there is doublespeak b/c she’s also communicating, “being gay isn’t wrong.” They didn’t even get to the making out part of studying and already Maya’s left the building and Emily is PISSED and rightly so.
Emily: “For the first time in my life, I am ashamed that you are my mother.”
Yup. This is way worse when Mrs. Fields told everyone at Thanksgiving that Emily wet her bed sometimes.
But for real, it’s good to see Emily stand up for herself and not let her mother’s bigotry make her feel ashamed of her sexuality.
Later on Mom pulls a Nancy Drew, going through Maya’s bag to discover that her and Maya have been getting down and dirty with some magic markers and notebooks. She then picks up an Altoid tin and because you know, all high school kids hide weed in Altoid tins (for real), she opens it and OMG IT’S MARIJUANA and it is NOT BEING STORED PROPERLY.
Mom tells Emily she went into Maya’s bag and wants to know if their relationship involves more than just muff-diving —
Mom: “Your friend left her backpack here. I returned it to her parents. Are you doing drugs with her? Is that what this whole thing is about?”
Emily: “What are you talking about?”
Mom: “Are you stoned?”
[MOM REACHES OUT TO HIT EMILY??!]
Emily: “No!”
Mom: “Look honey I want you to know that this has nothing to do with her being a girl, if it were was a boy –”
Emily: “You wouldn’t have looked through her things. Are you lying to yourself or me?”
Mom: “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
Emily: “You’re right about that.”
Mom: “You’re no longer allowed to see her.”
Emily: “You can’t do that.”
Mom: “Watch me.”
Emily: “This doesn’t change the way I feel about her.”
Mom: “Don’t bother calling your father. He’s as disappointed in you as I am.”
LIAR!!
Okay quick story: this one time in high school my brother’s car got broken into, and they took out all his stereo equipment and CDs and shit, and his backpack. But then they threw his backpack on the neighbor’s lawn before departing the scene of the crime. The neighbors then returned the backpack to my mother and all that was left in it was an Altoids tin with a pipe and weed inside. So basically his car got robbed and he also got caught with drugs, all at one. Shitty, right?
My mother responded to this by requiring him to be honest about his drug use from then on and putting some kind of poster on his wall with steps on it. Idk, I was in boarding school. I actually don’t know exactly what she did, but it was not SEND THE CHILD TO JUVIE CAMP.
Yup, Maya is on her way to “True North” where someone (according to Hannah) went for huffing spray paint and came back singing gospel music.
Emily can’t get ahold of Maya. Luckily, Emily has really nice friends, even if they’re all pretty and little and probs lying.
“I am officially jealous of Emily’s love life,” says Hannah as Emily departs to see what her surprise is upstairs. The other girls smile a lot and probs think about what it would be like to attend a clambake.
What could it be? Is Donna losing her virginity to David tonight? Is The Craft filming a sequel in someone else’s bedroom? Is Frankie gonna shave some girl’s legs in the bathtub?
NO, IT’S MAYA!!!!
And what better way to spend your last night together for several months than standing together, hugging each other, while listening to cheesy romantic music.
If this means Emily’s lesbian plotline is over for the season, I am CRACKING SKULLS.
Don’t panic….according to Maya’s (Bianca Lawson) imdb profile, she’s still on till episode 21 (end of the season, I think).
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0493161/filmoseries#tt1578873
episode 21 is next week tho
wouldn’t next week’s episode be episode 14? if this one was 13…?
i don’t understand how it works either, idk. that’s just what it said on imdb.
Next week is definitely episode 14. So cross your fingers and she’ll be till the end :)
Holly Marie Combs is listed for 21 episodes too. And she misses a lot of episodes. I think that just signifies that she was hired as a regular. A lot of people didn’t like her so I think they got rid of her early.
But hopefully Emily will have another love interest this season.
You are correct. And I’m kind of glad to see Maya go… I just can’t watch her without thinking “Kendra the Vampire Slayer” and “you’re a million years old.”
OMG KENDRA
she wins the award for Worst Accent Ever in the History of Television
Oh come on, if you didn’t know her role was from Buffy would you have properly guessed her age? And yes her acting then was less than perfect but I think she’s come along way and did this character justice. Just a thought..
Legit hysterical recap. Caught myself laughing obnoxiously. Well done.
I cracked up at “Is The Craft filming a sequel in someone else’s bedroom? Is Frankie gonna shave some girl’s legs in the bathtub?”
that last picture…exactly what I thought when I watched the scene.
oh wait, no, lesbian sex, that’s holding hands and giggling, right?
I actually liked this. It’s not like any of the other girls have been having sex with their boyfriends. They were sad, and they were awkward, and it felt real to me, not contrived or subtext for something else.
*unpopular opinion*
but do people really light a bunch of candles so that they can hug each other standing up for an hour? i mean i’ve done that Neverending Hug thing with people I’ve dated before, I get it — but usually that’s because we just made out, we can’t make out for some reason or another… maybe i’m just a slut
I’m sure they probably made out, I just don’t think they *necessarily* had sex also.
if you’re a slut then I’m a slut too!
actually this episode was really sweet (if we forget about the homophobic mum for a second)
Aria had sex in the bathroom, but you’re right, none of the other characters had sex, aside from Allison…which is kind of a given but still only hinted at.
but still, this scene in all its cuteness really, really reminded me of South of Nowhere and all the hair brushing that was going on there…
Didn’t Aria have sex in a bathroom with the teacher in like, the first episode? Or was I just reading way too much into that?
Have Aria and Ezra even had sex on the show yet? It’s ABC Family people!
Lucy Hale (Aria) said in an interview somewhere that Aria and Ezra haven’t had sex yet. Which is good because she’s sixteen and Ezra’s . . . not.
I am going to firmly believe that they danced naked by candlelight after the cameras went away because their clothes were vaguely rumpled when they came back downstairs.
i don’t understand why maya is leaving if emily’s mom is the homophobic one? like wouldn’t she send emily to boot camp? why is maya going to boot camp? if i actually watched this episode would i already know the answer?
maya had marijuana in her bookbag, and emily’s mom found it, and gave it to maya’s parents and I guess maya’s parents, who were hippies last episode, are now sending her to juvie camp to deal with her weed-smoking problem.
this show is just like the opposite of skins.
No, you wouldn’t. Maya’s parents are super liberal hippie freaks who got married after their kids were born and use tattoos in lieu of wedding rings. But a little pot and their kid gets sent to a religious juvie camp. It makes no sense.
Yeah, I wish they would have explained that more or at least give us a scene with Maya and her parents. But maybe her parents caved under the pressure of another, more conservative parent coming to them saying “your daughter has a problem.”
gonna be so upset if this is the end of abcfamilyappropriate homo-ness!!
come back maya :(
or better yet, emily should bust her outta there but i’m a cheerleader style.
side-note tru story: in 9th grade my mom went through my backpack and found a quarter of weed and took it without saying a word to me. skewl ends and my friends and i are all ready to ~*~smoke dat kush~*~ and my heart sunk to my stomach when i realised it WASN’T THERE ANYMORE.
so we picked up another quarter and never spoke of it again.
A+ parenting.
Ha! Hilarious. I got busted in high school by one of those special crime dogs and suspended for a week. My parents laughed and made me clean out the garage. Which I did – while stoned.
Only reason I started watching the show… just saying.
They love the gays! In the It Gets Better video they made, two of the main people behind the show said they were gaymarried with kids. This excites me.
For one crazy minute I thought you meant the stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars with your mother and hiding it in pasta boxes plotline…
that was meant for e, below.
Although, thanks for the good gay news abigail!
you guys, hannah’s plotline made me cry. it hit way too close to home. boo, this episode.
YES! Thank you. That shit was heartbreaking… but would people really be like “Look at that girl sitting alone eating cupcakes! Hahaha!” But yeah, otherwise I though they handled it all really well. I can relate. Hannah is my fave.
CLITORFERENCE by Emily’s mom!!!
….I’m sorry, I’ve really just been waiting to use that term since the effing dykes post.
Thanks for confirming that the fat suit was weird and for ‘Mom busts in to ask if Emily has ever been toed’ as after she said the line ‘I can’t even imagine where this was headed!’ I totally thought that being toed was the only logical conclusion
Thank you for having this site. Just got done at another site where Mrs. Fields is being canonized as the greatest thing since slice bread. After one too many posts of idiots talking about an actress who looks 21 being too old because of her real life age being 30 – yes this is the level of criticism some places, this week’s slide into Maya is the worst monster in the history of mankind for defending her girlfriend from her Mom’s freakout is too much. Thanks for restoring my sanity. It is nice to have a place where fans pray for a creepy guy who actually does look 30 to bang Emily without an ounce of concern for what Emily may feel about that matter. Sanity restored by Autostraddle. Thank you.
meant “where fans don’t pray for a creepy guy…”
i love you for pointing out the ridiculousness of storing weed in an Altoids tin. that was all I could focus on at that moment- “WTF? NO respectable stoner would carry weed in a mint tin!!”
wait for serious though in high school everyone totally did put their pipe in an altoids tin and often also their weed HOWEVER said weed was also contained in a plastic bag or wrap of some kind, not all loose up in the tin
this is what my life has come to
Def true. EVERYONE in high school kept their weed/pipe in an altoid tin. a friend of mine had to refuse to give our english teacher an altoid after it fell out of her bag in class once. We never let her live it down. “Uhm, no…sorry. I think there’s only one left and I need it?” it was highlariously awkward (tehehe get it!?!? HIGHlariously…ignore me, i wish i could at least say i was high as an excuse for what just happened…I’m sorry.)
I still use an Altoids tin. Everyone at my apartment watching that episode high five-d immediately when we saw that Altoids tin. So true!
But yeah, you don’t just throw it in there…
improper marijuana storage should be a crime.
and WTF is juvie camp?!
In regards to this episode, I cannot take this Ian character seriously knowing he was a basketball playing leprechaun in the DCOM ‘Luck of the Irish’. That’s all I see. A leprechaun.
Other obvious fallacies have already been addressed. :)
also, Smart House. small child with an awesome house.
He was also a mermaid in Thirteen.. Even though I liked that movie.. Badassness denied
I cannot unsee him as these characters. Particularly Smart House kid for some reason. You’d think the mer-man would’ve made more of an impression…
Riese, that’s bizarre how your brother’s car robbers took the music and whatever was in his bag, but not the weed?! I’d take that shit to later bask in the glory of my victorious heist. Sounds like someone had it out for him.
Don’t panic! Despite the ridiculousity of Maya’s exit from the show, I have read in several places that Emily “gets more action” than the lot of ’em, and all of it lady-centric. So, this is not the end of her lesbian storyline, since it does seem the show is committed to Emily just being, y’know, an actual lesbian. 4eva.
Yeah, just because she doesn’t have a girlfriend, doesn’t mean she’s not a lesbian anymore! Besides Maya’s annoying…and 112.
Hehe, toed.
“This is how lesbians have sex on the teevee.”
Unless we’re watching The Real L Word, that is.
I love their storyline. I hope she isn’t gone for good after tonight’s episode..
I am so late to the PLL party. Just started watching it. Mostly because I was like the recaps of glee are awesome so the recaps of PLL must be hilarious as well.
And I was right.
“Luckily, Emily has really nice friends, even if they’re all pretty and little and probs lying.”
Maybe I’m high on caffeine and no sleep (not Altoid tin weed) but that line had me cracking up longer than a normal person should have. Because I’m a dork and it’s my kind of humor.