Pretty Little Liars 216 Fashioncap Plus: Let the Water Hold My Gay Feelings Down

This week on Pretty Little Liars some actual content related to Emily’s love life occurred! I mean, not a ton, but like three scenes which is about all we can really expect these days. Normally Riese would be here to make the jokes, but due to the recent Autopocalypse, you’re stuck with me! Let’s get to some plot and some sweaters.

We start where we left off with the liars up at Spencer’s lake house a few hours/days/eons/minutes after Lucas has taken the big plunge. A slips lakewater in to Hanna’s water bottle and she takes a big gulp. When I was at camp some kid drank lake water and got a leech in his mouth… or maybe I saw that in a movie. Turns out the police are going to dredge the lake in the morning because no one bothered to call the Coast Guard or spend fifteen minutes looking for Lucas.

THIS IS ALL JAN'S FAULT

The next day, girls get up around 4am in order to substantially hang out before school. We are immediately assured by an conveniently timed phone call that Lucas called his folks to let them know he was okay. I seriously almost turned off the TV. How is this fucker not dead? Scooby Spencer reveals that she found some Go phones and a receipt from somewhere in Philadelphia in her attic. The receipt and Go phones couldn’t possibly belong to anyone in Spencer’s family because, well, As If.

BUT HOW DO YOU MAKE THE GO PHONE GO?

Spencer wants Hanna to join her as she scours Philly solving the mystery of the receipt street address, but Hanna would much rather stay home and contemplate the fact that one of her closest friends maybe tried to kill her a little bit. Going out on a clue hunt in Philly?

Hanna spends most of the rest of the episode crying. She doesn’t even break out of her own self-involvedness to humor Mona’s self-involvedness. Seriously guys, this is a big deal, Noel dumped Mona! So while Hanna and Mona are individually breaking down, Caleb decides this is a great time to lose trust in Hanna and question why she’s a big fat liar who doesn’t want to find Lucas. This is the perfect chance for Mona and Hanna. Monanna.

MONANNA FOREVER

Side note: Hanna’s outfit is compleltely adorable, but I already talked about patterned tights at length.

Later that day in school Spencer an Aria enjoy the obviously ample time in between classes to chitchat and find love. Before I get to all that, I need to address a really serious and emotional issue.

What the fuck is Aria wearing?

FIRST OF ALL, EW

I know that I had some positive words to say about faux fur vests in the past but in this particular instance Aria looks like Elmo climbed on to her shoulders and died. Wait, I can do better. She looks like Cruella Deville’s less fashionable twin sister who works part time at a beet factory. Spencer, how do you feel about Aria’s fur thing in comparison to your adorable grey vest over the J crew button up my roommate totally has?

SO SORRY ABOUT YOUR HIDEOUS FUR VEST

Have we known each other too long to do some more plaid shirts and vests? I think not.

Despite her red Do Not Enter vest, Holden runs right over to ask Aria on a hot sexy date. He even asked Aria’s dad for permission to be nice and weird. He’s all like, “Heyyyy I know we went to preschool together but let’s get it on.” So Aria’s all like, “Meh. Kay,” but agrees to first track down the mystery address from the receipt with Spencer. After school, Spencer and Aria do just that and take their little fashion asses to Philadelphia to scope out the address on the receipt. Either these girls live awfully close to the city, or their parents should think about investing in those tracker things that tell you where a car has been. Aria and Spencer spend some time staring at the sky and a gum vendor but eventually declare the whole situation a bust and go along their separate merry ways to Aria can get ready for her date.

C'MON LETS GET OUT OF HERE. I CAN'T BE SEEN WITH YOU DRESSED LIKE THAT

Spencer’s seen one too many episodes of Psych and uses her fake psychic skills to deduce that since she sees two people with seeing eye dogs she must be near a school for the blind. Within minutes Spencer is inside said school which, of course, was the school Jenna went to. Spencer ends up meeting one of Jenna’s old friends/classmates/lovers/artist pals and they sit for a cup of tea. The guy, who in his IMDB entry is just credited as “Blind Guy,” looks vaguely like my high school prom date and sports a mean set of Heath Ledger curls. The actor is Alexander Nifong and here’s a shocker, he’s not actually blind. Here’s an actual shocker, he’s that guy “Jeremiah” who Blaine sang to at the Gap on Glee! Adorbs. Jeremiah wastes my time and yours telling us stuff we already know about Jenna, like that she’s kinda hot and seductive but also probably an evil villain and maybe an alien.

IF YOU'RE LUCKY, MAYBE I'LL HAVE MY WAY WTH YOU IN THE THERAPEUTIC ART CENTER

Aria sets up she and Holden’s date so that they’re attending a play Ezra has tickets for. When Ezra arrives Aria promptly ignores Holden (and he even took the time to bring her gummy bears). I think I like Holden — he sort of dresses like a 24 year old queer librarian (aka Senior Editor Rachel). Regardless, upon Ezra’s arrival, Aria’s hair blows softly in the wind and Ezra gets immediately uncomfortable… like maybe he just realized he’s been dating a high school student. Unlike every other character on Pretty Little Liars, Holden has seen a few after school specials and recognizes immediately that Aria and Ezra have some sort of passionate/sordid past and calls Aria right out on it. Just as Aria starts to get defensive, Holden reminds her that as long as their parents think that the two of them are riding off in to a romantic sunset of love, they could probably each do some sneaking around. Holden is obvi gay or a drug dealer. Or maybe he’s dating Jenna.

Great! With all that out of the way, now we can get to the gay stuff. Maya reappears magically as Emily’s forget-me pills have finally started to wear off. They’ve got big concert plans which, for the purposes of this article, I’ll assume are to see Dar Williams. The concert is 21 plus though so the girls have to get fake IDs even though Maya is clearly pushing 35. Weirdly, Maya seems all distracted by texts and phone calls. Emily brings Maya to the crisis hotline (because nothing is hotter than court mandated community service) but Maya leaves in a weird frenzy. Could it be that Maya has been contacted by A and now everything is about to start crumbling down?

Nope! Actually it’s just a good old fashioned lesbian ex is calling all the time. Or is it? Emily puts on her powerful cool new voice and tells Maya she can share the contents of her heart/texts/life force whenever she’s ready, but Maya finally explains everything is over and done, but he just isn’t getting the message. Maya’s use of a masculine pronoun to described a former lover shakes Emily to her core. Obviously Emily’s never taken a sensitivity training class. How is she supposed to know that Maya’s just gotta do Maya?

EMILY IS A GRACEFUL GAZELLE

Normally I just wear the grossest T-shirt and jeans I own to concerts. That way I don’t have to worry about getting beer spilled or smoke blown on any of my nice clothes. That being said, Emily’s shirt here is awesome. Maybe she’ll be crying later while she’s trying to wash someone else’s vomit out of it, but in the meantime that cobalt blouse is just plain bomb. Oh, did you want it?

Parker at ShopStyle

Rounding out the episode, and bringing any suspense directly to a halt, we discovered that Lucas hasn’t been helping A at all but instead the thing he “lost” was a shitton of Caleb’ money we didn’t even know he had. Wow writers, way to not stretch or develop the characters at all this week. Way to go indeed.

LUCAS IS ONE SWEATY MAN

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Lizz

Lizz is a consumer, lover and writer of all things pop culture and the Fashion/Style Editor at Autostraddle.com. She is also full time medical student at Brown University in Providence, RI. You can find her on the twitter, the tumblr or even on the instagram.

Lizz has written 261 articles for us.

21 Comments

  1. Loving Hannah’s Fuck That face.

    I still can’t get over the fact that Bianca Lawson(Maya) is on this show. BL is beautiful, but she’s older than Mr. Fucking Fitz. She was on Saved by the Bell and My So Called Life-how has she been playing the same age for 20 years?

    • Or better question: how is there still such a dearth of parts for WOC that Biana Lawson has had to play literally the same bit part for two decades?

  2. I don’t want the cobalt shirt, but I’ll take the lady wearing it any day.

    There is literally no way not to make that statement creepy so I just went for full creep.

  3. How come the goodwill never seems to have any $200+ cobalt shirts in my size? or if they do they’re not the half off color :(

    being poor sucks :P

  4. Yes Bianca is 35. You have to understand black people do not age that fast.By looking at her you would not have known how old she is.People need to stop the hate.If you looked as young as her you would play a teenager your self.She takes what ever part she is offered.

  5. i liked arias outfit it was unique. and as for bianca lawson i can`t believe shes 35 she doesn’t look it i remember watching her on buffy as kendra the other slayer

  6. 1) Mona was dating Noel, not Noah.
    2) I Gleeked out at recognizing “Jeremiah”/blind dude.
    3) I was legitimately shouting at my screen when EVERYONE was telling Aria that it’s fate or that it’s romantic that she’s dating her English teacher. (I also ranted about it for a good 20 minutes the next to friends…) I just want to set Aria and all her fucking storylines on fire. So. Wrong. Ugh.

  7. Bianca isn’t 35. She was born in 1979 – two years after me. So she’s turning 33 this year.

    Some people have young faces and play younger than they are for a long time, that’s all.

  8. This is barely even remotely related to this recap, but speaking of tracking where your teenage kids take their cars… my grandmother used to note the mileage on her car because my dad (when he was a teen) would take the car across the state line into Illinois where they would serve him drinks in a bar (in the late 1950s). So my dad got the bright idea to crack open the odometer and roll the car’s mileage back to a reasonable number so Grandma couldn’t tell he’d been out drinking with his friends.

    He totally would have gotten away with it… if he hadn’t accidentally left his wallet at the bar, where they called my grandma to try to return it. Grandma got her revenge by telling us this story when we were teens to completely undermine my dad’s authority.

    But I have to admit, my dad was kind of a bad ass. I would never have had the balls to try to mess with the mileage.

  9. Did anyone else notice that Holden’s parents are lesbians? Aria says something about his mom being in a sugar-free phrase when he was a kid, and he makes some throwaway comment about his moms going through lots of phases.

  10. i have a feeling holden is gay and the only reason he went out with aria is becuz he doesnt want to be gay anymore and thats what he is hiding from his parents just like aria is trying to hide the fact she is still seeing mr fitz

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