Previously on Pretty Little Liars, the Liars dealt with the fallout of being trapped in Charles’ underground hellscape for three weeks, in their own ways. Emily helped herself to her dad’s guns, unloading bullets and rage at paper dummies down at the shooting range. Hanna stripped her room to the barest walls and sat on the floor and stared at the violation and processed it like a metaphor. Aria, who at some point in the dollhouse decided to shoulder exactly zero percent of Ezra Fitz’s bullshit going forward, went full-throttle Spencer while wearing a dress that said “Stop Men!” Spencer glared at everyone, especially her mother for refusing to fill all her prescriptions, and yelled at Ali for a little while about how her family is all Gargamels. And Ali met another age-inappropriate cop named who made it gross immediately.
Spencer is tucked away in a corner of the kitchen we’ve never seen before, just huddled down there like a helpless little lamb while her mom sleeps on the couch, guarding the pain pills. Remember that episode when Spencer told that story about how good she was at hide and seek in the most psychotic way? Like staring out the window and it was lighting and her voice was growly about how she used to destroy Melissa’s life playing hide and seek? I think that’s when I knew for sure I would marry Spencer Hastings. And that’s what I thought about when I saw her all scrunched down here, like maybe this was one of her hiding spots from the days of yore.
The Liars do a phone chain for their daily debrief of the facts.
Emily: Well, Sarah — who, just by the way, takes about ten showers an hour — says Andrew isn’t Charles, even though she never heard Charles speak or smelled which Axe body spray he uses.
Spencer: #NotAllMen, Emily! Toby doesn’t bathe in Axe body spray! Caleb doesn’t!
Emily: Whatever. A lot of shit has happened to me, but at least at the end of the day, I’m gay.
Spencer: So Sarah says Andrew doesn’t have a Charles vibe?
Emily: Yeah. To be honest, though, she seems pretty messed up.
Spencer: Don’t date her to make her feel better, Emily.
Emily: Fine.
Spencer: I’m serious.
Emily: I said fine! Anyway, who is going to tell Aria about Andrew?
Hanna: Aria, Andrew isn’t Charles.
Aria: He has to be! I am so tired of getting murdered! I don’t want to get murdered anymore! If Andrew is Charles, I’ll never be murdered again!
Hanna: Shh. Honeybun, I know. We’ll talk about it at school.
Aria: HOW ARE WE STILL IN SCHOOL?
Hanna: Aria, take your Xanax and let’s go. Calculus in half an hour. I’ll see you there.
Sarah gets out of the shower, and gets real squirrelly about Emily leaving to go to school. Does that mean Sarah has to go back to school? Is Pam mad at Sarah for not going to school? Does Sarah look feral? Emily almost answers yes to the feral thing — like she and Aria are somehow morphing into people who could activate some super twin powers and become a mega robot version of Spencer — but she swerves at the last minute and says mostly Sarah just looks like a lost puppy. Then, in a move that is going to come back and bite her like a literal feral cat, Emily gives Sarah a burner phone. Just. Come on, Emily. “Here is unsupervised access to all my shit, a way for you to communicate off the grid, and also how about some french toast and mimosas?”
At the Brew, Aria is cleaning her camera gear for like the eleventh time in two days. Her lenses get more baths than Sarah. Ezra wanders over and offers her some breakfast comfort food, and says she can spend the whole day just hanging out in his office if she wants. He says, “You can write.” And she snaps, “No writing!” So he offers her a million other options, like reading or organizing the kitchen or alphabetizing his mail or polishing her knives or taking a nap while he stares at her through his video camera and journals about immortalizing her youth makes sure no one stabs her in the face.
There’s a lot of crafty framing in this episode. (Norman Buckley directing Joseph Dougherty’s writing is always such a treat. It’s as layered as you want to go.) I won’t overwork it; maybe I’ll talk about it on Tumblr later. But: See how Aria and Ezra are pushed to the edge of the frame in the direction they’re talking, how there’s no leading room like the standard way you’re supposed to film this stuff. Like above with Emily framed right and looking left, and Sarah framed left and looking right. That’s comfortable to your eyeballs and brain. It’s the rule of cinematography when it comes to conversation. But Ezra and Aria don’t have any leading room between them.
So it makes you feel kind of creeped out, right? Kind of uneasy? You’ll see it again with Hanna and Dr. Sullivan in a minute. The Liars are experiencing a disconnect and a discomfort trying to relate to anyone who wasn’t in the dollhouse. And also, that negative space behind Aria (and later, behind Hanna), your brain is sending you panic signals when you see that, because you know (without knowing you know) that Norman Buckley is showing you that empty space for a reason. So you’re like, “Who’s going to step into that space?! What are they going to do?!” Your brain doesn’t know if it’s a metaphor or if it’s murder.
To wit: Aria decides to take Ezra up on his offer. She hangs out at the Brew and looks through all her photography. Standard Instagram stuff. Lattes and books and Buddha statues. A hundred thousand photos of Spencer. But then she finds all these pictures of Andrew seeming like a normal 30-year-old teenager in his seventh senior year at Rosewood High School and her noggin gets to whirring about who is is, really. She says it out loud: “Who are you?” One day he shows up out of nowhere, gets Spencer to take off her bra like a wizard, hosts an academic decathlon that nearly causes Spencer and Mona to murder each other, then follows Aria around like a Noel Kahn for half a season. Who is he?
Framed right.
Monster sneaks in.
Told ya!
For real, though, look at all the spaces in the frames the Liars aren’t occupying in this episode. It’s on purpose and it has so much to say. (Again: Hanna, especially at school.) So, Ezra decides the best way to help Aria is to call, I guess, Rosewood General? And pretend to be a police officer? He’s like, “Oh, hey, hospital. This is Mervin. Can you tell me Andrew Campbell’s blood type, social security number, physical location at this moment in time, etc.? If you need to look it up, I’ll hold.” They hang up on him, obviously, but not before telling him Andrew is adopted.
Spencer and Ali take a minute before school to squabble with each other. Spencer is convinced Ali’s dad is lying about Charles. Ali isn’t not convinced, but she is a girl who died but didn’t die who just got out of jail for murdering a whole other girl who died but didn’t die, and instead of Emily rewarding her selfless dollhouse heroics with a smooch on the mouth to affirm her goodness and worth, Ali is receiving the opposite reward: fighting in a mirror with Spencer to remind her, both literally and metaphorically, how fucked up and duplicitous and fleeting and ungraspable her real life still is. (Emily, you’re ministering to the wrong blonde girl! It’s better than murdering the wrong blonde girl like everybody else, but it’s still not good!)
Spencer says if Ali won’t drill her dad’s brain in the night to mine his memories of Charles, she’s going to talk to Jason, and that just sends Alison over the edge. She doesn’t want Spencer to get Jason involved because she doesn’t want Jason to hate her, because that’s how it works, because every adult man on this show who abuses girls finds a way to paint themselves as the victims of everything the Liars do to break get from them. Ezra did it. Jason’s doing it right now. Andrew is going to do it in a minute. I mean, Ali doesn’t say that. She’s a sixteen-year-old girl who’s been called a bitch-monster so long she’s starting to believe it. But she touches the edge of the truth, and asks Spencer to leave it alone.
Hanna runs into Dr. Sullivan at school while she’s waiting for the Liars to arrive. You’re like, “Why, all of a sudden, is school so important to Hanna, of all people?” But then she meets with Sullivan after class and lays it bare: The thing A/Charles tried to do, has been trying to do from the very beginning, is break the Liars apart, and the worst thing that could possibly come from the dollhouse is if he succeeded. She clutches her hand the whole time, the one she was forced to use to choose a Liar to torture, and asks if Dr. Sullivan can do some polyamory couples counseling for the four of them. Like maybe subpoena them or something, with her doctor powers? Anne says yes to the first thing, no to the second; so, Hanna vows to get their asses to therapy if she has to rope ’em up and throw ’em in the back of Toby’s truck.
Town Square.
Soccer ball: [Flies at Ali’s face]
Ali: [Steps over, takes a fake shot at Lorenzo’s nuts, lunges, taps it back to him]
Lorenzo: Your moves are smooth and your face is underage. You’re every Rosewood cop’s dream, girl.
Ali: Are those church kids?
Lorenzo: Yeah, you’re every Rosewood youth minister’s dream, too, girl.
Ali: I wonder if Aria will let me borrow her Stop Men dress.
Lorenzo: You know you want it.
Ali: Wanna jet? You’re right. Bye.
Toby: [Watches condescendingly from the window]
Pam pulls out some of Emily’s old plaids from the attic so Sarah can have some things to wear around that aren’t dirty old yellow tank tops. Sarah puts on a lesbian-themed fashion show for Pam and Em, while they throw socks at each other and try to pretend Emily’s not going to have to end up stabbing this girl on top of a lighthouse. Pam casually asks why Sarah ran away after being held hostage in the sewers beneath a state park for many years. Emily is like, “Oh my god, Mom, you can’t just ask someone why they’re feral!” But Sarah doesn’t mind telling about it. Her mom is a horrible woman who threw all of Sarah’s clothes in the yard and burned them like a bonfire after Sarah was kidnapped. Roasted marshmallows on the fire, roasted hot dogs, s’mores, the whole thing. A freedom luau, basically. Pam gives Sarah a hundred more of Emily’s old denim vests and a plate of empanadas. And a vodka.
Hanna busts up the party to drag Emily to therapy. It’s amazing. It’s so Hanna. Holding the world together with her Hufflepuff arms. She just wheels up, calls Emily, and when Emily walks outside her house, Hanna goes, “Get in, I mean it, we’re going to therapy.”
Toby, meanwhile, damages Spencer’s calm by asking her to ask Alison to stay away from Officer Lorenzo so she doesn’t get him into trouble. Spencer doesn’t flip the coffee table and go, “How about telling the ADULT MEN in this town to not SEDUCE TEENAGE GIRLS. How about NOT holding the victims responsible for their own victimization for once, TOBY. HOW ABOUT THAT.” Instead, she asks him if he seriously thinks Ali is the same person she was when this show started, back when texts were read aloud in unison and Jason had a whole other head. Toby sees her point, but Ali framed him for blowing up Jenna’s eyeballs, so he’s having a hard time letting that go. He says if Spencer trusts Ali completely, he’ll stop this shit. But, like my friend Valerie pointed out last night, Spencer doesn’t trust anyone completely. She spent a full half season of this show accusing herself of murder.
So Spencer takes her mistrust off the couch and over to Jason’s office to ask about Charles DiLaurentis.
Jason: You mean Charlie DiLaurentis?
Spencer: Um, what?
Jason: Charlie DiLaurentis, my imaginary friend from childhood?
Spencer: I say again: Um, what?
Jason: Yeah, he had to go live on the farm with our old cat, Hannibal Lecter DiLaurentis.
Spencer: I’m gonna go to therapy now.
Jason: Cool, have fun. I feel lucky that I’ve never really needed any therapy.
Well, so the Liars are at Dr. Sullivan’s office, working out what they’re going to tell her about Charles. But Hanna says they’re not there to talk about Charles. They’re there to talk about the hard work of loving for a lifetime. Emily, for one, will not be closing her eyes during this appointment due to the fact that the last time she closed her eyes in Sullivan’s office, she was hypnotized into believing she cracked Ali’s head with a shovel and was then transported through a time-vortex into the floorboard of Jenna’s car. All of this planning is moot; Spencer rushes in talking about imaginary Charlie and A texts a photo of the Risen Mitten holding a knife to the back of Sarah Harvey’s head, threatening to slice and dice her if they don’t get out of that therapy office right now. And so they do.
They zip over to Emily’s, but Sarah isn’t in bed at all. It’s just some pillows. Sarah is in the shower. When she gets out, Emily gives her the biggest hug, and you can see it in Sarah’s eyes, the Cousin Nate of it all, being that close to Emily, completely unhinged, and how someone is going to end up duct taped inside a closet because of it.
The next stop on the Liars panic tour is Alison’s. First, they explain about imaginary Charlie, and how something kuckobananas is going on here. There’s just too many blonde twin ghosts running around this town for all of them to be ghosts. So they split up and fan out and start looking for hiding places where Jessica or Mr. D or Jason might have hidden information about an invisible son or nephew or something. There’s no journals or anything about him in the hidden room behind the bookshelves. No slideshows of his youth in the attic, stashed among Alison’s dolls and one million dollars in cash money. No drawings of his in Jessica’s armoire, none of his old broken down toys in the basement. Aria gets bored and decides to do some crafting, and when she does, she finds a photo of Jason and Charlie and Mrs. D stuffed into a button jar. A photo from that day at the Campbell Apple Farm.
Out on the porch, Alison wonders to Spencer if Lorenzo knows about The Jenna Thing, the kissing rock thing, the Vivian Darkbloom/Holly Golightly thing, her intimate friendship with the grave-digging witch thing. She’s saying it like she wants to date him, but I wonder if maybe she really just wants to coach the girls’ soccer team at church, and he’s the first person in a long time who acted like she could hang around kids and not chop them up and do crazy necromancy with their dead bodies. Spencer tells her to go for it. Maybe Ali will even get a soccer penalty named after her. Emily digs stuff like that, you know.
The Liars bounce so Ali can talk to Jason and her dad alone. On the way home — filling up the full frame together, camera looking up at them, because their empowerment is in each other! — Andrew comes raging out of the courthouse like some kind of full-on men’s rights activist, screaming about how the Liars wouldn’t him fuck them and wouldn’t let him be the hero every video game and Disney movie led him to believe he was entitled to be, which makes them garbage women and he hopes they die. It’s straight up like Mario finding Princess Peach on the street after she rescued herself from Bowser’s castle and tearing into her about how was coming for her and how fucking DARE she climb out of that lava pit all by herself. Aria is still apologizing! Still! Another creep surveilling and berating her and she’s still apologizing! Oh, Aria, forgive me because you were all of us all along, and I just couldn’t see it.
Spencer: Well, everyone hates us.
Emily: Only assholes hate us. So, every man in this town hates us.
Hanna: Which was the whole point of couples counseling! I tortured y’all! But I can’t lose you!
Aria: No, you didn’t. I never got tortured. I’m the one who tortured y’all.
Spencer: Wait, we were all forced to torture each other, but none of us ever got tortured? A just wanted us to know he could make us do it?
Hanna: Making us think we hurt each other hurt us more than anything he could do to us.
They group hug and head home, determined, more than ever, to stop splitting up.
At Spencer’s, her mom is all worked up about how Andrew is out of jail and they couldn’t charge him with anything and how is this Spencer’s fault because it’s got to be Spencer’s fault, and if this means Spencer doesn’t get into an Ivy, well all hope is lost and they might as well have just drowned her in the bathtub when she was a baby. Spencer goes upstairs and takes the sleeping pill she lifted from Aria and tries not to think too hard about how some things were actually better in the dollhouse.
Ali shows Jason the photo of his imaginary friend, and so when Mr. D comes home from whatever Scrooge McDuck thing his job is, they confront him with it and he’s forced to confess that Charlie was real but now he’s dead. Maybe Toby’s mom threw him off the roof of Radley. Maybe Jessica bashed his face with a shovel and buried him in that hole. Maybe Veronica strangled a lookalike kid with her hydrangeas and buried him in the same hole. Maybe both those boys were just girls with short hair who liked baseball. Maybe they were Cece. Maybe they were Bethany. Maybe they rise from the grave every Halloween and go trick-or-treating. I swear to God, if this turns out to be some kind of horrible representation for a trans character, though, I am going to throw myself off a bridge. I have not invested this much of my life into this show to have it do that to us. Please MONA VANDERJESUS don’t let that be a thing.
Anyway, speaking of photo albums, Sarah Harvey has been going through Emily’s pictures, apparently, because when Emily gets home Sarah has cut her hair.
Leger de main. Kisses, bitches!
As always, my hugest thanks to Nicole (@PLLBigA) for the fantastic screencaps. Nicole is an actual magician. You should follow her on the Twitter machine. SHE KNOWS EVERYTHING.
Comments
I feel 10000x smarter about cinema after reading this THANK YOU Heather
Your user pic!
I wish this recap had just been that last screencap. That’s it.
Paige. :(
“I swear to God, if this turns out to be some kind of horrible representation for a trans character, though, I am going to throw myself off a bridge.”
Yeah like what if Charles were Paige and Paige were a “trans character”? You would have to admit that that would be a lot more satisfying as a matter of narrative than having Charles turn out to be some random peripheral straight dude (Wren, Andrew, the nerdy guy whose name I don’t even remember that used to be in love with Hanna).
Lucas! I keep going back and forth between it being Jason or Sarah. Sarah is just weird and we never saw her down there before nor did Mona mention her.
Fucking Lorenzo.
“I swear to God, if this turns out to be some kind of horrible representation for a trans character, though, I am going to throw myself off a bridge.”
I’m very concerned that’s exactly where this storyline is going ಠ_ಠ
i feel like i know so much more about leading space and camera angles now
also couldn’t ali’s dad be lying? and charlie isn’t dead? maybe they just THINK he’s dead but it turns out he was buried alive or something wacko like that
also sarah sometimes looks a little bit like amy raudenfield
Oh whoa, you’re totally right.
I really should but Rita Volk at the top of my list, but the first comparison I saw was Heather’s Stahma Tarr offspring. But I just can’t not see Amy when I look at Sarah. And now I’m thinking if Emily was on Faking It…
That wig made her so Stahma Tarr it was unbelievable. But now that I can see her face, I get the Amy vibe. And, weirdly, a Dianna Agron vibe? But that was only after I put Paige’s Lego man hair on her.
Oh I totally saw Dianna. Also someone else added Sara Foster from D.E.B.S.
Haven’t read the recap yet (thought I’m going to do that immediately), just commenting quickly to say THANK YOU HEATHER for getting this up so quickly! None of us wants to put any added pressure on you, but I think I speak for everyone when I say how much we SUPER APPRECIATE the hard work that you put in every week to create these incredible recaps for us.
To quote one of my favourite episodes of Gilmore Girls: In a relationship, any relationship, it is important to let the other person know that you appreciate them.
And now – on to the recap!
You’re welcome, Allison!
– Tell me again why we traded Mona for Alison?
– Of course Andrew couldn’t keep a hostage while doing that. He doesn’t have adrenalized-hyperreality.
– Oh Lorenzo, you’re so shady that I don’t even mind that you’re trying to hook up with a psychopath.
– HH, you’re right about how the men in this town are abusers…and a whole bunch of other things, but that doesn’t mean that Ali is some innocent victim. There’s a reason that everybody in town hates her, and it’s not because she makes a good scapegoat for them to avoid the grossness of other people.
– I’m just going to say it: I would prefer if Spencer dated Jason over Toby. Their chemistry together is so much better. Yes, I know he’s her brother.
– Yeah, Spencer did accuse herself of murder, and I haven’t cleared her…at all.
– Whoever sent the facetime threat must have been the one to call Dr. Sullivan. The timing on that is just too coincidental.
– Hey look Emily, you’ve got Miley Cyrus in your room.
– If Spencer has another noir episode, can we get Peggy and Angie in this one?
PS – In two weeks Mona’s ex makes a scene with her in front of Hanna. Awkward.
When Andrew was doing his rant, I could already feel you deconstructing it, HH.
Well, well. Leslie.
*hello darkness my old friend*
Please tell me this is an Arrested Development reference. I so hope that’s how you meant it because I’ve been laughing about it for a day now. If it isn’t I guess I’ve made a huge mistake…
The show can’t possibly want to make us think Sara Harvey/Emily is a good pairing right? I’m all for watching disasters but like the whole thing is so fucking creepy.
I think they’re aiming to make Emily into a protective person. Sarah will be an emotionally vulnerable person, and Emily will look after her.
It’s so weird to me that Emily and Ali aren’t just hooking up. Making Emily hook up with al Ali lookalike is even weirder!
Also giving Ali an age inappropriate male love interest for no reason other than that “he doesn’t know anything about her”.
Right, like isn’t the much better story that she falls in love with the girl who knows EVERYTHING about her?
Okay, now that I’ve actually read the recap…
Mr. D was totally lying about Charlie being dead. More likely, Mr. and Mrs. D PRETENDED that their son Charlie died, and convinced Jason that he’d been imaginary all along, because Charlie turned out to be psychotic (I’m thinking some Dexter Morgan shit, like slaughtering bunny rabbits or something) so they sent him to Radley. But since that would be embarassing, they told everyone he’d died. If he were actually dead, why wouldn’t Mr. D have just TOLD Ali that?
The other possibility is that Mr. D told Ali whatever the truth really is, and Ali lied to the liars. I kind of agree with Toby that Ali can’t be trusted. Not because she’s inherently evil, I just think she never gives the Liars enough credit. She’s always trying to hide things from them to protect them, but if she’d told them the truth back when A had first started stalking her, they’d all have been much safer.
My BFF and I have a theory that Charlie was either a foster sibling or a friend of Jason’s who deluded himself into believing that he WAS a DiLaurentis or at least was entitled to be part of the family. Then he did some really scary shit and was completely cut off from the family, so this entire A plot is his way of getting back at the family who “abandoned” him but which he still “belongs” to. Really delusional fantasies of betrayal and entitlement.
THESE ARE ALL SUCH GOOD THEORIES (both of yours!)
also I mean, of all towns to lie about someone being dead in, c’mon scrooge mcduck. come up with a better lie to explain why somebody isn’t around anymmore.
Agree. These are two of the best theories I’ve heard!
Daaaamn, validation from both Riese and Heather!! *adds this feather to her cap*
“Toby, meanwhile, damages Spencer’s calm by asking her to ask Alison to stay away from Officer Lorenzo so she doesn’t get him into trouble. Spencer doesn’t flip the coffee table and go, “How about telling the ADULT MEN in this town to not SEDUCE TEENAGE GIRLS. How about NOT holding the victims responsible for their own victimization for once, TOBY. HOW ABOUT THAT.””
YES. THANK YOU. ALL THE FUCKING RAGE WITH THIS PLOT. FUCK LORENZO AND FUCK VICTIM-BLAMING. I don’t care if Ali is a manipulative sociopath, the cartes blanches that are given to every fucking adult male in this show is REPULSIVE and I hate that it’s always the girls’ fault for becoming targets of these predators.
Preach, preach, preach.
I’d like to point out how mature and amazing Alison’s new look is, which I’ve noticed is in direct juxtapose to how the Liars are made to look like their younger selves. C’mon, Heather, help me psychoanalyze the costume choices for the girls now!! There’s gotta be something deeper there.
You know, I think they’re making her look more like her mom, and on purpose for some reason. Ali as a reflection is such a huge theme on this show. Remember that one season when you could barely even tell her and Hanna apart? And Ali is even kind of dressing like a real estate agent now? I need to pull together some photos to support this theory. I will do that.
Your comment earlier about how Ali looks like her mom now made me pay more attention to her wardrobe, so I am verrrry intrigued to hear more about this idea. You bring such fascinating depth to your recaps!
I think I read Marlene confirming somewhere that Charles isn’t trans. I can’t find it anymore, but I swear I saw it. The biggest reason people assume it is because of Ali’s flashback to her mom hiding a dress, but I assumed that one was for Bethany.
Also, isn’t the ghost twin supposed to be symbolic of Bethany? (Actually my real theory is that they were going with the Ali/twin book line at first then changed it halfway through the show.) And if Charles was a trans woman, why would she go to the prom as the prom king? It doesn’t make sense. I refuse to let it make sense.
I don’t think Charles is trans. I don’t think Marlene would do that. But I will be absolutely furious if it happens and I’m already really uncomfortable with the fact that it’s become such a major theory.
I’m actually with PaperOfFlowers. I think Charles isn’t actually a DiLaurentis (Marlene has said over and over there aren’t any twins) but someone obsessed with the family who wants to be part of it. Perhaps Bethany’s brother, who learned Bethany was actually a half sister (like Andrew and Alison)? I don’t know. In a way I’ve stopped trying to guess. I’m just along for the ride at this point.
You’ve eased my fears. Thank you.
I want Emily and Sarah to make out just once because she looks so much like Dianna Agron (if she had Miley Cyrus’ haircut) and it would help to fulfill my dream of seeing Dianna Agron make out with a girl.
Dianna Agron is in “Bare” where she plays a stripper, and Paz de la Huerta is her lover.
OMG HOW DID I FORGET ABOUT THIS.
Although my brain would also love to see Dianna Agron and Shay Mitchell make out so I stand by my original post.
Oh wow, I’ve read SO MUCH Glee fanfic that you just blew my mind when you said Dianna Agron hasn’t mad out with a girl. I was like, “Um, Quinn has scissored Rachel, Brittany, Santana, Mercedes, Marley, Kitty, Emma, Tina, Sue, Unique, Terry, and then Rachel again.”
Can we talk about how Songs of Experience is one part of a collection of William Blake poems-Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. There is a poem called A Little Girl Lost that kind of has the same patriarchal themes the show has been hitting on. There could be other relevant poems in the Songs of Experience collection. I just started with the most obvious. IDK if there’s anything else here, just thought I would see if anyone wants to english major out with me.<3
Oh, I want to talk about that! Tell me more!
I just saw this reply! I will dig further into this. I wish we could have a PLL conference/panel.
There’s one from Songs of Innocence about the shepherd which is super creepy in this context
I want to if it’s not too late! I LOVE Songs of Innocence and Experience so much. Generally a lot of really interesting stuff relating to innocence, sexualkitty and how society fucks you up. Blake had some really cool interesting ideas about how fixed dichotomies don’t really exist – the way this show plays with what Spencer called “the grey places”, with no-one being totally good or evil would really fit in with that. There’s also ‘The Poison Tree’ in Experience, which is so fucking A – it’s about how if you bottle up anger, it can lead to murderous rage. Equally he was really interested in the blurring between innocence and experience, how they’re not mutually exclusive and they both have their benefits and pitfalls. Which is apt given how coming of age this show is. And also maybe relates to the whole weird dolls as an icon of horror motif in the show. I’m not sure about the exact significance, but I’m curious as to why they’d introduce church in an epussode named after Blake – he was incredibly devout, but in a deeply unconventional way, and saw organised religion as evil. It’s also funny that ‘Little Girl Lost’ is followed by ‘Little Girl Found’, and there’s a twinned dyad in Innocence of ‘Little Boy Lost’ and ‘Found’ poems – and in a wider sense there’s the twinning and interlocking of the Innocence and Experience collection itself. Man, I could talk about this all day!
Don’t we think that Sara might actually be Bethany, and that Charlie obviously isn’t dead–but Mrs. D told Mr. D that to get him off her back about having an affair and producing a bastard Whackadoodle with Mr. H?
Yeah, I think there’s a VERY real chance that Sarah is Bethany. Very, very real.
I was thinking the same thing. This might just be a function of having been kept in a bunker for 2 years, but she has a very undead cousin Nate vibe to her. I don’t like it. Also, where’s her group of PLL doppelganger friends? Don’t you think they’d be there trying to prevent her from being murdered again? Or at least looking for her when she runs away again the day after she gets rescued?
Re: The Cameras – Heather how do you know everything about everything? I learn more when you recap a thing than the majority of my thousands of dollars college classes.
My girlfriend is a film editor, went to film school an Northwestern. When I met her like six years ago, I wanted to impress her, so I started reading a lot of film theory books, and then just fell in absolute love with studying it on my own. (But I did impress her. That part worked too. It was a win-win.)
Thanks for that protip
Ladies Sarah Harvey Looks Like (updated):
Stahma Tarr
Rita Volk
Ksenia Solo
That new Kat chick from The Fosters
Charlotte Sullivan
Dianna Agron
Cara Delevigne (thanks to Chelsea Steiner)
Miley Cyrus (thanks to Kristana)
Daenerys Targaryen (thanks to Ray)
The Dag (thanks to Ray, googled and approved)
Porunn from Vikings (thanks to Ray, googled and approved)
You might say she’s … everywhere and nowhere.
You might says she’s every woman
M760 added Sara Foster from D.E.B.S.
The official Sara Harvey comparison
https://twitter.com/iflipforrizzles/status/611686896440344576
I love this (sorta) meme you’ve started. Would you mind if I started a “Ladies/People Sara Harvey Looks Like” tumblr?
I have this horrible Stockholm syndrome feeling WRT Sara. I hate to not trust her but this show has made me distrust everyone new who comes near Emily…or any of them really. Lorenzo saying he doesn’t take no for an answer made me throw up in my mouth a little, but not as much as Toby trying to protect him from Alison.
That first set of captions = gold.
Toby staring judgingly out the window at Lorenzo and Ali is like the most Toby moment on this show to date.
Also yes! Lorenzo is targeting Ali and Toby is blaming her for it! It’s Police culture and Patriarchy all in one shot!
Also also: I’ve been saying all along these girls should just be a polyamorous lesbian couple and forget about everyone else. (Caleb and Toby can just date each other. And none for Ezra Fitzgerald.)
RT
Does this include Mona? Because if so, yes. I mean yes anyway, but even more yes.
I’m getting impatient here: WHERE IS MONA?!?!
I know I know she’s in out-of-town, but come on show. I need VanderJesus back.
Aria is significantly less awful now that she has some independence from Ezra. My wife and I started watching the show from the beginning since she never watched it, and we just fast forward through all the Aria-Ezra scenes. My wife already hates Ezra so I don’t even know how to break it to her that he turns out to be literal worst human ever in season 4. Heather if you just decided to recap the rest of show while pretending that Ezra doesn’t exist I wouldn’t be mad about it.
I don’t know if this is intentional, but after reading your view of the framing, Sarah Harvey in that towel outfit reminds me of the Virgin Mary, color and all. I’m not sure how this relates to things, though. I need to think about it, but wanted to throw it out there in case others pick up on anything.
I’m also incredibly worried this is going to be a really awkward representation of a trans character, especially due to the clues about Sarah Harvey being Charlie. I love Farscape, and they had a character named Harvey that was based on the 1950 film of the same name about an imaginary rabbit. Now, I haven’t seen the film, but we know Charles likes old things and choosing that name as an alias likely knowing what Charlie was written off as to Jason would make perfect sense. That combined with Marlene’s mentioning of Charles’ tragic backstory has me concerned.
This season of pll is interesting in being more direct about calling out the misogyny.
I am less concerned about Sarah being violent and more concerned about the stereotype that would be reenforced by Emily sleeping with/starting a relationship with her. I cannot handle this turning into the “women sleep with women because they have been damaged by men” thing. I can’t. I know a lot of folks trust the writers on this show but I don’t…at least not on queer stuff. Paige didn’t move…she was written out of the show, y’all. They killed off Mya and the one time Emily sleeps with Ali, it is never openly discussed. You don’t think they would have been processing the sh*t out of that experience, that night that was years in the making? You don’t think the liars would have had a lot to say to Emily about this?
I am super worried about Sarah and Emily. Super worried.
By the way, thanks Heather. Your recaps help me intellectualize this guilty pleasure.
Heather – first I just want to say I absolutely adore your recaps. I only started reading them at the beginning of season 5A but I enjoyed them so much that I went back and read all of the old ones. They make me laugh. They make me think. And they make me enjoy this show on a completely different level than I did before I started reading them. So thank you.
Second – I’ve never commented before, because I’m more of the silent type, but I’m dying to know what you wanted, but ran out of time, to say about Ali in your last recap. I’m so eager to hear your thoughts on Ali in church and as a queer woman and what she did to both Mona and Paige.
I’ll be honest, I’m an Emison fan. And while I have a whole slew of reasons why I feel they’re soul mates and a whole slew of other reasons why I believe their relationship, both good and bad, is the crux of this entire show, I appreciate and respect fans like you who identify with Paige and believe that she and Emily belong together.
I can acknowledge the importance of Paige in Emily’s life and vice versa. I went through my own journey of both liking and disliking Paige at certain points (for the record I’ve gone on that journey with Alison too)but I believe Paige and Emily truly loved one another, probably still love one another.
But I have to admit I wanted to weep with joy when, in one of your recaps (I can’t remember which one now), you said, in reaction to something Alison had done, basically how could she do whatever she’d done, just when you were opening your heart to her. I always wondered how much you’d be able to do that and how unbiased you could be toward her, considering your affection for Paige.
As silly as it sounds I was so angry at Ali because I wanted you to open your heart to her and there she went screwing it up by falling back into her old Alison DiLaurentis behavior patterns….lol
But what makes me hopeful and curious is I think you see Ali more clearly than most (both those who love and hate her). And that’s why I sooooooo want to hear your thoughts on her – for better or worse. You have a brilliant way of dissecting characters and getting down to the very core of them. And you’re so eloquent about it…. not to mention hilarious.
I know there are those out there who consider her a straight girl who is just screwing with Emily and those who firmly believe she’s gay. Personally I believe she’s bisexual and it’s been obvious from the beginning of the show if a person looks closely enough.
And it’s easy for some to write her character off as an irredeemable, mean girl, sociopath rather than take the time to look closer; try to see what caused the damage and if she is able to overcome and heal that damaged part of herself.
Anyway, I hope you find the time to put those thoughts on paper, at some point, because I would suck them up as eagerly as Hermione reads Hogwarts: A History.
Hope you’re feeling better.
Hey, Ellie! I’ll try to tackle this on Tumblr this weekend. I’ll link you when it’s up. In the last days of Paige, what I realized — and I talked about this a lot in real life but I don’t know how much I talked about it in my recaps — was one of the main reasons I wanted Paige and Emily to be together so badly was because it was the only way Paige was going to be on the show. And she’s just so important. But I really did love the way she got to leave. It was a triumph befitting her amazing lesbian growth.
I feel very confused and frustrated that Ali and Emily aren’t exploring their relationship this season. It doesn’t make sense to me at all. I don’t remember if I said this to my best friend or wrote it somewhere, but why how boring to have Ali fall for a guy because he doesn’t know her past, when the show could have her opening herself up fully to the girl who knows EVERYTHING about her.
ANYWAY. More later. I’ve got an OITNB recap to finish up!
I actually squealed when I read this. Yes, a forty year old woman squealed like a teenager – freaking her cats out, by the way – and feels no shame in it. I can’t wait to read it.
It’s too bad the writers couldn’t have found a way to keep Paige around as a recurring character without having her storyline have to rely on her being in a relationship with Emily. I know the show is about the liars (I consider it 5 liars, not 4. I don’t think the writers give Ali enough credit as the first pretty little liar who, in essence, created the others)but there still needs to be supporting characters who have an important place. I think they could have done some interesting things with Paige, in her own right, and as a part of the team who could help bring A down, without her needing to be tied to Emily romantically. I mean… why couldn’t there have been another genuine lesbian couple in Rosewood? But that’s a conversation for another time.
I share your frustration with the way the writers are completely ignoring the elephant in the room. To not explore the dynamic between Ali and Emily is asinine and disrespectful, not only to the audience but to the characters. If they felt trying to explore that was too much to take on during this whole final A reveal, at least have the characters have a short conversation about.
It could have been as simple as “hey, we hooked up and there is obviously something here between us, that needs to be explored, but we need to just put a pin in it while we figure out who’s torturing and trying to kill us.”
That would have been a little lame, but at least it would have been an acknowledgement of not only the importance of that moment in the 100th episode but of the fact that there is something powerful that exists between these girls.
Part of me actually doesn’t even mind if they put off these two exploring their feelings for one another until after the time jump because I don’t think they’re ready for it right now anyway. We’ve watched the other girls mature over these past years but we haven’t seen anything like that for Ali.I know all the girls are now late 17/early 18-ish, but at 15 Ali was alone, living on the streets, after her mother tried to bury her alive, after someone conked her on the head and tried to kill her. The girl has got baggage she needs to work through. It’s going to be a while before she can have a healthy relationship with anyone.
But don’t ignore it like it never happened. And don’t throw random, creepy (I’m talking to you: Talia, Jonny, Sara, Andrew, and Lorenzo) meaningless love interests into the mix just so they don’t have to deal with the important relationships.
I love these writers and I think they’re brilliant but sometimes I really feel they’re disrespectful to their audience and their characters. And speaking of disrespecting characters – what the heck happened to Pepe anyway? He was my favorite and the only friend who didn’t turn his back on Alison…. or maybe he did and that’s why he’s gone…
Okay… I’m off my tangent now. :-)
Anyway, I look forward to reading your thoughts when you’re able to get to them.
I completely agree with everything you said especially on the Ali/Emily hookup. It would have been perfect if at least Spencer had found out about it and confronted them, forcing them to discuss it. However, I feel like it’s never going to be addressed even more especially after the time jump. What exactly would they have to say about it after 4-5 years have passed?
Marlene, no one is saying that they have to sleep together again. As a matter of fact, I will be pissed as fuck at Emily if that happens. All what most people want, I think, is for Emily and Alison to talk about it sooner than later and come to some sort of agreement to be friends or whatever.
On a completely different note, how old is Dre Davis? I mean she seems younger than Shay and the other girls but slightly older than Sasha.
Where does anyone say that Charles is dead? Did I miss that part of the episode?
Mr D didn’t say anything about Charles being dead in the episode I watched either (Netflix). He talks to Ali and Jason but there’s no audio.
As for Lorenzo I assumed he was young like Toby being part of a “new faces” programme implies youth. Now that’s not to say he’s not a shady creeper but he doesn’t seem to be an age inappropriate shady creeper for a change. And Alison can handle anyone so I’m not afraid for her.
I just DON’T GET IT. I don’t get it. Spencer Hastings, the Big Brain of Rosewood High, tries to take a phone call without her mom knowing, by hiding on the other side of the kitchen counter? This is such a minor detail but it drove me crazy omfg. Who the hell. And she. On the other side of the counter? So her mom wouldn’t hear. The visual? So she couldn’t see? Why did she. HOw?