Pretty Little Liars Tells The Truth in “If At First You Don’t Succeed, Lie, Lie Again”

Things are looking up for us, I think. See — television affects children irrevocably, according to the social scientists and also to The Parents Television Council, who believe all children should be raised by their televisions. That’s why the PTC grades each television on its ability to parent, like the PTC is a really twisted social worker or something. Anyhow even if they’re right I think things are looking up for us.

Last year, when the kids were dying of self-loathing and everyone was suddenly eager to talk about it, Glee did an Issue Episode, reminiscent of Blossom‘s Very Special Episodes, after-school specials, etc. In the 80s and 90s, Special Episodes taught us how to handle a thing, like abortion or bulimia or abuse. We saw Kelly Martin handle it, and then we decided how we would handle it. Glee’s “Issue” was gay bullying. In the episode, Kurt’s hetero friends rally behind him to defend him and they beat the bully and ALSO SING AND DANCE.

So there we have our first example of what you should do when your friend gets gay-bullied okay? Okay good, moving on to the topic at hand, Episode 115 of Pretty Little Liars:

In Episode 115 of Pretty Little Liars, no lesbians made out or rocked each other gently in a candlelit room. However, plans were made and fucks were gave and suspects were raised.

via prettylittlepicspam.tumblr.com

Last night on Pretty Little Liars, Spencer told Emily’s swimming coach that Paige, the Psychotic Swimmer Girl, had said something mean to Emily about her homosexualspectacularness. See, Paige — who looked cute in her first scene and then transformed into a douche — wants to be captain of the swim team, but now that Emily’s back from her homosexual vacation, because everyone knows being gay is a full-time job that prohibits you from participating in extracurricular activities, Paige is worried that Emily will get to be captain because Emily is : 1) a better swimmer than her, 2) not Totally Fucking insane. Paige is probably a closeted homosexual, because she looks at Emily a lot with those “I hate that I want to bang you” eyes of despair.

So Paige threatened to out Emily to her team if Emily dared to beat her, and Emily was like, “Are you A.? Yes or no? If you are A, then you are one scary motherfucker. If you aren’t, then you are NOT the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. SUCK IT.”

No just kidding, Emily says if you want to be a better swimmer, then work for it, or something very tough & dykey like that.

Later that day, Emily tells her friends what happened with Paige and Spencer apparently just naturally went and told the coach.

Emily is then shocked/appalled when the coach calls Paige and Emily aside after practice and says she understands that a homophobic remark was made and she wants to punish somebody. Emily is totally confused and says everything is fine and she will take care of it herself. In other words, Emily is pretty, she’s little, and she’s lying.

Then later on Spencer asks what happened with Paige and Emily is like WHAT and Spencer was like, oh yeah, I told the coach, that girl always talks shit about the homogays. Emily gets pissed and says she can take care of herself. The thing about that, though, was the nonchalance. Like it was just one more bossy thing for Spencer to do, because you know, she wears plaid cardigans and looks really smart and seems to “have her shit together.”

Near the end of the episode via flashback we find out that Allison was not just a bitch, but perhaps actually completely and totally evil. We still care who killed her though, despite the fact that this mystery has more holes in it than Helena Peabody’s character arc but whatever, what-the-fuck-ever, give us the tea and talk about our eyes being windows to our soul, for crying out loud we’ve been sitting here all this time JUST FUCKING TELL US WHO A IS AND THEN EVERYBODY MAKE OUT.

Also, Paige tries to murder Emily in the swimming pool and there are some nice underwater sequences with good music.

Anyhow back to Spencer telling the coach about how Paige made a bad joke to Emily about the breakstroke and what “team” Emily was on and how Spencer seemed so nonchalant about telling the coach, like Of course I told her. Because that’s what you do.

Didn’t you know?

That’s what you do when someone says something homophobic to your friend, you go tell somebody in a position of power who can use that power to impart wisdom and execute discipline to whomever dared to do such a terrible, terrible thing. That’s what you do, kids. Say no to drugs, say nope to dope, always use a condom, wear your seatbelt, don’t walk alone at night, no means no, there is no excuse for violence against women, judge a man by the content of his character not by the color of his skin and there is no excuse and zero tolerance for homophobic language. Everyone got that? Okay. Thank you.

What did you think of the episode?

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3271 articles for us.

31 Comments

  1. Lindsey Shaw gives me a huge lesbian vibe.

    Anyway, I HATE this show. I just cant make myself watch it. But I feel bad when I don’t, ’cause it’s like I’m not supporting lesbians in the media or whatever. So thanks for this, Riese. You make my gay to gay life easier.

    • yes! total homo vibes. and/or wishful thinking.

      i’ve been pining for her ever since ‘neds declassified’. is that weird? probably.

      also she was super hot in the ’10 things i hate about you’ series that was cruelly yanked after only one season.

  2. 1. The coach looks like Oprah. She’s cool. Nice addition.

    2. Where’s Toby? Is that greaseball asshole suppose to be replacing him? If so, DONE!!!

    3. 41 minutes and nothing happened. NOTHING! We know nothing more about A today than we did weeks ago.

    4. Go Spencer! Pretty and brave!

    5. If a bitch tried to drown me, at the VERY least we would have fought. POINT BLANK PERIOD. I’m not going to argue with her. That was very extreme and there would have been equally extreme consequences. That bitch would have been knocked out or facing attempted murder charges. Like wtf, Emily? That’s not okay.

    TV has just been irritating me this past week. Just pure suckage all around, except for Spartacus which is consistently and increasingly awesome.

    • i hope next week emily shoves paige into the pool, i mean bitch tried to DROWN HER. isn’t that a big deal? i feel like that’s a big deal.

      • Exactly. It’s dumb and like I said I am not a violent person but I would have knocked her out. Mainly because telling someone would be her her word against mine..

    • I loved Emily’s reaction of just being mildly annoyed about the whole drowning thing. As though Paige (?) thinking Emily was scheming to get the top position was somehow worse than her trying to murder her.

      • Page is just too much of a teenager, blinded by a need for social acceptance, a want to be the top dog, and an annoying but inescapable attraction to Emily to realize the seriousness of her actions.

        when Page gets older or gets in trouble for it, she’ll look back and be like “Yes, I see now. Intentional drowning of my competition/ secret love was not an appropriate response.”

        I remember being that dumb…those were the days.

  3. Emily is so hot. I wanna move to Rosewood and fill the quota of lesbians because they clearly don’t have enough if the weird psychobitch is Emily’s new love interest. Let’s hope not. Let’s also hope Emily’s swim team decides two-pieces are better than one!

    • I hope not.. Besides her bad hair cut.. this is wrong.

      The whole I hated you before I loved you works sometimes..like with my Chrolli. But no one was almost murdered by a person then fell in love…except maybe Mr. and Mrs. Smith. That worked. But only because they liked each other in the beginning and the attempted murder was more like a deep therapeutic discussion/ foreplay. But for regular people.. no. Not okay.

    • YES! Spencer’s voice is amazing! I also love the way she dresses and is so bossy and matter of fact about things…She is very Bette Porter to me. I originally started watching this show examine/criticize the lesbian plot line, but I continually find myself distracted by Spencer’s handsomeness…

  4. I love that Emily doesn’t like the sweet innocent women. Allison…Maya…and unless the radar is way off looks like Paige. The relationship between pedophile Ezra and Aria really needs to end.

  5. i think one of my problems getting into this show before was that i thought emily was maya. now i know, but i still don’t want to watch this.

  6. i totally thought paige and emily were going to have a steamy locker room scene when she first appeared …like some repressed homosexy shit but then realized paige is just psychotic.

    also, the whole time paige was drowning emily, i figured she could have just swam away. Isn’t she supposed to be a good swimmer or something…

  7. Emily is pretty and all, but has anyone noticed that she gets this like constipated look about her a lot? It’s like her “concerned look”, but in most screencaps it looks like she needs to poop.

    • I don’t know if the music has made it clear or not, but there are shady things happening all the time! You’d be perma-concerned too! But if Emily needs help coping… I’m here for her.

  8. So I know we only recap the homogay storyline. But let’s take a moment (or twenty) to cherish Spencer telling Aria: “Yesterday you were ready to give me tongue.”
    With that voice and that line…brain. short. circuiting.

    I need to consistently remind myself that the pedo bear is, in fact, not coming for me because the actors who play emily and spencer are actually older than I am. phew.

  9. as terrible as this show is, gotta love it for allowing exchanges like this to happen:

    emily: “…just some snarky comment about me be gay.”
    spencer: “i will destroy her.”
    aria: “can i help?”

    without making the whole thing into a ‘special episode’ like that episode of saved by the bell where jesse is so excited so scared or every episode of full house.

    the cat in the hat knows a lot about that is the best show.

  10. Am I the only one who loves this show bahhaa…also, am I the only one who is slightly turned on by Paige even though she IS a douche bag…10 bucks says she comes out and replaces Mia as Emily’s gf who’s all saved from being gay and what not.

Comments are closed.