Previously: Ezria got a slow motion kiss with a school bus in the background and this is a really poor previously, but I was in a rush and forgot to throw in all the “SRSLY GUYS.” comments I wanted to include so I’m awkwardly doing that now, and also thanking Lor for addressing the school bus. Oh, and there’s a new Jason, because this is a soap opera and that’s how we roll.
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My Name Is Trouble
Sweeney: The previouslies remind us of Wren, so I guess we’ll be seeing him, and I don’t like it because SPOBY 4EVA.
Lorraine: I suddenly feel like we need #teamageappropriatelove on a t-shirt.
Sweeney: ABSOLUTELY. I would wear the shirt all the time.
Anyway, the girls are in a movie theater, apparently alone, watching an old black and white movie, recapping Spencer’s theory that Melissa is sneaking out to visit Ian on foot, and probably at Jason’s. Spencer spots someone in a black hoodie in the back of the theater, but when the other girls turn around, (s)he’s gone. Then the screen starts fucking up and the hoodie person reappears. Just as (s)he is diving at them Spencer wakes up on her couch.
Unfortunately, she’s waking up to a new nightmare, as Melissa is poking around her with a flashlight, looking for her wedding ring. Dude, the least you could do is wake her up and ask her to move first. Rude. Anyway, she took the ring off because it was cutting off her circulation on her fat pregnant fingers. Melissa’s phone starts buzzing and Spencer reaches to grab it, but Melissa stops her. She answers the phone saying that she’s not alone and telling the caller to wait until she gets upstairs. Shady business. Spencer stands at the bottom of the stairs and tries to listen, and makes ominous, “Oh shit,” faces.
SHHHH!
The following morning Hanna goes downstairs to find her epic awful father in the kitchen laughing with her mom. He wants to take her to school, but Mona’s already on that, and Hanna’s not interested in rearranging plans. He tries to be fatherly, but Hanna gives him the super You Totally Fucking Abandoned Me cold shoulder. (L: And don’t forget springing his new family on her. You cold shoulder on, girlfriend.) He leaves.
Hanna then gets confrontational with her mother about their laughing because what business does she have laughing! Mama Marin says that she gets what a shithead he was, but: “Just because someone hurts us once doesn’t mean we have to permanently delete them from our phone book.” Deep. #PrettyLittleLessons.
Sara: Yeah, I can think of about a dozen things that are phone-book-deletion worthy from season 1 of this show alone.
Sweeney: Sorry, sarcasm translates poorly. Agreed. I mean, I feel a little bad for Mama Marin getting all swoony for her piece of shit ex in this episode, but I feel worse for Hanna who has to watch it.
At school Emily is washing her hands in the bathroom and as soon as the random girl in there with her leaves, the other three PLLs burst out of the stalls behind her. It’s adorable and ridiculous. I wonder how many takes it took them to get that right.
Emily is freaking out about the letter from the scout, which is totally insufficient to get her mom to stay in Rosewood. The girls discuss their various after school plans — practice for Emily and Spencer (WHO IS COACHING THE TEAM NOW?) — and Aria has her first day of class at Hollis. You know, the school where Pedzrafitz and his ex-fiancee both teach. THIS GIRL. THIS STUPID FUCKING GIRL. You do recognize that you’re only perpetuating the faculty/student relationship, right? I mean, an infinitely less bad one, but I’m pretty sure a university would fire a professor for fucking a 16 year old student too.
Sara: Well, this is still a university in Rosewood…
Sweeney: An unfortunately accurate point.
Hanna, unfortunately, has nothing to do beyond playing kleptomaniac with Mona after school. That’s a hobby that gives me the sads. I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY, USELESS FUCKING ADULTS. Hanna’s a full-on criminal when separated from her besties. Fuck you all. Speaking of the shitty adults: this is interrupted when a teacher comes into the bathroom and the girls all scatter and pretend they weren’t just hanging out.
Sara: Because, apparently, the parents have spoken to every single teacher at Rosewood High about the girls having to stay apart? Seriously, this punishment feels like a lot of work.
Sweeney: Right? I wonder if that’s why we never got punished for much as a kid. My mom was just all, “Ugh. Effort. Fuck it. Carry on, kids.” (JOKES. I LOVE YOU, MOM.)
In the hallway, Spencer spots Toby, who is there dropping off GED paperwork. Toby can’t stay long, though because he has to get to work. He hesitates when Spencer asks him about the job. He’ll be working for Jason DiLaurentis, helping him build a fence. Womp. Awkward. He needs the cash to get tools and a truck in order to do other jobs and eventually escape the Rape Manor in which he currently resides. Spencer makes him promise he won’t go inside Jason’s house because she doesn’t trust him. I’m surprised nobody is pointing out the fact that Toby should be wary too, what with Jason having recently been under the impression that Toby murdered his sister and finding that blame shifted away only so it could land on Toby’s girlfriend. Jason hiring Toby is some major fucking weirdness and I don’t get why nobody is pointing this out.
Lor: Agreed. I don’t think exposing yourself to Accusations of Murder Manor is the way to escape Rape Manor.
Sweeney: Elsewhere, Hanna spots Lucas and tries to get him to stay and chat. He’s in a hurry, though, because he’s giving Caleb a ride to the hardware store during lunch. Lucas apparently has delightful, present parents — they’re letting Caleb stay with them for a while. It’s always exciting to hear the idea of good parents! Lucas continues to make some, “I have to shave my hands,” excuses and leaves. He stops short, though, and decides to play nice. He asks about the separation of the PLLs and then halfassed invites her to come help with yearbook stuff after school. She agrees, because she remembers that she needs to conserve the power of Mama Marin’s magic vagina.
At Hollis, Ezria are getting coffee and having a really stupid conversation about their stupid relationship. Pedzrafitz misses being able to see his infant girlfriend every single day as a daycare monitor in her playpen. (S: +1 and a big LOL.) Aria’s super stoked about being able to hold hands in public, because she’s fucking stupid. Pedzrafitz points out that her father teaches there three days a week. Aria responds about how you’d expect.
Lor: Her father, sure, but no mention of job endangerment, laws, or prison time. I hate them.
Sweeney: SO MUCH. Ezra has to be A. It’s the only way to explain why, of all the various secrets/scandals, Ezria is the only one that never gets more than a threat, in spite of the fact that it’s the WORST. KEPT. SECRET. They are so bad at hiding their illegal relationship!
We pan across campus to see Jackie Molina, Pedzrafitz’s ex-fiancee, noticing them just as they point out that Friday’s not one of those days and so they face nom a bit. The music gets really dramatic as we see Jackie Molina’s discomfort at realizing her ex-fiance went on to become a pedophile. I’m sorry, girl.
Sara: BEST. The show tries to make you be all, “Ugh, Ezra’s ex is such a nosy bitch,” but NO. That poor woman! I would be freaking out and alerting Aria’s dad like yesterday.
Sweeney: Exactly. We’ll be sending you a sympathy card, Jackie Molina.
Aria enters the class she’s taking, which turns out to be a pottery class. Seriously? I guess I should have known — this is Aria, not Spencer. Anyway, some students leave the room, allowing Aria to see that one of her new classmates is none other than totally-not-blind!Jenna. DUN DUN DUN!
Spencer is walking home in her lacrosse uniform, which I can’t help but associate with the first time one of Melissa’s boyfriends put his hands on her. She looks up at Jason’s house and he magically appears just to be a creep and tell her that Toby already left. More dramatic music plays as Jason goes into the house and Spencer stares at an upstairs window where curtains had just been closed.
Later she’s telling Emily all of this, and Emily’s not being very supportive. She outright tells Spencer she might have imagined it. Spencer is freaking out and can’t call Toby because he’ll try to be the hero and she doesn’t want him in danger. Emily can’t sleep over, due to parental lockdown. “Lock your door,” she says, hanging up.
Sara: Which sounded a lot like, “Bitch, I got my own shit,” to me.
Sweeney: Spencer goes to the window and spots Jason in his window, which means it’s time for another Instagram Filter Flashback! Emily and Spencer are making popcorn and discussing how noisy things are over at the DiLaurentis home, which Spencer says always happens when the parents go out of town.
There’s a knock at the door and it’s Ali, wearing a guy’s varsity letter jacket. She’s visibly upset and wants to spend the night. She says that Jason doesn’t have friends, just people who use him to get wasted. She goes on about how sick Jason makes her and how she should call her grandma about Jason, because she would write him out of her will. We get a brief moment of emotional Ali, but she gets defensive and rude as soon as Spencer asks if she’s all right.
Back in the present, Spencer calls Emily who has to awkwardly get rid of her mom to take the call. Spencer asks Emily to remember the flashback she just experienced and Emily ONCE AGAIN plays the, “Calm down, it’s not a big deal!” card. She’s driving me fucking nuts with this. WHERE WERE YOU ALL OF LAST SEASON, GIRL?
Lor:
Sweeney: A+
Spencer pushes on and finally gets something bordering on an, “Oh, shit,” look from Emily (bordering, because, you know, acting is hard) when she asks where Jason was the night Ali disappeared. Is this really the first time they asked this question? Not even when Jason was being a creep and trying to set Spencer up did it occur to her to consider this possibility? Damn it, girls.
Lor: It’s getting so much harder to watch them bumble around. Too stupid to live isn’t fun to watch.
Sara: I would say that it’s pretty unlikely he killed Ali, because he would be one of the first people the police checked out, but again, this is Rosewood PD…
Sweeney: At school, Hanna is asking big important yearbook questions and then notices that Lucas has his eyes on a girl who he says is named Danielle. Hanna tries to get Lucas to ask her out and it was sweet at first but quickly gets pushy. Lucas cuts her off: “You of all people know my batting average, Hanna.” Ouch. But also: fair.
Back at the Hastings home, Melissa is still rummaging for her wedding ring. A terrified and abnormally shaky-voiced Spencer asks Melissa to sleep in the house instead of the barn because she’s afraid. She then cryptically dances around asking if Melissa would have her back over “someone who’s not me.” Spencer tells a cute story about a bully that Melissa stood up to for her, but Melissa’s not having it and tells Spencer not to make her choose between her and her husband and storms off.
Lor: She’s impregnated by his demon sperm! DON’T MAKE HER CHOOSE!
Sweeney: Pedophilia Den. Aria is complaining to Ezra about Jenna being in her class. She’s looking for another class to take. Ezra’s creeper advice is, “You can run but you can’t hide.” Ew. He adds that there’s no reason not to seize an opportunity to make things right with Jenna. In all fairness, it’s probably wise to keep an eye on Jenna if she can.
Hanna once again wakes up to find her shitty father in the house. He’s standing outside having a sketchy phone call about why he came, that he quickly ends when he sees Hanna enter the kitchen. He insists he’s having problems with his new family, and adds something about how intuitive Mama Marin is, which causes Hanna to make an awesome, “Ugh, seriously?” face.
Anyway, Emily has forged a letter to her mom, promising her a scholarship if she stays at Rosewood! Hanna thinks this is the best idea ever and is totes excited for Emily, while Aria’s on Team Everyone Who Isn’t Me Always Gets Caught. Hanna says it’s like Alison used to say, “You’re not lying — you’re just re-telling the truth.” Ali was so wise. Emily says that there isn’t any other way to stay in Rosewood. Maybe the fact that she’s a potential suspect in a murder investigation and skipping town looks shady as fuck? (Unless you’re Aria, who left the country.)
Lor: (Because nothing bad happens to Aria.)
Sweeney: At Jason’s place, two hot boys are hard at work and Toby is thankfully shirtless!
Toby is a little standoffish with Jason, who makes it a point to tell him that he only ever thought he was guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Welp, I’m glad someone addressed the Accusations of Murder Elephant in the room, though I’m still solidly on the side of finding Jason’s hiring of Toby suspicious.
They hear someone coming and Jason thinks it’s Melissa, but it turns out to be Spencer, just traipsing through the bushes, which seems odd, but OK. Spencer asks if Melissa has been coming over a lot and he says only a few times because of mail mixups. HOKAY. SURE. Jason goes inside to get a drink.
Spencer asks hot sweaty shirtless Toby if he’d quit right now and go directly to her bedroom. He says the truck he wanted already sold and can’t really get any other jobs right now.
Sara: Toby just needs to learn some barista skills or something, on account of how everyone hates him and will never hire him to build them a porch.
Sweeney: Jason reappears with a trash bag, saying that it’s a little too crazy inside to invite them in. When he throws the bag down, some gauze covered in blood spills out. Jason laughs it off, saying he cut himself. Spencer get’s suspicious face and Toby just shrugs and goes back to work. This is kind of on a par with people not saying goodbye on TV phone conversations. Wouldn’t he have said, “Spencer I’ve gotta get back to work, I’ll see you later,” or something to that effect?
Lor: I can’t get over how incredibly creepy they are making Jason seem right now. He’s getting the Toby Edit big time.
Sweeney: Big time.
In the pottery class, Jenna spills some stuff and there’s a lot of dramatic pausing before the teacher asks Aria what her name is. She lies, “Anita,” and the teacher asks her to help probably-not-blind!Jenna. Another guy volunteers to do it.
Lor: No rosters in this class? No? Cool.
Sweeney: I buy that the teacher wouldn’t have checked a roster in this instance, but you’re right in that it’s a little odd that she didn’t refer to it later and Aria maintains this whole weird “Anita” thing. Although I imagine your pottery professor would be chill about letting you go by a weird name that isn’t yours.
Upbeat teen romance music plays as we cut back to the yearbook room. Hanna is talking to Danielle who does not know who Lucas is, so Hanna fills her in. She talks Lucas up as a photographer and also as the hottie of the 11th grade. LOL. She adds that she wanted to have something more with him, but just couldn’t compete. I like their friendship, but I’m torn on how I feel about this particular brand of meddling.
Spencer is at a pawn shop, hawking Melissa’s ring! She swears she’ll be back on Monday to buy the ring back, though. She swears that the ring is hers and she just needs some cash until Monday. As she leaves, the shot of her is another annoyingly shakey distance shot that implies that A is watching. Or that the cameraman was drunk that day. IDK.
Lucas confronts Hanna about telling Danielle that he sold some of his photographs, which is a lie. He also wants to know why Hanna is really doing this, what with the shitty awful thing she did to him at the dance. She says she really did just do it because she cares about him and is sorry and doesn’t want to be judged by her biggest mistake.
Emily is sitting at her desk feeling distressed about the letter situation when her mom appears with a box from the attic. It’s filled with presumably significant childhood stuff of Emily’s, like an old teddy bear. Her mom goes on to say that it must have been so hard for Emily to have to hide who she was and fear that her mom wouldn’t love her anymore. She says it took a lot of work to get to where they are now. It’s a sweet mother/daughter moment. She leaves to go back to packing and Emily tears up the letter.
Lor: Ah, yes, the perfectly timed emotionally poignant moment. Destroyer of secret plans and half truths.
Sweeney: More upbeat teen romance music plays as Spencer pulls a cool old pickup truck up to Jason’s house. Toby is floored and says he doesn’t even know how long it’s going to take to pay her back. He says he loves her and she says she wanted to say it first. CUTE SPOBY KISS. (Less cute when we see that Jason is creepily standing in the background watching, but not even Jason is immune to how adorable they are, obviously.)
Sara: I hate when people do this in movies. Hello! Don’t you think Isabelle is going to say, “Hey, why didn’t you respond to that text?” the next time she sees Papa Marin? Dumb.
Sweeney: In the pottery classroom, everyone’s gone except for Aria and Jenna. Probably-not-blind!Jenna asks “Anita” to help her clean up. She then says something about getting to “see” what she made because she can still see weird little shadows or some other such nonsense. She asks “Anita” to light a candle in the pretty little candle holder/cover thing she made, and also to turn the lights off. Jenna flips a switch that causes it to spin around in circles and it’s actually quite pretty, in spite of how creepy this scene is. Jenna asks Aria what she sees. She starts to tell a story about how the light would dance under water when she used to swim. She cries as she adds that this is what she was going for, but she can’t see anything. That’s actually kind of what she accomplished, and Aria says as much. Jenna correctly realizes that this is Aria, after hearing her talk and yells at her to blow out the candle.
Lor: She heard the 32-year-old-soul in her voice.
Sara: Maybe not blind Jenna seems a lot more blind now, and this whole scene was sad.
Sweeney: It was sad and I’m going to seem like a major asshole if she’s really blind.
Spencer overhears Melissa on the phone, being shady. Something about wanting to make sure she’s asleep. Spencer calls Emily, who doesn’t get to answer because she’s interrupted by her mother, excited about a letter she just found from Danby University. It turns out to be the letter she wrote…and tore up. Her mom freaks out and gets excited, running off to Skype her dad. Emily digs through her trash and finds a note from A:
Lor: Well, shit. I’m impressed.
Sara: I’m back to loving A again!
Sweeney: YES. This was brilliant. Nice move, A.
The other three PLL’s are in Spencer’s bedroom with the lights out. Aria is recapping the Jenna/Anita bit for Hanna and Spencer, though Spencer is mostly pacing and staring out the window. Aria fears that she made it worse: “If Jenna is A, I totally rattled her cage.” Spencer spots Melissa leaving the barn, and the girls head out after her.
Outside, there is an aggressive amount of wind soundtrack noise. The girls see Melissa leaning in a car window to talk to it’s driver. They learn that the driver is none other than WREN! I actually forgot we were going to see him! He gets out and hands her something from the trunk. It’s a paper bag of some sort. Spencer guesses that it’s pain killers of some sort for Ian, what with him having fallen from a bell tower. Wren leaves an Melissa inspects the contents of the bag.
A-NONYMOUS: A is buying Melissa’s ring back from the pawn shop. Of course. Color me unsurprised. Still, this was actually useful in a, “Here is a plot point!” kind of way, which this segment was getting away from. (Like that one time A ate popcorn and re-watched the scene we just saw.)
Next time: TV continues to warn us against meddling, when Hanna’s interference goes awry. Also, Spencer is going to seek out Wren to explain the Melissa situation in Pretty Little Liars S02 E04 – Blind Dates.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 30-something with three kids who spends an embarrassing amount of time watching teen television dramas. There's a whole lot of Internet out there, and I plan on reading all of it before I die.
