PLL Roundup times.
Mar. 15th, 2011 05:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyDelayed PLL roundup time!
The New Normal
Much is made of Caleb and his hat that Hanna returns to him, but no one mentions the pancake sitting on Emily's head as they discuss the similarities between the girls warning Hanna about Caleb and those same concerns being voiced about Toby. For shame, Emily. For shame.
Quick episode recap: Ashley, Hanna's mother, is more than a little surprised when the client/customer (what do you call your once a year regular visit from someone when you work at a bank?) whom she believed was the last in her family suddenly springs a great nephew out of the woodwork. A great nephew who wants his great aunt's money. Money, you might recall, that Ashley stole. DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN. Luckily the nephew is happy to flirt it up with Ashley but the guy still gives Hanna the creeps.
Hanna spends most of the episode giving her mom the o_O look and sneaking around with Caleb without actually doing anything. This is after the opening sequence where she's still on Aria's shitlist, anyway. Aria and Hanna make up, and... really, other than getting in a couple of great lines, Hanna basically spends the rest of the episode locked in a pretty war with Caleb.
Caleb does some digging when he's not engaged in mortal-pretty-kombat with Hanna and finds out that the great-nephew is related to the client in question... but the guy pretending to be this great nephew? Yeah. Not him. Great nephew died two years ago and he was pretty darn old to boot. But when Hanna tries to tell her mother this, Ashley is all "lalalala, I can't hear you!" which makes no sense at all, even with the whole "if I mention this to one of the higher ups, it'll just draw attention to the fact that I swindled an old lady out of her fortune." Indeed that would be true, Ashley, but only if you actually followed through on that and didn't just tell the con artist to fuck off because he is not who he claims to be. LOGIC. Is the soft focus on the mothers around her screwing with their minds or something?
(Seriously. I get that you don't want to see every wrinkle or whatever is going on since these women aren't 16 or 22 anymore, but when everyone else is at the mercy of HD and you guys are all soft focus, it messes with MY eyes. Irksome.)
Speaking of mothers, Ella is invited to some thing with Ezra Fitz by some other teacher whose name I didn't catch. I'm not sure if Ella's actually sort of toying with the idea of flirting with Fitz or what, but Byron gets word of this and he is pissed. So he meets with Ezra, the two do not get along, and Byron shares his angst (he's trying to date my wife!) with Aria (awkward since this is the Montgomery woman he's actually romancing, Byron) and she's ticked that Daddy dearest doesn't like her boyfriend. She eventually sets him straight that all the English teachers are going to this... thing, and Byron calls in the midst of an Ezra/Aria hookup. The mood is killed and I am highly amused.
Totally random, but Aria is adorable. Nothing like book Aria, but adorable all the same.
That brings us to Spencer for no good reason. Spencer is baffled as to why Toby would think Jenna leaving a braille message for "bad" would be incriminating. Toby tells her that she's reading it wrong, so Spencer obsesses over this and over how dreamy Toby is. To kill the mood there, we run into Jenna trying on something in black lace at a store in town and the creep-o-meter is cranked up to 11.
Toby is temporarily cleared because there was an issue with some of the evidence linking him to Ali's murder, but he's not completely delusional. He knows the moment the police can get something else on him, he's right back to where he started. Spencer finally cracks the braille code and figures out that bad is also 214. But what, oh what, does 214 mean? And what does it have to do with Spencer, and who was Jenna discussing this with?
Know what we're missing? Emily. Remember Paige, the second strongest swimmer on the team? Yeah, well, her dad storms into school at the start of the episode and starts going off on how the only reason Emily was picked over Paige is because Emily is a lesbian. Ezra calms him down before he actually makes that point, but still. Emily doesn't tell her mother about the public meltdown because she really doesn't want to hear her own mother condemning her any further, thank you very much. Luckily Ella tells Pam about this and Pam goes to town on Paige's daddy the next time they run into one another.
Wait for it.
Paige ambushes Emily (again) and then in a move that surprises NO ONE ON THIS PLANET, kisses Emily. Because the person making your life hell when you're a gay teen on TV is also gay, or at least interested in you, and they are going to kiss the shit out of you.
Why, tv, why? Why do you subscribe to this theory?
Whatever. It's not making me like Paige. For one thing, her doofy hair is annoying. For another, I... I don't get the Paige/Emily thing as anything other than a reason to mainline brain bleach, thank you.
Anyway, The New Normal ends with Spencer and Toby riding past a motel, possibly the one where Spence made out with Wren (Ren? I don't know.) way back at the start of the season. 214 is a motel room number, btw.
Overall, worth it to finally see Pam (Emily's mother) stand up for her kid. Otherwise... meh. Middle of the road. Stuff was needed, stuff was cute, but nothing super awesome.
--
The Badass Seed:
Or the episode wherein we need a play production to be staged so that Mr. Fitz can direct it and Aria can volunteer to help him out by being stage manager, slip up and call him Ezra in front of the entire cast, and Jenna can be exceptionally creepy. Also, Hanna hops in the shower with Caleb, gets an eyeful, and later (much later) the two finally give in and start kissing like crazy, leaving my poor little 'shipper heart dangerously confused.
On the one hand I have a serious thing for Hanna/Lucas. On the other hand, Caleb is like ninety kinds of hot and interesting. What is a girl to do? Cheer for the triumphant return of Mona, that's what. Also, Ali returns in flashback form and we completely diverge from the books because as far as I recall, they had no frat party stalkage of Ian. I'm confused as to when exactly this takes place because Hanna only looks 'hefty' in her mid-section, but Aria's still got vibrant pink streaks so timeline, please?
In other news, the girls find Ian's golf trophy from August '09 for a golf tourney in Hilton Head and there's apparently blood on it. They think it's Ali's and turn it into the police. Sadly the blood is rat's blood and A isn't thrilled that they ran to the police with this. Then again, neither are the police. Toby finally finds out that Emily didn't turn him in- Jenna did.
Speaking of Jenna, she creeps everyone out when uttering the line, "I'm fascinated by the nature of evil." Oh, Jenna. Tone down the creepy because you and Ian exchanging stuff? Yeah. Creepy times creepy results in skin crawling. *twitch*
Oh, and Ian or Ali may have pushed an incredibly drunk girl down a flight of stairs at a frat party a year or so ago. Good times, ya'll. The episode ends with mice in A's lair. The Spencer rat is the one who was used for the donation on "Ian's" golf trophy...
--
A Person of Interest
We begin with Spencer and we will end with her as well. Her family has decided that it's best if she sees a shrink. Personally I'm inclined to believe them, and not simply because book!Spencer had serious issues. But Spence is about as thrilled as any teenager is when being told that their family has decided they need psychiatric help. She freaks. Somehow this leads to her dropping Toby off at the motel we discussed in the previous episode, and while she's there she hears Jenna playing her flute... in room 214. Dun DUN DUN.
This leads to Spencer and Toby staking the place out and an adorable scene where Spence is hopped up on caffeine and the thrill of the stakeout as well as her bribing one of the housekeepers. ♥ The stakeout inevitibly leads to Spencer and Toby playing Scrabble, he kicks her ass, they fall asleep together, and when they wake, A leaves them a little note. It turns out that this is not the 214 they were looking for, I guess.
Moving along on the questionable hookup thread, Emily attempts to talk to Paige about the forced kiss, but initially Paige wants nothing to do with Emily. However, she thaws and arranges a meet at a bar outside of town, I guess, where there's bad karaoke. Paige's hair is less god awful, but I am not boarding the good 'ship P/E anytime soon. Sadly, Em appears to feel differently and she and Paige kiss. Then they picnic as I try and figure out whether Maya and Emily officially broke up, agreed to see other people, or if Emily is just cheating on Maya. Confused. When Paige refuses to come out of the closet, Emily decides she doesn't want to deal with feeling ashamed of herself again, so she lets Paige down as gently as she can.
There's a cute scene where Aria and Emily have a bit of a chat and it's nice that someone remembers that when the series started, Emily was closest to Aria. Aria confesses that ever since Ezra has been talking to Jenna, Aria has been racked with guilt over repeatedly lying to him about 'The Jenna Thing', but since she promised never to tell, she feels she can't. Also, she's afraid. Emily tells her that since she wants to tell Fitz, it's okay with her. Aria does and she and Fitz are cool. Shallow sidenote: Aria's red outfit was so pretty!
That leaves us with Hanna, whose mother finally busts Caleb and Hanna's little sleeping arrangement. Naturally in kicking Caleb out of the house, Ashley has ensured that Hanna follows him right out the door. They camp out and Hanna loses her virginity. When Hanna returns home, Ashley is relieved and pissed, but doesn't get to bask in this long because Hanna reminds her that of all the people in Rosewood, Ash should understand how it feels to have no safety net at all. Ashley answers a call from Caleb and invites him to dinner and then to stay with them for awhile. When she tells him to call her Ashley, Caleb gets this odd look on his face and goes outside to make a call, where he informs someone that he can't do this anymore.
Oh, Hanna. Meep!
I said we'd end with Spencer, right? Well, Spencer comes home and the police are there. She asks if they've finally nailed Ian and no. Melissa says that Ian spent the summer before with her in Hilton Head because she was pregnant and they went down to HH to get an abortion but she lost the baby before the doctor's appointment.
Bull.
Fucking.
SHIT.
Hilton Head is not the place you would go to get an abortion, no. The excessively wealthy Bible-belt thumpers do not look kindly upon such actions, k? So either cover-up fail or writer fail or a little of both. Do not insult me, show.
The episode ends not only with my brain leaking out of my head in rage, but with Spencer being named a person of interest in Ali's death.
Dun-dun-DUUUUUUUUUN.
You're a crafty one, A. Crafty indeed.
--
Someone to Watch over Me
Or, the episode where Spencer gets the full frame-up job for Ali's murder, Hanna's heart breaks, Caleb is found to be working for the enemy (shades of Margo from SVH!), and Paige flirts with Sean only to go home to Emily.
That actually covers most of it. Aria and Emily overhear Caleb talking to someone about his not wanting to spy on Hanna anymore. They tell Hanna, she refuses to believe it, and then Jenna walks in wearing the owl pendant Hanna thought Caleb was going to give to her. Hanna tries 2-1-4 as a locker combo for Caleb's locker and it works. She confronts him and he admits that Jenna paid him to spy on her, but he broke it off. Sort of. Mostly. Hanna kicks him out and my little shipper heart, she breaks. Oh, she breaks. Oh, and Hanna slaps Jenna.
The other thing worth mentioning is that Aria sends her mother a text meant for Ezra. This leads me to believe that she has Ella listed as "Ella" in her phone, although the next person down from Ella would be Emily, not Ezra. Hunh. Oh, and Aria has Emily hold a bunch of random stuff that represents her relationship with Ezra, but chooses to keep the book he's signed for her. Yeah, the random stuff NO ONE (but A, Aria, and Ezra) could connect to the pair she ditches. The thing that all but spells out their relationship? She keeps. Oi, Aria. Oi.
Need sleep or I'd watch the latest episode, too. Lots of Holly scenes, although some episodes really only have her pop up for one scene. Still. Holly!
Well, it seems to me we had this conversation once about Toby...
- Hanna, putting pancake!Emily in her place.
- Hanna, putting pancake!Emily in her place.
The New Normal
They brought me in to class the place up.
- Caleb
- Caleb
Much is made of Caleb and his hat that Hanna returns to him, but no one mentions the pancake sitting on Emily's head as they discuss the similarities between the girls warning Hanna about Caleb and those same concerns being voiced about Toby. For shame, Emily. For shame.
Quick episode recap: Ashley, Hanna's mother, is more than a little surprised when the client/customer (what do you call your once a year regular visit from someone when you work at a bank?) whom she believed was the last in her family suddenly springs a great nephew out of the woodwork. A great nephew who wants his great aunt's money. Money, you might recall, that Ashley stole. DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN. Luckily the nephew is happy to flirt it up with Ashley but the guy still gives Hanna the creeps.
Hanna spends most of the episode giving her mom the o_O look and sneaking around with Caleb without actually doing anything. This is after the opening sequence where she's still on Aria's shitlist, anyway. Aria and Hanna make up, and... really, other than getting in a couple of great lines, Hanna basically spends the rest of the episode locked in a pretty war with Caleb.
Caleb does some digging when he's not engaged in mortal-pretty-kombat with Hanna and finds out that the great-nephew is related to the client in question... but the guy pretending to be this great nephew? Yeah. Not him. Great nephew died two years ago and he was pretty darn old to boot. But when Hanna tries to tell her mother this, Ashley is all "lalalala, I can't hear you!" which makes no sense at all, even with the whole "if I mention this to one of the higher ups, it'll just draw attention to the fact that I swindled an old lady out of her fortune." Indeed that would be true, Ashley, but only if you actually followed through on that and didn't just tell the con artist to fuck off because he is not who he claims to be. LOGIC. Is the soft focus on the mothers around her screwing with their minds or something?
(Seriously. I get that you don't want to see every wrinkle or whatever is going on since these women aren't 16 or 22 anymore, but when everyone else is at the mercy of HD and you guys are all soft focus, it messes with MY eyes. Irksome.)
Speaking of mothers, Ella is invited to some thing with Ezra Fitz by some other teacher whose name I didn't catch. I'm not sure if Ella's actually sort of toying with the idea of flirting with Fitz or what, but Byron gets word of this and he is pissed. So he meets with Ezra, the two do not get along, and Byron shares his angst (he's trying to date my wife!) with Aria (awkward since this is the Montgomery woman he's actually romancing, Byron) and she's ticked that Daddy dearest doesn't like her boyfriend. She eventually sets him straight that all the English teachers are going to this... thing, and Byron calls in the midst of an Ezra/Aria hookup. The mood is killed and I am highly amused.
Totally random, but Aria is adorable. Nothing like book Aria, but adorable all the same.
That brings us to Spencer for no good reason. Spencer is baffled as to why Toby would think Jenna leaving a braille message for "bad" would be incriminating. Toby tells her that she's reading it wrong, so Spencer obsesses over this and over how dreamy Toby is. To kill the mood there, we run into Jenna trying on something in black lace at a store in town and the creep-o-meter is cranked up to 11.
Toby is temporarily cleared because there was an issue with some of the evidence linking him to Ali's murder, but he's not completely delusional. He knows the moment the police can get something else on him, he's right back to where he started. Spencer finally cracks the braille code and figures out that bad is also 214. But what, oh what, does 214 mean? And what does it have to do with Spencer, and who was Jenna discussing this with?
Know what we're missing? Emily. Remember Paige, the second strongest swimmer on the team? Yeah, well, her dad storms into school at the start of the episode and starts going off on how the only reason Emily was picked over Paige is because Emily is a lesbian. Ezra calms him down before he actually makes that point, but still. Emily doesn't tell her mother about the public meltdown because she really doesn't want to hear her own mother condemning her any further, thank you very much. Luckily Ella tells Pam about this and Pam goes to town on Paige's daddy the next time they run into one another.
Wait for it.
Paige ambushes Emily (again) and then in a move that surprises NO ONE ON THIS PLANET, kisses Emily. Because the person making your life hell when you're a gay teen on TV is also gay, or at least interested in you, and they are going to kiss the shit out of you.
Why, tv, why? Why do you subscribe to this theory?
Whatever. It's not making me like Paige. For one thing, her doofy hair is annoying. For another, I... I don't get the Paige/Emily thing as anything other than a reason to mainline brain bleach, thank you.
Anyway, The New Normal ends with Spencer and Toby riding past a motel, possibly the one where Spence made out with Wren (Ren? I don't know.) way back at the start of the season. 214 is a motel room number, btw.
Overall, worth it to finally see Pam (Emily's mother) stand up for her kid. Otherwise... meh. Middle of the road. Stuff was needed, stuff was cute, but nothing super awesome.
--
I think my character is being totally selfish. I don't even know how to play that.
-Mona
-Mona
The Badass Seed:
Or the episode wherein we need a play production to be staged so that Mr. Fitz can direct it and Aria can volunteer to help him out by being stage manager, slip up and call him Ezra in front of the entire cast, and Jenna can be exceptionally creepy. Also, Hanna hops in the shower with Caleb, gets an eyeful, and later (much later) the two finally give in and start kissing like crazy, leaving my poor little 'shipper heart dangerously confused.
On the one hand I have a serious thing for Hanna/Lucas. On the other hand, Caleb is like ninety kinds of hot and interesting. What is a girl to do? Cheer for the triumphant return of Mona, that's what. Also, Ali returns in flashback form and we completely diverge from the books because as far as I recall, they had no frat party stalkage of Ian. I'm confused as to when exactly this takes place because Hanna only looks 'hefty' in her mid-section, but Aria's still got vibrant pink streaks so timeline, please?
In other news, the girls find Ian's golf trophy from August '09 for a golf tourney in Hilton Head and there's apparently blood on it. They think it's Ali's and turn it into the police. Sadly the blood is rat's blood and A isn't thrilled that they ran to the police with this. Then again, neither are the police. Toby finally finds out that Emily didn't turn him in- Jenna did.
Speaking of Jenna, she creeps everyone out when uttering the line, "I'm fascinated by the nature of evil." Oh, Jenna. Tone down the creepy because you and Ian exchanging stuff? Yeah. Creepy times creepy results in skin crawling. *twitch*
Oh, and Ian or Ali may have pushed an incredibly drunk girl down a flight of stairs at a frat party a year or so ago. Good times, ya'll. The episode ends with mice in A's lair. The Spencer rat is the one who was used for the donation on "Ian's" golf trophy...
--
Thank you for looking at me tonight the same way you did yesterday.
- Aria to Fitz.
- Aria to Fitz.
A Person of Interest
If you trust him I do, too.
- Emily to Aria
- Emily to Aria
We begin with Spencer and we will end with her as well. Her family has decided that it's best if she sees a shrink. Personally I'm inclined to believe them, and not simply because book!Spencer had serious issues. But Spence is about as thrilled as any teenager is when being told that their family has decided they need psychiatric help. She freaks. Somehow this leads to her dropping Toby off at the motel we discussed in the previous episode, and while she's there she hears Jenna playing her flute... in room 214. Dun DUN DUN.
This leads to Spencer and Toby staking the place out and an adorable scene where Spence is hopped up on caffeine and the thrill of the stakeout as well as her bribing one of the housekeepers. ♥ The stakeout inevitibly leads to Spencer and Toby playing Scrabble, he kicks her ass, they fall asleep together, and when they wake, A leaves them a little note. It turns out that this is not the 214 they were looking for, I guess.
Moving along on the questionable hookup thread, Emily attempts to talk to Paige about the forced kiss, but initially Paige wants nothing to do with Emily. However, she thaws and arranges a meet at a bar outside of town, I guess, where there's bad karaoke. Paige's hair is less god awful, but I am not boarding the good 'ship P/E anytime soon. Sadly, Em appears to feel differently and she and Paige kiss. Then they picnic as I try and figure out whether Maya and Emily officially broke up, agreed to see other people, or if Emily is just cheating on Maya. Confused. When Paige refuses to come out of the closet, Emily decides she doesn't want to deal with feeling ashamed of herself again, so she lets Paige down as gently as she can.
There's a cute scene where Aria and Emily have a bit of a chat and it's nice that someone remembers that when the series started, Emily was closest to Aria. Aria confesses that ever since Ezra has been talking to Jenna, Aria has been racked with guilt over repeatedly lying to him about 'The Jenna Thing', but since she promised never to tell, she feels she can't. Also, she's afraid. Emily tells her that since she wants to tell Fitz, it's okay with her. Aria does and she and Fitz are cool. Shallow sidenote: Aria's red outfit was so pretty!
That leaves us with Hanna, whose mother finally busts Caleb and Hanna's little sleeping arrangement. Naturally in kicking Caleb out of the house, Ashley has ensured that Hanna follows him right out the door. They camp out and Hanna loses her virginity. When Hanna returns home, Ashley is relieved and pissed, but doesn't get to bask in this long because Hanna reminds her that of all the people in Rosewood, Ash should understand how it feels to have no safety net at all. Ashley answers a call from Caleb and invites him to dinner and then to stay with them for awhile. When she tells him to call her Ashley, Caleb gets this odd look on his face and goes outside to make a call, where he informs someone that he can't do this anymore.
Oh, Hanna. Meep!
I said we'd end with Spencer, right? Well, Spencer comes home and the police are there. She asks if they've finally nailed Ian and no. Melissa says that Ian spent the summer before with her in Hilton Head because she was pregnant and they went down to HH to get an abortion but she lost the baby before the doctor's appointment.
Bull.
Fucking.
SHIT.
Hilton Head is not the place you would go to get an abortion, no. The excessively wealthy Bible-belt thumpers do not look kindly upon such actions, k? So either cover-up fail or writer fail or a little of both. Do not insult me, show.
The episode ends not only with my brain leaking out of my head in rage, but with Spencer being named a person of interest in Ali's death.
Dun-dun-DUUUUUUUUUN.
You're a crafty one, A. Crafty indeed.
--
We swim on the same team, but I don't really know her that well.
- Emily about Paige
- Emily about Paige
Someone to Watch over Me
Or, the episode where Spencer gets the full frame-up job for Ali's murder, Hanna's heart breaks, Caleb is found to be working for the enemy (shades of Margo from SVH!), and Paige flirts with Sean only to go home to Emily.
That actually covers most of it. Aria and Emily overhear Caleb talking to someone about his not wanting to spy on Hanna anymore. They tell Hanna, she refuses to believe it, and then Jenna walks in wearing the owl pendant Hanna thought Caleb was going to give to her. Hanna tries 2-1-4 as a locker combo for Caleb's locker and it works. She confronts him and he admits that Jenna paid him to spy on her, but he broke it off. Sort of. Mostly. Hanna kicks him out and my little shipper heart, she breaks. Oh, she breaks. Oh, and Hanna slaps Jenna.
The other thing worth mentioning is that Aria sends her mother a text meant for Ezra. This leads me to believe that she has Ella listed as "Ella" in her phone, although the next person down from Ella would be Emily, not Ezra. Hunh. Oh, and Aria has Emily hold a bunch of random stuff that represents her relationship with Ezra, but chooses to keep the book he's signed for her. Yeah, the random stuff NO ONE (but A, Aria, and Ezra) could connect to the pair she ditches. The thing that all but spells out their relationship? She keeps. Oi, Aria. Oi.
Need sleep or I'd watch the latest episode, too. Lots of Holly scenes, although some episodes really only have her pop up for one scene. Still. Holly!
