Pretty Little Liars: A Little Creepy

Hello there, Gasmii!  If you’re reading this, you probably think you’re too old to be watching the family channel, but they are not kidding when they talk about “a new kind of family.”  This show has everything from student-teacher relations, to murder, to homosexuality, to incest, and the list goes on.  Also, I did not realize how many characters there were until I started working on this recap.  Our 4 main girls have 7 parents, 2 siblings, and at least 10 love interests between them, in addition to 3 authority figures watching over them (ranging from their high school principal to a local cop to the freaking FBI), 1 ghostly presence, 1 creepy blind girl, and 1 bitchy tertiary friend.  That’s 29, and I’m sure I’m forgetting someone so we’ll just round it up to 30 characters introduced in the first 10 episodes.  But enough about that, join me in my first venture into recapping a scripted show as we discuss the juicy details of this week’s return of my newest, guiltiest pleasure.

If any of you are actually reading this, allow me to apologize for taking forEVER to post this.  I also apologize if this seems rushed, I promise to do better by you guys from now on.

We pick up right where we left off:  Hanna has just been run over by a car for “knowing too much!”  Someone parks the car and runs away.  Hanna’s mom gets pulled over by the cops.  Miraculously, this is not for the bank heist she just pulled, but because her daughter just got mowed down by a vehicle.  Our remaining PLL head for the hospital, but not before Aria catches a glimpse of dreamy/creepy Noel.

“Who needs that cute guy I’ve apparently been crushing on for years when I’ve got my teacher to make out with/angst over?”

I love the opening credits for this show, but the lyrics are a total lie.  ”Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead?”  BullSHIT!  Every secret on this show has been revealed AFTER Alison’s death.  But enough of that:  the girls are at the hospital calling their parents when Hanna’s mom (who is talking to Dorkus) comes over to tell them that Hanna’s has a broken leg but is going to be okay.  Spencer accuses Toby, but Hanna’s mom says the police picked him up last night, much to Emily’s surprise.  She sends the girls home and promises to call them when Hanna can have visitors.  The girls have a brief debate over what to do and come to the grand conclusion of waiting until they can talk to Hanna.

Spencer gets home and her creepy sister (who is psycho Nanny Carrie from One Tree Hill, is she not?) is actually quite nice and comforting, although Spencer does get a bit of a surprise in the form of semi-dressed Ian appearing to ask about Hanna.

The next morning, Hanna wakes up in the hospital with her mother by her side.  Hanna asks about her friends and her mom tells her that the girls were there the night before, along with Sean and Dorkus.  Mom is of course concerned by this nerdy acquaintance her daughter has made, but seems placated to hear that he’s nothing more than a yearbook colleague.  Hanna reaches for her hospital room phone to call the girls, as if she has their phone numbers memorized.  What is this, the 90′s?

Fitzy shows Aria the “I SEE YOU” message written on the back of his car, and they discuss it in the middle of town in broad daylight, as you do in any secret love affair.  Aria keeps repeating that it doesn’t mean anything and wipes it away with her sleeve.  Emily is eating breakfast with her GI Dad and Mother Judgy.  She reveals that she and her boyfriend broke up, and tries to defend Toby, but her parents are having none of that.  He’s one of the Dangerous, Bad Influence boys, don’t you know?  The girls finally make it to the hospital to see Hanna, but first they have to get rid of her pesky mother so they can get to the juicy stuff.  Once Hanna manages that, she reveals that Noel is “A.”  Nice try, Hanna, but it’s the 10 minutes into the season.  It’s not that easy.

After a commercial, Hanna tells the girls that she saw Noel write an “A” message on the back of a car window.  Although we clearly saw that the message simply said “I see you” and was NOT signed by “A,” so nice sleuthing fools.  Spencer/Emily start asking what the message said and whose car it was, so Hanna just gives Aria a pointed look.  She reveals to the room her illicit affair with Ezra Fitz.

The girls keep repeating “Ezra,” and I can’t tell if it’s because they’re scandalized by the thought of calling their teacher by his first name or because it’s just a freaking weird name.

Spencer is surprised to know that this has been going on for awhile, and Aria says she “didn’t just get into his car last night.  Who do you think I am?”  That’s a direct quote.  Statutory rape is so much less scandalous the longer it goes on.  They recount what they have just learned, and come to no conclusions.  Although I doubt Noel was driving the car since Aria saw him standing in the crowd when Hanna was taken away.

There’s a knock on the door, and… it’s Noel!  I thought this was really weird until I remembered that he’s best friends with Hanna’s boyfriend.  Aria tells him Hanna’s sleeping and takes him into the hallway for a chat.  She tells him Hanna will be okay and takes the little teddy bear gift basket he brought.  Noel eyes her and ominously tells her that they need to talk.  She promises to call him and asks him where he was last night.  He says he was with Shawn.  LIES!

Emily’s parents cuddle on the couch and discuss household chores.  Uh oh!  GI Dad has to go away again, and Emily’s going to be stuck with Judgy Mom!  JM encourages GI Dad to talk to their poor, (sexually) confused daughter.

Hanna wakes up from a bad dream and gets creeped out by the teddy bear staring at her.  Bitchy Mona comes in waving a white bra as a peace flag.  Mona feels guilty for some fight they had which I had forgotten about, but it doesn’t matter because they’re already BFFs again.  And just when I was thinking they actually made Hanna look kind of like a hospital patient, Mona breaks out the makeup to make her fabulous again.  Mona tells Hanna that she admires her for taking a bow after puking on a trampoline during a backflip.  Oh man, that must have been puke EVERYWHERE.  Yuck.  While we’re on the subject, word of advice:  do not puke over the side of a moving boat.  Not that I’d know or anything.  Moving on…

The rest of the girls rule out Ian as “A” since he was with Melissa the night before, but Aria still has to deal with Noel.

Hanna’s door creepily opens as a creepy figure… oh wait, it’s just Dorkus.  The creepy music even gets all sweet as he leans over to kiss her on the forehead while she sleeps.  After he walks away, Hanna opens her eyes because she was totally awake and she totally knows Dorkus just smooched her.

Geez, Dorkus, doesn’t she have enough problems?  You’ve got to give her nerd cooties on top of everything?

Hanna tells her mother that she doesn’t need a private room, since- oh yeah!- they’re all poor and shit.  Hanna’s mom makes up some crap about a loan to placate her daughter.

Aria’s tinkling away on a piano when Noel finds her so they can have their chat.  She tells him that she saw him at the campground after the accident.  He claims he just wanted to scare a bunch of girls in the woods, so he’s only like the 834th creepiest person on this show.  Noel admits that he saw Aria in Fitzy’s car and offers to go to the principal with her, asking what Fitzy did to her.  Awww, look at Noel, thinking this relationship is wrong.  Silly logic.  She tells him it’s not like that and makes him promise not to say anything, which he does reluctantly.

Emily’s trying to get an update on Toby when his blind, incestuous half-sister overhears and claims Toby doesn’t want to talk to her.  Oh, and what do you know, she’s possessive and creepy about it.  Emily mentions that incest thing to throw Jenna off a bit.

Hanna’s having a fever dream at the hospital, and it features Alison!  Hanna tries to ask her what happened, but all Alison will say is that the four of them combined already know the truth.  Well, if they keep lying to each other and keeping secrets then we’ll never get there!  Although, at this rate we’ll never get there anyway because this show’s ratings are higher than Gossip Girl and 90210 combined and therefore it will be on for a decade.

Fitzy enters his classroom to find Aria sitting waiting for him.  They jabber a bit about how Fitzy makes Aria miserable sometimes, but he doesn’t make her unhappy.  Can someone get these award-winning, published writers a fucking thesaurus?  They decide that they want to keep things as complicated as possible while staring dreamily into each other’s eyes in the middle of the school day.

Dorkus brings Hanna vanilla, tapioca, and butterscotch pudding.  Good Lord, what’s a bitch got to do to get some freaking chocolate?  Break both legs and lose a spleen and part of a liver?  Damn.  Hanna goes for the tapioca and tells Dorkus he’s a good FRIEND.  When he doesn’t take the hint, she brings up his nighttime smooch, and he confirms that it did in fact happen.

“Nice try, Dorkus, but I’ve got my makeup bag back now, and am therefore too fabulous to travel to Nerdville.”

Hanna informs him that he has taken up residence in the Friend Zone, but he’s not feeling the real estate in that area.  He thinks she can do better than Sean, and leaves her alone with her thoughts and her tapioca.

Emily chats on the phone with Maya until she sees GI Dad staring at her from the doorway.  He’s all concerned about Toby, and keeps pushing Emily to tell him what’s on her mind.  After enough pushing, she finally rips that closet door off like a band-aid and tell him she’s gay.  He gives her a nondescript stare.

Spencer and Aria walk in the woods and talk about Aria’s affair with Fitzy.  Spencer declares it both self-destructive and really hot.  It turns out they’re looking for the tree with the “Alison <3′s Ian” carving, but it’s been chopped down!  Oh no!

Well, we can rule out George Washington as A.  He would never be able to chop down a tree and keep it a secret.

Emily’s parents discuss their daughter’s newfound sexuality.  ”Someone made her this way!”  ”She’s experimenting!”  ”Let’s keep this in perspective.”  GI Dad is pretty cool.  Judgy Mom is still very judgy.

Aria and Spencer arrive at Spencer’s house and discover that Ian and Melissa have eloped!  I give it three episodes before Spencer hooks up with Ian again.  Fitzy leaves his classroom late at night, and Noel is lurking in the hallway.

The girls are contemplating the possibility of A being more than one person when they discover an “A” message on Hanna’s cast.  Creepy!  We then cut to someone burning the part of the tree with the “Alison <3 Ian” carving as our cliffhanger for the episode.

Moving on to the second episode…

Not gonna lie, I spent much of this episode wondering why Hanna so frequently felt the need to use a wheelchair and crutches AT THE SAME TIME.

Hanna is home from the hospital, and the girls are there to help settle her in.  They leave her to reach things on high shelves while they go get the rest of her stuff, so she knocks some boxes down and discovers her mom’s money stash.

“WTF?  This never happened when I ate carbs and was fat!”

The girls come back and Hanna gets rid of them right quick so she can be alone with her stack of money.  She’s not too alone though, because she gets a text from A!

A little while later, Hanna confronts her mom about the unique form of green in her veggie lasagna.  Hanna’s mom insists that it’s her problem and Hanna should just worry about getting better.  Over at Emily’s house, awkward family breakfast is underway.  Maya’s going to come over for dinner, and Judgy Mom wants to make sure she doesn’t have any allergies.

Spencer makes out with her blue collar beau until her mom shows up with coffee.  She’s weirded out by the fact that her parents aren’t more upset about the Melissa/Ian elopement, but her mom says “what’s done is done” and reminds Spencer that she was a big part of making her sister’s life difficult.

Emily tells Maya to wear a dress to dinner, and says her parents have been acting weird since they find out.  Hilariously, she cites “changing the channel when Ellen comes on” as an example.

Fitzy’s class ends, but Aria stays for a bit of extra help.  She tells Fitzy that Noel left the message on his car, but claims he might have known for a while and would have said something by now if he was going to.  Fitzy doesn’t want to discuss it here, so Aria gets all up in his grill (as per usual, in the middle of the school day) to invite herself over to his place later.

Mona stops Emily and Spencer in the hallway to invite them to Hanna’s place for a party that night.  They’re a bit skeptical, but Mona has decided that Hanna is up for it.  Meanwhile, Noel approaches Fitzy with his harshly graded paper and gives him a bunch of pointed stares and veiled threats.  Noel happens to think his paper deserves an “A!”

Fitzy stares wistfully out his classroom window when Aria approaches.  Fitzy tells her about Noel’s creepy approach earlier and Aria grabs his hand when they’re interrupted by blind Jenna!  She just needs his signature, and she’s sorry to interrupt.  But is she REALLY blind?  And what, exactly, does she know?

Alex (Spencer’s working class boyfriend) has been invited to some special tennis thing in Sweden that could lead to a professional tennis career, but it turns out he promised his uncle he would work for him.  Spencer doesn’t understand how he could possibly prefer hard labor to playing tennis.

“Crap, which one did I put the farting powder in again?”

Over at Emily’s coming out dinner, Maya reveals that she can’t eat the seafood Judgy Mom has so lovingly prepared, because she is allergic to seafood.  Judgy Mom is surprised to learn this since she SPECIFICALLY ASKED Emily, who says she “forgot.”  Maya charms GI Dad, but Judgy Mom chugs wine, sees them playing footsie, and runs off to cry in the pantry.

Meanwhile, at Hanna’s house, Mona gets the party started.  The sight of Noel prompts Hanna to have a flashback about Alison getting some girl to dump Noel so Aria could have him.  Hanna tries to talk to Dorkus, but he’s too busy pounding alcohol to put up with her niceties.  Back at Emily’s, she and Maya smooch goodbye on the porch when Judgy Mom awkwardly interrupts with leftovers.

Noel sees Aria enter and tries to make small talk when Aria accuses him of blackmailing Fitzy into a higher grade.  Noel awesomely denies it and tells Aria it’s all in Fitzy’s head and she should take that into consideration.

Emily sees Toby on his stoop and heads over to tell him that she wasn’t the one who turned him into the cops.  He’s all sad and lonely and weird with his house arrest anklet.

Aria tells Hanna she wants to leave, and Hanna makes jokes about hot faculty party jokes.  Hanna says Aria should have told them a lot sooner because they tell each other everything.  Those are some big words considering all of the dough in that lasagna box.  Spencer finds Alex outside, and he’s all pissy.  Apparently someone submitted his application for the tennis thing, and she claims it wasn’t her, but she’s the only one he told.  After he leaves, our suspicions are confirmed when Spencer gets a text from A.

Hanna and Sean are telling a story about skiing when Dorkus interrupts to pick a fight with Sean by calling him a Saint Bernard.  When Sean finally gets mad, Noel hilariously stops him by declaring “It’s like fighting a kid that needs a telethon!”  HA!  Hanna requests an audience with Dorkus outside.  She tells Dorkus not to pick a fight with Sean when he’s really mad at her.  Dorkus says not everything is about her, which may be true, but your hissy fit most definitely IS about her, so that is a moot point.  He goes off on a rant that ends with him revealing that he destroyed Alison’s memorial since she was such a bitch to him for so long.  Hanna tells him she’ll keep it between them, but that just makes him sadder because when she’s nice to him it makes him like her more.

Whatever happened to the good old days when pretty girls didn’t even know dorks existed?  The social order has gotten so complicated.

Hanna brings up her suspicious feelings about Noel to Sean, who just wants to party.  Hanna’s not really in the party mood, though.

Jenna joins Toby on the stoop to reveal that she was the person who turned him in to the cops.  Turns out she’s still looking for a little of the incest loving, but Toby wants none of that.  She gets pissed and slaps him.

Hanna is alone at her house cleaning up after the party that she didn’t even throw when she hears creepy noises from upstairs.  She wheels around with one of her crutches and then hides in the kitchen in the dark.  Just when she’s starting to freak the eff out, her mom comes home and asks what happened.  When she hears that people were over, she promptly heads to the pasta box to find that their money has been stolen.

Emily gets home and is sad to hear from Judgy Mom that GI Dad has to leave sooner than expected.  She is, however, relieved that Judgy Mom is okay with her sexual orientation, until Judgy Mom reveals that she is not okay with it.  In fact, it makes her sick to her stomach.  Over at their house, Spencer and her dad make small talk about how sketchy Ian is and how the cops are ready to put Toby away.  You know, usual father-daughter nighttime chat.  Spencer sees a tag for a country club on Ian’s stuff and has a flashback to Alison returning from an alleged summer with her grandma being sketchy and with the same tag on her luggage.

Alison would have made a great replacement for Sammi on Jersey Shore.  It’s a shame she’s dead… and fictional.

Hanna and her mom are saddened by the fact that their stolen money has been stolen, so Hanna shares her pills with her mom as a condolence prize.  Once she’s alone, Hanna finds a note from A in one of her pill boxes promising to give the money back if she does what A says.  We then watch A slipping the hundred dollar bills into a creepy clown piggy bank.  Well, you had to wonder when we would be checking “clowns” off the list of standard creepy things on this show.

So all in all, I’m happy to have this charming little guilty pleasure back.  I enjoyed these episodes, they definitely gave me some good creeps.  This show is just so much fun.  What did you guys think?  Any couples you like/dislike?  Any suspicions of who A is or what he/she/it/they will do next?