Last week I didn’t recap Pretty Little Liars because I figured:
1. Nobody would care.
2. Nothing gay happened.
3. You’d still get a fashioncap!
So we might just switch over to pure fashioncap and then I’ll do an end-of-the-season roundup. If anyone reads this part and doesn’t just skip to the comments, share your feelings with me on this. I’m not sure if I can maintain recapping an hour-long premium cable show (The Real L Word) and really anything else?
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Episode 203: My Name is Trouble
Although I didn’t recap it, last week’s episode of Pretty Little Liars was probably one of its best yet despite its heterosexuality. Forced to remove the girls from their relationships with each other and plop them into new social encounters, PLL’s writers are finally digging into who these girls really are ON THE INSIDE.
Speaking of the inside of people, there has been no news on former vadgeblasters Paige and Maya. I hope they’re both in a very safe place with Papi where there’s cupcakes for everyone and everybody can smoke pot and/or be Queen Leader Champion of the Swim Team.
So. Last week on Pretty Little Liars, Emily wrote a fake letter of acceptance to Danby College with her Nancy Drew Calligraphy Set and decided against passing it off to her now-schizophrenic mother, only to have A. bug really bad, go through Emily’s garbage, and mail Emily’s family the fake acceptance letter.
Her Mom gets so excited about Emily’s imaginary scholarship to Dan-bee-Dan-bee-Do that she practically becomes a lesbian/17.
All the girls are still doing the thing where they get together to talk about how they can’t get together. Spencer’s basically completely lost her shit and is skittering about town in Victorian Fashions, dating Dove-soft hulkmonsters, pawning jewelry, hiding in bushes and buying trucks. Essentially, Spencer has become Olivia Benson in one of the episodes where she becomes a renegade guerrilla detective because the department didn’t back her irrational obsession with tracking down a suspect to a crime that may or may not have happened.
All this whispering and sneaking around has the effect of making the Liars seem like they’re all in secret lesbian relationships with each other.
A bunch of other stuff happened which brings us to THIS week on Pretty Little Liars: Episode 204.
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Pretty Little Liars Episode 204: Blind Dates
This week on Pretty Little Liars, Emily and her rascally friends pounded about in an alley looking very sassy/surly while Spencer fought with the pawn-shop man about the ring she sold him to buy Toby’s truck which A., obviously, immediately purchased (the ring, not the truck). Emily wore flannel, of course, and that is SO Aria in the bandanna with the hoops:
Have you noticed how whenever the Liars get a text from A., they get all bug-eyed and open-mouthed looking all around them (especially up, they’re always searching for A atop a building) for — A? Are they looking for A? Do they think that this time THIS WILL BE THE TIME that A gets lazy and is actually just sitting on the street with her cloak and dagger and gloves, texting away?
Anyhow!
Onto the lesbian parts!
We open The Lesbian Parts in Emily’s bedroom, which Pam ricochets into, package in hand. Is it a puppy? A pony? A lizard?
By the way, Pam’s #1 feeling is DANBY. Seeing as Emily’s been averaging about one facial expression per conversation I guess someone’s gotta carry the team.
The package is from A. and contains Danby merchandise and probably poison. Pam thinks it’s from the mysterious Coach Character. Womp WOMP.
Next up! Pam hauls her chipper ass to Emily’s swim meet where she apparently informs all the bleacher creatures that her daughter has been offered a full scholarship to Danby for swimming even though she’s only a junior and hasn’t applied yet, and obviously this has impressed the Citizens of Rosewood.
Interesting to note however — Emily’s top competition, Paige, is still nowhere to be found!? Where is Paige’s angry father, he should have 34 feelings about this advancement in Emily’s career.
But guess who IS at the swim meet!
It’s DJ Tanner! Just kidding, it’s Samara, the blonde girl of ambiguous origin who goes to a school with a really flexible schedule.
Samara’s like “congratulations!” and Emily’s like, in so many unspoken words, “oh my fucking god what the hell have I done.” Samara gets all Sajdah on our asses with “it’s a beautiful campus, I could come visit –“
I mean, they’ve been together — are they together? — they’ve known each other for a certain ambiguous amount of time but Samara’s already google mapping the route from here to Danby. Little does she know Emily will probably be stabbed by a serial killer way before senior year ends.
Samara: What’s wrong?
Emily: [SAYS NOTHING, MOVES HER FACE A LITTLE]
Samara: Oh my god you don’t want to go to Danby?
Emily: [STILL MUTE]
Samara: Or you don’t want me to come to Danby?
Emily: No, it’s not that. That letter is not real. The coach from Danby didn’t write it, I did.
No no I’m not even slightly concerned that you’re already planning our weekends together for 2013! I just have this weird stalker person who breaks into my house, steals my garbage and mails it to my Mom. That’s all!
AND THEN! Mrs.Fields, still in her Danbytrance, actually senses that Samara is more than a friend and cutely intones, “Emily has told me so much about you, it’s nice to finally meet,” which is obviously a total lie, but it’s a sweet lie.
Yes — it took Pam several ambiguous periods of unexplained time to come around and accept Emily’s sexuality. But maybe we can allow her that. She went through that disorienting bit of life where, as a mother who expected one thing and got another she got a little crazy. There’s the uncertainty and the fear and the hope that maybe if she really puts her foot down, this big loop she’s been thrown for could reverse itself. Pam’s husband is away and his job is a tad high-risk. She seems kind of lonely and her only life activities are preparing meals and carrying laundry past Emily’s doorway.
But as time’s gone on and she’s seen that Emily is 1)certain, 2)totally still the same person, Pam’s come around too. So hurrah. (Have I said this before? It feels like a new thought, but who knows.)
This is just to say that Pam, in her excitement, invites Samara over for some kind of celebratory meal. Probably turkey drumsticks and red velvet cupcakes and Hennessy and pita.
Emily’s like, oh shit, you don’t wanna know what happened to the last girl who came over for dinner, and Samara’s like, I got this.
WHERE’S PAIGE? I want her to return in complete psychosis and throw a table at Samara.
Samara jokes that Emily’s staying in Rosewood so they can have a second date, because honestly that’s exactly the kind of thing a 17-year-old lesbian would do.
Next up, Emily and Samara are sitting on Emily’s bed, looking at Emily’s scrapbooked years. Samara, understanding the weight of the Lesbian Persuasion lies upon her shoulders, butters Pam up so well she practically glides onto the bed, ready to talk more about glue-guns and rice paper. This isn’t the first Mom Samara’s had to impress.
G-d we have to work twice as hard, don’t we? When you meet your girlfriend’s borderline-supportive parents? You’ve already got one strike against you — vagina — so you can’t afford anything else. You can’t be also unemployed or shy or a total druggie wasteoid pothead.
SO ANYWAY! Pam, on her cloud of Sunshine, is already emotionally/hypothetically planning for Danby visits and calling the coach to thank him for the coffee mug/arsenic and Emily — because Emily la-la-la-loves the truth — is squirming.
Emily: “Mom. The truth is –”
Samara: “The truth is that Danby has a good team. But so do a lot of other places. My Dad knows the coach at Stanford and they have a great team. I was just telling Emily that I think a lot of different schools will be interested in her.”
Pam: “You think so?”
Samara: “With her times? Totally. I wouldn’t get locked in to Danby. Play it cool and wait for the other offers to roll in during senior year. That’s when the real action starts. if you contact the coach now, other places might get the wrong idea.”
Pam: “That seems to make a reasonable amount of sense.”
And herein Samara summarily solves all of Emily’s Problems With Her Mom. Now if only she could work on the “don’t ever see your friends” thing.
So at this point Samara is essentially stalking Emily, but she hasn’t tried to drown her and she doesn’t constantly send Emily sadistic text messages, so she’s practically Brandon Walsh.
Emily’s like, “My Mom found the internet today and has spent all morning in a quagmire of University admissions websites!”
Samara: “So, it worked.”
Emily: “For now.”
Samara: “So be happy. For now. With me. At least it gives us time for a second date.”
Wow! So that’s moving forward. In other news, at the end of the episode somebody blows Ian’s brains out.
