Episode 507: The Silence of E. Lamb
Welcome to the hallowed halls of Rosewood High, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children have homicidal maniacs hot on their trail! Emily’s mom is here for a parent-teacher conference with a new teacher and to tell Emily to invite all the members of the Final Five over for dinner.
The liars convene in the bathroom like a bunch of teen dirtbags. Ali is immediately suspicious of Emily’s mom, and Aria says she’s gonna be volunteering at Radley, and Spencer reluctantly agrees to help Ezra with his research. I feel like if Ezra had been more willing to put his files on a computer like a human and not a cylon, this whole process would’ve been waaaay streamlined. Regardless, Ali agrees to go to the dinner, and Hanna says something mean and quickly exits stage left before Ali can comprehend Hanna being snarky at her.
The others follow Hanna out, but Ali stops Emily to ask her to walk her home after school. Emily is visibly uncomfortable but comforts Ali as she panics about teachers finding out she got attacked because that’s where we are in our lives. This weird moment is broken when Sydney, that new swimmer, walks in and comments on Ali’s scarf so we are immediately suspicious that she is A.
After the opening credits, Emily is talking to Syd the Kid at her locker about Paige and the rat incident. Sydney says she doesn’t think it was anyone on the team because “everyone loves Paige. LIKES HER, I MEAN,” so now we know she probably has a crush on Paige AND that she doesn’t understand rat symbolism. The point is that Paige isn’t at school and that Sydney probably won’t be a background character for much longer.
Emily stops Mona in the hallway and asks what she knows about this, and Mona’s like “you’re going to have to narrow it down, I participate in a lot of hijinks.” Mona says the rat thing grosses her out and then greets Sydney, which grosses me out.
Mona: A dead rat has “boy” written all over it.
#misandry
Somewhere else at Rosewood’s School for Tortured Teens, Hanna spots Caleb reading a comic book in “preparation” for his high school exit exam.
They chat about Alison, and he criticizes the liars for being too willing to do whatever she wants at the drop of a hat. Admitting that she agrees with him, Hanna says that she wants to get out but is worried about losing her friends, so Caleb reminds her that he’ll always be there for her unless he’s doing a spinoff. True love. Sidebar, Hanna’s makeup looks great; I am very into her latest rebirth.
Sometime before, during or after school, Aria is volunteering at Radley! She’s carrying a thing and is wearing a nametag and looks super helpful regarding whatever ambiguous task she is doing. More importantly, she runs into Lamb, who acts like he doesn’t know how he knows her. Aria acts like she’s never met him before. This is exhausting, everyone just talk and be friends!
Prancing on back to Rosewood High, Caleb and Ali run into each other in an otherwise empty classroom to take their “exit exams,” which are confusing to me as a concept because it means Caleb is done with school but Ali is admitted back into school? Whatever, not important, it’s a device to give these two a private scene.
Caleb says Ali is a tornado w/r/t leaving debris in her wake, which seems mean to say to someone immediately after mentioning the fact that they were supposedly kidnapped for several years.
Then we flash bang wallop back to Radley where Aria finds a way to sneak Bethany’s drawing into an art class. Conveniently, she finds Bethany’s old roommate, who’s “having a day” and calls Aria a thief for stealing her drawing, but she’s also black so I’m already worried she’s going to get killed off.
We swing over the the Hastings house where Spencer is confronting Melissa in their yard for exposition and metaphor reasons. Melissa says their dad is ok and that Spencer’s sober coach left food out in the barn.
She moves to throw away a bag, presumably of gross food, but Spencer intercepts it and finds a dead rodent inside! I think it’s supposed to be a rat, but it looks more like something else. Melissa throws out the rat-thing and says she has to go wash her hands because of symbolism.
Caleb swings into Hanna’s kitchen with a six-pack of beers and a heart full of mirth because he walked out of the test! “Because algebra and civics, they don’t mean a damn thing in the real world,” he says, which is not ok with Hanna.
But she SOS summoned him for another reason, and that reason is WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ALI??? Caleb thinks Hanna needs to calm down because she’s trying to break up with Ali anyway, but Hanna is mad because she wants to control this situation! How embarrassing will it be for me if they don’t end up together after how loudly I proclaimed that they would in the last recap? Only time will tell!
Spencer shows up at Ezra’s door to help him move all his files so she can drive them to his friend’s secret shed or whatever. Neither Spencer nor Ezra look overly pleased, but Spencer lets her guard down enough to ask to borrow one of Ezra’s spy cameras without specifying who she would be spying on. Ezra hesitates but agrees.
Across the universe, Emily runs into Mona standing outside Toby’s exploded house. I like to imagine Mona had been standing there for hours waiting for Emily to walk by, but I digress. Emily’s like “j’accuse!” re: the rat, but Mona says that she’s transcended beyond rodent-themed bullying.
Star-sweep to the shed where Spencer and Ezra have just finished moving all of his boxes even though somehow neither look sweaty or like they’ve been doing any physical labor. Ezra admits that he’s disappointed in himself for biting off more than he could chew with his book and that he originally wanted to write about his family. In turn, Spencer admits that the spy camera is for her sister. He advises her to walk away from the whole thing (in a friendly way), and she tells him to take his own advice. Honestly, I would watch a show of the two of them solving mysteries together. Like The X-Files but with teenagers who make poor choices instead of aliens.
Back at Radley, Aria is doing something else ambiguously volunteer-y and unsupervised when Rhonda sneaks up behind her and demands the drawing back. Aria gives it to her, but before she can get any valuable information out of her, Lamb walks in. Rhonda goes off to take a shower. It’s a weird scene, and it bums me out that all the women of color apart from Emily are either irredeemably crazy or dead.
Later, Aria waits for Rhonda to leave her bedroom to take a shower so she can snoop ala Harriet the Spy. She doesn’t find anything, but when Rhonda comes back before Aria can escape, she hides under Rhonda’s bed? Sure, why not. Rhonda comes back in and lays down, so now Aria is trapped, but she found Bethany’s sketchbook under the bed, so that’s something.
