Elsewhere, at what I can only assume is some BDSM yoga studio I have yet to learn about, Aria is falling crotch first into Sensei Hot Stuff. Good for her!! I would love to see Aria’s crotch with someone new. Also apparently so would Sensei Hot Stuff because he seems determined to get Aria into a 50 Shades of Gay long term sub-dom relationship.
I’d also like to see Aria get into some light BDSM, but no rush.
Sensei Hot Stuff thinks the two of them should take a little breather but Aria wants to just keep going. I knew she had it in her. It’s interesting, it hasn’t really been explained why Aria is suddenly interested in self defense classes. A has always been after her and she never went before. I wonder if this is connected to the break-up; a fresh start to regain control of her life.
Also Sensei Hot Stuff is the only person in town paying attention.
Ari wants Sensei Hot Stuff to teach her how to defend herself from behind. Hehe. From behind.
I actually kind of dig Sensei Hot Stuff because he seems like the first person in Rosewood to identify one of the Liars’ behavior as abnormal. Yeah sure, the Liars have occasionally been thrown into therapy circumstantially, but I feel like the Liars’ boyfriends and parents rarely seem to notice how scared the Liars are, how paranoid they’ve become. And here’s a guy she’s only know for five minutes and he’s already seeing right through her to her core. He’s the kind of guy she can maybe ope– wait. Wait just a damn minute. Holy shit! This is how they get you! This is how professional TV writers get you to sign on for a new ship before the old one is even dead! I just got slapped with some executive writing realness. I was practically ready to date this guy myself and he’s about two breasts shy of my type!
$Sensei Hot Stuff: blah blah blah feel safe in my own skin
Sly move ABCFamily. Sly move indeed.
Back over at Stepford Wife Jessica’s Haunted House Of Gardening Doom, Hanna starts to pry a bit. She wants to know if Jessica saw Ali’s remains that night. Or what she saw. Jessica only saw the yellow blouse and– cue the pastel flashback! I wish I had flashback music I could play that you guys could hear every time this happens. If I say “dunana dunana dunana dun” do you know what that sounds like?
Jessica sits outside having lunch with Ali some time the summer before the Night She Was In A Million Places And Saw Everyone And Died (Maybe).
Ali wants to stay a few nights alone in Cape May. Her mother says no fucking way because, remember, Ali’s like 14. So Ali claims she wants to have her friends over for a big sleepover at the house, but her mother won’t budge.
So Ali holds her breath. Like a child.
I guess Ali did this a lot because her mother gave in. Which is a shame because for a split second I thought there was someone Ali couldn’t manipulate. Of course, Ali never invited the Liars to Cape May. She just hung around and made the beast with two backs with 30-year-old Wilden. Or Ian. Or that pilot. Or Brittney Griner. I wish.
Hanna reveals that she never got the evite to the big Cape May party, but Jessica doesn’t seem too upset. I suppose once your daughter has been dead for two years it’s hard to get mad at her. Actually, I have no idea. That’s territory I’ve never known.
Just in case you’ve ever wondered if Riese and I are genuinely invested in Pretty Little Liars::
This is the way that we live.
Back over at the dojo, Aria and Sensei Hot Stuff continue to rock some martial arts that, to my untrained eye, looks like some hawt Black Swan shit. Hopefully next we’ll get Aria magically appearing between her own legs.
Then, because she has absolutely no boundaries about authority figures or teachers, Aria kisses Sensei Hot Stuff.
Aria peels out of the dojo parking lot (all the best dojos have free parking, you see) and into downtown Rosewood. There she sees Mona speaking with police. She pulls over and fakes like she’s there to pick Mona up. I can’t tell if this is to try to save Mona’s ass or save her own. Six of one half dozen of the other.
Mona tells Aria she was just chatting up a cop in order to eavesdrop on a different set of cops speaking behind her. Aria points out that if Mona wants to be on Team Liars she needs to realize that she can’t even be chatting up cops because it makes them look like they’re snitches. And snitches get stitches.
Fortunately Mona overheard some good dirt on Wilden’s case. The investigators found Wilden’s shoe prints along side a woman’s.
Starsweep across town where Spencer has finally come to her senses.
TobAy admits he moved the RV for A in order to get the transcript of his mother’s conversations from Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane the night she killed herself.
TobAy feels bad.
Spencer feels annoyed.
Lizz feels bored.
Fortunately at that moment we sweep across town the pool where Emily totally cruises this bathing suit girl.
Emily sneaks over to her locker to take some more pain killers for her insane shoulder injury. Like wait until you see this bruise. It’s out of control. She needs to go see a doctor yesterday.
While she’s there Shana walks in. She claims needs a swim cap, but actually she wants to know why Hanna accused her of knowing Wilden. Shana also tells Emily she knows about Paige’s scholarship and that there’s one spot open.
Apparently on Pretty Little Liars Pennsylvania has all the best swim teams in the country because Stanford is, like, a pretty good Div I swim team. But for reals FYI Pennsylvania is not a huge swimming hub or anything, I looked it up. I know I suspend my disbelief for a lot of things on this show but this was just too tangible not to look up. So humor me.
The punchline here is that Shana is going to nab that scholarship, move to the Gay Area and fingerblast Emily’s girlfriend forever. So take that.
This just gets Emily even more fired up! What does Emily do when she’s all fired up?! She takes more pain killers!
TobAy and Spencer sit in Spencer’s kitchen reading his mother’s case file. Spencer reads it aloud because anything that is sad and dramatic can only be made more sad and dramatic by a slow and gentle reading aloud. Anything. The transcript of TobAy’s mom’s last therapy session sounds upbeat and hopeful. She wants to leave and see her family to make up for lost time. TobAy thinks this means she was murdered. It’s all very dramatic and depressing. I’m skipping the rest of the scene.
At the swim meet Emily is all fucked up on pain killers but jumps into the water and starts the race anyways. She swims okay at first but then hits her head and has to get rushed to the hospital! I just figured they’d have her false start or something! I didn’t know she was going to get hurt!
My sweet Emily! It happened so fast! I did have time to process! They won’t let Paige go to the hospital with Emily! Are we being discriminated against?! I’m not sure, it all happened too fast to tell! I don’t know what’s going on here! I have so many feeling!
Aria walks in just as TobAy walks out. She’s hilarious and maybe also jumping on the bandwagon and trying out being a U-Hauling lesbian. I mean, hey, it’s working for everyone else!
Just then, Hanna busts in with Jessica’s bird. She’s just convinced it’s going to spill all of Ali’s secrets. Plus it keeps singing the same song which will potentially be the death of us all.
Hanna points out that if Wilden had his own boat, then why would he need to stay at Ali’s parents’ house? Clearly something is amiss.
Later that night, the Liars dig into some research at their respective homes.
Hanna plays the Super Sleuth At Home Game which, in Rosewood, generally just amounts to asking your parents questions. She asks her mother point blank if she came back to Rosewood to duke it out with Wilden. Ashley sort of gives an answer.
Spencer reads up on TobAy’s mom while the obnoxious bird sings over and over again. Fortunately Spencer realizes that he’s not singing a song, he’s singing a phone number! I swear I realized it was a phone number just a minute before Spencer did and the really fucked up part of my self-involved brain wanted Pretty Little Liars to not reveal it until next week so I could tell everyone my theory! Womp womp.
Aria sits in her living room reading when she hears creeping outside. Good thing she had that self-defense class.
The doorbell rings and, who’s at the door?
It’s Sensei Hot Stuff!
He wants to talk about the kiss because nothing makes an inappropriately timed kiss even less appropriate than showing up at someone’s house unannounced in the middle of the night. But just FYIÂ Sensei Hot Stuff wants ON.
But like so does Aria. So she signs his sub-dom BDSM contract and they agree to bone off into the sunset together. Or something… I got up to make popcorn.
Across the neighborhood, Emily sits at home with Paige on the magical bed of no sex. An enchanted lesbian bed where no sex ever takes place, just feelings.
Emily admits everything to Paige. About the pain killers, about her shoulder and about how Ali Mask tried to mow her over with a car. It’s pretty cute. Then they kiss making, it the third lezzie kiss of Pretty Little Liars season four! Nice work guys! If we had one kiss in episode one two kisses in episode two does that mean we get three kisses in episode three?! I can’t wait for episode 24!
Ironically I immediately found myself wondering where Caleb was. I miss that little dyke.
Instead of checking in on Caleb, we flash back to the other three Liars who’ve convened at Spencers. They try out the bird phone number. It’s a business and no one picks up.
Hanna and Aria think Spencer fucked up the number, because um this is the hardest idea ever, and go upstairs to record the number from the bird. When they get up there, however, no bird. No fucking bird.
Across the street, Ashley Marin wraps up her muddy pumps in dirt and puts them in a garbage bag. Honestly they should have switch this scene with the last one because, I’ll tell you what, it was way less dramatic than the bird moment.
In our final A scene, A is enjoying some chicken. At first I think A’s cooked the parrot and I’m totally disgusted.
Then it’s revealed that A is feeding the chicken to the parrot. Well… I guess we eat other mammals… but still, I think I’m a vegan now.
(DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!)
That’s it for this week. I wanted to give you guys another round of Shit We Learned This Week but unfortunately we didn’t really learn anything too tangible. Better luck next week where we’ll see if PLL goes for three lezzie kisses! –L
