Even though I love Pretty Little Liars, I couldn’t help but relate to Hanna’s eye-roll when she and the girls discovered that officer Garrett was going into Jenna’s house and they just had to investigate. Isn’t enough enough? It seems as though the Liars enjoy walking into trouble as much as they insist they want to avoid it.
Maybe it’s because I keep reading tweets like this one from show creator Marlene King that episodes 209 and 210 are going to be so amazingly exciting, but I left last night’s show feeling unsatisfied. Usually, PLL keeps me guessing with multiple interpretations, leaving me desperately awaiting the following week’s episode. Last night’s episode did leave me anxious for next week, but only because I couldn’t wrap my head around what was bothering me about it. It’s not that it was bad, it’s just that it was … uncomfortable. Maybe that was the point?
Here are some things that bothered me about last night:
- Ezria awkwardness. I am not the biggest fan of their relationship, but I know I am in the minority there. Fans are crazy for this couple, and last night their chemistry was … let’s just say it fizzled more than it sizzled. I actually won’t mind if they break up. I just hated that he looked so pained but for some reason couldn’t get as emotional with her as well as knew he really felt; I also hated how Aria was playing dumb about Jason and about how she really needed to finish her bowl so she could fire it. Um, if your hot boyfriend with whom you still have a clandestine relationship shows up in your shop, you make out. You don’t continue expressionlessly painting your pottery.
- The perpetual fashion show. I’ve glanced through the blogs on the ABC Family website enough to realize that, on Pretty Little Liars, fashion is its own character and makes a statement for each girl. However: enough shows do this and we don’t need that to be the focus of PLL. Sure, it attracts young impressionable fashionistas-in-training who want to “steal Aria’s locks” or “grab Spencer’s style.” But some of us are more concerned with the mystery than the makeup. If I wanted to watch a fashion show, I’d watch Gossip Girl or Sex and the City.
- Jenna and Garrett together make me wanna barf. That’s all I have to say about that.
- Aren’t “Save the Date” cards sent out a year in advance, or whenever the wedding date is set? I thought it was eight weeks or so for invitations. There’s no way Hanna would be invited to a wedding six weeks away and have only just gotten the Save the Date card.
- The “corpse” in the morgue popping up at the end of the show was so ridiculous. It reminded me of something out of Are You Afraid Of The Dark?.
- Along that same vein, the “creepster” music that plays every time a non-regular character is on screen (Hanna’s dad, the doctor with the foreign accent, etc.) is making me overthink things. Is this music a sign that they could be A, or is it just appropriate because the character shouldn’t really be trusted?
- I can’t decide whether certain conversations between weird and sketchy characters mean everything, or nothing. Do I just take things at face value, or do I think more deeply about it? For example, when Jenna and Garrett claimed they had to act fast now that the Liars know something is up … does that mean they are guilty, or does that just mean they’re doing something to help? Or neither?
- Another place where I’m not sure if I should play along with discovered “facts” is when the girls “decide” things are true (i.e., make assumptions based on loose evidence or incomplete data). Looking at the autopsy report — which, by the way, was missing a page — Spencer sees that there was dirt in Alison’s lungs when she died. So she assumes that the cause of death wasn’t trauma to the head, but rather that she was … buried alive!?!?! Really? Couldn’t someone have just pushed her face in the dirt for a few minutes, suffocating her? Spencer’s few years of high school science doesn’t exactly qualify her to properly interpret an autopsy report like a professional would. Whenever someone jumps to a conclusion on this show, it’s taken as fact (just as soon as everyone pops their eyes open in unison and gasps appropriately). Which leads me to my next qualm, which is …
- I’m not sure whether we, as an audience, are thought of as really smart, or as really dumb.
However, there were some standout moments in last night’s episode:
- Emily’s storyline was very emotional and also very frightening, especially when she finds out that it was A who was fiddling with her sports cream. Emily showed very good acting last night, both in the scene when her father tells her she doesn’t have to worry about the Danby scholarship, as well as the scene when the doctor tells her that HGH (Human Growth Hormone) showed up in her bloodwork. She’s very good at getting teary-eyed without crying. It didn’t look fake at all.
- If Ali was, in fact, buried alive … well, then that’s terrifying!
- Something was going on with the lighting in the hospital scenes that was pretty cool (although it did make my stomach turn a bit). It seemed very blue and green. Maybe that were trying to enhance the already dungeon-like visual aspects of the hospital, but whatever they did, it worked.
- Something Emily said last night creeped me out the way a good R.L. Stine or Christopher Pike novel would back in the day: she pointed out that A has come for each of them, and that Aria was probably next. (Excuse this brief pause while I shudder again.) But that’s true! Hanna was hit by a car, Spencer was locked inside the haunted house and then almost killed by Ian, and now Emily was sent to the hospital due to an ulcer, the origin of of which we are fairly unaware. What will happen to Aria, and will either Ezra or Jason be around when it happens?
Photo Credit: ABC Family
Some posts that may be related to this:
