Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Like Every Week is Shark Week
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 16 | Aired on 02.07.2011
Paige, who is clearly having some kind of psychotic break and does not need the stress, is like, "I did not know what to say during that conversation. Sorry I drowned you that time? Sorry about my haircut? I've got a lot going on."
"Okay, so like what was on your mind when you showed up at freakin' Pam Fields' front door in the middle of the rainy stormy night, looking like a Melissa Etheridge song sprung to life? Because let me tell you, you are playing with fire there. My suitors of the fairer sex are normally sent around to the back door, if you know what I mean. Or to prison camp."
"Mostly I was thinking, 'I wish this bicycle were a jet plane, headed for the side of a volcano, so I would die.' I must admit I was not all that surprised when I drove into a wall."
"Shit just got real. Hold on a second while I decode your weird messages. You have to understand that my peer group is a slutty ghost, an autistic war criminal, an Icelandic existentialist and a functioning alcoholic. We don't generally wear our crazy on the outside."
"Well, I just kind of hate swimming now? So since swimming is all that I am, it has left me sort of bereft and crazy on the inside. How did you get back into swimming?"
"I came out of the closet and realized that grownups and most rules are actually kind of dumb, and therefore I can do basically whatever I want. Which nobody ever tells you, because if teenage girls ever found that out we would start a fucking riot."
"Okay, I can't handle the anarchy right now because I am losing my shit. Let's just start with swimming."
"That's cool. We can swim for the pure joy of it, like otters in the springtime: No timers, no limits, no drowning each other."
"Can we can do this for approximately twenty weird minutes in the middle of this episode?"
"You will get your happy back, and I will make a succession of oddly sensual faces. The music will be some horrible Sarah Bareilles crap about finding your womanpower."
"That sounds relaxing, thanks."
"Well, I've been looking for a new crazy person ever since Spencer stole mine."
MEANWHILE
Jenna's blindness tea is still steaming on the porch next to her gigantic blindness glasses when Spencer arrives, only to be brutally rebuffed by Toby, who shoves L'Attrape-cœurs into her hands and pushes her out the door. Shortest friendship ever.
MEANWHILE
Caleb is wondering if he can use the towels in the bathroom -- "I can shake off and air dry," he says adorably, with a wolfish grin -- but Hanna is too busy weeping uncontrollably because of her Aria situation to care. He offers to scamper but she assures him it's not him that's the problem: The thing she yelled at him about yesterday morning, Aria found out anyway. He heads upstairs for his shower, thinks better of it, and then just sits quietly down beside her on the stairs, and it is: Excellent.
MEANWHILE
Today Spencer's been wearing a costume not unlike if at Halloween they started selling "Sexy Eloise," complete with a bright-blue beret befitting a French tutor, if she were a French tutor in space. Melissa stops her in the kitchen, all sweet smiles and patience, and apologizes for jumping up her ass all day. Husband Ian finally told her about the time he molested her sister, and she's gotten past that in record time because she is a Hastings, and now she wants to talk about how they're having a baby!
Spencer's like, "Fine, but he is a killer! A kisser of girls and a killer of them also! Stop trying to fight with me!" Melissa, of course, is on a heavy dose of benzos and has no interest in fighting, but Spence can't even hear that. All she can hear is the music from The Omen, because now she and Ian really are family, and it's going to get that much worse. Melissa finally gives up, like she does every week around this time, and tells Spencer to go fuck herself.