Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 66 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Piste Off, Or: The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 20 | Aired on 02.18.2014
The reason AA wants you to have a Higher Power is because when you are an addict, you are not only internally thinking that you are the world, but also your body is telling you not to pay attention to anything else: That's two different kinds of being God. And the most important thing to me about any religious practice is that it reminds you that you aren't: An addict needs to shrink their internal perception of themselves down enough to admit the existence of the many other things in the world that are not just them and their survival, so they can learn to mediate between the outside and inside world.
Even a rage addict, certainly an abuser, any kind of control-loss like this you're looking at a basic glitch about what is you and what is the world -- or often, what is now and what is the amount of time that comes after now -- and being too full of your problem to add one single drop of anything or anybody else, even if you're hurting them or yourself. Or just pissing them off, which is why I mention this: It's also why addicts such as Spencer are always showing up late to the snakehouse.
OPERATION ASPEN EXTREME
Aria spots a nearby random ski lodge with a ski-lift that is closing in five minutes and because she is a literal genius, straps herself into that motherfucker with Ezra right beside her, out of nowhere, so suddenly she and her boyfriend who is also her torturer are suspended high above the world with no escape. It's so fucking great.
As is what he says next: "I didn't mean for it to end this way!"
OPERATION MANNEQUIN LEG
My notes, verbatim: "Liars running around and the flickering of the environments."
Which is pretty apt. They run around and around while the lights all zap and the recording about all the many snakes keeps talking and stuttering and everything seems like it is electrified and like we are about to have a parseltongue situation. They get got by an annoyed zookeeper and peace out, but not before grabbing their cash and wig, and then I think Hanna spots another wig? Like Mona was there in disguise as Spencer in disguise as Alison? That's so Mona. That's so Ali too though. Also kind of comforting, in a hard-to-describe way, like hiding from night monsters under your duvet, or using a British accent when you have to talk to grownups on the phone.
"Fun tip! If you go to the snake habitat wearing a mask of your own face and a wig of your own hair, that way the snakes will be fooled."