Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Picture This
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 9 | Aired on 08.09.2011
Spencer, heading off at full tilt: "Emily. Now."
Emily, laughably: "Maybe you should switch to decaf..."
Spencer: "Too late for that, by about ten years. MOVE OUT."
MONTGOMERY DINNER
Byron considers, as he sets the table, that possibly even Ella is not aware of just how bad the Mike situation is. It is really bad. They both get scareder and scareder. Then it gets even worse, because Byron's brother who killed himself used to act exactly like this.
Little too close, PLL. Claps for going there, but wow.
But also, claps for this: For putting it right in plain sight -- "I needed a gun to get out of here" -- and knowing that we, used to the heightened ridiculousness of this show, would jump to some Spencerian conclusion instead of just getting deathly afraid. The misdirection -- the brattiness and boob-punching with Aria, his stunningly vicious attacks on Ella, the violence at school, even the classic father/son discipline thing -- seemed to be leading somewhere else, somewhere alien and monstrous and inhuman, when the truth is a lot simpler and a whole lot harder to deal with:
He needs to be loved. Desperately. Immediately. Forever.
THE SHED
Spencer: "Clearly, my mother going to Philadelphia means we have to break into Jason's shed immediately."
Emily: "I am up for anything right now. Sure thing."
In the shed there is a roll of film, old-schooly, and darkroom baths, and then hanging up in there it looks like... Pictures of Alison's mouth? Is that Alison's? NO! It's ARIA! A thousand pictures of ARIA! Sleeping! Also surveillance equipment of all kinds! HOLY CRAP!
Jason comes home and they re-lock the shed, leaving a flashlight (a visual familiar to those who follow the producers and writers on Twitter) and hiding in the bushes. Inside, Jason notices a few things awry -- like the still-lit flashlight on the floor for example -- and then the camera goes chunk-chunk-chunk closer and closer to HIS CRAZY FACE.
You got me, show. You got me so many ways. Mike's despair, Caleb's absolutely believable and well-acted mom story, the freaky Jason switcheroo, the continued stylized lighting, even the sassy way Aria kept doing it with those dudes. What a great, sophisticated, beautiful fucking epi... Oh, there's more. More!
BONUS!
Caleb shows up at Hanna's after all, looking a little lighter and happy to inform her that he's taken her advice.