Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sweet Disposition
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 15 | Aired on 01.31.2011
I'm still really hot on the idea of Ali as this like Angel of Disclosure, finding the secrets and lies and then cauterizing them with her white-hot bitchiness. Like how with Tarot cards they go, "Death doesn't actually mean death, so that's the good news. On the other hand, being forced to change the way you see and live your life actually feels way worse than dying, so..." Or like how Rorschach isn't wrong, he's just fucking crazy. Or say, for example, Jenna needs to stop fucking her brother, because it's gross, so Ali decides to make them stop fucking... By blowing them up, literally, with a bomb. Lesson learned, secret erased. I mean yeah, now one of them's blind and the other one's lo-jacked for murder, but at least they're not fucking, right?)
So Spencer yelled at her about how she's not the only one who's sick of Ali's shit -- just the only one who would ever fight back directly, which is why Alison loves her -- and then it's time for some Real Talk:
"I made you, Spencer. I made all of you. Before me, you were just some goody-goody in plaid who did whatever mommy and daddy told her to..." Spencer's like what, like we're your puppets? If the lie fits: "Don't you see that? You don't exist without me." But then -- hearkening back to the future, we should totally stab Caesar -- Spencer hisses, "Tell me this: What is a leader, without any followers? Because it seems to me the question isn't whether we will exist without you, but whether you will exist without us. And as far as I'm concerned you are dead to me already."
I know we always say Spencer is so scary and so hardcore, and usually this is affectionate hyperbole because clearly Spencer is one of the finest characters in all of television, but that last line... Chills. I don't know how such a pretty girl could look so thoroughly demonic, but it's incredibly scary this face she makes, like, "What, and then you killed her. Right? You walked out into the yard and killed her ass and ... forgot to tell us, right?"
And when Spence comes clean to the girls, you know that's what they're all waiting for, and it never comes, so they're like, "And this was a huge secret because?" Because I wished death on my best friend and then she died, obviously. You don't see the connection? They all crowd around her with love and Aria's all, "Besides, Ali said stuff to us all day long that was much worse than just casual death threats, right?" But Spencer can't even feel the healing Liar love, because guess who's across the street (In Maya/Alison's bedroom? Still so confused about that) staring at us in the dark? Still wearing a shirt?