Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 3 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Smiling Faces Sometimes
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 11 | Aired on 08.21.2012
I feel like this show is always wonderful, you know, and insightful about what it's like to be a person and young and under constant threat and constant surveillance, but this episode... I don't know, it seems more real. Everything surrounding Paige and this ongoing relationship between Paige and craziness, and Alison, and Cece Drake, and the way it's messing with Emily...
Maybe Emily's obsessive defense of her is a little OTT, but the rest of it is intriguing and evocative and strikes a real chord. It's the same kind of feeling as the original Jenna Thing, I guess, or like from around the first season to ... The time that Aria was Anita, that was the last time this particular feeling came into the mix. Well, no. Also when Hanna saved Jenna from that fire. And sometimes -- most of the time really -- Mona Vanderwaal. But nothing lately.
When it comes, though, it's so true, and sad and scary and hard to pin down: The way the fear and paranoia and all that stuff becomes rage, or the hate becomes so intense it's not that different from love, and you get a second to look, really look, at the girl they're going after, and something says, But she's also just a girl.
The thing you have to put out of your mind, if you're ever going to be safe. But also, maybe that's part of what Alison was thinking, that day with Paige's note. I know I would be. I'd shake just like that, after it was done.
FIELDS
Emily: "Drink this tea and be mad at them, okay? I'm really sorry."
Paige: "Okay, enough. Listen, Alison and I had a very scary relationship. She teased me, I beat her up. The usual. But I zero idea of what I was playing with. She was relentless, and I had nobody to turn to because I have no friends, and it made me so crazy... It did not get better. I got suicidal. The only reason I'm not dead is because that meant she would win."
See? That is some intense shit.
MARIN
Ashley: "Hey. Just drinking a bunch of wine."
Hanna: "Did you watch it?"
Ashley: "Yeah."
Hanna: "And?"
Ashley: "And, in proud Marin tradition, I'm tossing it in the garbage disposal."
So great!
Hanna: "Thanks."