Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Nukes & Cookies
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 14 | Aired on 01.24.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Man, Lucy Hale is awesome. Just firing on all cylinders tonight, in another Buckley Dreamboat performance that's so dazzling it's almost enough to make you wish Aria Montgomery could find happiness.
...Almost.
Ella (hi!) brings in Aria's old babysitter -- now a famous New Yawk writer-lady and played by my beloved Alona Tal -- to demonstrate the possibility of a non-Rosewood existence, and hooks her up with Ezra in a way that manages to be slightly menacing. Of course all Aria can do is perseverate on this woman Simone and her age-appropriate wiles -- even though everywhere people are getting murdered and run over and A is still fucking up everybody's lives -- to the point where even Ezra has to roll his eyes.
Maya's phone has been reprogrammed, just like her mind -- oh, and FYI it turns out in a deleted scene that she had a history of drug use, which is why her hippy parents flipped so quick, if you were wondering -- but luckily Hanna has a heretofore unknown but strangely tense relationship with this bizarre slacker-hacker narc of the Quileute Tribe, and he's willing to adjust Emily's phone to get through the roadblocks. I don't know much technology, but it's all very hand-wavy and Zero Cool and leads to many excellent hacker conversations. Not so excellent is the convo with Maya, who is taking to her brand new cult like a duck to creepy, crazy water and sending Emily off the deep end.
Spencer's laptop with the Ian footage has gone missing, and only Ian could have taken it, so there's a lot of Thin Man, classic Spencer-stomping hardcore no-bullshit action for her. (Appropriately enough, Spencer is dressed like a thin man the entire time. Her outfits are getting to be like if Blair Waldorf's clothes had a baby with Scott Fitzgerald's clothes. It's so shocking and so very hot, but never fear: Aria's clothes still come out slightly ahead, with the usual brazen touches of mental illness.) She also crosses sneaky paths with Hanna's narc friend, so I guess he's here to stay. I just wish every boy on this show were played by Noel Kahn, and then we wouldn't have these problems. No: Every boy on every show. That would be pretty cool.
Everybody looks especially delightful this week -- even Ian, still doing his Sinister Julia Child routine -- which is nice because they're having a danceathon, like in Stars Hollow or the Dust Bowl days of olden times. It brings Ella and Byron together (she rocks their encounters hardcore, of course), but more importantly it's one of the most luxurious visuals I've ever seen on this show. You could watch this dance with nobody talking and still be getting your money's worth, so gorgeous is it. The lights, the projections, the music... It's how I've always wanted my birthday to look! But with way more molesters, obvs.
Not so nice for Hanna, anyhow, since she's having no luck finding a job at even the weirdest boutiques, and must rely on A's bizarre generosity one horrible soul-crushing task at a time. Next up: $200 a pop to dance with poor old stalker Lucas...
And that's when everything goes impressively bugshit.
Before you know it Emily's drunk as hell and bitching out Hanna for stringing Lucas along (like Ali did with her), bitching out Ian for killing everybody or whatever, Toby's unfair lo-jack, and stumbling around the place like a gorgeous zombie. Hanna's over here getting dumped by Sean and rescued by poor old sweet Lucas, who thinks this is a teen movie where she finally loves him, and not actually the disgusting prostitution that it is. Aria tries to eat Simone's face off and Spencer's stealing a dance with Ezra to keep Aria from embarrassing everybody, only to get pulled into dancing with Ian so he can threaten her with certain death if anybody finds out he molested her... I mean, it's intense. Annnd fabulous.
So back at Spencer's, Hanna agrees with Drunk Emily that she was acting horribly tonight --but doesn't explain about the cash money because we're not talking about Ashley's stealing thing -- and then finds Spencer's laptop randomly on the coffee table. Needless to say, the Ian video has been wiped... But there's a picture of Alison heading merrily to her death, with somebody following behind. And in the little thing at the end, and it's even creepier than normal, Ella smiles warmly at A as she hands over that leather jacket/gloves combo in coatcheck, because they totally know each other.
Next week: A finally detonates some landmines, leading to what looks like (but is probably in all fairness not) a full-on Girl War between the Liars.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Emily heads for Hanna's flask and Spencer reports her inability to get into Ian's desk, but then Aria can't even pay attention because Simone has touched Ezra's arm one too many times. If she weren't wearing entire Decepticons as earrings, she'd be taking them off. She heads over to beat them both to death and Spencer grabs her just in time, begging Ezra for a dance. "Somebody's crushing on her English teacher!" Simone giggles to Aria, who just about does an angry backflip.
Hanna comes out to complain about the toll this dancing is taking on her body and soul, and crunk Emily has already gotten to a pretty tipsy place. She's drowsy and sexy and scary and magical and it's really disturbing; the first thing she does is call Hanna out for dancing with Lucas: "You know he worships you and you're never gonna look at him that way. Alison did the same thing to me. Makes you feel powerful, huh?" Hanna's like, "You can't say this shit if you already drank all the hooch, but no: I do not feel powerful, I feel the opposite of powerful. I feel gross." Emily, however, is not hearing it: "It's too bad she's not here tonight. Alison would've been really proud of you."
Damn, Emily!
It reminds me of something Norman said a while back, about how the thing that attracted them all into Alison's orbit was the very fact of how repulsive she was. That's so perverse, and so completely true. It's like how everybody thinks Twilight is a big deal because it's so "romantic" when the truth is, nobody but dumb moms think that shit is romantic: Twilight is a big deal because it's gross and weird, and teenagers are automatically gross and weird. Twilight is not the new JK Rowling, it's the new VC Andrews.
Spencer's entire explanation for dragging Ezra onto the dance floor: "Five more seconds and you would've ended up on YouTube. That was a suicide mission and you know it." Everything's a war if you look at it right, and that's why even though Hanna's my favorite Spencer will always be my girl.
Sean's conciliatory for about five seconds, but Hanna's not giving in on the Lucas thing -- price just went up to $1000 -- so Sean abruptly and poetically dumps her: "That car broke more than your legs. There's something really sick going on up there." Oh, girlfriend. She's like, I'm well aware. So then -- as a gorgeous cover of the Outfield's classic song about "I Don't Wanna Lose Your Love Tonight" starts playing, which is fucking genius -- she goes back to Lucas, because his arms around her are at least something. Taking the lie ever closer to the truth, and feeling wretched about it.