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!Into the dance -- which is just gorgeous; I've seen a lot of Norman Buckley party scenes in my time and this one beats them all -- and of course old Hanna's brought her flask with her. Hello, old friend! Spencer laughs at her friend's total grossness and tells her to at least fold a magazine around it, and everybody starts showing up, looking lush. Everybody looks amazing at the dance, especially Emily; even including Ian. Whose appearance, it's worth pointing out, always presages a jumpcut back to Ali in the video throes.
Goal one: Get Ian's laptop bag out of the locked drawer in his office by stealing his keys from his checked coat. Goal two: Keep Emily from total meltdown. (This is a secret goal they don't know about yet.) Goal three: Keep crazy Aria from chewing Simone and/or Ezra's face off. Goal four: Whatever horrible thing A is going to make Hanna do. Goal five: Never stop dancing.
Emily points out that without the laptop there's no reason to go to the police, but Spencer's hilariously not buying that: "Look, we saw what we saw. Something went down between him and Alison, and he buried her in the yard to shut her up!" Spencer is so magnificent. It's not like Spencer goes to 11, it's like she lives there.
Byron Montgomery shows up, to Ella's wary smiling surprise, and she explains the rules of the danceathon to him while Ian's announcing the beginning of the contest. Ella is, of course, in charge of like half the things going on. Including not giving him a fucking inch, thank God, and in her usual classy way. Ella being the one person who has solved the self-contradicting binomial Teen Girl equation, which is how to be sexy enough to get what you want but not so sexy that you're indicted for a crime nobody's ever actually committed.
Simone shows up and Aria -- who is requesting the Rescues from the DJ on a signup sheet, although how great would it have been if she'd requested the Ella/Byron song? -- starts getting weird about it. Apparently she and Ezra had a fabulous coffee date, talking about world events and classic literature and, I don't know, Iron & Wine or dumpster pools or whatever old people think is hip. The Cobrasnake. "They did not have English teachers like that when I was here," Simone gushes, and Aria digs her nails into her palms like a tiny big-eyed stigmatic.
Spencer splits to get the key, and Hanna notes poor Lucas in the corner before meeting up with Caleb and Emily to complete the phreak transaction. Once Emily's got the phone in her mitt she runs off like Gollum and Hanna sticks around to yell at Caleb for charging her double. Hanna's all about money but especially right now: "Considering you charged her three times the normal amount that phone should answer itself and have a built-in lipstick!" Hanna's a good friend, in the oddest ways. He tells her to call customer service with her black-market complaints and she calls him an ass, and then they have the coolest microconversation: