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!I had to rewind that shit about sixteen times to make sure it actually happened. The only way that could be more upsetting -- or more honest -- is if they'd jumpcut again to Alison's sex spasms. Just toss the while nasty salad at once. And then you got Aria, who can't even deal with the semi-unconscious sexual warfare of this conversation, and is only there to steal Ian's keys by, get this, pretending it's her dad's jacket. While Spencer heads off with the keys, Lucas tries to remind Hanna that she's there with a date -- "Remember him? Big guy? Likes to hit me? -- and she literally shushes him, like would make Aria proud. You can feel Lucas give in; she feels it too, and it makes her want to barf.
Aria's about halfway to a freakout, asking Ella how long fucking Simone's going to be in town, and offering the opinion that Simone is making a total ass fool of herself. Ella takes her measure, and Aria looks extremely messed up, so her mom finally comes to half of the conclusion: "I think I know what's going on here. You're jealous." Aria scoffs and wriggles and twitches and makes it completely clear that that's what's going on, and Ella tries to be kind about it.
"Honey, she's your old babysitter, and she's your friend, and she's spending more time with Mr. Fitz than you," she says carefully. "But Aria, you gotta cut her some slack. You know it's hard to meet nice guys. Sometimes you gotta strike while the iron's hot. You'll understand one day." She caresses Aria's face and walks off and Aria gives the greatest OMFG of the entire episode -- an episode which is turning out to be just a hit reel of Aria OMFG faces.
I love how everybody on the show understands that Ella and Fitz would be the perfect match, because they're both teachers and they're so great in scenes together, but they also understand that that concept would be too gross even for this show. But then to sidestep it by having Ella be the sensitive, intuitive mom trying to shepherd her precocious daughter through the fantasies of adolescence, that brings the Ella/Ezra dynamic back into it in such a way that it's almost grosser and definitely more awesome. Ella stands in the way not by being authoritative Pam Fields, or selfish Ashley Marin who would sleep with her daughter's boyfriend/crush, but just by being awesome Ella. I love it.
Hanna takes a break to talk Sean out of freaking out, which does not go well. Apparently they're on dance #5, which means at worst she'll come out of this with a grand, which is not chump change. She's like, "Lucas is finally dancing instead of just swaying, I have to keep this shit going," and Sean is like, "You are on a date with Lucas." Which is true. Hanna, as usual, comes prepared: "This is a marathon, not a sprint. There'll be plenty of dances for us!"