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
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Aria has been up all night -- dressed like if the Hamburglar joined Bananarama -- because that picture of the somebody chasing Alison from That Night was totally taken from Alison's bedroom. So they send Spencer to speak to funny-talking/hot brother Jason DiLaurentis, who gets the photo tested but later admits he could have taken it. He was fucked up that night because that whole year he was doing drugs with Ian, whom btw he and all the other drug guys knew was boning Alison, which is gross on all levels. Spencer figures out at some point during the episode that it's actually herself in the picture -- because of that time she murdered Alison for warning her about Melissa finding out about Ian in a way that seemed like a threat -- but then they see Jason skulking around in Maya/Alison's bedroom and they all scream!
Hanna's stuff this week is amazing. Turns out that old lady is coming back to the bank early, which means Ashley is shitting herself, so A sends Hanna this awesome Mother's Day card and drawn on the front a comic balloon coming out of the mommy's mouth that says, "I NEED MONEY!" which I think just might be the greatest A message of the entire show, it's so fucking beautiful. Well done.
So the deal is that Hanna's supposed to get Ella to figure out her daughter is sleeping with Fitz, by sending her to this out-of-town museum opening that Ezra and Aria are attending as a real-life couple. After Spencer accidentally compares Hanna's A-rrangement to the annexation of Poland, she realizes you shouldn't give into bullies -- for real -- but when she tries to warn Aria off, girlfriend just bushies her eyebrows and calls Hanna a hater some more. All of which gets fixed later; the important thing is that both Aria and Ezra look hotter than the fucking sun on their date.
Thanks to secret helping by Caleb the Cyberwolf, Ella's car breaks down, and she ends up hitching a ride with Estranged Byron and then boning him in the museum parking lot! YES! The cagey way Mom acts and lies about this to Aria the next day just confuses the issue for everybody, but the point is: A was defied. That should turn out well. Oh, and then further irony: Mrs. Potter drops dead minutes before her appointment, so the whole Hanna/Aria throwdown thing was even more of a useless farce than it seemed. Which is nice, because I don't like it when Hanna is sad.
Feeling bad about her memories of killing Alison in the yard that time, or at least yelling at her and being photographed in the yard that time, Spencer spends the episode running around being like twice as Spencery as usual: When Emily gets menaced and gay-bullied by her competition on the swim team, Paige McCullers who wears Selma Blair's old haircut and a shitload of cardigans, Spencer calls a PE coach tribunal that causes Emily to nearly take her head off. Oh, and then Paige tries to drown Emily and it's awesome.
Also, they follow up on the maker of those bracelets they always wear and stare at all the time, and it is Mrs. Garrett rocking some short white hair and support for Geri Jewell's sexuality. She says A bought the bracelets under Spencer's name, so it's a dead end, but then in the creepy tag we find her making tea for A, remarking on her "interesting eyes," and Renfielding around about how she told Spencer the lie she was supposed to. Oooo!
Next week: Running around, screaming, Spencer finally makes an ally of Toby.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Aria would like to know why Hanna's so upset -- is it because Sean dumped her? -- but she's got 99 problems and Sean is not one of them. There's an awkward segue related to relationship issues and Hanna's like, "If you guys are having a tough time, statutorially speaking, maybe you should chill out? Or don't go to Philly, where my sabotage will ruin your whole life."
Aria, of course, to her this is like getting stabbed a little bit in the abdomen, so she makes some very awesome rage faces and pulls yet another "Hanna's jealous" hater card out of the deck and spits in Hanna's eye and pulls her hair and runs away to write a poem about it, eyebrows looking deranged as she goes.
At lunch, Spencer is feeling chatty. She asks after Hanna and Aria's like, "Who gives a shit?" Okay, so she turns to Emily about swimming and she doesn't even look at her, and so finally Spencer's like, "Mama's bored, bitches! Talk about something! Aria, let's talk about your pretend date! Let's get jazzed like when you tried to slip me tongue for the tickets! You were parading around like a circus poodle with a parasol and now this? Come on! What will you wear?" Spencer suggests the red dress, and man is she correct about that, as we'll see. It's so sexy, and so sophisticated that you could almost forget you are a pedophile and think you're having an actual mature relationship.
Spencer's like, "Emily, why the stinkeye lasers?" Oh, because Paige McCullers is giving me shit. Spencer's like, Ugh, we played field hockey together. We named a penalty after her." Heh. And so what happened? Some snarky comment about me being gay. "I will destroy her," Spencer vows, just like that: Like RoboCop's underlying secret programming just kicked in. Target fucking acquired.
But also, that's Spencer's deal today: She has to save everybody, twice as hard as usual, because she is the one in the photograph. So Em tells them not to worry about Paige, it's done, she has to be team player girl, and they go through her swag-bag, about which Emily could not care less because it's tainted with Paige's evil lust. Inside, though, there's one of those bracelets we're always gasping about: "Maybe the store owner could tell us who bought the fake Alison bracelet, or even the Jenna one, and we would know who A is!"
Yeah, probably. Probably it will be that simple.
Ella's lecture on the annexation of Poland is the intersection of many vectors: It's about A, it's about Alison, it's about Paige, all at once. Appeasement would never have worked, because as Spencer puts it -- and you think she's talking in general, or because she is 100% made of war; or because she's constantly trying to find and murder A and solve the problem; or because she is consumed with Paige's destruction or maybe already went to Coach. But the reason is that it's all these things, plus the secret conversation she had with Ali that night, which means this is also one of those "We should totally just stab Caesar!" deals -- "You can't ever give in to a bully, because if you give them everything they ask for, it'll still never be enough. Your only choice is to stand up to them, even if it costs you something."