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!Ella loves it, the bell rings, Hanna has been electrified and radicalized by Spencer's all-encompassing map of the universe and chases Ella down, but Coach snags her and drags her to detention... Where Cyberwolf is already licking his chops. There is a hilariously deadpan product-placement conversation about the upcoming movie about Justin Bieber's life such as it is, so tone-deaf and ridiculous and out of character that you just full-on have to admire it. It's like when your boyfriend "does the dishes" by breaking them into one million pieces so you'll never ask him to do it again.
"Oh, you want us to talk about Bieber this week? You know that our show is about alienation and the inappropriate sex roles into which teenagers have been forced by the neuroses of their Baby Boomer parents, right? And that there is no Justin Bieber in our universe, because he represents the defanged and feminized virgin ideal that would invalidate our whole show... But still, yeah? Because sure! We can talk the fuck about Bieber. The only thing more perverse than our obsessive documentation of modern perversity is the commodification of his Cullenesque male vagina anyway."
"First of all, it's not just a movie, it's his real story. You know what? Just don't talk about the Beebs okay? You don't know the Beebs, you don't understand the Beebs. Or his hair."
Hanna Marin, ladies and gents. She complains about Ella going to Philly and lives being ruined and whatnot, and Cyberwolf is like, "Um, is Mrs. Montgomery running a terrorist cell?" (I wish!) Hanna remembers herself and goes, "Just turn around, Sketchy," in the funniest way, and then suddenly he's excused, because he has emailed the school posing as his social worker, and he runs off to be sketchy someplace else.
Aria is uncomfortably hot right now, knocking on Fitz's door, but then he drives up in a limo, grinning hugely, and they are total dorks and it's sort of bemusing.
Lolita could never be written now, of course, but I've always preferred a reading that sidesteps the second-wave specter of "coercion" -- an admittedly hard interpretation for most to swallow, but supported by the fact that the book's funniest and darkest passages are Humbert's Keystone Kops farcically failed attempts at rape -- by looking at it as the story of two people who get exactly what they want, and why it destroys them.
Dolores is too young to be making these decisions, but in another way so is Humbert, which makes it not a story about pedophiles but a story about us, because that's the dilemma: Everybody's got trapdoors and surprise parties inside, and you want to watch for that; but also, if you wait until you are perfect and he is perfect you will never ever fall in love, because nobody is ever fully grown. Which is a good thing, because if you were perfect you wouldn't need love, because nobody would have anything you needed.