Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT How We Quit the Forest
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 19 | Aired on 02.28.2011
Emily: "If you love him, you should tell him about how we blew up that girl that time. If you trust him, I trust him. The Emily Fields Savings & Trust is insured by the FDIC to the amount of infinity."
Aria: "Life really is this simple for you, isn't it?"
Emily: "Let me show you pictures of the cat I bought last night and you tell me."
Spencer and Toby wake up, and he is just a kitten in the mornings, but the sweetness is undercut by the smoky coffee taste of Creepy Flautist next door. They throw on no clothes whatsoever and run to 214, where Jenna's self-pressed CD of creepy flute music, Songs in the Key of 1,000 Corpses is playing all by itself. On the bed is the mysterious shopping bag, once empty and now containing a visual pun: Ice from the ice machine and a note from A that says, "Getting colder!" or some such. Even Spencer is like, "What the fuck was the point of this whole thing?" Toby wonders who A is, and Spencer tells him to forget it.
Paige and Emily on their picinic, listening to Passion Pit and getting their dream-date hand-holding on. Emily suggests they go see the band in Philly next month, and Paige says that she can't do that, or anything else, because if she gets outed the world will end, because being gay is gross. Emily begs her pardon and breaks up with her immediately, because nobody can walk you backwards into shame without your permission. Paige is bummed, but at least you don't hear that ice-tinkle sound of her going even crazier. Well done, Fields. As usual.
Aria shows up at Ezra's house and says the most comforting thing: "I don't want to tell you something, but I'm going to, and then you will hate me." Ezra assures her this is not the case, but privately wonders whether he might end up hating her, despite the fact that she has just insured that he can't without proving her right. The only thing I hate more than "we have to talk" is "don't be mad": Either way, you're setting the stage in a way that removes any and all options for the other person. Their eyes water aggressively at each other. Aria is an emotional blackmailer.
Ashley Marin: (Shitting it because Hanna's still not home.)
Hanna: "I'm home, bitch."
Ashley: "Did you enjoy your night of being homeless with a werewolf?"
Hanna: "Actually we went camping, to make my irrational behavior even more of an adventure. I finally earned my badges for Campfires, Stag-Killing, Tent-Erecting and Berry-Foraging. Also for Fucking."
Ashley: "Well, I'm glad you're home."
Hanna: "Are you kidding me? I live in the forest now."
Hanna: "Allow me to draw a spurious parallel between Caleb's situation as an abused foster-child werewolf, and your situation as a cop-screwing old-lady mugger. At least that old lady had the decency to drop dead, can't you at least give him the guestroom?"
Ashley: "That makes very little sense, but the tree does not fall far from the apple, and so I will take it into consideration."
Caleb: (Calls Hanna's phone a split second after Hanna's in the shower.)
Ashley: "Hanna's phone. Your Doom speaking."
Toby and Spencer revisit their Scrabble brain-sex and talk about how their homes are both violently inappropriate right now: Toby's because he is alone with Darkness Incarnate, and Spencer because she can't stop ruining her sister's marriage no matter how hard they try to get her to cut it out. Suddenly, they kiss and it's lovely, and Toby manages to be somewhat smooth, which is even more welcome. Emily was like Dumbo's feather, and now he can fly without it. "Fly," in this case, meaning "act normal for a hot minute."
Turns out Ashley did not summon Caleb to the house in order to gut him like a fish over Hanna's campfire, but in fact to feed him food and give him hell -- "Help yourself to a soda, like you've been doing" -- and then abruptly ask him to come live with them, legit-style. Because she identifies with him, a little, but mostly because she knows she's in danger of losing Hanna. Which means that it's so important to Hanna that she's being a better parent by showing she trusts Hanna's judgment than by forbidding (anything, for the first time in Hanna's life).
It is a very sweet scene; so sweet, in fact, that Ashley's numerous death threats should anything go wrong are more than discounted by the sunny, grateful, honest smile and understanding that Caleb shoots back.
Alternately: It is a very sweet scene, which means a station wagon is about to hop a curb and drive onto the Marin lawn and through their living room and into the kitchen and this car will be driven by Fake Nephew with Ian riding shotgun and the house will explode all around them and A can be like, "Hanna, you still have not suffered enough. I have made a savory pimiento loaf out of the burnt-up charred bits of your mother and boyfriend, with a tomato-based gravy containing your tears. You will eat the entire batch in front of the football team, while your father, his business associates and the school counselor are treated to the video I made of you having sex in the forest last night."
Ezra: "Aria, the fact that you blinded a sexually warped young girl, having set her on fire, only makes me love you more."
Ashley: "Caleb, now that we've adopted you, you can call me by my first name. Mrs. Marin makes me feel so old! You don't think I'm old, do you? Does this ass look old to you? Can I get you a beer?"
Caleb: "Goodnight, Mrs. Ashley."
Ashley: "I'm not like a regular mom, I'm a cool mom!"
Caleb: "I got a good thing going on here. Mysterious Interlocutor, I can no longer play this long con on the Marins. They are too awesome. And permissive.
M.I.: "So all that work we did getting you thrown out of foster care and living in the school and getting discovered by the girls and then getting thrown out of the school and then living in the basement and then living in the forest and now living in the guest room -- all of which, apparently, I was able to predict -- was for naught?"
The cops arrive at Spencer's house due to her totally telling Garrett that she lied to the cops and had means, motive and opportunity to frame Ian for whatever. Her parents are just about dunzo at this point. Melissa -- and people are not believing this, but I do believe this -- explains that the big lie about being in Hilton Head was not because of Alison (whom Ian described as being a creepy stalker that summer) but because he and Melissa were pregnant and about to get an abortion -- for which they needed to drive to an island off South Carolina?! -- but then she miscarried like always happens on TV. Mom's just like, "Spencer, you are going totally SVU on us. You are on a drug called Charlie Sheen."
On the way out to the cop car, Spencer texts the Liars a quick SOS, and since everybody lives next door to everybody else on this show, the girls instantly come running out of the woods to wonder why this is all happening. A texts everybody: Breaking news, bitches! Spencer Hastings is now a Person Of Interest... IN MY MURDER!
Everybody reads the text aloud and shivers and shakes and then boom: Creeper tag, in which A is playing their reading aloud of her message over and over again, fully with a bowl of popcorn at her side.
The things this show thinks it can get away with are equal only to the fact that it always, always can.
Next week: All manner of hell breaks loose. Three episodes left before the long cold season of no PLL for awhile.