Friday, July 8, 2011

Pretty Little Liars 2x04: "The Not So Lucky Horseshoe"

Last week my older sister told me that she’s scared to watch Pretty Little Liars  alone. I made fun of her and said she was ridiculous; the show is not THAT scary. This week, I had to eat my words as I hid my head under my blanket in fear of A.

Other Side of Town: The Liars travel to the other side of the tracks to buy back Melissa’s pawned engagement ring. While Spencer goes inside to deal with the pawn broker, the other girls stand in the creepy dumpy back alley, where the pawn show resides. For the occasion, Aria has decided to dress up in her ghetto attire. She replaced the bird in her hair with a bandana, put some big ass hoop earrings in her ears and sported a lime green jacket.



Inside the shop, Spencer hands the pawnbroker her pawn ticket. Instead of telling Spencer he already sold the ring, he hands Spencer a rusty old horseshoe. Spencer gets huffy and puffy, but before she can blow the house down the pawnbroker kicks her out. Just as the girls get a text from A, Emily looks up to a billboard that reads “Somebody’s Watching You So Look Your Best.” It is an ad for an ophthalmologist so there are also glasses on the billboard. CREEPY CREEPY CREEPY!



Teacher in the House:  Ella gives Aria the heads up that downstairs there are double berry pancakes with a big A on them. A for Aria. (Does double berry mean 2x the blueberry or two TYPES of berries? You need to explain these things better Ella!) Ella also gives Aria the heads up that she is taking over Ezra’s English class as of today. Aria is shocked because, now, staring into her gorgeous English teacher’s beautiful eye would just be gross and creepy. 

As the liars walk down the halls of Rosewood High, Ms. Ella Montgomery's head pops out from a classroom. Aria stays to have a chat with her mom and the other girls quickly scatter. She thinks her mom wants feedback on how the English class went so Aria just goes “Yeah your handwriting is god awful. Not even close to as good as Ez I mean Mr. Fitz. Everything about him was beautiful.” Turns out Mike left his keys and home and Ella just wanted Aria to give them to him. Ella adds at the end “Now that you mention it, the “no seeing your friends thing” should apply to school as well.” So let me just get this straight. Not Acceptable: Talking to your friends at school or on the phone. Acceptable: Fooling around with your teacher and meeting up in random greenhouses in the middle of the night.

Hanna’s Dilemma: In yet another “coffee and kitchen discussions” Ashley informs Hanna that she needs to see Dr. Anne for a solo session. Hanna just goes “Can’t we just watch Intervention and call it a day” which is just awesome. Ashley contemplates this offer for a second until she realizes she will look like a bad mother if Hanna does not see the therapist.

Hanna spends the first half of her therapy session staring at Dr. Anne’s boots and the second half staring at the clock. Dr. Anne drops the sage wisdom of “Allison is still here for you isn’t she.” I will echo Hanna in saying “Dr. Anne you don’t even know the half of it.” She then asks Hanna to have a conversation with  Allison through an empty chair. Hanna stares at the chair for a few seconds and then peaces out.

Hanna runs into Lucas, wallowing in self pity, in the school courtyard. At first Lucas wants to call off his date with Danielle because he is scared and awkward. Then he comes up with a Marin worthy scheme. Since Hanna got him into this date mess, she is going to help him out of it. How is she going to help her out? She is going to bring Caleb (aka Lucas’s bro-mate aka Hanna's ex) and make the date a double date!

Danby: Over at the casa de Fields, Pam finds a package full of Danby swag on her doorstep. She runs it up to Emily’s room as any proud mother would, thinking that it’s from the scout. Inside Emily finds a note that reads “So happy to have you on our A-team.” If the A- team means the gay team, I totally agree! 


At Emily’s swim meet, Samara is also happy to have Emily on her A-Team. She also tells Emily that Pam blabbed to every spectator that Emily is going to Danby. Emily gets very upset because she doesn’t want to be living a lie anymore. She tells Samara about the fake Danby letter (leaving all the A parts out) when all of sudden Pam appears. Emily introduces Pam to Samara and in less than a split second, Pam invites Samara over for dinner. Yay!

Wren is Back: Spencer struts into a hospital to talk to Dr. Wren, but he happens to be talking to a nurse about work. Spencer starts off polite and turns to the nurse saying “I am sorry, this is kinda important. Could you um…” The nurse just stares at her blankly and Spencer loses all of her patience. She continues with “Could you um…kinda not be here.” It was awesome. When the oblivious nurse finally gets the hint, Spencer discovers that Ian is hiding somewhere outside of Rosewood and he needs meds and supplies. Wren asks Spencer not to get involved because it is too dangerous. That is like asking Curious George not to be curious!

When Curious Spencer arrives home her parents are gone, so she sneaks into Melissa’s barn where she finds a suitcase. Curious Spencer stares at the suitcase. “What could be in the suitcase?” Curious Spencer asked to herself. Curious Spencer looked to her left and then right, to make sure she would not get in trouble, and then quietly unzipped the suitcase. Curious Spencer screamed in fear when inside she saw a suitcase full of grenades. Nope, sorry, wrong show. Inside the suitcase were some clothes, men’s shaving cream, pills and Ian’s passport. (And yes, Ian’s headshot is amazing.)




Creepy Mike and Jason: There is a long montage of shirtless men playing pickup basketball. There was a full 25 seconds of men shooting, dribbling and passing a basketball with no dialogue; I timed it. Finally, Aria arrives to the b-ball court where lil Mike is nowhere to be found. Apparently he has not been showing up there for months. Jason, on the other hand, happens to be participating in this shirtless game of pickup.  He tells Aria that he used to think she was totally cool with her rad pink highlights in her hair. I think that was him attempting to hit on her, but I am still not sure.  Either way, if Aria leaves Ezra for Jason I will be outraged. Jason isn’t even that cute! I may be just as outraged if Aria dyes her hair pink again.
                         
Later that night Aria is home alone and hears a door slam. She goes out to investigate and Mike jumps out from the shadows screaming boo. Aria confronts Mike about not playing pickup anymore and demands to know where he was. When he refuses, she threatens to tell ma and pop and Mike’s mysterious outings. Mike is just like “hold on there big sis. You really don’t want to do that. I am pretty sure you don’t want the rents to know you are sneaking out to see the other Liars in greenhouses. Also I will probably figure out you’re sleeping with your teacher, and that you would really want me to keep to myself. ”

The Dates: The double date is in full blast over at the Marin residence. Lucas and Danielle are sitting out on the patio while Hanna and Caleb stare at them from afar. Lucas is twiddling his thumbs thinking the date is going great, but Danielle doesn’t agree. She admits to Lucas that she is jealous of Hanna. First of all, Danielle, get on line. Second of all, the idea of Hanna bringing Caleb just to make Lucas jealous is hilarious. Lucas informs Hanna and Caleb about the situation as he starts humming “nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go eat worms.”  Hanna goes into hardcore brainstorming mode and realizes the only way to get Lucas laid is to cuddle up with Caleb. It works and gets Danielle all riled up for the read of the date.

Over at Emily’s, the celebration of three has become a celebration of two, on Emily’s bed. Emily and Samara are looking at baby pictures and cuddling up with each other.


Pam comes to check on the girls and Samara commends Pam on her awesome scrapbooking skills. Turns out, Sam is a hardcore scrapbooker, which makes her even more of a catch.  Pam then brings up how she wants to make a Danby/Rosewood scrapbook and Emily should go visit Danby with the scout. Just as Emily is about to confess her sins, Samara comes in for the win and tells Pam that “Emily needs to keep her options open. A lot of schools will be interested in her and checking her out. I mean, for her athletic abilities of course. Also wait until senior year. That is where the real action starts--- um in terms of recruiting obviously.”

Hanna’s Breakthrough: Also the next morning, Lucas thanks Hanna for helping him out the previous night with Danielle. He tells her that she truly has evolved from that heartless drone who used to follow Allison around. This struck a chord in Hanna and she headed straight to therapy.

Dr. Anne is shocked to see Hanna because 1) She didn’t have an appointment and 2) last session was so successful. Hanna tells Dr. Anne that even though Allison made her do horrible things in order to stay friends, it used to be worth it because Allison made her feel special. Dr. Anne convinces Hanna to talk to the empty chair as though it is Allison and this time Hanna pulls through. After telling “Allison” that she no longer needs her Dr. Anne asks how Allison would respond to those comments. All of a sudden, the empty chair is facing the back wall and, as it slowly turns toward Hanna, the “real” Allison is in it.


I am still a bit confused about this scene. There are three possibilities of what could have happened. The first is that all of the dialogue happened inside Hanna’s head, and she was just staring at the chair thinking about it; the second  is that Hanna spoke her dialogue out loud, while Allison’s was in Hanna’s head; the third is she said both her and Allison’s lines out loud for the therapist to hear. Either which way, the conversation with Allison was intense.  Allison tells her that Hanna is nothing without her and her friends will soon forget her; she is the only person that can make Hanna happy. Hanna fires back with “At least I will be alive.” That is the Hanna we know and love.

Dr. Anne is very impressed by Hanna’s progress in therapy. I am as well. It takes a lot of courage to face your demons head on like Hanna did. Dr. Anne is not very impressed when she discovers someone broke into her office. Not only did they break in but they ransacked the entire place; they threw the desk upside down, and cut the cushions of the couch. In case the destruction of her office did send a strong enough message, A wrote across the wall “Nosey Bitches Die.”



When the cops come, they inform Dr. Anne that there was no forces entry, whoever broke in had a key or was an amazing lock picker. Poor Dr. Anne, you have no idea what you are getting yourself into. 

The Shrieking Shack: Spencer sends out her bat signal and the Liars apparate into Spencer’s Toyota. Emily fulfills her one dumbass question quota of the day by asking if they should call Garrett for backup. In unison the three shout out “Of course not Emily, you dumbass.” They follow Melissa and Wren out to the shrieking shack in the middle of the woods. Aria has 911 on speed dial, but Hanna informs the group that her cell phone is only picking up one bar. I hope that Verizon Wireless is not sponsoring this show, or that may look bad for their reputation.

All of a sudden they hear Melissa shriek from within the shack. The girls rush inside to make sure everything is okay, but it is not. Ian is lying against the wall, with a gun in his hand, dead. There is a “suicide note” beside him. The camera pans up and we see that a horseshoe, just like the one Spencer got from the pawn shop, is missing from the wall.

Outside by the cars, a black gloved person drops Melissa’s cell phone into Spencer’s bag.

Like I said in the beginning of the recap, this show is getting darker and scarier by the week. Do you guys agree? Where you scared? Let me know.

APB 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i was bit creeped out when allison turned around in the chair. she is such an awful person. i really have no idea how she had any friends. i think it was scenario 2

Singer_Anastasia Nikole said...

when the girls are in the alleyway the poster kinda reminds me off The Great Gatsby.. with the eyes

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