Eye Spy – A Recap of Pretty Little Liars’ “Kingdom of the Blind”

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I made the mistake of telling Mona that my PLL recap was going to be late again this week.  She didn’t take it well . . . 

Que Pasa, My Pretties!  Wow, with one character faking blind, another faking pregnant, a third possibly faking crazy, and a fourth faking her student’s good grades, who would have thought that the PLL Girls would end up being the most honest characters on the show?

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This week on PLL, quite a few supporting characters found their lives caught in an ever-growing web of Big Fat Fibs.

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Also, Lucas became a Pyro, and Mona continued her new weekly trend of doing completely random things, by singing, temper tantruming (Is tantruming even a verb?), and playing solitaire, all in the same episode!

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That Rosewood . . . it sure is a wild and wacky place.  Let’s review, shall we?

In which Lucas and Caleb Swap Personalities . . .

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So, remember back when Lucas was still “nerdily delicious?”

Ahhh .  . . those were the good old days.  And while, I must admit the peach fuzz he started sporting on his face, ever since the day the writers decided he was “BAAAAAD” is kind of hot (in a dirty way) . . .

. . .  I miss my adorkable stud muffin .  . . A LOT.

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But I digress . . . the episode begins with Lucas getting reamed out by his principal, for having a BAAAD attitude, and getting BAAAAAD grades.

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 Here’s hoping he merely has a bad case of Senioritus, because he already got into Yale or something.  And yet, somehow I doubt it . . .  A very concerned Hanna rushes to comfort the dude she once voluntarily pushed out of a boat.

Lucas responds by burning a letter to his parents, and allowing the “flaming missive” to set fire to a random classroom trashcan.  (That’s right, Lucas!  You show that trashcan who’s boss!)

Martyr Hanna rushes toward the flames to rescue the letter.  And Caleb — the guy who used to sleep in the school library, get lots of detention, and steal everyone’s cell phone, in turn — rushes to rescue Hanna.  It’s one big happy rescuing family . . .

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Apparently,  Caleb stopped hanging out with Lucas . . .

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. . . around the same time Lucas started slinking around the streets of Rosewood at 4 a.m., like a homeless person.

This, coincidentally was also around the same time that Caleb stopped BEING an actual homeless person, because he got a rich mom he never knew he had.

Am I the only one noticing a pattern here?  These two just totally did a personality swap . . .  kind of like in that movie where Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman pee, in the fountain and subsequently switch bodies . . .

Now, Caleb,  a.k.a. the guy who started dating Hanna, because Formerly Blind Jenna paid him to do it, is the one lecturing her about honesty, and fearly protecting her from creepers like Crazy Mona.

And Lucas is the one HANGING out with the creepers, making vaguely threatening statements to everyone he encounters, and trying to convince Hanna not to be so gosh darn naive.

Oh . . . did I mention Lucas also VISITS crazy Mona at the loony bin . . . the same girl who, in the not so distant past,  bullied him almost as aggressively as Alison, herself, did?

The plot . . . it thickens . . .

Speaking of good girls and boys going bad . . .

In which Mama Montgomery gets herself into deep doo doo . . .

So, last week we watched Mama Montgomery help an unwitting Emily cheat on a test, by taking it for her.  This week, Emily becomes convinced that “A” helped her cheat on the test, and spends most of the episode, whining to everyone who will listen that she should have gotten a lower grade.

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As my brilliant friend sassyfran so cleverly noted, Emily should really consider SHUTTING UP.

We don’t get much for free in this world.  And when life hands you a 94%, proverbial or actual, you TAKE IT, say thank you, and then run away, before anyone realizes you don’t really deserve it . . .

But this story really isn’t about Emily, for a change.  It’s about Mama Montgomery, who’s being brought before the principal on suspicion of cheating, and Fitzy, who knows ALL ABOUT wanting to provide a little extra pleasure to students in his English class . . . if you catch my drift.

In the end, Fitzy comes to Ella’s aid, saving her from having to confess to her crimes, and possibly losing her job.

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When Ella asks Fitzy why he did what he did, he tells her “because I rather enjoy f*&king your daughter, and wish to consider doing so for the forseeable future” “a long time ago, we used to be friends” . . .

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 . . .  which, of course, distracts me from the rest of the episode, because I can’t stop thinking about (and singing) this . .  .

Damn you, Fitzy, and your catchy theme song phrases!

Speaking of teenage girl super sleuths . . .

In which we wonder why anyone would want to go through the trouble of faking preggers for multiple months . . .

Spencer gets to make her trademark Spencer Face plenty this week, when she catches BOTH her mom and her aggressively unlikeable,  crazy pants’ sister in a MASSIVE lying game.

It all starts with Mama Hastings admitting to her daughter’s that she has agreed to represent Police Boy Garrett, the very same possible double murderer that she FORBID Spencer to visit in jailing just two weeks prior.

B*tch Sister Melissa, who’s been looking remarkably baby bump free, of late,  seems surprisingly cool with the idea, which leads Spencer to suspect foul play.

Apparently, Melissa’s been mightly chilly with Spencer, ever since the summer, when she supposedly had a miscarriage out of town, and Spencer wasn’t there to support her in her “hour of need.”

You must be wondering why I put “hour of need” in quotes.  After all, losing a baby is AWFUL . . . right?  At least, I assume it’s awful . . . I never actually lost one . . . or found one for that matter.

Except,  as Spencer finds out later, Melissa didn’t lose her baby this summer, she lost WAAYYYY earlier than that, possibly back in Season 1, after that car accident.  This pretty much means girlfriend’s been waltzing around with a pillow up her shirt for MONTHS.  And Spencer’s mom’s been keeping that secret for at least half that time.

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The question is why?  And what the eff does it have to do with Police Boy Garrett, who Melissa claims is the only boy who never lied to her, despite all those times he lied to Spencer . . . the cops . . . and everyone else on this show.

Could Police Boy have been the real father of Melissa’s baby?  Had she carried it to term, would it have come out looking like this?

Or this . . .

We may never know . . .

In which Not So Blind Jenna gets busted . . . FINALLY . . .

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Last week, I cheered on the PLL girls, when they decided to use their recently acquired knowledge of Blind Jenna’s not-so-blindness as leverage against her and the so-called “A” team.

So, of course, I was thrilled to see Aria going undercover as Blind Jenna’s Band Geek friend, and super excited, when the littlest PLL found the handwritten note, instructing Jenna to go to “H.Cobb at 4:15” and bring “earplugs.”

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It all started out great, with the girls tailing Jenna, as she went from cab to car, and ended up at a SHOOTING RANGE.  You know, because Blind People have SUCH great aim.

(Note: If you recall, last week the “A” team was picking up some guns and Ammo.  This might be one of the reasons why.)

And while it was wholly satisfying to watch Hanna corner Blind Jenna, as she DROVE HER CAR away from the shooting range, I have to say, I was a bit disappointed that the girls never ACTUALLY played the A game, by blackmailing Jenna into giving them intel about “A” like they initially planned.

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Hanna TOTALLY jumped the gun here.

And that speech Blind Jenna gave, about faking blind to PROTECT herself from “A?”

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  If you believe that, than allow me to let you in on a secret, I’ve only been pretending to be an anonymous girl blogger.  I’m actually Ian Somerhalder, star of The Vampire Diaries . . .

Riiiight . . .

In which Mona entertains everyone, but especially herself . . .

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But if I had to pick an MVP of this episode, it would absolutely be Mona.  Seriously, how entertaining is this Looney Tune?

You just never know what you’re going to get with her.  One minute she’s the clingy outcast . . .

. . . the next minute she’s Queen B . . . Then, all the sudden she’s a homicidal sociopath, with super human strength.  Two episodes later she’s a drooling invalid, who cuts herself with tweezers, in moments of “clarity.”

Now, she’s the Belle of the Crazy Ball, regaling all the other nut jobs with beauty tips she learned in magazines . . .

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 . . . gossiping with Hanna, having secret meetings with BAAAD Lucas, and teaching Caleb how to play solitaire, while giving him makeout advice . . .

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But wait, by the end of the episode, she’s changed again.  Now, she’s a RAVING LUNATIC . . . a secret American Idol candidate . . . and a hoarder of playing cards?

Maybe next week, SHE’LL be Ian Somerhalder . . . (Now THAT’S a Mona I’d like to see . . .)

In which A drinks coffin vodka .  . . EWWW!

Ahhh, we’ve the final scene of the episode .  . . the “A” team moment.  We pan out on a floor filled with “A” paraphenalia.  There are teeth, twine, and letter blocks, like the ones “A” used to make that gross necklace Emily got last week.

Ever the lush, “A” chugs down an already open bottle of vodka, and returns it to its natural resting place . . . an ice box . . . with Ali’s body (presumably) inside.

Mmmmm . . . nothing like a little dead corpse flavor to go with your mixed drink.

I’m thinking one of the PLL girls (probably Hanna . . . that lush!) . . .

. . . put the bottle in Ali’s coffin as a “keepsake” of some sort . . . just as Aria had put in that ugly pair of earrings.

But still, did “A” really have to drink it?  That’s just gross . . .

Until next time, my Pretties!

[www.juliekushner.com][Fangirls Forever]

Managing Expect-A-tions – A Review of Pretty Little Liar’s Season 2 Finale “UnmAsked”

[Brief note: This post is simply a “review of” and “reaction to” “UnmAsked.”  A full recap will follow . . . eventually. :)]

Strait jackets .  . . all the cool psychopaths are wearing them . . . 

Greetings, my Pretties!  This week, PLL wrapped up its sophomore season with a season finale that was arguably as polarizing as “A” herself.  Thousands of frustrated fans flooded the message boards, Twitter, and YouTube to express their discontent with the way the season concluded.

Meanwhile, others rushed to defend the controversial choices made by the writers and producers.

The source of this controversy, of course, was the identity of “A” . . . the technologically savvy, ridiculously snarky, and seemingly omniscient super villain, who had been torturing the titular Pretty Little Liars, since the pilot episode.

And while I suspect a large number of fans were surprised by the reveal, it wasn’t necessarily for the reasons the writers intended . . .

Truth be told, this was far from the first time a television series that had been based on a book series chose to remain faithful to some of those novels’ main plot points.  Many television shows have successfully done this, without provoking the inevitable ire of the fandom.  Back in 2008, True Blood was applauded for its faithfulness to the murder mystery storyline that comprised the first book of the Sookie Stackhouse book series (serial killer included).

A season later, they were applauded again for creatively diverting from those same books, in order to save the life of a beloved character, who notoriously met his demise on the first few pages of the series’ second novel.

More recently, in 2011, the producers of Game of Thrones received critical acclaim for their almost slavish loyalty to the book series on which it was based.  Critics particularly appreciated the show’s courageous decapitation of the show’s main character, a moral and mostly likeable protagonist, who also happened to be played by a rather well-known and popular actor.

So what made PLL the high school outcast of this group?

The difference in this situation, I think, was that the producers, writers, and cast of PLL failed to properly manage expectations regarding what viewers could expect to see in the season’s final episode.  In what was undoubtedly an attempt at last-minute damage control, Pretty Little Liars showrunner, Marlene King, assured fans that she had never explicitly told fans that the identity of “A” would be different from who it was in the books.  And yet, when countless articles, and press releases, like THIS ONE, and THIS ONE posited this very theory as stemming directly from King, herself, she never exactly disabused fans of this notion, either.

So, when Mona van der Waal acted so RIDICULOUSLY guilty, throughout the show’s second season, that she all but wore a neon sign on her back that said, “I AM A,” recappers and reviewers, like myself, pointedly avoided listing her as our main suspect, simply because we took for granted the fact that the writers weren’t going to go there.

 

So, when they did, in fact, go there, we couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed and betrayed.

And that’s a shame, because it undermined the integrity of what was, by many other respects, a pretty solid finale episode.

Truth be told, of all the possible “A” suspects — with the exception of, perhaps, Not-so-Blind Jenna, and maybe Lucas — Mona had the best motive to be “A.”  After all, she had been shamelessly tortured by Ali throughout most of high school, while the rest of the PLL girls stood idly by, and let it happen.

To make matters worse, Hanna, Mona’s self-proclaimed “one true friend,” has been noticeably distant from Mona, throughout the series, consistently ditching her to engage in “A-Sleuthing” with the rest of the liars . . . (of course, it could be argued that Hanna’s recent absence from her life was actually MONA’S fault).

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And yet, I would have liked to see the producers push the boundaries a bit, by not necessarily going with the most obvious choice for “A.”

We’ve seen the writers take chances like this, earlier in the series, in a number of ways: by introducing new characters, who weren’t in the books, choosing not to kill characters who died in the books, and, in one particular instance, killing a character who DID survive the series.  So, why not do it again, in this instance, by changing the identity of “A” to someone unexpected . . . someone who seemed a bit less . . . for lack of a better term . . . shady?

Or, conversely, I would have liked for the writers to simply be honest about the direction in which the story was headed, by saying something like this: “There are some aspects of the television series that pay homage to the books.  But even faithful book readers will find some surprises in store for them in the season finale.”

This, at least, is a true, and non-misleading, statement.  After all, the finale DID have some surprises contained within it, even for fans of the book series . . .

Unlike a lot of other series’ season finales, which tend to be slow-moving and uneventful, until the last ten minutes of the episode, “UnmAsked” definitely FELT like a season finale.  The episode moved a long at a brisk pace, throughout the hour.

And the genuinely creepy locales where the drama unfolded . . .  for example, the Psycho-inspired motel (complete with its very own Norman Bates, lookalike) and accompanying Shower Scene . . .

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 . . .  the Masquerade Ball filled with strangers and unsavory looking characters . . .

. . .  the abandoned road on a dark and stormy night, A’s “Lair” which looked like it would have been right at home in the first hour of any episode of Law and Order, SVU . . .

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 . . . only added to the building excitement, and unshakeable feeling of impending doom.

I was also really impressed with the acting in this episode.  As the unhinged Mona, Janel Parrish was just the right mix of campy crazy, unintentionally hilarious, and genuinely terrifying.

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Hanna’s shock and sadness at learning her so-called bestie was a total wackadoodle, who HIT HER WITH A CAR, felt real to me.

Shay Mitchell’s Emily literally had me in tears, during the episodes heartbreaking final moments . . . And this is coming from someone who was never a Maya fan.

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(I also adored the parallel between the pilot episode’s Body Discovery, and this one.  That background song they played during both, will haunt me for the rest of my days . . .)

And who could forget the unbeatable Team Sparia, who provided the episode’s only evidence of comic relief . . . not to mention a nice nod to a certain segment of the fandom?

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Speaking of ships,  fans of Ezria . . .

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Spoby . . .

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  . . . and Haleb . . .

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 . . .  all had something to cheer about, when the aforementioned couples each received their respective Happily Ever Afters Nows, this week.

Of course, I still wanted my Wren to make an appearance . . . (Damn you, writers!  DAMN YOU!)

And while the episode did answer some of the major questions plaguing fans throughout the series, it also presented us with plenty of new ones to get us excited for the upcoming third season (which is set to premiere this summer).  Here are just some of the questions that were swimming around my head, after “UnmAsked” concluded:

(1) Who exactly is on the A Team?

Was Mona REALLY it’s leader?

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 (And why didn’t Spencer “join it,” when she was given the chance?  I mean, wouldn’t that have been the perfect way to keep your ENEMIES CLOSER?)

(2) Which mysterious female dressed as The Black Swan at the Masquerade Ball?

(3) Who was Not-so-Blind Jenna talking to in the park, and what mysterious item did she give her (because it looked much too small to be the Black Swan costume)?  And WHEN DID SHE GET HER DRIVER’S LICENSE?

(4) What the F is the deal between Abs Toby and Dr. Sullivan (a.k.a. as the lame shrink who got scared out of town by an eighty pound high schooler?  Is he her son, or what?  How much did they know about what was going on?  And why was it necessary for Toby to “pretend he didn’t love Spencer?”

(5) Who exactly was the creepy chick with the red dess and gold mask at the Masquerade Ball?

And was she the same creepy chick who visited Mona in the loony bin, at the end of the episode?

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(6) Does Mona’s have Supernatural Powers, which enabled her to BEAT UP Spencer and Emily, on separate occasions, and CARRY SPENCER INTO A CAR?  (Oh and how lame was Dr. Sullivan’s explanation of her PSYCHOSIS?  How exactly does being a psychopath, make you seem omniscient to OTHER PEOPLE?  Where exactly did this b*tch go to shrink school anyway, Dunkin Donuts?)

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(7) Did the flashback featuring Mona and “Ali” dressed as Vivian Darkbloom actually happen?  Did “Ali” really not pick up the phone, when Mona called her, like Mona said?  Or was being “A” the price Mona paid for her so-called popularity?

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(8)Who killed Maya (assuming Maya is actually dead) and why?

(9) And, perhaps, most importantly, “WHERE’S MY WREN?”

So, tell me, my Pretties, what were your thoughts on the Season 2 finale?  Were you disappointed that Mona was “A?”  What are your expectations for next season, in light of some of the cliffhangers / new mysteries introduced here?  Feel free to vent to your heart’s content, in the comment section below.  I’ll see you there!

[www.juliekushner.com][Fangirls Forever]