Pretty Little Liars: Through a Glass Darkly

January 7, 2015 5:56 AM - Season 5, Episode 14

Three months after Mona's death, the girls try to get Allison arrested for her murder. Aria enlists Ezra to get Mike to talk about his feelings. Paige and Emily face a crossroads in their relationship.

Recap
Three months after Mona's murder, and the police are nowhere close to arresting Alison. Spencer and Emily attempt to frame her by placing her hair at the crime scene, but in the process discover cameras that filmed the murder. After being showed the tape, Jason recants himself as Alison's alibi. She is arrested. Meanwhile, Aria enlists Ezra's help to get Mike to open up about his feelings surrounding Mona's death. When all her college applications are rejected, she enlists Caleb's help to hack into the colleges' databases to see if the reason she was rejected was because of her or A. Emily struggles with the fact that Paige is leaving Rosewood, and attempts to get Paige to stay after Alison is arrested, but Paige leaves anyway. The police connect the death of Bethany Young with Mona's and the district attorney drops the charges against Spencer. Hanna helps Mona's mother out in any way she can, while they both grieve over Mona.

On-Screen Hash Tags
#PLLCoverUp
#MonaCam
#PLLFireworks

posted by Bulgaroktonos (6 comments total)

GOD Ezra should not have tried to talk to Mike about his feelings. How unbelievably inappropriate! If I were in high school and the teacher who'd been sleeping with my sister who was also in high school tried to initiate a man-to-man talk with me I think violence would be involved. How unbelievably presumptuous! It's not your place you skeevy pervert.

I was also super relieved that they threw in that bit about how the camera batteries have been run down for months so we know they didn't record Spencer and Emily coming to plant evidence, just the latest in a long list of terrible plans. I was afraid they were going to keep the "Spencer's under suspicion" plotline going for the whole season and I'm really glad they didn't; I wasn't enjoying it and it made me unhappy.

Two amazing Twitter theories I saw when perusing #PLL:

1) Bethany and Allison are twins and the reason Allison didn't remember the ski trip the same way Jason did is because she wasn't there, it was Bethany.

2) Paige left Rosewood because she has something to hide or did something wrong or bad, LIKE BEING A.

God I am so unbelievably glad this show is back.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:08 AM on January 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ezra's man to man with Mike was hilariously terrible. It's like the show has entirely forgotten that Aria is an underage student he's sleeping with, everyone's just cool with it now. To be fair, they are never in school so it makes more sense.

I'm glad to see Ali in jail, because it's moving the plot forward and keeping it from getting trapped in a half season long struggle of them trying to pin stuff on Ali which seemed very possible. That said, Liars has one move and one move only, which is to SHOCKING TWIST, so there's no chance she did it. My money is on CeCe Drake, but my money is always on CeCe Drake because I kind of hate her.

Obviously, the best and most important part of any Liars episode is the ominous messages from A. It's possible nothing will ever top "Merry Christmas, Bitches" from the end of the Christmas special, but the fireworks were close. You knew they were going to do it, but it still delivered. A+, great ominous message.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 10:51 AM on January 7, 2015

That said, Liars has one move and one move only, which is to SHOCKING TWIST, so there's no chance she did it. My money is on CeCe Drake, but my money is always on CeCe Drake because I kind of hate her.

What if the SHOCKING TWIST is that Alison's sister isn't Bethany, it's CeCe? Or that Alison is actually CeCe Drake and Bethany and CeCe are actually the DiLaurentis twins? Or that Jason IS Spencer's half brother but Spencer is actually Alison and Alison is actually a sentient frog?
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:06 AM on January 7, 2015

Actually though no one has done any DNA tests on this shit, right, so it is possible that Bethany wasn't actually Alison's sister, we're all just assuming, and I try to keep one twist ahead of everything so I was all over believing Bethany was Alison's sister until the reveal and now I assume that's a damn lie, just like how now I've stopped believing Alison is A. I'm also afraid that it's going to turn out she's not A and all will be forgiven and we'll conveniently whitewash that she was a terrible friend and a bad person. Not me! Alison DiLaurentis is a bad person NEVER FORGET.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:08 AM on January 7, 2015

I do fear that some of the overarching message of Alison being just the absolute worst human being ever will be lost now that she's Sad Allie in Jail. It is important not to forget that she is terrible; she's like a gaslighting elemental taken form to walk the Earth and be a shitty friend.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:44 PM on January 7, 2015

I am very fond of the phrase "she's like a gaslighting elemental taken form to walk the Earth and be a shitty friend" because it is super true, although I also think it's more than that; she tells people to be ashamed of perfectly natural impulses (e.g. Spencer being attracted to that guy) or tells them to do things of which she knows they'll feel ashamed (e.g. Hannah's bulimia). It's gaslighting, but there's also just straight-up manipulating people and using shame as a weapon. She is really, really terrible -- as if teenage girls don't feel enough shame anyway. Jesus.

Also, I am super pleased with the inclusion of the on-screen hashtags as an official element of the post. It delights me. Well done.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 1:52 PM on January 7, 2015