Pretty Little Liars - TWoP Forums p434

- ninjamitts Loyal Viewer:

I haven't been this in love with an episode in ages! Here's what made me get all flustered with delight:

1. The principal. I definitely hope he comes back. Obvs he is a bad guy, they make that clear at like minute 7 when he ominously glowers at Best Girl in the Universe Emily, "You're no saint, Emily." But

1a. Realizing Emily isn't a saint (not that she's a Secret Bad Girl, or that her niceness isn't real, just that it only extends so deep) is the coolest clever-bad-guy signifier I've seen on one of these shows. Jenna did this too! {~"and everyone thinks you're the nice one"} It's so fun!

1b. If you're an avid watcher, you already knew the principal was a bad guy, because at the beginning of the episode, he talks to two of the moms and their daughters the same way - as though they're children. And it works, better on the moms than on the girls, and you're like, "Man I hate when that happens," until you remember what show you're watching, then you're like, "Did the show suddenly decide to suck or is Something Up??" and sure enough.

2. Noel gives that speech guys give. The one where how mean girls are so much scarier than mean guys because mean girls play games and hold grudges whereas guys just have a fight and it's over. I hate that speech in my bones, because it is the biggest lie boys tell everyone, themselves included. While it's true that girls do tend to engage in overt social stuff more openly, I've seen guys go crazy vicious with the psychological warfare without thinking about it. It comes so naturally to some guys, the casual debasement and smug pecking order stuff, they're still able to convince themselves that they're simple and clean. Nobody's safe from being really just awful simply because of their gender. So I made a face while that speech went down, right, but as soon as it was over, like while I'm still making the face, my girl Hannah steals the conch and is like, "The hell, Noel, you are not only the subtlest beast in the garden, you are also the smarmiest! HANNAH OUT."

3. Godawful Aria and Amazing/Probably Also Awful Holden. (PS I am totally down with Holden now and forever -- this must be how Jacob feels about Noel. Kid could turn out to be the very worst and I would still love him truly.) I love that, while Aria is freaking out about Holden's Dangerous Secret, she's too dumb to realize that her mysterious thing is dangerous too. I love that this show is constantly about showing the viewer how stupid Aria is without telling us, and while still keeping her in some kind of weird but-I'm-the-protagonist limbo. It's amazing, they are the very cleverest of writers.

4. Godawfulness aside, Aria is rockin' at closing ranks. It's like her one function besides being the very worst. When Caleb calls out Jenna and Aria's freaked because that this will draw the wrath of A onto Caleb's beautiful and best-boyfriend-ever head, and then Hannah will be the very saddest beautiful girl in the world, and this show loves Hannah and so do we? Aria makes this face like "WHOA SHIT" and huge-eyes at Caleb for a second, and then she makes a second face like "WELP! OK I guess this is happening," which morphs instantly to a third face: that closed-rank nigh-military blank face with the aggressively crossed arms that clique girls sometimes do. It's not so much any individual expression, it's more in the astonishing fluidity. Like the actress breathes this stuff. <3

Other moments to delight:

-- "What is [that mysterious and ominous ambient noise]?!?!" "It's just the plastic." If I ever start a blog, it will be a PLL blog, and it will be called "It's Never Just the Plastic".

-- For the first time in the history of visual media, someone deciding to explore the Abandoned Dark Rooftop Where No One Ever Comes also remembered to prop the door open.

-- Mona is a one-man mafia. This is how girls get lonely, and how lonely girls get. :)

-- I don't know how young ladies can reasonably decide between Caleb and Holden as TV Boyfriend or Spencer and Hannah as TV Girlfriend. I guess we'll just have to root for everyone?

//fast-talking ~exuberant~ loose but articulate style I like, similar? to twop jacob also maybe more to gabe at videogum//


+ Pretty Little Liars - TWoP Forums p438:
-ninjamitts: So, a conversation topic for long-term PLL watchers, while we putter around waiting for another episode or another recap or whatever: What hooked you on this show? Do you remember? Because when it started, this was a pretty silly show with only hints of the awesomeness to come. For me (besides a few of those delightful little moments that would sneak out from Spencer's actress) it was this scene with Hannah, maybe you remember it?
Former Fat Girl/Current Beauty Queen Hanna is sitting in her kitchen, being miserable because she is having issues with Sean, having totally wrecked his car (which is when I *should* have realized this show was so amazing forever, but I am a little slow about things), and how now some thin girl has been driving him to school. Ashley comes home from fancy dinner, bearing lamb chops. Hanna explains the situation, the terrible shame of having allowed skinny girl to drive boyfriend to school. Mom gives Hanna the lamb chops. Hanna is like, *"Why are you feeding me when I allowed this to happen?!"*
In any other show, this is where we would address Hanna's eating disorder. The mom would make a concerned face, realizing that she, in her obsession with beauty and being taken care of by men, has effed up her daughter to the point that a) food is only allowed on good behavior days, b) one should feel personally ashamed if one's man-property is allowed in the vicinity of c) girls who are thin and therefore irresistibly superior to girls who are less thin, and d) one should feel more ashamed of this than, say, the actual act of destroying the property of a significant other. Or, it's possible that she wouldn't, but somebody else towards the end of the episode would address all this stuff, possibly to Hanna or possibly to Hanna's mom. Full House Moments all around. But on PLL, this realization never happens, and you learn more about good parenting by the scary vacuum made by bad parenting, more about the relationship dynamics and history in Hannah's world by this one casual weirdness than by a billion angsty confessional soliloquies.