The guilty pleasure that just keeps giving, Pretty Little Liars, is chugging along in its winter season, offering up plenty of mystery, intrigue, saucy Heathers / Mean Girls meets The Craft mild bitchiness, disturbing older men / teen girl storylines and one terrific coming out story.
While the quartet of teen girls continues to unravel the mystery behind their collective blackmailer, a tech genius who goes by the moniker ‘A,’ Emily (Shay Mitchell) is getting a thoughtful, carefully plotted coming out story, and a mighty cute girlfriend to boot. While much of PLL expects the viewer to suspend disbelief – especially with the 16-year-old Aria (Lucy Hale) dating her of-age teacher narrative– Emily’s story is sensitive, sweet and mostly believable. But no wonder, since the cast recently made an ‘It Gets Better’ video and it turns out the creator and producer are lesbian and gay respectively.
But on to the good stuff – the re-cap of Emily’s storyline! SPOILERS ahead…
The center of the high school universe appears to be the cafeteria -- where love lives, egos and eating habits are made and broken. And that’s where we first encounter our ‘it’ couple Emily and Maya (Bianca Lawson) for this week’s episode. Per usual, Emily has been hashing out the who dunnit of ‘A’ with her co-conspirators Aria, Hanna (Ashley Benson) and Spencer (Troian Bellisario) when her girl Maya turns up to whisk her away to ‘study.’
And Hanna, being the first person Emily came out to – by default, as ‘A’ helped Hanna got a look of the blackmail photo of Emily and Maya kissing— could not be more supportive. It’s gotten to the point where Emily and Maya now greet each other with a lip lock when they meet up in the cafeteria and that’s about as open as it gets in high school. But in the Pretty Little Liar’s world nobody bats an eye. Emily’s friends just look on with what appears to be genuine envy.
Not one to hold back, Hanna asks the question that is likely on viewers’ minds – “Studying? Is that girl on girl code for romance?” As a side note, if you went to Mount Holyoke as I did, the answer would be ‘yes,’ but that’s a whole different sort of re-cap.
The typically all-business Emily plays with her friends by saying that she and Maya like to indulge in, "walks in the rain, picnics by the lake and dancing naked in candlelight," which again, does not sound unlike dorm life at a women’s college… But then Emily cops to kidding and says, “We go to dinner and a movie. Just like you…”
Later, the camera lingers outside of Emily’s bedroom with Emily’s mom Pam (Nia Peeples) peering through the crack in the door. And as we saw in the last episode, despite an effort to accept Maya, Pam’s not handling the gay thing with the greatest aplomb.
Meanwhile, the girls happen to be lying down side by side, studying while caressing each other’s feet. While the gay girls in the audience might let out a collective “awwwwww,” Pam is not having any of it. There will be foot rubbing in her house over her dead body.
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She barges in on the girls, who do happen to be sharing a textbook, and orders them to stop.
“Pam, I promise we were studying,” Maya chirps up.
An unmoved Pam says, “Mrs. Fields, I am Mrs. Fields to you.” Well, Maya is a bit of a stoner (more on that later), so I’m thinking she’s envisioning Emily’s mom as a giant cookie, but rather she darts out of Em’s room -- conveniently forgetting her backpack.
“For the first time in my life I am ashamed that you are my mother,” a typically quiet and respectful Emily shouts.
Next up -- what’s a mother to do with too much time on her hands, her daughter’s empty bedroom in which to snoop and the daughter’s girlfriend’s backpack just sitting there calling for a nosey mom to rifle through it? She goes through the backpack of course. It’s her house and her prerogative after all.
Just a tidbit of backstory -- the series premiere last summer introduced audiences to Maya and to her penchant for lighting up occasionally. She had invited Emily to smoke with her at their first encounter.
Fast forward to this week’s episode and of course Pam finds Maya’s stash in an Altoid tin. That’s what Altoid tins were made for. Otherwise Altoid’s would come in a plastic or cardboard box, like every other mint.
Next, Pam confronts Emily about the contraband in Maya’s backpack. “Are you doing drugs. Is that what this is about?” she asks Emily. She reaches out to cup Emily’s chin in her hand but Emily slaps it away, likely for asking that stupid question. Here’s wishing Emily had replied, “Girls do not have to be drugged to sleep with girls. That’s what frat parties are for…”
Frustrated, Pam issues an edict. “You are no longer allowed to see her,” she says. Not about to cave to her mother’s whims Emily shouts, “This doesn’t change the way I feel about her.” And that momentarily stops Pam in her tracks. Hmm. Putting an end to this lesbian thing is out of a mother’s control so Pam trades a verbal upper cut telling Emily not to bother going to her more understanding father about it. “He’s as disappointed in you as I am,” she gibes.
It’s the next morning outside of school and a dejected Emily walks up to the girls, who are discussing Spencer’s sister Melissa, who is suddenly trying to get pregnant with her former fiancé / current husband Ian, who kissed Spencer when he and Melissa were only engaged the first time, and how Ian had a relationship with their dead friend Alison. Whew, that’s a mouthful.
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“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Emily bemoans, “They’re sending her to juvie camp for three months.” And it’s revealed that Pam went straight to Maya’s hippy-dippy parents with the stash, which begs the question as to why her freethinking, transplants-from-California, land of legalized marijuana, would take such drastic measures as to haul her off to juvie. Although, there is a “Maya Goes to Juvie,” spin-off possibility here...
That evening, Hanna, Spencer and Aria are at Spencer’s house, diligently pretending to study trigonometry but discussing ‘A’ when Emily shows up late.
“There’s something waiting for you…” Hanna says, opening the top button of Emily’s jacket to help her friend with a sassier look.
Upstairs, in a candlelit room accented by roses and a champagne bottle, is Maya. The girls had sprung her from her ivory tower on her last night before heading to juvie so that she could have a proper goodbye with Emily.
When Emily asks how Maya got there she says, “It took a village and a very tall ladder.” More “awwwws” are in order for Emily’s friends, the most supportive supposed clique in all of high school history. Cue a slow song and Emily and Maya slow dance together.
From the kitchen the girls hear giggling above. They collectively flash a look like the proud little matchmaker types they are and Hanna says, “I’m officially jealous of Emily’s love life.”
But never fear, the show’s ever-present point-of-view shot from outside means someone has been watching the entire evening unfold, so rest assured that something nefarious, like the entire event, is likely being live-streamed for Mama Pam’s viewing pleasure.
The episode ends with the girls watching the complete video ‘A’ has sent them of their dead mean-girl friend Alison and Spencer’s brother-in-law Ian in the woods on the night she disappeared. And unless Ian was clubbed on the head and dragged away last minute, he is a ringer for the killer.
Check back next week for more gay-caps, and later this week for an exclusive interview with Nia Peeples!
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