That terrifically guilty pleasure of last summer, Pretty Little Liars, is back to become the must-see winter addiction, and it got off to a great start Monday night with the best friends – think Heathers / Mean Girls meets The Craft for those of you haven’t seen this nugget of distraction – continuing to unravel just who their collective blackmailer ‘A’ might be.

While much of the episode occurs in Hanna’s (Ashley Benson) hospital room après the summer season’s cliffhanging episode in which ‘A’ clipped her with a car, PLL’s resident lesbian character Emily (Shay Mitchell) gets a great storyline in this mid-season premiere. Hence, our SheWired ‘Gay-Caps,’ in which we primarily sum up storylines for LGBT characters on shows that offer multiple storylines.

To play quick catch-up on the first 10 episodes – Hanna, Emily, Aria (Lucy Hale) and Spencer (Troian Avery Bellisario) are BFF’s at first ripped apart by their bitchy leader / friend Alison’s disappearance and subsequent murder, and then brought together by an omniscient blackmailer named ‘A’ who stalks each of them via technology and often good old-fashioned notes over an explosion they started that caused their neighbor / classmate Jenna to go blind with Jenna’s stepbrother and occasional lover taking the fall.

And at the start of the show, each of the lead girls has plenty to hide in the vein of the old ‘we’re only as sick as our secrets.’ While Emily faces her secrets and begins to come out as gay to her friends posthaste thanks to the appearance of new girl in town, the charming and easy on the eyes Maya (Bianca Lawson), who takes a liking to Emily.

However, the other gals have more to hide. Hanna’s a clepto who gets caught fairly early on, so there must be more to her story. Meanwhile the over achieving under aged Spencer has a penchant for snogging her sister’s of-age fiancé’s while 16-year-old Aria hooks up with her English teacher, an earnestly sensitive poet type named Ezra Fitz (Ian Harding).

As a side note, much ado is made about how inappropriate it is for a teacher to date a student but there’s hardly any mention of the older men in this upscale Pennsylvania town chasing down jailbait, which is rather alarming but would put a damper on the wild storylines, so here’s to assuming the writers just threw caution to the wind and hoped nobody would question the moral -- not to mention -- legal implications of the multiple Lolita storylines.

Over the course of the first 10 episodes ‘A’ ensured that swiped photo booth pics of Emily and Maya looking adoringly into each others’ eyes and kissing fell into Hanna’s and Emily’s mom’s (Nia Peeples) hands. While Hanna went out of her way to show support for Emily, with Aria and Spencer soon following, Emily’s mom tucked the photos to be addressed at a later date. Well that later date was this Monday!

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SPOILER ALERT:

In the end-of-summer cliffhanger Emily’s dad, a soldier, arrived home from a long tour in Afghanistan, to Emily and her new friend Maya awkwardly hanging out in Emily’s bedroom.

Monday’s episode had Emily supine on her bed chatting with Maya, who, from the sounds of it, is missing her girlfriend and wants to see her but the girls have all been focused on Hanna’s accident and ‘A.’

Emily says ‘I miss you too,’ to Maya as the camera pans to reveal her dad in the doorway. While Emily admits she was talking to Maya her dad doesn’t get the hint. Ever the protector, he demands to know why she’s so jumpy.

‘Who’s giving you a hard time?’ he asks, and after he cajoles her several time to know who’s messing with his daughter, she admits to her astonished dad that she’s afraid of him and her mother.

“I’m not who you think I am,” she says, and he still doesn’t get it. Finally she says, “I’m gay,” and repeats it a little louder and with more conviction.

Cut to Emily’s somewhat controlling mom telling the dad, “It’s that girl from California…Maya.”  Really, it’s always those freewheeling California girls who do the corrupting. Just check out Mila Kunis in Black Swan for further proof.

Emily’s mom eschews the idea that Emily’s afraid of her parents and whips out the photo booth kissing pics.

At the end of the day, the dad, who wouldn’t necessarily wish gayness on his daughter,  says he’s essentially just glad Emily is alive and healthy while the mom continues to put her baggage on the situation.

“How are we going to fix this?” she implores. “Are you willing to turn away from everything we wanted for her?”

Later, Emily tells Aria she came out to her parents. Aria attempts to comfort her saying it will be okay.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be bit it’s going to be different,” Emily says. And that’s a wrap for this Gay-Cap.

Congrats to PLL for providing a reasonably thoughtful lesbian storyline even if the writers have failed to grasp the legal ramifications of the whole jailbait dynamic.

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