Perfect Xero

It tuns out that John's car wash was just another front for Heisenberg's meth operation. I think that Bay's been getting in to the LSD laced garlic knots again. Also, did I just forget something from the last batch of episodes? Why was Travis's arm in a sling?

Don't get me wrong, I thought that the Reverse Flash future room was lame and completely unnecessary, but, end of the day, it's mostly just a stylistic choice, that scene could have just as easily played out with a regular TV monitor and a laptop or two. I consider Mrs. Grunwald and her psychic visions being the reason that Alison got pulled out of her grave That Night to be a much bigger strike against the show and the story than anything that happened in Game On, Charles.

Someday I'm going to get drunk enough and yell this at a dinner party: "If there were a billion people on the planet it would sink into space and explode. I am having a great time! I am the Commodore!"

I think it's good that Mariana's not beating herself up over it anymore, but I also don't see why she felt the need to announce it to Matt either. She's been processing this all season, he literally only found out the day before. The extent of their interaction that we've seen since she told him that she had sex with another guy while they were dating is her wanting to sing a song with him and Brandon, and Matt rather politely bowing out. Where was all this begging and groveling that she says she's not going to do anymore? It's not his fault if she's been shaming herself, we've not seen him do anything to shame her or guilt her or set any condition for his forgiveness. "I forgive myself for cheating on you. So do you want to get back together?" Maybe it was meant to come off as self empowerment, but saying it to him the day after she told him that she cheated on him just comes off as incredibly self-centered and dismissive of his feelings and need to process what she told him.

I was reading through a few old episode discussion threads from this season and realized that they probably aged Jason down so the whole forgotten sibling story would be more believable to people. When they first showed us Charles, people asked how an 8 year old Jason wouldn't remember his brother, and the show's answer was that Jason was really a 3-4 year old when Charles was sent away.

Thanks!

Do you have a link for that?

Speaking of patterns, last season ended with Stef blackmailing Robert, plotting a secret emancipation where Callie lied to Robert, and ... then the Season ends with them being rewarded by Robert signing away his parental rights. Close on happy Fosters Adams being happy. This half-season: Callie calls out the judge by name, even though any logical view on her situation would tell her that it's not the judge's fault that they found her birth father or that Stef took out a bloody restraining order against Brandon. She and Brandon lie their asses off about their relationship, Rita lies for them, Carmen lies for them even as she's being put in Juvie, and ... The Judge tells Callie how he's proud of her, they're rewarded with the adoption going through, close on happy Fosters Adams being happy. The system might be broken, but, I'm sorry, holding up an adoption because your birth father who never knew you existed was found is not a symptom of the system being broken. An adoption being held up because your foster mother took out a restraining order against her own son (and then used her connections as a cop to try to cover it up) to keep him away from you is not a symptom of the system being broken. This show is starting to remind me of Parenthood and the Braverman family, in the worst possible ways.

That's fair, but even in Welcome to the Dollhouse the boys in the home movie with baby Alison don't look 7 - 8 years older than her. I don't know why, I guess they just forgot that Jason was supposed to be in the same class as Ian and Melissa. At best they could try to say that Jason was a freshman then and just hung out with the seniors.

Well, it's pretty obviously a retcon, but Mr. D told Alison and Jason that Charles was 15 months older than Jason when they confronted him earlier this season, IIRC. Then, in this episode CeCe said she was 5 when she went to Radley, so Jason was 4-ish, and Alison was almost 1. So, basically, Jason is only about 3 years older than Alison and the girls. It also matches with the castings of young Jason/Alison/Charles in the home movies we've seen of the three of them, a lot of people said that young Alison looked too old relative to Jason and Charles, but it turned out that they had just already decided that Jason was 4 years younger than previously implied. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ On the plus side, it means that Jason was actually a relatively age appropriate option when he was sort of involved with Aria back in Season 2.

We don't know when it started, but the affair with Peter was obviously taking place after CeCe was born, since she's older than Jason. In light of her affairs, I would guess that Jessica was someone who didn't love her husband but was staying with him for financial and status reasons. Perhaps he had an ironclad prenup or the like. Maybe she did love him but also enjoyed the cheating. Sure, having an affair isn't smart, but she'd hardly be the first person to think that she was clever enough to get away with it. The situation with CeCe is somewhat similar, she won't directly fight her husband's wishes and take a stand against him, but also thinks that she's clever enough to sneak her girls clothes and then later fake the death of "Charles" so she could transition to Charlotte.

The Jenna thing and the bracelets happened during the same time period where CeCe had "out privileges" and was hanging out with Alison and Jason all the time. She could have got the bracelet from Ali herself, or even been the one who helped Ali come up with the plan to give her friends friendship bracelets to keep them quiet about the Jenna thing, in the same way that she helped her deal with Paige.

I just watched this last night. The thing that struck me the most is that they wrote Jason 1.0 a lot more like Alison, taking charge of the memorial, rattling and manipulating Wilden and the Rosewood PD, generally seeming like he was a step ahead of everyone else. There's a scene that I'd completely forgotten about where Jason accusingly tells Spencer that Ali told him all about the Jenna thing, (but had placed the blame entirely on Spencer). Spencer asks him if he believed that, and he just gives her this look that says that he probably doesn't but wanted to see her reaction, and she tells him that he's as bad as Alison. His response, "In some ways, I'm worse." I can't imagine a scene like that playing out with Jason 2.0. They also kind of implied that Jason might be helping Alison fake her death, which would have certainly been a radical departure. Maybe, CeCe had a copy with her things (I mean she was obsessed with Alison, and they were supposed to be super close friends that summer) and Bethany took it because she was planning on planting it on Mrs. D's body to frame CeCe (or Alison) for the murder?

Someone at the Rosewood PD probably watched a few episodes of 21 Jump Street, misunderstood the concept, and started recruiting high school freshmen to be Cops.

Marlene used the wrong excuse, she should have just told us that Alison was picturing young "Freddie" from the birthday video because that's the only face she knew for Charles.

So, Cece says that she was diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder because she got blamed for Bethany pushing Toby's mom off the roof, and laughs because it was actually a correct diagnosis for Bethany. But as A she also randomly does things like attack Alison, drive a car into Emily's house, and you know, drop Jason down an elevator shaft. Which makes me think that she actually was accurately diagnosed, and there's a good chance that she really was the one who pushed Toby's mom off the roof that night.

I don't know if there are other sources or not, but in the episode in Season 2 where Spencer and Toby discover the NAT club, they're looking in Ian's Rosewood High 2005 yearbook (in what appears to be the Senior section), which is where they find Ian, Jason, and Garrett have NAT club listed under their pictures. This makes them seniors 7 years before the girls would be seniors. In last seasons finale (Welcome to the Dollhouse), when they're getting ready for A's "prom", Aria observes that all the songs are from 7 years ago, and Spencer realizes the theme for the prom is the same as the last prom Melissa took Ian to.

Mileage varies, I thought he was a pretty big asshole to Callie about it during her birthday party.

It's hard to know if Charles lack of empathy is the flashback is intentional or if it's just a child actor not being very good. Yeah, everything about this episode (and the birthday party video for that matter) implied that they closed the age difference between Jason and Alison to only, like, 2-3 years at most.

Charles/Charlotte is older than that though. Charles is 2 years older than Jason, and Jason is part of the Melissa/Ian generation which is around 7 years older than the Liars. ETA: Charles/Charlotte is only 1 year older than Jason.

I think that part of Callie's panic attack with Wyatt might have simply been that ... Callie didn't really want to be with him. She was with him because he was a Brandon alternative.

Her yearbook entry also says that she was Prom Queen and in the Drama and Debate clubs.

To me this show is mostly a gender inversion of the normal noir thriller. Women are in the dominant roles, the heroes and the main villains; the male characters are relegated to love interests, femme fatales, gal Friday's, and damsels in distress. Every guy on the show has been involved in something shady, mostly because in the world of noir none of the supporting characters are complete innocents.

I think so many of the scenes looked poorly shot because they decided to blow their entire effects budget for the episode on the Dr. Wells/Reverse Flash future room holograms and touch screens and didn't have the money/time to make anything else look decent.

Well, in the books it's actually Toby who is the rapist ...