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S05.E18: Oh, What Hard Luck Stories They All Hand Me


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Yes, all Bethany said was that "the bitch" was evil and manipulative and especially effective with men. This could totally be Ali (yet Bethany accepted the invite in Ali's letter; do we have any definite clues for who Bethany hated and who she didn't?) It could have also described CeCe who was Ali's soul twin at the time and maybe Bethany hated her for this reason, or even Mrs D (we never saw Mrs D's effect on men, but we know she did have affairs). It could also be Mona - we did see her mention Radley in the flashback in this very episode, and while Mona was a nerd before Bethany died, a detail like continuity would not stop the show from going there. The show is filled to the brim with manipulative bitches. Though it would be totally hilarious if it was Toby's mother. Please make it be so, show! I will lol and lol.

 

I think we are supposed to think that Talia is just really socially awkward, not strictly romantically.

 

I thought Hanna's confrontation of Holbrook made sense because of her Wilden experiences, except she is now older and also less vulnerable because Holbrook has nothing on her mother. Even with the potential murder framing, Hanna is not at the lowest point in her life right now, and this is nothing new to her.

 

Speaking of "nothing new", it's interesting (and by that I mean "meh") Aria's "finally, something happens to her!" storyline - Aria is so defined by her relationships that the writers can't find anything else except Ezra or a family member or a family member's relationship.

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Lots of excellent moments sprinkled throughout a mediocre episode. The Hanna/Holbrook scene was pure gold. But for me, the best part was seeing A look for the tape and finding it missing. A is rarely foiled, so a A tag ending in an A fail is meaningful, like maybe a turning point.

What this said to me is that A is probably piggybacking off of Mona's existing network. Since the tape was removed in Mona's room, A wouldn't necessarily know that it was gone because Mona wouldn't have bugged herself. She might have set up an alarm of some sort to tell if anyone had gone inside, but she's probably too smart to have an actual camera feed inside her own room.

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I guess I am in the minority because I found Hanna's confrontation with Holbrook utterly laughable. Stupid music, which way too loud, umpteenth example of a character jumping out of nowhere in order to scare one or two viewers who have never watched television or movies before. Plus, I have never found Holbrook even remotely menacing. He is about as scary as Ezra's little brother. 

 

 

I love that Holbrook was genuinely upset and confused that he got in trouble for manipulating evidence at the behest of his teenage lover. Not only is he a spineless creep but he's also an idiot.

 

I am pretty sure Holbrook isn't actually Alison's lover - the Liars are sure that he is, so he is most certainly not. Q.E.D. He is an idiot indeed, though.

 

 

I think we are supposed to think that Talia is just really socially awkward, not strictly romantically.

 

Yet she managed to provide an in-depth analysis of Emily's love life about 24 hours after meeting her for the first time.

 

 

Also, in defense of Talia..she might not know that Emily is even a teenager. I mean, Emily doesn't look like a teenager.

 

Well then, Spencer, Jenna and most of all Maya should not have been allowed into Rosewood High at all because none of them looks like a teenager.

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One of the things I actually do love about this show is it's depiction of female friendship. The girls are never pitted against each other over silly things like love interests, and remain genuinely supportive of each other through everything. And while they do fight occasionally, they always eventually apologize and work it out. It's a surprisingly mature and meaningful representation of friendship amongst a group of young girls on TV.

 

 

This is the single greatest thing about this show. I love that Hanna and Spencer's "fight" lasted all of half an episode and then they both apologized. So long as the show doesn't really screw with the girls' friendship, I can deal with all the crazy.  I just love seeing girls/young women on TV who aren't fighting over boys and truly have each others backs.

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Well then, Spencer, Jenna and most of all Maya should not have been allowed into Rosewood High at all because none of them looks like a teenager.

 

I just meant that, it's not like Talia would have reason to know that Emily is a high school student. Like, if she were her teacher, then she would have reason to know. But I don't believe it's ever come up between the two of them. 

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I guess I am in the minority because I found Hanna's confrontation with Holbrook utterly laughable. Stupid music, which way too loud, umpteenth example of a character jumping out of nowhere in order to scare one or two viewers who have never watched television or movies before. Plus, I have never found Holbrook even remotely menacing. He is about as scary as Ezra's little brother. 

 

Yes, that was weird. It felt like they wrote a scene for Wilden, remembered he was dead, and then forced Holbrook in the role. Totally out of character and it almost seemed like a Hanna fantasy rather than something that really happened. 

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Question: Do we know what movie Mike was watching?

Them!  It's a sci-fi movie about ants that mutate into man-eating monsters after nuclear tests in New Mexico.

The way Mike was talking about Mona remembered every detail of the movies she watched - it made me wonder if her plan (supposing she had one) had been inspired by the movie and all the details were there. I've never seen Them!, but it doesn't sound like it's got anything about faking one's death or framing one's enemy in it. 

 

The writers are making the girls sound like idiots the way they've got them jumping to conclusions for the sake of "twists" the audience can see coming a mile away. How they now say "Ali" instead of "A" like it's proven fact or how all this time they've assumed Holbrook has been behind this and behind that and have been using his name like he's the culprit when all they ever had to go on was an absence and a kiss with Ali that might not even have been him. 

 

However, he did say, "You've been barking up the wrong henchman." Which is a confession, right? So he has been doing things for either Ali or someone he thinks is Ali. Has he been blackmailed into it?

 

I'm so over Mike's attitude. I don't know for how many more episodes I can deal with it.

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For a little bit I thought Holbrook's tantrum at the police station was staged for Hanna's benefit, and then stopping her on the dark deserted highway was a trick to get her to admit to something.  Which she did when she revealed that she knew about the contents of the storage locker.  But no, he's just another creep.

 

That scene where Talia put her arms around Emily to tie her apron for her was very unsettling.  If a relative stranger like Talia surprised me like that, she would have gotten a sharp elbow to the chest.  It just came across as way too handsy and agressive, and as I noted last week, makes Talia look like she doesn't have appropriate boundaries.

 

Johnny seems nice, and has a good not-from-Rosewood perspective, but his hipster DB lifestyle puts me off.  I don't know if he's competition for Toby or just a devil to tempt Spencer off the path to college.  He reminded me of the guitar-playing man-candy Aria hooked up with when visiting some college for a weekend.

 

I liked Spencer's conversation with her mother.  They usually have good scenes.  I laughed when Spencer said something like "can you remember for 5 seconds what it was like when you were my age?" because I thought, given the actors' age difference, Veronica's response should have been "oh honey, that was like 3 years ago."

 

I liked the A-tag, since this is one of the few times we've seen the PLLs were ahead of A.  I'm sure next week A or a minion will steal that tape back, and no one will hae thought to make a copy of it.

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I don't get why Talia and Emily are supposedly inappropriate.  Emily is 18 (she had her birthday in that episode in season4 where Paige threw a surprise party and Jenna nearly drowned in a lake), they're both single and, most importantly, she's not Emily's school teacher.  As far as I can see, Emily and Talia are two adult co-workers who find each other attractive. 

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I think the problem with Talia is we don't know how old she is.  In the real world, Talia would have to be in her mid to late twenties to have the training and experience to run a kitchen on her own and its probably safe to say someone twenty-five or older hitting on an eighteen year old high school student is at least a little creepy.  That being said, lets not forget this is Rosewood were Toby became a professional carpenter at the age of eighteen, so its entirely possible Talia went to a vocational school and Ezra hired her with little to no experience and she is actually nineteen or twenty, which would make her relationship with  Emily completely normal, at least in terms of age.

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Third post! What the hell are they planning with Mike? They tried this shit three seasons ago before Mona was revealed as A to send him up as a false flag (breaking into Spencer's house). Are they really that out of ideas? 

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Third post! What the hell are they planning with Mike? They tried this shit three seasons ago before Mona was revealed as A to send him up as a false flag (breaking into Spencer's house). Are they really that out of ideas?

How long in advance were they planning for seven seasons? Because if they planned five and they recently got seven, they may indeed be out of ideas.

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I don't think the word planning figures much in the vocabulary of the PLL writers. They are all about the word random. Wait, I meant repetitive. Or was it ridiculous? One of those r-words, you know.

 

In any event Mike being suspected of being A isn't too repetitive by PLL standards. It doesn't come close to evergreens like "Toby has died (just kidding)" or "Ezra and Aria break up for good (if only!)" or "Spencer says J'Accuse (based on on evidence whatsoever)".

Edited by Jack Shaftoe
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I don't think the word planning figures much in the vocabulary of the PLL writers. They are all about the word random. Wait, I meant repetitive. Or was it ridiculous? One of those r-words, you know.

 

In any event Mike being suspected of being A isn't too repetitive by PLL standards. It doesn't come close to evergreens like "Toby has died (just kidding)" or "Ezra and Aria break up for good (if only!)" or "Spencer says J'Accuse (based on on evidence whatsoever)".

 

I don't know if I can make it for two more full seasons after this one.  PLL is a fun show but it's so convoluted at this point that there's no way the pay-off is going to be worth seven seasons of barely-there plot.

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(edited)

I don't know what's up with Holbrook--except that I'm disappointed because I'd had hopes he would prove to be one of the few (only?) grown men and officers of the law in Rosewood who did not turn out to be a total creeper about teenage girls.  There goes that pipe dream.

 

Hanna was, hands down, the best part of this episode, and her scene with Holbrook just proved to me why I think she just might be my favorite liar (Spence is a very close second).  THANK YOU for somebody actually saying out loud on the show that grown men should know better than to be sexually involved with--or be manipulated by--a teenage girl.  And I'm so very glad that character got to be Hanna, and that she delivered her message with a tire iron!  Kick ass, Hanna M, kick ass.

Edited by M1977G
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