Tag: Sasha Pieterse

Pretty Little Liars: Along Comes Mary – Morticia Adams (Review)

ANDREA PARKER

Pretty Little Liars this week sees Mary Drake, in “Along Came Mary” as a dour version of Morticia Adams (The Addams Family). She must be, at the very least, the ethereal twin to the morbid yet sexy Morticia. The main differences being that she has more color to her face and her black ensemble is all shirt and trousers versus a long and clingy dress. (She also has a look on her face like a smacked arse…)

Last week saw the Liars hiding their inadvertent murder of Henry Rollins (who was not Henry Rollins at all) and Alison being smuggled back into Welby.  It also saw Spencer almost have hot and heavy sex in an elevator with a chap called Marco. She learns in this episode that he is Toby’s new boss and heading  up the Rollins investigation.

Whoops.

A Gathering:

Apart from Mary Drake, there are a number of old enemies gathering in the area. Sara Harvey (Dre Davis) and blind Jenna Marshall (Tammin Sursok) have even, apparently, joined forces.  At the tail end of the episode, Noel Kahn (Brant Daugherty) joins the two women for a drink and it looks like the Liars may have some trouble ahead. 

Jenna already has a tie to the dead Henry as does Mary Drake. All that remains to be seen is whether Sara had connections to Rollins (or Archer Dunhill)  and Kahn have connections to the dead man as well.

Random Thoughts and Questions: 

Why did gloomy Mary rip Rollins’ picture in half?

Was Henry’s motive theft all along?

Alison is very snippy now she is out of Welby and Rollins is dead. Granted she has been cleaned out and is stuck with morbid Mary but snapping at the other Liars who have done so much is pretty off.

Nancy Drew fail.  Emily and Aria both go to Archer’s apartment and look for evidence. Finding some, passports and so on, they proceed to get their fingerprints all over the stuff. Toby arrives and gives them five minutes to depart before a forensics team arrives.

Burner apartment. What a meta millennial phrase. Like burner phone but bigger, and in this instance, messier.

The Plot:

So Alison is allowed out of Welby now that Rollins has disappeared but she is in the care of Mary Drake.  The DiLaurentis coffers have been drained dry and Alison is one very  unhappy Liar.  Drake works hard to distance herself from “Henry” and things are not very harmonious in Casa Alison.

Ezra proposes to Aria. But… He gives her a heartfelt speech about lying and telling the truth.  Aria has more than a few secrets that Ezra is not privy to and there is the whole “Nicole” phone call.  Taking advice from Emily, Aria deletes the call.  Not a real great idea as this is Pretty Little Liars, and the late love of Ezra’s life could show up alive and well.

Emily is dating Sabrina (Lulu Brud) and misses her exam. A.D however takes it for her, apparently, and the police finally find Rollins’ car. Later the Liars learn that their “trail” set up for the dead man has been extended…by someone else.

Alison is going through her anger phase and she tells Emily and Aria that trusting Drake is not an option although she believes that Mary did split from Rollins when things got “murder-y.”

Spencer calls Hanna about Caleb and as the two talk Jenna show up. Spencer suggests Hanna follow her.  Hanna’s response gets the “line of the episode award.”

“Me acting normal doesn’t include tiptoeing around behind a girl with a big white cane.”

(Alison gets the “close-second” award with: “She’s just gonna keep acting like a demented den-mother if you’re here.”)

Jenna shows up at the DiLaurentis home and is surprised that Alison is out of hospital, she says, and Jenna  explains she  was looking for Henry.  As the blind girl leaves, Ali shouts at her  to tell Archer to go to Hell, “Maybe he is already there,” Jenna replies.

Alison meets Detective Marco Fury (Nicholas Gonzalez) and he offers help in getting her money back. He also mentions that the police believe it was about the money.  He also reveals that the faux trail set up by the Liars continues to Baltimore and beyond. Alison is unsettled by this information. 

SASHA PIETERSE
Alison (Sasha Pieterse)

Speaking of unsettled, Alison finds the jacket that Emily sent to the police the she thought her friend killed Charlotte. A note on the back is “signed” by A.D.

The episode ends on that proposal and after the scene fades to black, Kahn arrives for drinks with the terrible duo of Sara and Jenna;  making it a threesome.

Pretty Little Liars may be falling a bit in the popularity stakes but so far the last season has been, at the very least, interesting.  There were a not a lot of high-points in this episode but Spencer bumping into Marco counted as one.   Aria’s speedy hustle away from the head and her sudden jump up from the bed counted as two more.

The series airs Tuesdays on Freeform.  Tune in and see how Aria answered that proposal question and to see who is using Rollins’ credit card. Could it be Mona? She has helped the Liars recently.

Cast:

Pretty Little Liars: The Talented Mr Rollins – Dead in the Headlights (Review)

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS

Before going any further on a breakdown of Pretty Little Liars and “The Talented Mr. Rollins,” let us address the elephant in the episode; the “death of Rollins.”  After being caught dead to rights in the headlights of the PLL Nancy Drew club’s car, the uber villain has his face shoved through the windshield.  A great shot, Elliot’s head and face surrounded a space caused by broken glass and not a shard on any PLL or in the car.

What?

As the camera records the Liars and their reaction to the horror facing them (Sorry for the terrible pun.) there are a few scratched faces and not one little piece of windshield anywhere. (Another quick complaint here.  Why no airbags?  Was the collision with the faux Rollins not enough to register? Or was it more dramatic with Hanna getting a boo-boo on her face?)

“The Talented Mr. Rollins”  finished on a massively impressive note. Elliot’s lifeless face drooling blood from its open mouth framed by broken a windshield was priceless on a number of levels. A case of poetic justice combined with a sort of bitter irony since Toby only just discovered that the real Rollins is a 58 year old man. In other words the dead guy in the Liars’ windshield is not who he claimed to be.

Despite the lack of broken glass this was an enormously satisfying end to the episode.  It punished Elliot for being a cruel and sadistic douche and combined the hapless groups normal mode of operation. The PLL club runs headlong  into all of their investigations leaving  dangling threads,  incorrect conclusions and friends along the wayside.

(Another word of complaint: How is it that every time someone goes into Ali’s old house Elliot turns up soon after. Is this a case of supremely bad timing on the Liars’ part or does Rollins have E.S.P.? Of course now he is dead Elliot will not be turing up to  foil any further plans of evidence gathering…)

The Amish connection was an excellent touch. Another case of pure irony had Elliot and Charlotte heading to the community. Considering that the uber religious sect have some pretty strict views on life, the fact that former fella  Charlotte and Elliot were canoodling on the farm would have caused the farmers to have a fit.

Mary is conspicuously absent in this episode.

A lot detecting was done by the Liars.  Aria finding what was in that locked ottoman at the end of the bed and Spencer putting two and two together to find that Elliot was making latex masks all pointed to Elliot being the new Uber A.

Leaving the main plot aside for a moment, romantically the pretty little liars got back on track. Emily sorts things out with her crush, Spencer clears the air with Caleb and Aria sent Liam packing.  Plus Toby gets engaged to Yvonne.

“The Talented Mr. Rollins” also brings back the doll theme when Aria and Hanna talk with the Amish girl who knew Charlotte. Ali’s sister gave the farmer’s daughter dolls that were dressed as the Liars.  Also at the Amish farm, Aria learns about Hanna’s introduction to the cattle prod when she was held captive.

Elliot discovers that someone has been in his trunk and reacts accordingly. He takes Ali from Welby and makes a run to the lake.  The good doctor forgets the first rule of taking drugs long term, patients build up a tolerance.  Ali recovers in the car and bashes Rollins’ head against the window. She then leaps from the vehicle.

The Pretty Little Liars are following, although they took a short cut to head off the car ahead. Ali runs past the headlights and immediately after, Elliot runs in front of the speeding vehicle.  He is struck by the front of the car and has his head shoved through the windshield.

TROIAN BELLISARIO
Troian Bellisario as Spencer

Earlier in the episode Spencer tells Emily that they are trapped in Rosewood until Ali’s issues are resolved. With the death of Elliot Rollins the Liars may be stuck in the small town for a lot longer.

Pretty Little Liars airs Tuesdays on Freeform.  Tune in and see how this last season pans out.  The remaining episodes should reveal much. For example, who Elliot really was and exactly how  Mary fits in?

Cast:

Pretty Little Liars: Charlotte’s Web – The Good, the Bad, the Guilty (Recap/Review)

Pretty Little Liars follows up the midseason premiere death of Alison’s transgender sister with Charlotte’s Web, which feels a bit like “The Good, the Bad and the Guilty.”

SHAY MITCHELL, ASHLEY BENSON, TROIAN BELLISARIO, LUCY HALE

Pretty Little Liars follows up the midseason premiere death of Alison’s transgender sister with Charlotte’s Web, which feels a bit like “The Good, the Bad and the Guilty.”  The cast are broken into the good; Hanna, the bad; Aria and Sara, and the guilty; Aria (maybe) and Ezra (equally maybe). It is revealed that the death of ‘A’ was not an easy one as Lorenzo tells the Liars that Charlotte’s neck was broken before being thrown from the church tower.

The first part of the episode spent a good amount of time trying to convince viewers of Aria’s guilt, clearly a waste of effort as the Montgomery is too slight to have lifted Charlotte let alone break her neck. The focus then shifts, only a little early on and then more so after Aria returns to Rosewood, to Ezra.

Furious that his Nicole is obviously dead and that Ali’s sister is free to roam the streets and go to church at four in the morning, this revelation occurs on the day that he and Aria see Charlotte head into the church. Rather interestingly, this means that these two were the last to see Charlotte alive…

Sidenote: Is it just this viewer or does Liam look like a younger version of Ezra?

Emily is rescued by former flower-child Sabrina (she of the “drug candy”  that got Toby in so much trouble last year) when her credit card will not work on the Hollis Medical Institute’s  parking machine. Later, it is revealed that all those hypodermic needles from the previous week’s episode must have something to do with Emily’s  mystery blood treatment.

What Em is having done is not clarified but it could have something to do with a “hepatitis” (A, B, or C). Much later Sabrina is asked not to say anything about bumping into Emily at the Institute.

Hanna finds the key to her mother’s security suite and learns that Aria lied about where she went in the wee hours when Charlotte was being murdered and Hanna was hydrating.  Apart from wondering what Aria was really up to, Hanna is more worried about Caleb meeting her latest squeeze, Jordan.

Spencer is convinced that she influenced the person who murdered Charlotte with her criminology study on the “Honeymoon Murderer.” Aria is taken off Ezra and the job of getting the next book from him is passed to Liam.

Later Aria talks her boss into letting her try again and she explains to Ezra that they will not take back the advance. He gives Aria the “first draft” of his second book. She asks him where he went the night that Charlotte was killed after they met. Ezra tells her home.

Sara Harvey shows up twice, each time with her hands covered. When Emily visits her father’s grave Harvey shows up, looking weird and not a little creepy.

Hanna proves to be quite adept at playing Nancy Drew and after finding the “incriminating” footage of Aria and Ezra, deletes the evidence.

ASHLEY BENSON
Hanna and Emily…

Aria tells the other Liars, sans Ali,  what happened on the night Charlotte was killed and it seems like now Ezra is the new suspect. Spencer then explains that she told Ezra about her murder case study, she believes that Ezra copied the murderer’s MO and killed Charlotte to keep Aria safe, or out of misplaced anger about Nicole’s death.

Spencer’s mother clarifies how she feels about her and Emily tells her dad about what happened at school and that she lost her scholarship after he died.  When Sara Harvey shows up, Em leaves.  Later flowers are put on a freshly dug grave (Charlotte’s?) and as the camera gives a POV shot of entering a limo, the drivers says, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

It never ceases to amuse at how capable Hanna is at computerized tasks, or at manipulating a CCTV security system.  Ms. Marin is not the sharpest file in the manicure set the best of times.

By the time the show ends, Alison tells Lorenzo the she believes her friends could well be responsible for Charlottes’ death; a 180 degree turn around from before.  As usual, Pretty Little Liars crams a lot of things into one episode:

A lot of “things” unsaid,  relationships that all feel a bit “mix and match” and more questions than answers.

Sidenote: Whoever did wardrobe for this episode? Hanna’s nighty looked like something Granny Smith would wear, not a 20 something fashionista.  Makeup and lighting also looked pretty shaky this week with Alison looking as though she  had been beaten about the face and eyes…

As usual kudos to the cast: Sasha Pieterse Lucy Hale, Ashley Benson, Troian Bellisario, and Shay Mitchell. Oh and for the older  fan, more Nia Peebles please.

Pretty Little Liars airs Tuesdays on Freeform. Tune in and try to keep up with all the twists and turns.

 

Pretty Little Liars: Of Late I Think of Rosewood (Review)

If there was any doubt that things were going to be different in Rosewood after the midseason break of Pretty Little Liars, the release of CeCe, aka Charlotte, aka ‘A’ proved that it is not too late for things to go south, again, in this odd little verse.

HUW COLLINS, SASHA PIETERSE

If there was any doubt that things were going to be different in Rosewood after the midseason break of Pretty Little Liars, the release of CeCe, aka Charlotte, aka ‘A’ proved that it is not too late for things to go south, again,  in this odd little verse.  In what may be the longest time ever in a seasonal break, in Rosewood the “liars” have all aged five years.

Once again, the girls decide, to an extent, to stand by Alison (Sasha Pieterse) and “lie” once more for their friend. Only Aria (Lucy Hale) breaks down and says what she really feels; ‘A’ still terrifies her and even the older version of herself is scarred to the bone by the experience. (Kudos to Hale for knocking it out of the park with her train tale.)

This “Old Home Week” episode shows that the ghosts of Rosewood, Radley and ‘A’ are not resting easy.  As evidenced by the playing of Fleurie’s “There’s a Ghost” with lyrics that mention  masks (more lies) and ghosts (‘A’ and all the victims of the entire incident previously) this second half is going to be full of revenants that refuse to lie still.

It comes as no real surprise that once CeCe is let out that she dies. Initially thought to be a suicide, by the end of this  episode of Pretty Little Liars, it is revealed that Charlotte was dead before exiting the church bell tower.   At least two suspects spring to the fore; Mona (Janel Parrish) who dramatically crumples up her pages-long prepared statement to pronounce that Charlotte should be released and Sara Harvey (Dre Davis).

Standout Moments:

Aria revealing that she is far from normal after her time in captivity and being tortured by ‘A.’

LUCY HALE
Aria revealing that the trauma is far from over…

Sara Harvey showing up at the funeral looking drugged out of her mind.

Spencer’s The Wizard of Oz quote from the munchkin coroner; who pronounces the Wicked Witch of the West:

“Really, most sincerely dead.”

Hanna (Ashley Benson) moaning at the cocktail party that there are no “special drinks” and calling Radley a “Squirrel Factory.” She then starts the ball rolling with “Electroshock Margarita?”

Spencer; again, with her drunken confession at the revamped Radley “Squirrel Factory” aka,  “sanitarium:”

“I thought it wouldn’t matter what we said to the judge… because I thought they would never let her out. I thought that we could just lie for Ali one more time and it wouldn’t matter. But it did. They let “A” out.”

Overall Thoughts:

It is fitting that at the Charlotte Cocktail Party  Spencer (Troian Bellisario) brings up the lies told at the hearing.   Her “testimony” which, out of all the girls’ was the most straight forward was the most impressive.

TROIAN BELLISARIO
Lying one last time for Ali…

At the cocktail party, that Alison does not attend as she is welcoming Charlotte home,  the only “liar,” apart from Spencer who does not get into the drink renaming drill is Emily (Shay Mitchell).  Lucy does come up with “Manic Depressive Mai Tai” just before Spencer professes that she loves her friends lack of good taste.

ASHLEY BENSON, SHAY MITCHELL
Hanna and Emily

In terms of dramatic reveals, the dead body of Charlotte, carefully covered up except for that right-hand clutching the crumpled flower, took second place to the arrival of a clearly stoned Sara at the funeral. (And haven’t we seen something similar in Rosewood before?)

Sidenote: What a great turnout for a mad-as-a-hatter kidnapper who tortured several young girls for an enormously long time. Clearly, being a DiLaurentis means that all past sins are forgotten come funeral time…

Before the end credits roll the funeral ends and  Alison leaves with Dr. Rollins, Mona zooms off, Sara floats to her car and Lorenzo (who has clearly been promoted in the five years the liars have been away) stops by to tell Hanna, Emily, Aria and Spencer that a)Charlotte was murdered and b) Not to leave town.

There are a number of familiar faces that turn up although Nicole was not one of them as apparently she was abducted by revolutionaries in South America while building houses.

Patsy Cline’s Crazy plays out the episode and the song sets up the end-scene rather well. Pretty Little Liars is about to get cray-cray all over again and it is almost like five years never happened…away from Rosewood…for those who “got away.”

Since the title of the episode is a “homage” to an old Twilight Zone episode, “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville;” where the protagonist of that old segment  wanted  to return to “days gone by” it seems that this episode of “Liars” may be heading “back” to the way things were before ‘A’ was un-masked.

The second half of season six airs Tuesdays on ABC on their new Freeform, replacing Family. Tune in and see where this mystery will head now that CeCe is “dead.”

 

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