S01:E07 - Pretty Little Stalker
The seventh episode of Pretty Little Little Liars, titled ‘The Homecoming Hangover’, picks up right after homecoming, of course. Yasemin begins the episode talking about the last week’s cliffhanger ending that was “the best thing ever”. Perhaps another hangover is brewing as the podcast’s new drinking game makes a return. Lacey is overjoyed to see a ‘Go Sharks’ sign only one minute in, whilst Yasemin yet again remains sober for another episode.
The opening scene is of Aria, Spencer and Hanna rightfully panicking, but Yasemin won’t give up a chance to mock them as they’re prancing around the school hallway looking for Emily. Clearly your hosts are not the ones to call when your tinder date turns out to be a potential murderer – “stop being dramatic” is probably not what you’d want to hear upon begging them to call the police.
Whilst talking about the horror vibes of the opening sequence, Yasemin ponders on more important things, like how Spencer is able to turn the lights on using a switch - “who has light switches in their school?”. Despite the chaos, your hosts continue to mock and laugh at the liars’ worry and fear. The girls eventually decide to do the smart thing and ring Emily, only to find her phone outside the chemistry lab where it’s obvious something bad has gone down.
While the girls are rightly worried for their friends’ safety, Yasemin downplays the seriousness of it all: “It’s like the tiniest bit of blood okay, it’s not like a pool, it’s just like a little bit, you know someone’s been cut, someone isn’t bleeding to death.”
Luckily Emily is alive, but unconscious, in the back of Toby’s car. Your stereotypically white hosts are obviously true crime enthusiasts and are quick to ponder the possibilities that await Emily. “Is he driving to chop her up?” asks Yasemin. To your hosts disappointment, that sort of gruesome stuff doesn’t occur until the later seasons of Pretty Little Liars and obviously Emily survives to be snubbed for favourite liar another week. To cheer her up, there’s a brand new Toyota Corolla in her driveway because of course she won the raffle. “Emily’s in bed, she’s back home already, so it clearly wasn’t that big of a deal” says Lacey, further supporting the fact that Emily is being overdramatic even though she was potentially with Ali’s murderer.
Like normal friends, Aria and Spencer dish the dirt and tell Emily all about their findings in Toby’s file, whilst insinuating Toby was up to no good with his step sister - but is Jenna a victim here? Emily does not fall for Toby being the villain, pointing out that if he murdered Ali why didn’t he bother to kill her too?
Your hosts treat you to short, but regular, renditions of a poorly done Southern American accent because clearly Pam Fields gives off that vibe. When Pam is questioned by the police, she gets a shock when the policeman lets slip just who Emily’s real date was to homecoming.
Pam isn’t the only confused soul as Lacey is equally confused about when the school made a guest-list. Yasemin joins the confused party saying “why would you make a note of their date, would you not just make a note of the list of people who came, you wouldn’t say X came with X.”
Pam defends Emily against accusations from the police officer that she might be keeping secrets, which makes your hosts fangirl over her even more - “Pam needs a spin off” says Yasemin and Lacey adds that it’s “the sitcom we didn’t know we needed, Good Ol’ Pam”.
The liars grill Emily on what happened and after revealing she tripped, Aria is adamant Toby was more involved and wants her to go to the police. Spencer is also on the hate Toby train – in reality, she never left - wanting him to go down for murdering Ali and attempting to do the same to Emily (if only he hadn’t failed). Hanna finally shows up, bringing with her the very thing everyone is talking about - the file!
Unlike Aria and Spencer, Hanna is a nice friend and attempts to lighten the mood, but Emily is too distracted by Toby’s file to care - until she remembers Hanna’s comment from homecoming about Maya and confronts her on her intentions. LGBTQ+ ally Hanna reassures Emily that she and the girls will always support her regardless of who she is interested in dating, which makes your hosts reflect on this sincere act of friendship.
The Spencer and Melissa feud continues as Spencer tries to put the story straight for Alex after Melissa’s sneaky encounter with him at homecoming. After begging for what seems like an eternity, he agrees to a do-over date, but only if he is in control of E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G aka, Spencer's worst nightmare.
This episode also sees Aria take her own relationship to the next level. Tired of Ezra being the only criminal, she follows in A’s footsteps and tries her hand at stalking. She starts small with a simple voice note - totally normal for a student to do this right? Or is Lacey’s interpretation of “psycho” more accurate?
A mystery package gets Aria’s hopes up. She assumes that it must be from her one true love, Ezra Fitz, but it is in fact from another admirer thanking her for babysitting him at the homecoming. Disgust and disappointment quickly take over Aria’s face and your hosts are left questioning the thought process of this admirer “would you really spend money on flowers for that?
Trouble is brewing all around the Montgomery house this episode. Ella ditches her son’s lacrosse game because her hatred for Byron is simply too much – of course, your hosts agree he’s the worst.
Meanwhile, Emily wakes up from a deep sleep into a nightmare as she is greeted by a barking German Shephard, Jenna Marshall in the doorway and good ol’ Pam holding a plate of cookies. Yasemin is utterly confused why Emily has a crowd watching her sleep, but Lacey clears things up explaining it was Jenna’s insistence that allowed Pam to accommodate such a strange activity. Jenna of course doesn’t care about Emily’s wellbeing, she is there to find out the tea on Toby’s whereabouts and the location of the infamous file.
Later, Lucas’ crush on Hanna becomes clear as we see him zooming in on her 40-year-old’s updo in the pictures he took at homecoming. Clearly stalking is the theme of this episode. Sadly for Lucas, Sean is Hanna’s king and current boyfriend and it’s now Lucas’ job to take their pictures. But after being left alone the entire night, Sean is not in the mood to play along and Lucas doesn’t help the situation as he spends the entire time antagonising him.
Pam tries to have an intervention with Emily about Toby, but what troubles Yasemin even more is Pam’s mention of Jenna’s “eye seeing dog” translated to guide dog for us Brits, “I’ve never even heard that before, I thought she was just taking the piss at first, but if that’s what they call them then… very literal”.
The entrance of Byron into the episode instantly irks your hosts and for a millisecond they become Aria fans as she talks back to him in her sassy, disrespectful way, but this doesn’t last long as the intentions behind her conversation with Bryon are smelling a little too much like Ezra Fitz and she soon becomes her bratty self when accused of being too young to understand what her parents are going through.
Whilst Emily is laid up in bed with a hurt wrist, Hanna puts her racing boots on and drives Aria and Spencer through the middle of nowhere to burn the file. A too-perfect picture of Emily lights up Hanna’s phone, forgotten in the car, and your hosts take a moment to show their true colours as they talk about the type of pictures they save for their friends in their contacts. It certainly isn’t as flawless as Shay Mitchell’s headshot.
In a heated moment in the woods, Hanna ends up revealing her hobby for stealing and a verbal cat fight takes place between the three liars - ultimately ending in the file’s demise. Unfortunately, due to Emily’s wrist injury, her important text about the file following her conversation with Jenna, has been sent too late and once again your hosts are left in a confused state wondering how the timeline of this episode works, but Lacey comes up with a genius plot that might involve the return of the Southern American accent.
Pam does eventually release her prisoner, uh, daughter but only to another institution known as Rosewood High. Here, despite her obviously very serious and life altering injuries, Emily is treated to a dirty look from Maya who acts like she doesn’t even know her having been humiliated when Emily took Toby to homecoming.
It being a school day, our stalker *cough cough* sorry Aria, has the chance to check in on Ezra in his classroom, but she is instead greeted by a sub-teacher, which for any other normal teenager would be a good day, but for Aria, it’s the end of the world and it’s back to the drawing board to come up with a another way to hunt down Ezra Fitz. The sub-teacher, Miss Shephard isn’t your ordinary sub as hardcore PLL fan gives a little insight into the
You’re treated to another sequence from your hosts as they try to put themselves in the shoes of Jenna Marshall, who is desperately trying to locate her locker, but being blind doesn’t make that an easy task as Yasemin sums up ‘how does she know where she is? How does she know that’s the right side of the lockers? There must be something on the other side to indicate like this isn’t the right side, it’s the other side.”
Aria’s stalker vibes have rubbed off on Spencer too as she goes to call Alex’s bluff and checks on him at the Country Club, where she is surprised to actually find him there making fruit kebabs for some extra cash, which according to Lacey he so desperately needs as “he couldn’t afford caffeine if he tried”. Spencer’s lack of work experience rubs Lacey the wrong way as she is unable to wear a hairnet properly, but her social status doesn’t interfere with her ability to get down and dirty with Alex.
Lucas has his first sexual experience as his little finger brushes against Hanna’s hand whilst watching a sexy video titled ‘Turkey on a Snowboard’. After such a vulnerable encounter, he feels comfortable enough to open up about Ali’s nickname for him, some of you might feel bad for Lucas, but Lacey is team Ali and calls her “a queen”!
Lacey shows off her investigating skills when Spencer discovers the B*tch Board and sees that she has made the cut, but was it added by a worker or did someone anonymous put it there to cause conflict? Yasemin feels left out and attempts to add some investigative knowledge that might help, but Lacey is more skilled and puts the record straight. (Lacey is a bitch, clearly :P)
More dysfunction for the Montgomerys as Ella and Byron are called to the school and Byron now feels like it’s the right time to step up and be a good parent figure. Obviously, your hosts are Team Ella all the way, so far that Yasemin suggests we should’ve been able to take a vote on who thinks Byron should stay - what would be your vote?
Aria has put all the stops out this episode and gets an A+ for trying to find Ezra Fitz, but she might've taken this hunt a little too far. She’s gone to level 99 and is now outside Ezra’s flat, this is her last chance to find him and make sure he is alive. After no answer, she decides to go to level 100 and go full blown stalker and enters his flat with a hidden key, to a perfectly timed voicemail which potentially puts their relationship in jeopardy.
Leaving Ezra’s flat deflated after that voicemail, Aria clings to the one thing that will make her happy which is a note left by Ezra in a novel he gave to her, as she’s touching his handwriting you are blessed with a musical number by your hosts which really showcases the atmosphere of the scene.
In the final closing scene of this episode, Emily encounters a truck outside the Cavanaugh’s house which has a totaled motorbike on it, this could only mean one thing and to Hanna that means Toby’s dead, but this has not been confirmed. Spencer and Hanna have yet another verbal cat fight over Emily’s right to be emotional and an A text clears up some uncertainty about who is not A.
Quotes
“Little Mike, he interrupts them about his stupid lacrosse game that no one cares about.” - Yasemin [13m 57s]
“I thought this was a bit strange, because Emily is sleeping and then Pam is like ‘oh so you’re awake’ well yes because there’s a f*cking dog barking in my face. Is she being serious? And why are they all just standing there?” - Yasemin [16m 06s]
“You are the bad guy, you cheated hun. You’re automatically and forever will be the bad guy babes.” - Yasemin [27m 30s]
“Jenna can’t go anywhere quietly, like if she doesn’t have her clicky-clacky, she’s walking down the lockers touching every bloody one and all you can hear is DUH DUH DUH DUH.” - Lacey [38m 26s]
“He [Lucas] moves his finger and it touches her thumb and he acts like he thrusted it in her hole.” - Lacey [46m 32s]
“But father of the year over here is like, I want to focus on the kids. Where was that attitude a year ago when you were banging a student?” - Lacey [53m 12s]
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