Emily’s becoming a one-woman vigilante, Spencer is more forgiving than Mother Theresa, Aria has predictable boy issues, and Hannah dressed like one of those ladies in an 80’s Soap Opera. All that and more is up for discussion in the Pretty Little Liars review of “The Devil You Know.”

I want to address the title of this post, real quick. The devil you know is someone you can defeat, but as with A, it’s hard to fight an invisible target you know very little about. When you know the target, you have a better chance of fighting back.

emily fields

Hannah

For fans of Hannah and Caleb, this episode was fun. As I’m lukewarm about Caleb, I’m going to gloss over those moments. Instead, I want to focus on the fact that Hannah’s Mom buys ice. This perplexes me. If the water in rosewood so bad that they can’t fill ice trays?

Emily

Now that Spencer’s less likely to act like Nancy Drew, Emily took up the role. And, Emily was once the champion for the freaks, was quick to throw out a dismissive “He’s always been freaky” about Jason. C’mon, Em! Less judgement, more brains!

Showing more brains than she has before, Emily realized that the entirety of Ian’s suicide/confession was put together from “A” text that she’d gotten. Add that with mysterious map mailed to Em, and you’ve got the girls all trampling around through a graveyard in the middle of the night. They really need different extracurricular activities.

Spencer

Oh, Spencer, honey – I don’t understand you. Melissa choose to believe a killer over her own sister, but Spencer has no hard feelings because of the guilt she has for pawning M’s engagement ring. But I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make them even. Spencer is the one who encourages her parents to hold a funeral for Ian. I don’t understand why it would be a public affair, as no one else but Melissa is mourning him. I couldn’t even figure out why Aria’s parents were there when we saw how upset they were about how Ian had been a coach at the high school. People don’t pay their respects to a teen killer like that, it just doesn’t happen. Not that I grew up in a town with a teen killer, but this is obvious stuff. But now I’m off track.

Spencer kept trying to admit that she’d pawned the ring, but was always interrupted. It was almost comical. And then, brace yourselves, Melissa recognizes the generic ringtone of Ian’s phone coming from Spencer’s purse. Even though Melissa just put Spencer through hell for not believing her, she decides to do it again by insisting that Spencer had been texting as “Ian” in efforts to put Melissa through hell. I think it was time for a little benefit of the doubt, but it was hard to put a cap on the bottle of hysterical-crazy-pregnant-lady that Melissa had unleashed. Listen producers, you’ve made her unlikable. We understand. Melissa’s a bitch. My only question now is if Melissa was going to say something to Spencer in her big reveal other than the fact that Ian had been dead for days. Despite this being a big “HMM” moment for me I feel like the show probably didn’t intend for it to be a question mark and won’t even address it again.

Aria

I’ve saved Aria for last, even though she’s the star of the ensemble. Thing is, who isn’t bored by her ongoing love issues with Ezra? I suppose that yes, he is hot. But that only takes you so far. Sometimes I think, yea, Aria is too mature to deserve an idiot boy who’s still in high school. But othertimes (just as frequently) I think that Aria has a lot of immature moments and she needs to be with a guy closer to her age.

Jason has been re-introduced into the show and this time, he’s taken a liking to Aria. And in turn, Aria likes being noticed. Plus, this works out perfect for scripts as Jason is blonde to Ezra’s brunette.

Meanwhile, Aria is still dating Ezra. She gets upset when he doesn’t out their relationship to her parents, somehow not realizing that if her parents knew about the relationship they’d ground her forever. Why use logic, just be mad at the boyfriend. Hey, it works for a lot of girls.

This episode didn’t address the therapists office being trashed,  included the reveal that Mike breaks into people’s houses, and had Hannah’s Mom freaking out when she couldn’t reach her daughter. Hmmm. I’m going to scrunch my face and eat some peanut butter popcorn. Until next week, folks!

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