It’s no secret that we’re fans of Pretty Little Liars, but last night’s episode “The Homecoming Hangover”  felt off-key in every way.  Hopefully this is just a bump in an otherwise perfectly enjoyable series.

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS - "The Homecoming Hangover" (ABC FAMILY/ADAM ROSE)

Aria the Stalker

She may not be a full-fledged stalker, but Aria has been going a little crazy trying to force an interaction with her and Mr. Fitz. When someone doesn’t return your phone calls – it usually indicates an unwillingness to communicate.  She comes off far too “desperate schoolgirl” in this episode. And if Ezra Fitz Aria’s age and we saw her hounding him this way – you’d forgive her actions even less. When Erza doesn’t show up to school, Aria heads to his place and even uses his spare key to go into his apartment. She wasn’t exactly suave in covering up her intentions when she was grilling the sub about Mr. Fitz’s whereabouts. Gee, ya think she cares more about the hottie than To Kill a Mockingird? Aria needs to be written as a girl who can be less obvious, otherwise there’s no suspense. It becomes less a question of “if” anyone will figure out Aria and Mr. Fitz have hooked up, but when. Now, speaking of building up suspense…

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS - "The Homecoming Hangover" (ABC FAMILY/ADAM ROSE)

Emily’s Accident

There was such a major cliff-hanger in the previous episode, and where was the payoff? We looked, but we did not see! (At least not until the end of this episode.)  Toby dropping Emily off at the hospital felt like such a let-down. The girls found her cell phone. Gasp! On the floor. Gasp! There’s blood. Gasp! But she’s at the hospital and the biggest problem is her nosy mom. Sigh. Turns out that Toby was not just harmless, but helpful. And now probably dead. But we’re not addressing that part yet…

Three Idiots in the Woods

When Aria, Spencer and Hanna were in the woods, Hanna wanted to burn the file. With her fingerprints all over it, we don’t blame her. (Seriously girls, invest in some gloves.) Aria does the truly dumb thing in throwing the papers into the convenient creek. Burning paper destroys it, but throwing it into water stills gives it the options to float, get caught in the sewage drains, or simply go ashore (which they did.) Maybe some of the ink has faded? Ha.  At this rate, we wouldn’t put it past these girls to throw a dead body into the lake and expect it to sink like magic. Emily wasn’t there, and she seems to be the one with the most sense.

Parental Issues

The one jaw-dropping moment we didn’t see coming was when Aria’s Mom couldn’t keep her husband from staying, so she decided to leave. Even more jaw-dropping was how the kids didn’t seem to fight to keep Mom there by shaming their Dad into leaving. (If we had to choose a parent to stay it’d be the one who didn’t lie and cheat, and then have us lie to our Mom on their behalf for a year.) Trying to make your family be okay with your actions isn’t going to happen by forcing them to deal with you when what they want is space. And hey, look how giving Emily space turned out for Maya…

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS - "The Homecoming Hangover" (ABC FAMILY/ADAM ROSE)

The Dead Romance

We truly thought Emily liked Toby, so when he asked her in the previous episode if she came to homecoming with the wrong person – we didn’t think so. We thought she liked them both. Apparently not so much. Maya gave Emily space, and now the two are going to stand a chance. When Emily told Maya that lots of people would see their photo, do you think she meant because A had it? We thought Emily was going to say she’d submitted it to the Yearbook.

Yearbook Guy

We love Hanna with yearbook guy. Although making a turkey ride on a skateboard seems really mean (think of the turkey’s fear of whiplash!), and we hope that was a fake video. (We know he has a name but we like calling him YEARBOOK GUY!)

Our New Cliffhanger

Toby is either dead, or in a coma. Don’t you think it has to be one of the two? Okay fine, you’re right – he could be missing. Seems pretty sad, although the actor did have very creepy eyes to watch on screen.

We still love Pretty Little Liars, but this episode didn’t sit well with us. What did you think of it?

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