"Turn of the Shoe": Pretty Little Liars Review/Recap

Larianny Perez ’17/ Emertainment Monthly Writer
Rewind: In the Season 4 premiere “A is for A-L-I-V-E”, Mona told the four girls everything she knew! She even brought them to her lair where she showed them a video that proved she was not the one who put Aria in a box that almost killed her. When the video almost revealed that Spencer’s sister, Melissa Hastings (Torrey DeVitto), was there that night and helped put Aria in the box, all of Mona’s files started getting erased on her computer by an unknown source. To help with her innocence, Mona gave Hanna a video she stole from the cop car that could imprison Hanna’s mom, Mrs. Marin.
Ali’s mom, Jessica DiLaurentis (Andrea Parker), moved back into her old house. Ezra, Aria’s ex-boyfriend and English teacher, started working at Rosewood High again and told Aria she could start seeing other people because it could help her move on. Emily and Paige McCullers (Lindsey Shaw), Emily’s girlfriend, started planning on moving to California together after high school. Jenna told Emily that if anything happens to her to tell Toby, Jenna’s brother and Spencer’s boyfriend, that she never meant to hurt him.
Apparently whoever saw Ali the night she died is turning up dead! Toby received a text from A saying “Bet you miss her every day” and attached a picture of his mom. Detective Wilden (Bryce Johnson) was found dead. The girls attended Wilden’s funeral where Spencer looked into Wilden’s coffin and found Mrs. Marin’s phone in his coat pocket. There was a mysterious woman wearing a black funeral veil that attended the funeral. And last but not least, a Pennsylvania state police is doing an investigation on Detective Wilden’s murder and said he has read all about the girls in Wilden’s reports and he will be taking them in for questioning.
WOW! A lot of things happened last episode, and many more things happened in this week’s episode!
Mona is once again trying to prove her innocence to the girls. She takes them to the RV so they can have another snoop around in hopes that they will finally believe she is on their side; turns out the RV is gone! Now, how guilty does this make Mona look? Very! But, later on in the show we find out that Toby was the one who moved the RV. Wow! What a twist! But why? Looks like A has something against Toby. A told him that if he gives them the RV,  he could get a transcript that his mom’s doctor wrote the night that she committed suicide.
What?! Looks like A knows everything and knows how to get what (s)he wants. But, can the transcript A gave Toby be trusted? What if A was the one who actually wrote the transcript and is trying to get Toby upset? The transcript talked about how Toby’s mother loves him and he does not believe that his mother would commit suicide without saying good-bye. He believes Radley Sanitarium, the mental institution in which his mother, Mona, and Spencer stayed at, is hiding something. What could they be hiding? In any case, Toby told Spencer not to tell anyone. So, the girls, minus Spencer, will continue to believe that Mona is guilty.
When Mona brings all of the girls to where the RV was, the RV is not there, but something else is. Hanna and Spencer drive off but Aria tells Emily to wait. They watch as Mona goes into her car and then starts to struggle. There is someone in a mask attempting to strangle and kill her. Mona manages to grab a flashlight, hit the masked person, and get out of the car. When Aria and Emily run up to help Mona, the person drives off with her car. But that is not the last time they see him/her. That person makes a U-turn and tries to run the three girls over. Emily moves Aria and Mona out of the way and end up banging her arm on a rock that was on the ground. Ouch! Who was the masked person? Why did they want to kill Mona? Will this attempted murder help the other girls realize that Mona is officially on their side?
Emily’s fall is bad! Her arm is hurting so much that when Paige goes to give her a hug she moves away. She does not tell Paige how she got hurt because she doesn’t want Paige to be involved with A again. The next day Emily has a huge swim tournament but the pain is too much for her to handle. She decides to take painkillers, but he pills she takes backfire! While she is swimming the pills distort her perception of the distance between herself and the edge of the pool. She bangs her head against the wall, and she is taken to the hospital. Did A put a little something extra in the pills? Will this be the end of Emily’s swimming career? Will Emily not get the position on Stanford’s swim team after this incident? Can she kiss her dreams in California with Paige good-bye?
Another tragic thing occurs in this episode: Spencer gets rejected from UPenn!! L That was her dream school! The school she’s been expecting to go to since before she was even born! She would be the first in her family not to attend that school! It was sad to see the rejection letter, and even worse seeing her cry! The only person she tells is Mr. Fitz, her English teacher. He tells her that she can send him her college essay and they can work on it to send it to other colleges.
In this episode Aria starts taking classes with Jake, a martial arts teacher, where he teaches her self-defense. One of the topics they talk about is trust and how she has to trust him for their student/teacher relationship to work. At one point, they get so close to each other during her lesson that Aria kisses him. Later that night he goes to her house and tells her that he has a feeling she won’t be going back to class, but that he wants her to know that he’s interested in her. So, they plan on meeting up for coffee. Has Aria moved on? I think yes! Who wouldn’t? He’s hot!
There is also a flashback in this episode, and we get to see another glimpse of Ali, before she passes away. The scene is Ali and her mother sitting down at a café. Ali tells her mother that she could order a cocktail, and that she would not tell her father. Boy, did Ali like keeping secrets. She tells her mom that she wants to spend time with Spencer, Aria, Hanna, and Emily at their lake house in Cape May. Her mom refuses Ali’s request, but Ali is not going to take no for an answer. She holds her breath and even when her mom attempts to pour a drink on her, Ali keeps her mouth closed. Ali’s mom finally caves in and says she can go. What a twisted way to get what you want, right? Anyways, Hanna tells Mrs. DiLaurentis that they never went to Cape May and that’s exactly what the mother figured. She finds a bunch of empty beer bottles and figures that her daughter was hanging with an older crowd. Who was the older crowd? Possibly Detective Wilden?
Mrs. DiLaurentis is given Ali’s old parrot from Nana D, Ali’s grandmother.  Mrs. DiLaurentis saiys Ali spent more time with that bird than she did with her own grandmother, that the bird even slept in her room. The parrot repeats some of the things Ali used to say to a point where it even sounds like her. The parrot even hums a tune and says, “Hello.” Mrs. DiLaurentis gives the parrot to Hanna who then leaves it at Spencer’s house. Spencer is getting annoyed with the bird humming the tune and saying hello. But, then it all clicks. She figures out that the tune the bird is humming is not the tune of a song, it is a phone number. You go Spencer! So now the next step is to figure out who’s phone number that is. Could it be someone that Ali always kept in touch with? Could it be a lover? Could it be Wilden? We’ll have to find out.
Spencer calls the girls over and they try calling the number. The phone just keeps ringing and no one picks up. Aria decides to go back upstairs and record the bird in case they got the numbers wrong. When they go back upstairs, the bird is gone! Just great! That phone number could have led to so many answers being revealed and it’s gone. But who took it? At the end of the episode we see that one of A’s accomplices has taken the bird. I guess they knew what secrets it held.
Mrs. Marin was out of town when Wilden was murdered, or so she says. We, the audience, never find out in this episode. But the evidence that keeps arising makes her seem more and more suspicious. Let me take you guys back a few seasons…
Hanna and Mona used to be best friends at one point and were shopaholics. They sometimes even stole merchandise. Did they think they wouldn’t get caught? Well, Hanna did and Detective Wilden brought her in for questioning. Once he was done talking to Hanna he talked with her mother. A crime like that could have put Hanna in jail and news like that would spread around fast in the neighborhood and would not look good on their family, so Hanna’s mom fixed it. When she walked out of the interview she told Hanna that they were leaving. And just like that they left. How was Hanna in the clear? What did Mrs. Marin do to get Hanna off the hook? In a later episode we saw that Detective Wilden came over Hanna’s house. Hmm, seems weird right? Well Mrs. Marin brought him up to her room and we can all guess what they did! So, looks like Hanna’s mom took one for the team. Poor Mrs. Marin!  Wilden kept harassing them and even pulled Mrs. Marin over one night telling her to tell Hanna to keep her mouth shut or he’ll shut it up for her. At that point she ran him over with her car!
That is not how he died. Apparently Jenna and Shauna, Paige’s ex-girlfriend, went to the crime scene later that night and dragged his body. He was alive because he was seen a few episodes later, but in last week’s episode he was found dead. As to how he died or who killed him, we don’t know! But Mrs. Marin is looking more and more suspicious as the evidence comes up.
Now, let me talk about Shauna and what she does in this episode. Hanna confronts her for not being at Wilden’s funeral, especially since she helped Jenna move his body.  Well…could she have been at the funeral? Could she have been the mysterious woman in the black funeral veil? But either way, Hanna lashes out at her, and even says that Jenna was there to say good-bye. Another time Shauna is present in this episode is when she goes into the locker room Emily iss in. She is talking her up before the swim tournament, saying that her bruise looked pretty bad and that she knew that Emily was trying to get the last spot on Stanford’s swim team. She also tells Emily that she is going for the last spot as well. Friendly competition? I don’t think so! Could Shauna be so determined to get onto Stanford’s swim team that she put something in Emily’s pills? It wouldn’t be the first time someone has drugged Emily. And I do not think it was a coincidence that the film makers had Shauna in the scene where Emily banged her head and they were trying to get her out because we could clearly see Shauna’s facial expressions and she was neither surprised nor cared that Emily got hurt. Hmm…
Now back to Mrs. Marin, why was her phone in Detective Wilden’s pocket if she was away? Could she have been in Rosewood the whole time? Well when Hanna gives her mom her phone back, her mom acts like it’s nothing. She says that she must have left it on the front desk when she checked-out of the hotel and they mailed it to her. Hmm…why is she lying? Hanna told her mom she found it in the mail-box when she really didn’t, so she just caught her mom in a lie.
Later on, Hanna finds a bag under the sink and inside are her mom’s muddy heels and a toothbrush. Now why would her mom leave her heels in a bag under the sink? Is she trying to hide it? What about the toothbrush? Was she trying to clean the heels? Now why would she need to use a toothbrush when she could just go to the cleaners? Hmm…very suspicious. And when Hanna confronts her mom about finding the shoes, her mother becomes very offensive and tells Hanna to pretty much mind her own business. That’s not even the worse part!
Mona talks to a police officer, but it’s just a diversion to hear what the investigators behind them are saying. They tape up the South Shore of Torch Lake as a crime scene because they found Wilden’s footprints; they think he was there the night he was murdered. But, they also say that there were two sets of footprints and the second one were heels. Hmm…heels? Now, who has heels that are muddy? Oh I know! Mrs. Marin does! See how she is looking more and more suspicious?
As you can see A LOT of things happened in this episode! I give this episode two thumbs up! If you have not started watching this show, I would say start now! Pretty Little Liars is the type of show where you are constantly at the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next. It’s suspenseful! So if you are into suspense and like a good blackmail here and there I would definitely recommend watching, because you will get that and so much more.
However, it’s been a few seasons now, and the reveal of A has still yet to come. I believe they are dragging it along to a point where I’m fed up and just want to know who A is already. But, with that being said, they are doing a great job in giving me new information about Ali, her disappearance, and the conflicts that are presently going on in the show. So although I have yet to find out who A or red coat are, I am still getting some answers.  That is satisfying enough for me, because as much as I’d like to find out who red coat is, I also don’t want to because then I’ll be upset that the search is over!
Predictions: Hmm, what can I predict will happen in next week’s episode? Honestly, it’s reached the point where I do not know what they are going to throw at us next! From watching the sneak peeks, Mrs. Marin confronts Hanna about snooping around her business and tells her not to do that. Also, Hanna, Emily, and Aria go to an abandoned warehouse where a man opens the door and they show him a mask asking him if he made it. Like, where did the mask come from? What new incident occurs where they land upon that mask? Also, Melissa, Spencer’s sister, might get an internship in London?! And then she tells Spencer that they probably both deserve the chance to leave Rosewood! I wonder what Melissa is running away from? Is she not trying to be the next one to wind up dead? Is she part of the A team and knows A’s next move and is trying to warm her sister to get out before things get ugly? Who knows! We’ll find out next week on ABC Family at 8pm!

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