Pretty Little Liars - The Devil You Know

After a little bickering about which one of us would draft this post (as opposed to add to it and edit it), we landed on the blogger who liked the episode a little bit less. So we hope you like to hear nitpicking and moaning. Who doesn’t?!!! Haha. Spoilers follow.

So, what was lacking? There were revelations in the episode and some great creepy moments, but we had guessed these things before. Of course Ian was a red herring and didn’t kill Alison. Of course A was sending Melissa the texts. One of us would argue that, while we guessed these things, the show needed the girls to find out and the show needed to confirm these facts. But we compare a lot of teen shows to The Vampire Diaries, a show that moves fast, confirms things the audience knows immediately, and then throws us eight new twists on top of the confirmation. This comparison is unfair, but we do it anyway.

The only thing we didn’t know was that Aria’s brother Mike has made burglary his exciting new hobby in the wake of his parents’ drama. Get a grip, Mike. More than half of us have divorced parents and we know how to stay classy. As surprising as the Mike thing was, it wasn’t cool enough or creepy enough. We wish Mike’s secret were better, but we were kind of excited that one thing the girls attributed to Ian wasn't actually A.

We both liked the romance bits of the episode. Can we just say that we are shipping Aria and Jason even harder now? This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to regular readers. True, we would take “Aria and her cabbage patch doll” over “Aria and Ezra.” But we really think that, even if he weren’t possibly taking Ezra’s place, Jason is a more interesting choice for Aria. We liked the note that A left him.

Hanna continues to be awesome. She’s like the good version of Alison. All the balls, none of the bitch. Ok, maybe just a tiny amount of bitch….but just enough to be epic. She and Caleb are so sweet, and we think the best part of the episode was when he told her that he knew about her helping him out and then she kissed him.

One of us thinks that Melissa gets more irredeemable and stupid by the episode, but the other kind of felt for her when she was yelling at Spencer. Most people would be shocked to find that their sister was impersonating their dead fiancé via text message. We think Melissa will eventually believe that Spence wasn't sending those texts. Jackie Molina needs to step up her game. Right now, we think the show needs a new villain. We can't see A, so we need a flesh-and-blood antagonist. Ian is dead. Jenna isn't cutting it for us anymore. She's too pathetic to be scary. We need someone like Dolores Umbridge, Lauren Tanner, or Hans Landa to manipulate the girls and for us to hate. (Sidenote: the other blogger doesn't think Jenna is "pathetic" so much as she's becoming "sympathetic", which hasn't happened to any of the aforementioned villains.) <- Thank you, peanut gallery. (You're welcome, rude.)

One more gripe before we go: Although we doubt the show meant this literally, if there is a Stephen King book that begins in a graveyard, we don’t remember reading it. Did Pet Sematary start in one? We don’t remember. But even so, that’s just ONE. That said, we hope the show keeps up the horror elements.

Episode grade: B