Pretty Little Liars: Season 4, episodes 1-2.

Okay, we don't exactly know why our blog views have skyrocketed in the past week, but it makes sense that it's the return of Pretty Little Liars. That means we'd better write about it, right? Give the people what they want!

For some reason, we thought the show would immediately abandon the ruse that Ali is dead, especially after she's been seen by a Liar and Mona. But no. They just give us her mom and the Liars finally starting to truly suspect their friend isn't dead and gone. 

We love Ali's mom. She's an alcoholic and a little bit of a manipulative witch. She taunts Hanna subtly about her weight (making it sound like a compliment). 

We'd just like to leave this here for teenage girls reading this: Don't talk about another person's weight, whether it's a diss or a compliment. It's not your business and any comment, even a nice one, can be taken too seriously and as encouragement to starve. 

Also, if you'd like to love your own body more, stop talking about YOUR weight, diet habits, clothing sizes, desires, and workouts. The less you complain about it, the less it's on your mind. To really axe the body stress, don't read women's magazines. Seriously, they are classless, dumb, and sexist. Rant over. 

We loved the flashback with Ali holding her breath at lunch with her mother. We also loved the parrot.

We think everyone was disappointed to find out there was a dead pig in the trunk. That didn't really fit the girls' gasps. If we had been there, we would have just groaned. But who's sad that Wilden is gone? Um, no one. He was the worst and the creepiest. 

Do we believe Mona is with the girls? It would be nice to believe it, and she seems sincere. "A" tried to kill her this week as well. We are Mona fans and would like to see her working with the Liars more, so the first two episodes have been a treat for us. 

Speaking of treats: no more nauseating Ezria! They are completely broken up. Sure, they've broken up before, but it seems real this time. It was cruel of the show to taunt us with a fantasy vision of Ezra getting arrested like he deserves. Oh, if only.

We guess he has a son now, so that would be too cruel. It would also entangle Aria in more Ezra drama, which would bore us. There's almost no way Ezria isn't endgame but for now…hey there, Sensei! Nice to meet you. It's annoying that Aria is crushing on yet another TEACHER, but better him than ol' Fish Face.

Paige is obviously going to die since she's planning to steal Emily away from Rosewood. Aww, think how happy Ems would be! "A" would never allow that. 

Emily's storyline was particularly intriguing this week. She is stressed about getting into Stanford and has a hurt shoulder from A's last attack (that she really should have seen a doctor about), so she OD's on painkillers and nearly drowns during the swim meet, ending up in the hospital. 

It's cool to get more of Toby's motivations behind why he's still helping A. It has to do with his dead mother. She was in Radley and committed suicide just as she was showing signs of getting better. "A" got Toby his mother's file. We like seeing layers to Toby and finding out more of his secrets. More of this storyline, please!

We were weirdly happy when Spencer didn't get into UPenn. It's probably best that she break family tradition, since her family is a little crazy and neurotic. Also, it gets annoying when all teen shows have these impossible brainiacs who all get into Ivy League schools. There are plenty of great students who don't get into those schools. On TV, it's like kids are either flunking out or going to Yale with Rory Gilmore. Additionally, Spencer did copy Melissa's paper that one time, and cheaters don't deserve to go to a school that awesome. 

Do you guys think Ezra was right to discourage Spencer to talk about her mental problems in her essay? On the one hand, there is a huge, unfair stigma associated with mental health issues, even though most of us will have one at one time over the course of our lives. On the other, the essay would definitely stand out and someone might understand what a bad ass Spencer is. 

We don't know where the show is going with Ashley Marin's troubles and secrets. We don't think PLL would actually kill Hanna's mom, so there's not as much tension there for us as you might think.

Our only problem with this show right now is that there are too many standalone scenes that are a waste of time, don't have interesting dialogue or quips, or don't move things along. Every scene that isn't contributing directly to plot needs to at least have some good character development.

Episode 1 grade: B

Episode 2 grade: B+