4.2 Turn of the Shoe Starting with Spencer, she gets a bit of a shock when UPenn reject her application. It’s not surprising that even a type-A, over-achiever like Spencer would struggle to maintain academic excellence while also dealing with murder mysteries and stints in mental hospitals, but she takes it pretty hard all the same. She claims to be the first of her family to not attend the college and Ezra warns her against using the same essay, which details her experiences with A and subsequent breakdown, for other applications. With the knowledge that going to college would make the fifth series of Pretty Little Liars a little difficult, will she even go away next year? Sadly, the show seems to be doing its best to keep all four Liars in Rosewood for the foreseeable future. Emily’s dreams of attending Stanford with Paige on a swimming scholarship are fading fast, as a shoulder injury she gets while saving Mona from A causes her to nearly overdose on painkillers. Her medicated state during an important swim meet puts her in the hospital and probably ruins her chances of winning the spot over rival Shana, so it seems likely the show will follow the grand old tradition of sending its graduating cast to the bog-standard local college. Hannah, as usual, doesn’t really have any problems with Caleb off packing for Ravenswood, and has to focus on the possibility that her mother is a killer. Hints about Wilden’s death are dropped throughout the episode and, after Hannah finds some muddy heels hidden under the kitchen sink, she learns from Mona that heeled footprints were found in connection to the murder. Ashley furiously denies such allegations, but the fact that she’s acting very suspiciously does more to convince me of her innocence. This show doesn’t make its villains obvious, and my guess is that Ashley’s covering up for someone else (possibly Pastor Ted? Or even Caleb?). The show is doing its best here to insert some sympathy back into Toby’s plight, as the ‘truth’ about his mother A offered last week is revealed. It doesn’t take Spencer long to catch on to his suspicious behaviour, even if she’s been far too quick to trust his intentions this year, and he comes clean about the psychiatric report. We learn that his mother killed herself while staying in Radley, and a positive evaluation taken days before the event suggest to him that there’s some kind of conspiracy going on at the institution. We already know there is, as demonstrated by Mona last year, and I think it’s about time we met up with Wren again. Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, A is for A-L-I-V-E, here. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
