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Pretty Little Liars Review: “Shadow Play” (Season 4, Episode 19)

Pretty Little Liars took a break from their regularly scheduled programming to side step into the mind of Spencer Hastings (Troian Bellisario) and yes, it was just as complicatedly brilliant as it appears on TV - and all dressed up in monochromatic colors and old-fashioned garb, no less.

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pretty-little-liars

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Before delving into Spencer’s exhaustion-based manifestation, the Liars begin to test their ‘Ezra is A’ theory. Naturally they do so sans Aria. They recover Ali’s diary in one of Mr. Fitz’s desk drawers. At first it seems like a breakthrough, but later they discover that it was more of a plant. Spencer’s trance opens her mind up to the possibility that A has set them up. It turns out that Ezra (Ian Harding), or whoever (still leaving some room open for possibility), changed some important references in the diary to throw the Liars off. And for the first time, we see proof that A doesn’t know everything.

There have been a lot of moments on Pretty Little Liars where the Liars were thwarted by A’s knack for impossibly knowing everything. It’s what keeps the standard one step forward, two steps back pattern that has been established on the show going. This time the girls have the upper hand. Not only do they have firsthand knowledge of a lot of the stories, but they also have copies of the original pages. It won’t be too hard for them to find the small changes that were apparently worth covering up.

The bigger conflict that has arisen on the show is that Aria and Ezra are back together. The Liars now know it. They also know that Aria has been lying about it. With Spencer’s theory rapidly proving itself to be true, they face an internal problem. How do they tell Aria? No matter which way you look at it, it’s bad. If they don’t tell her and she finds out on her own, if they do tell her and she doesn’t believe them, it’s not going anywhere positive. Even if Ezra is the manipulative psychopath they believe he is, that doesn’t change the impact he’s had on Aria’s life – and how screwed up it will be after she learns this new information.

Do you think that Aria will be able to handle the truth? What are your theories on why Alison has a number for the Fitzgerald Art Institute attached to her cash? Let us know what you thought of this retro Pretty Little Liars in the comment section below!

Random Thoughts:

  • Could Hannah’s heels have clacked any louder while following Mona (Janel Parrish)? No wonder she got caught.
  • At first I thought that A let the Liars have the diary back because he/she needed more of their help figuring out the clues.
  • Does real life Spencer think that Alison would resort to stripping if she was out of cash or was her dream not imitating life in that scene?
  • PLL has been a little frustrating lately. This episode was a nice break.