‘Pretty Little Liars’ Review: “Brother, Where Art Thou”

Season 6, Episode 7: “Brother, Where Art Thou”
Air Date: Tuesday, July 21, 2015

In this week’s episode of Pretty Little Liars, Hanna performs minor surgery on the girls, Emily gets her mack on, and Charles throws himself a very weird birthday party.

Spencer and Aria huddle around their laptop watching YouTube videos on how to remove a microchip from a puppy when a phone rings. Aria starts rubbing her neck, wondering if that is where the ringing came from. I have no words for Aria right now. In positive Aria news, she has decided her Doll Phase (which she compares to Picasso’s blue phase) is over and she is going to throw away all her dolls.

After Aria leaves, Toby stops by fresh from the police seminar he was attending. Seriously, a police seminar? That may be the best excuse PLL has ever concocted to explain a character’s absence. Spencer doesn’t want to lie to Toby about everything that is going on, so she tells him she is going to Aria’s to work on her Valedictorian speech, and then heads to The Brew to hang with Hanna.  While at The Brew, Spencer gets a call from Ali. Ali explains that she has been MIA because her dad received a death-birthday card from Charles,  and then took himself and his daughter off the grid. Jason wouldn’t run away with them though because he is determined to meet his non-imaginary friend/ older brother. While Spencer is on the phone with Ali, Sabrina the stoner baker saunters by and slips some gummy edibles into Spencer’s bag.

Hanna walks down in the morning about to scurry off for breakfast when Ashley hands her a cash filled box of lasagna for Hanna’s college tuition. Just kidding, lasagna money is so Season One. What Ashley really hands Hanna is a check for thirty thousand dollars courtesy of the Carrasimi Group. Hanna is suspicious when her mom lets it slip that Jason suggested she apply for the scholarship and that the DiLaurentis’ used to donate to that firm  After some online sleuthing, she discovered that Carrasimi is the same investment group that paid to shut down Radley. Spencer is convinced that Carrasimi is actually a front company to Charles’ bank account.

Sara’s ‘friend’ Claire shows up at the Brew looking for Emily, in hopes that she can reconnect with Sara. At first Emily is suspicious, but decides that she is okay with Sara interacting with another character on the show. Sara isn’t sure if she wants to see her old friend, but she warms up to the idea when Emily offers to be her escort.  The two proceed discuss their kiss from the previous night and Sara isn’t sure if she dreamed the kiss or if it was real. Oh man, I wish I could wake up from a dream of kissing Emily and have it be real.

But then Sara says one of most disturbing lines of the episode or maybe even the series. She says “I’ve had enough pretend kisses. This was my first real kiss in three years.” Is she insinuating that Charles forced Sara to kiss him in the Dollhouse? Did Charles molest all of the girls, or just Sara, who he forced to act and dress like his sister? How is this line said and overlooked so easily? Emily doesn’t blink an eye by Sara’s comment and tells Sara they should probably slow down and try to figure out what they individually want.

When Emily and Sara arrive at the countryside milk and cookie shop Sara immediately reconnects with her old friend. While Claire fills Sara in on all the dirt and drama she missed out on while being kidnapped for three year,  Emily is delegated to be the third wheel and is forced to awkwardly people watch. As they are about to leave, Claire invites Sara to stay over at her house, possibly for an extended period of time and Emily goes into full-on protective, jealous girlfriend mode. She comes up with a hundred reasons for why Sara cannot stay with Claire, and whenever Claire tries to counter, Emily shoots her right back down. Jealously really doesn’t look good on Emily.

After the meeting though, Sara decides that she is going to go live with Claire so she and Emily can start dating. She reasons that if she and Emily don’t live together they can go on real dates, eat food not prepared by Mrs. Field’s, and they can make out some more. I am with Sara until that last point. I am pretty sure it is a lot easier to sleep with someone when you literally sleep in the same room as them.

The Gang

Now that Sara has moved out, Emily attends her first Scooby meeting in god knows how long and gets caught up on the day’s shenanigans.

The meeting turns into a battle of the competent liars (Spencer and Hanna) versus the  liars with their heads up their asses (Aria and Emily). Spencer and Hanna lay out their plan to catch Charles. First, Hanna will surgically remove the microchips from the liars’ necks and leave the chips at Spencer’s house, so A thinks they are at home (every week I think that I can’t possibly love Hanna more, and then she does something like pull out a semi-sterile suture kit). Second, they will follow Jason using the GPS Hanna planted on his car. Emily doesn’t think it will work due to the fact that A pretty much has superpowers, which to Em’s credit is kind of a valid point. Then Aria makes the always smart suggestion of telling the Rosweood PD what is going on and letting them handle it. Aria needs to stop talking this season. Everytime she does, her lack of any common sense physically hurts me.

Spencer compromises with Aria, they will let Toby in on their plan because he is trustworthy and he is a cop. When Spencer tells Toby the plan he applies the new skills he learned at his week long police seminar and  tries to act all cop like wanting to do everything by the book. When will people realize you can’t do something by the book when you are dealing with Charles. Spencer uses her sexy Spencer voice to talk him down, he agrees to play by the liars rules, and grabs some special gummies from Spencer’s bag on his way out.

The liars follow Jason’s GPS signal to a creepy abandoned playhouse, full of rows and rows of pinball machines. Just as Jason is about to finally meet and talk to his brother, Toby and Lorenzo barge in, ruining the brotherly bonding moment and spooking Charles. Charles turns on all of the arcade lights to distract the cops and Toby, who has been shoveling Spencer’s edible gummies into his mouth all night, starts tripping balls. I mean he is hardcore tripping and the flashing lights and loud carnival noises do nothing to help.

When Jason gets home, he is livid. All he wanted to do was meet his older brother, who was kept away from him for all these years. Yes, Charles tried to kill his sister, and yes he tortured and kidnapped six girls, but it was his right to meet his brother! Ali tries to console but is distracted when the two hear voices upstairs. When they get to the attic, an old home video of their second cousin Freddie’s birthday party is playing. The two siblings realize that Freddie wasn’t their second cousin, he was their brother!

So to quickly recap A=Charles=Freddie. Get it? got it? Good!

Hanna Quotes of the Week:

Hanna: Except now we have hardware in our necks. God, we’re like cyclops.
Spencer: Cyborgs
Hanna: I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced cyclops.

Questions:

1. Remember when the IRS was supposed to be on the case, shouldn’t they have figured that Carrasimi was laundering Charles’ money before two high schoolers did?
2. Why are all of Charles’ childhood videos shot on old school projector film? He grew up in the 90’s, weren’t home videos were shot on VHS by then?
3. Why did Charles waste all this money on chipping the liars when all you need to do to find one is wait at The Brew?