breaking july

This is another "where have I been?" post. The good news is, I've been in my revision cave and almost have a fully revised manuscript ready to send out into the world! And that's always a good thing, right? Oh, and I've also been busy with lots of work-related reading. They don't call it conference season for nothing. Pitches are fun and exciting and they result in piles of submissions to keep you cozy on an already hot summer night.

The bad news is, there's been no Pretty Little Recap because I've been unable to access new episodes! I knew cancelling our cable service would remove our ability to watch our favourite shows "on demand" as opposed to "with a little effort", but it turns out that sometimes (like when you're really busy with other things), that little bit of effort makes all the difference. That and I've been marathoning Breaking Bad to catch up before its final season premieres in less than two weeks. You know you can't blame me for that :) Anyway, all of that is to say that I plan to catch up on PLL imminently and when I do, there will be a catch-up PLR and I will make every effort (since I'm a few episodes away from being caught up on BB) to actually be on a normal PLR schedule again. Plus, yes, the neglected Friday5 will make its glorious return sometime soon. I have to confess, for a while there, the news was pretty heavy, with the passing of fellow Canadian Cory Monteith, plus Comicon, plus lots of Catching Fire and Divergent news, and I actually felt too intimated by it all to try and capture it in such a limited format. But there are book recs to catch up on and fun stuff to discuss so it shall return!

That's the latest with me. How've you been?

pretty little recap: pledging 4 life

4.05 Gamma Zeta Die

In any teen series, I always love the obligatory check out college and hit up a frat party episode! Classic stuff. And of course, nobody does it like PLL with the character drama, the lesbian-straight fake-out, and of course, the creepy torture den, amiright? There's much to discuss so let's dive in!

Going Greek with booze and, of course, murder. Photo credit: ABC Family

Pretty Little Highlights

1. We finally return to the Tippy the bird storyline! Huzzuh! I like a good bird-phone number mystery. Yes, some of the answers were convenient, but hey, at least they returned to it! Some shows never follow up on the plot threads they introduce (I'm looking at you, Glee).

2. College party! As I said above, the college party episode always makes for great TV, even if your friends are acting weird or trying to bury evidence. Gotta love all those drunk extras.

3. Best line of the night (and this was not easy, considering Spence's entire chat with the college nerd) goes to Hanna, regarding Hot Caleb spending the weekend camping: "The closest thing he has to a phone is a can of beans."

4. But also, yeah, let's talk about Spence's geektastic convo with nerdboy.Crazy eyes. Hufflepuff. A Lannister always pays his debts. Move over Creeper Toby, I think Spencer has found a new soulmate.

5. I'm actually going to give Aria some points for her tie skirt, which was pretty cool, but she loses them all because of the horrific yellow top she wore with it. You just can't figure it out, can you Aria? Also, you lose even more points for "Four Wheel Hive". That's just bad.

Pretty Little Mistakes (a.k.a What Aria Did)

1. Was Aria's brother always this useless? Yeah, I guess he was. He makes Aria look slightly less useless. But only slightly.

2. Speaking of useless people in Aria's family, why did her mom just sit in the car swatting at bees when she could have just opened the door and bailed? Yes, I know. Drama. But I would have been out that door at sight of bee #2. Maybe even bee #1.

3. Oh Hanna. I love you. But bringing a gun to a frat party with a plan to go bury it in the woods is just stupid. It's almost as stupid as trying to sink a cop car. I still love you, but you need to learn to listen to your friends.

4. Emily needs to STOP wandering off on her own. I swear she does that in every episode and when has it ever worked out for her? Okay, to be fair, I'm not putting a lot of thought into whether or not it's ever worked out for her, but I'm fairly certain that more often than not, it's just creepy/scary/awful and she usually hits her head/shoulder/whatever.

5. No Hot Caleb. Yes, the line about his can of  beans was pure gold, but still. Where's Hot Caleb???

Pretty Little ZOMG WTF?!

1. It ain’t Tippy the bird. I should have known the mystery phone number would lead to a crazy abandoned murder room with claw marks on the inside of the door! Of course. Nice pink phone though.

2. Clearly Housemother Crazy has been up to no good. But what's the connection to Aly? Is Housemother Crazy part of the A team?

3. And finally, the big ZOMGWTF moment of the night--Hanna being cuffed and hauled off by the police for TRYING TO BURY THE GUN THAT PROBABLY MURDERED WILDEN. Not smart, Hanna. Not smart. I know she'll somehow get out of this, but I'm having a hard time imagining what that will entail. Is it next week yet??

~PLR~

pretty little recap: smashing mugs

4.04 Face Time

How are we already on episode four? I feel like the season just started five minutes ago. Oh right. It's because I marathoned the first 3 episodes... Oh well. Another week, another batch of creepy masks!

It's night time! Why wouldn't you hang out at a creepy mask place? Photo credit: ABC Family

Pretty Little Highlights

1. Let's get this out of the way up front. Pretty much any episode featuring Hot Caleb means Hot Caleb is going to be a highlight. And it's not just because he's hot (though, yeah, obvs). It's also because he's brave, tries to do what's right, and looks out for Hanna like a boss. I love these two together. Can they please just stay together forever and ever? Please? PLEASE? I DON'T WANT HOT CALEB TO LEAVE THE SHOW! HE IS THE BF MVP OF THE CENTURY!

2. Aria's new dude is turning out to be pretty awesome too. When he was giving her the advice about figuring out if she's hurt or injured, I was thinking, "Man, this guy is too cool for Aria" and then Aria went and proved it by having no clue what the eff he was talking about. It's a pretty basic metaphor, Aria. How has she made it this far in school? Oh right. She was banging her teacher. Zing!

3. Spencer and Aria spying on Melissa was pretty entertaining since they were basically standing RIGHT THERE and Melissa is so dopey that she still didn't see them. I feel like Melissa is the cheerleader version of an evil mastermind. (No offense to cheerleaders--I just needed to stereotype to quickly/easily explain what I mean. You guys are admirably athletic!) Plus Sparia almost always makes for excellent dialogue. Much like Hanna + anyone.

Pretty Little Mistakes (a.k.a What Aria Did)

1. The Emily after school special continues. Something in that storyline needs to either happen or go away. I'm not diggin it.

2. Melissa, why oh why would you desperately (it has to be desperate because it's night time) take the masks from the shop only to dump them in the water nearby? Sure, she's smashing them (poorly), but a) they're still fairly accessible and b) stop littering off that guy's dock! I'm sure he doesn't appreciate waking up for his morning coffee by the lake to find pieces of smashed masks all over his dock and where he likes to swim.

3. Aria's studded sweater and weird pants combo (as partially portrayed above). Enough said.

4. Creeper Toby's Mom blah blah blah. I'm sorry. Usually making fun of Creeper Toby is enough to entertain me during his scenes, but there's nothing to make fun of in this storyline so I need it to end! It almost pains me to say this, but I need good old shirtless-for-no-reason Creeper Toby back!

Pretty Little ZOMG WTF?!

1. Melissa... killed...Wilden?? Maybe??

2. Or was it Ashley?? I'm so confused right now. Am I the only one who had trouble understanding everything Melissa was talking about?

~PLR~

why there is no excuse

I was planning to do a Friday5 this week. There's been big news in the US, leading to more exciting news (our dear KB aka Veronica Mars pulled a twitter proposal on uber-lovable Dax Shepard!), but there's something else that keeps popping up in my Facebook feed, and my blog feed, and in the news, and, it seems, everywhere I look. So I'm going to talk about that instead. I apologize for being serious and somber on the Friday before a long (at least in Canada--HAPPY CANADA DAY!) weekend, but my thoughts on the subject of Paula Deen have been bouncing around in my head all week and the more I read about the controversy, the more I worry for this society my young daughter is poised to grow up in.

I'll try to keep this brief... 

I get what she did. I get the people who are upset about it. What I don't get, are the people who think it was too small and too distant an incident to fuss over. The people who say nobody is perfect, and everybody has done something they regret, and feel it should therefore be excusable. Why should we hold Deen to a higher standard than the rest of us? Because she's in the public eye. She's in a position to influence our brains and our children and our culture. That's why. Those things you've done that you regret? Odds are, they weren't okay either, but because nobody knows about them (or cares on a society-wide scale), nobody is condemning you to the level they're condemning Deen.

That's why.

Let's set aside for a moment the fact that I personally think Deen's apologies are more PR than they are sincere. Even if it was an isolated incident that happened in the past and she regrets it, as a society who has now been exposed to a concrete example of this type of behaviour, we can't just let it slide. Because the moment we excuse it in ANY FORM is the moment we let our children believe that under some circumstances, that type of thinking is okay. And it's not. It never was. Even back when it was "acceptable", it wasn't actually fine, it was just a bunch of people who were wrong and didn't know any better. That makes it something we can learn from. But it still doesn't make it okay.

If someone is truly sorry and appears to have a firm understanding as to why what they did was wrong, then I think they should be forgiven. Forgiveness is important. And yes, if Deen really is sorry, we should forgive her. But don't try to minimize what she did. Don't claim it's being blown out of proportion. That's damaging to progress. Your excuses are hindering my ability to raise my daughter in a world where she has no reason to question the fact that prejudice and racism are ridiculous and disgusting.

So please, for the sake of evolution, go ahead and forgive Deen if you believe her apologies, but don't try to rationalize what she did. Or downplay it in any way. It doesn't matter when, or where, or why. It's forgivable, but it's not okay.

pretty little recap: new season, new insanity (and a bit of the old too!)

Season Four, Episodes 1-3

Hello my lovely PLLers! I am happy to say that I'm finally all caught up on PLL! I marathoned the first three episodes and my head is still spinning! But before we dive into the juicy deets, welcome to the Pretty Little Recap 2.0 a.k.a. the less stream-of-consciousness version of the PLR. As much as I enjoyed the live-blogging format, I found it was occasionally detracting from my enjoyment of the actual show. My attention was split between the TV and the computer screen and that's not good for a PLLer who wants to absorb every last clue (but still fails miserably cause the crazy is too intense on this show!). So, as promised, the PLR is getting a makeover and I hope this new format will allow me to pay more attention to the show while I'm watching and keep this recap (of sorts) to just the good stuff :) Without further ado, here's a condensed PLR for Season Four, episodes 1-3...

This poster totally makes me think I shouldn't mess with Aria. But I'm going to anyway.

Pretty Little Highlights

1. It took 3 episodes, but Hot Caleb is back on my tv screen! (But seriously PLL, why did it take three episodes?? You're lucky I watched them all at once...) My goodness have I ever missed our resident Rosewood pretty boy/bad boy. And he was in fine form, being all noble and defending Hanna. I know these two are in a comfortable place in their relationship now, but that girl owes him some serious makeouts.

2. Crazy Mona is still being creeptastic, but in a whole new way. I don't know if I should trust the girl or not and I love that about this show.

3. Spencer isn't broken. Our dear girl Spence is back to her old self, and yes, she's back with Creeper Toby (whom I WILL NEVER TRUST), but she's also back to her quippy Spencer self (College rejections aside). I would follow her through another mental breakdown if it came to it (because she's so entertaining to watch), but I'm glad we have our jokey, generally happy Spencer back.

4. Aria has a new sorta-boyfriend! Nothing against Ezra--I really do like the guy and I'm even fine with Aria ending up with him--but that storyline was becoming so boring and repetitive. It's nice to have a new (hot!) guy on the scene to stir the pot. He's not Hot Caleb hot, but he's more than welcome on my screen.

5. Tibby is officially my third favourite liar (after Hanna and Spence, natch). That bird has style. I have to give husband credit (he never watches PLL, but my marathon catch-up session forced him to glance up from his laptop occasionally), he totally called the phone number thing before I did. But to be fair (to me), the bird wasn't even finished whistling the tune once and husband yelled out "It's a phone number!" probably because he watches a lot of TV and is suspicious of everything and randomly guesses that things are phone numbers and when you do that, there's a good chance that eventually you'll be right! At least, that's what I'm telling myself. I was more impressed with how well Tibby managed to impersonate Aly. They should just slap a blonde wig on the bird and take her to school with them!

Pretty Little Missteps (a.k.a. What Aria Did)

1. Oh Emily. I love you, girl, but seriously, taking your mom's painkillers? This is PLL, not an after school special. You need to get your shiz together. If you injured yourself, you should get your own pills (you're already lying about what happened to your shoulder) and leave it at that. Stop being silly, Emily. The Rosewood lesbian swim team community is not impressed with how poorly you're representing them.

2. Aria's wardrobe (I told you she wouldn't escape... this section is dedicated to her after all). Clearly her fashion sense isn't improving with age. Maybe new guy (blanking on his name atm) will take her shopping or at least give her some of his old gym sweats to wear. Anything would be better than that bedazzled dress she wore to Wildren's funeral.

3. And speaking of the funeral, how many times are we going to see the liars, all dressed in black, standing outside the church post-funeral, getting a simultaneous!text from A? I feel like there should be a montage of these scenes set to Graduation by Vitamin C (Because that was the first montage song that popped into my head. Yes, I know it doesn't make much sense.).

4. The Rosewood Moms are up to something... at least Ashley is. Ashely, rule #1 in being a sneaky no-goodnick is to NOT THROW YOUR MURDER PUMPS IN THE GARBAGE! You need to burn those kicks ASAP! You know your daughter is one of the queen sneaks of Rosewood aka Sneaktown and still you pull an amateur move like that! Get your act together, Ashley.

Pretty Little ZOMG WTF?!

1. The masks. Oh God, the masks. Why PLL? Why dolls and masks and other creepy things?? I can't. I just can't. I feel like the writers have a hat with terrifying plot devices and they just randomly draw one on a weekly basis.

2. One of the A-teamers decided to choke a bitch. Yes, Mona was attached. Yes, it was creepy as all get out. Though I do find myself wondering how the attacker managed to jump into the front seat and drive away so quickly after Mona hurled herself out of the car. Does this imply that the attacked is small and nimble? Or am I reading too much into it?

3. Looks like we're in for more spooky plot devices as we end episode 4.3 on an x-ray of Emily's injured shoulder (spooky) and a crackly old recording of Dem Bones (extra spooky, unless it also makes you think of cartoon skeletons dancing around... which, yeah, kinda).


That's it for this week, PLLers! This was a bit of a whirlwind recap, but now that I'm up to speed, things will be a little more focussed with only one episode at a time :)

~PLR~