Pretty Little Liars Season Premiere Review: “A is for A-l-i-v-e” (Season 4, Episode 1)

For a teen drama, Pretty Little Liars has always edged on the mature side, and the season four premiere keeps this trend going in a big way.

Last season ended with the Liars narrowly escaping a fire which could have been set by any number of people on their growing enemies list, only to be confronted with a new shocker. As if finding out that Mona (Janel Parrish) was no longer the voice of crazy behind the A-Team, the police car that was supposed to be swimming with the fishes at the bottom of a hopefully-not-super-local river, fully equipped with a streaming video of Hannah’s (Ashley Benson) mother running over Detective Wilden (Bryce Johnson), was now on display in the Rosewood town square – flashing lights, muck, and all.

Someone went through a lot of trouble to tow this water-logged piece of metal right into the middle of town – without being seen, naturally. When the Liars arrive the video is on a loop, playing loud and clear for any passerby to see (or hear). Of course, no one happens to stumble on the scene before the Liars plus Mona drive by. Whoever put it there clearly has good timing since as soon as things start to get incriminating, miraculously, a couple walk down the street.

The first question the Liars plus Mona should have asked after they got over the initial shock was, “where was this video player manufactured?” because the last time I checked, not too many electronics can spend a few days underwater and live to play again. Instead, one of them came up with the brilliant idea of checking the trunk.

There’s been a lot of speculation about who (or what), but mostly who, was going to be in the trunk. My money was on Jason DiLaurentis (Drew Van Acker). He was clearly a threat to someone, or he wouldn’t have been almost killed in the elevator mishap last season. We haven’t seen him since he mysteriously disappeared from the hospital, and the most anyone has heard from him was a vague text message Emily received. Even his mother’s reassurance that he was alive and well didn’t seem convincing. If “A” has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t trust what you can’t see – and even then there’s room for interpretation.

So what was in the trunk? A dead pig.

That should have been their first indication that a cop was dead, even if they weren’t completely in agreement about who it was. Wilden’s car plus dead pig, the equation practically solves itself. Which leads to the bigger question of, “who did Wilden piss off enough to get rid of him?” We already know that he had some attachment to the B-Squad, but it’s also possible that Alison (Sasha Pieterse) was pregnant with his child when she was murdered –  er, if she was murdered, so this could be an elaborate revenge plot. All the evidence is starting to stack up against the fact that Alison’s really dead, despite the body. All we know for sure is that someone who shares enough of her’s DNA markers is dead. And now, so is Wilden – not a huge loss.

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