Pretty Little Liars Review: “Face Time” (Season 4, Epsiode 4)

Things are far from perfect on this episode of Pretty Little Liars, where we are seeing first hand what happens when you eliminate one threat – two more pop up.

Detective Wilden (Bryce Johnson) was never anyone’s favorite, especially when it came out that he was connected to Alison (Sasha Pieterse) in some perverted way or another, but he looks a lot like the lesser evil when you think about what’s lurking in the shadows now. Not only did Wilden’s murder bring in investigators of a higher pay grade with embarrassingly more resources, but they seem to have a chip on their shoulders about the size of our lovely Liars. They’ve wasted no time flagging all the usual suspects and without any of the personal vendettas that Wilden had, they might actually solve a case before they exit stage left.

So who killed Wilden? I’ve squandered over several theories floating around the twitterverse and blogosphere in the last few weeks, but there seems to be an equal distribution of pointing fingers at both Hannah’s (Ashley Benson) mom and Spencer’s (Troian Bellisario) sister, Melissa (Torrey DeVitto). Both of these women have their reasons for wanting him out of the way, and it’s sad to admit, but those reasons actually don’t completely suck. They don’t justify murder, but they’re definitely rooted in wanting to protect someone they love. Ashley Marin (Laura Leighton) is pretty transparent about it, while Melissa usually hides it strategically under layers of designer duds. Either way, if the truth comes out that it was actually one of them behind shooting Wilden, it might be one of the first times in Pretty Little Liars history that someone actually looked guilty, and was guilty .

Which is anything but what is happening at Emily’s (Shay Mitchell) house these days. With Child Protective Service’s breathing down their necks, it couldn’t have been a worse time for Emily to start with the diva act and throw a temper tantrum on the front lawn. I understand that all the girls are dealing with a lot of stress, but it looks like we’re about to see Emily really start to feel the “air getting heavy.” She’s probably not going to go all mental like Spencer and end up in Radley, but we can probably expect to see her acting out and becoming more aggressive then we’re used to. It seems a little late for this type of behavior considering what she’s already been through. Between Maya’s (Bianca Lawson) death and shooting Nate (Sterling Sulieman), her world has been turned upside down more than once. But everyone has their threshold (or a case of PTSD)- and now that ‘A’ may have inadvertently taken her out of the running for a swimming scholarship, it’s a Bad News Bears type of day (before they got good).

Continue reading on the next page…