Pretty Little Liars season 4 episode 17 review: Bite Your Tongue

This review contains spoilers.

4.17 Bite Your Tongue

Well that settles it then, doesn’t it? Pretty Little Liars has done a good job of leading us down the wrong path before, losing some fan respect in the process, but Spencer’s discoveries this week almost confirm what the show told us in the summer finale – Ezra is board shorts, he was involved with Alison, and it’s looking more and more likely that he’s also ‘Big A’ (or whatever we’re calling it). Can we believe it? Well, no, since the flashback was arguably just a visual representation of Spencer’s “aha!” moment, but for now we can work under the assumption that Ezra has been one big lie to track down Ali.

It was so good to see Spencer in crime-solving mode again after her setback with Toby’s side-mystery last week, and it makes perfect sense that it was her who finally uncovered the biggest secret of all (for now at least). There’s a reason she hasn’t told the rest of the girls yet, however, and that’s because she probably doesn’t believe it herself. Not one of them has suspected Ezra since Noel Khan got him fired back in season one but, now that we’ve seen him warn off Jake in such a classic evil villain way, that means absolutely nothing. Didn’t they learn from Mona’s brief stint as an honorary Liar that these guys are great actors?

The trail from Alison’s diary entry led Spencer to a college bar near to Hollace and, once she enters, Ezra is sitting there with his beer and boysenberry pie. I don’t know about you, but actually witnessing that interaction between Ezra and 14-year-old Alison was all kinds of creepy. Its one thing to know it happened, but the show doesn’t seem to be shying away from showing us exactly how inappropriate their relationship might have been. Again, we don’t know it did actually happen (I’ve been burned before, so forgive me for being cautious at this critical stage), but all signs point to predator.

But that’s not even the only problem the girls have to deal with, as Mona and Ezra are seeming pretty chummy these days. Does this have anything to do with Mona and Mike’s new ‘friendship’, or was their clandestine teacher/student meeting an opportunity for Ezra to warn her off of the Montgomery family? The two of them definitely didn’t come off as allies a couple of weeks ago and, even if Ezra has been behind a lot of the A action, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about Aria in his own special way. Like Aria, I think everything Mona does (expect for towards Hannah) has another agenda behind it.

There were a lot of extra clues dotted around the episode for anyone paying attention, and the most intriguing one all was the name ‘Cavanaugh’ on the patients list at the dentist. I have to admit I’m no expert in the Cavanaugh family history at this point, but is it possible Toby has a relative wondering around Rosewood who we don’t know about? With someone shady there with Hannah, you can only assume that the presence of that particular surname on the list was definitely incriminating in some way. Then again, this attack along with the one on Emily at the school makes me worry that Ezra can’t have been in three places at once, and therefore can’t be A.

But we can’t get away from the fact that his perchance for boysenberry pie and Board Shorts Ale almost confirms his romantic involvement with Alison, and that’s good enough for me. With Spencer now in on this particular secret and keeping it to herself, I can only imagine the fallout’s going to be huge. Even if Ezra is cleared of all A suspicion over the next couple of weeks, the search for proof has been one of the better Pretty Little Liars arcs we’ve seen in years. See you next week! 

Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, Close Encounters, here.

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