Pretty Little Liars season 4 episode 11 review: Bring Down The Hoe

This review contain spoilers.

4.11 Bring Down The Hoe

Line dancing! Is it just me, or was the theme of this week’s dance just an excuse to have a slightly rude title for the episode? Whatever the reason, at least it gave us something interesting to look at while relationships crumbled and the Liars uncovered absolutely nothing new about Red Coat’s identity. Season 4a might be the slowest to date, but at least we know that the second half of the season usually amps things up.

All we’re getting right now are vague teases that point to Cece being behind ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, which only makes experienced Pretty Little Liars viewers certain that she’s actually totally innocent. But, then again, even if she isn’t Red Coat (despite the red coat in her apartment), it seems as if she’s on the A team. My theory? She’s investigating Alison’s murder (otherwise that was a pretty excessive Alison shrine) and has obtained the red coat as a clue. There’s something fishy going on for sure, but even her being responsible for Wilden’s murder seems farfetched right now.

Spencer actually makes a sensible decision – her first in a while – when she tells the girls about Toby and his mother. It really was time to come clean since the other three Liars were starting to suspect two supposedly-reformed A team members of scheming again, and now at least everyone’s on the same page going into the finale. Toby’s obsession with finding the truth makes sense, but at least he’s now got the girls and Caleb backing him when things, like this week, go wrong. The answers to his questions will probably lead nowhere particularly interesting, but Toby still being involved with A at least makes use of last year’s arc.

Hanna’s storyline got a very convenient helper this week, as a random guy at school decides to leave an envelope of cash in her locker. When she asks him about it, he tells her that he saw someone – not Ashley – with Wilden that night, and the gunshots were fired after her mother had driven away. Is this really how things are going to wrap up? True, we always knew that Ashley wasn’t the real murderer, but surely it might have been better for the Liars to uncover the truth before a witness stepped forward and helped out? Maybe there’s more to this guy, because that seems like a strange development this late in the game.

Meanwhile in the land of Aria’s love life, Ezra has reached the stubble-growing stage of his depression over Malcolm, and spends the hour trying desperately to connect with Aria. It’s too bad that she now has a perfectly age-appropriate boyfriend standing in the way, because the guy could really use a friend right now. It’s not surprising the faculty don’t want to mix with him given that he’s been sleeping with one of the students for two years, but at least he has Emily looking out for him and his relationship with Aria. Will we see them rekindle things next week? I really hope not.

While nothing was found in the crawlspace under the DiLaurentis’ house, Emily does remember Alison telling her about another one of her delightful hobbies. She used to break up with boyfriends when her friends didn’t have the bottle, and one of them had once pulled a gun on her. Taking a gigantic leap and plucking a bit of evidence out of thin air, Emily decides that the guy was Wilden and the friend was Cece – meaning that Cece killed Wilden! Sound theory, that. Her mentioning it now, of course, means that it probably wasn’t Cece, taking another suspect off our ever-dwindling list.

There are only two hours between us and the answer to Red Coat’s identity, but those two hours will unfortunately be aired over two months. Next week’s mid-season finale will most likely deal with Toby’s mother and Wilden’s killer, which will tide us over for a while. We’ll also be saying goodbye to Caleb (sob) as he heads over to Ravenswood. See you there!

Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, The Mirror Has Three Faces, here.

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