Pretty Little Liars season 4 episode 6 review: Under The Gun

This review contains spoilers.

4.6 Under The Gun

Well that was a nice advert for Ravenswood, wasn’t it? While I’m looking forward to seeing what the Pretty Little Liars’ team can do with a new series (and Caleb finally having something to do), a part of me really questions whether shoehorning a fantasy show into a real-world drama is the right thing to do. Does is just give them a free-pass to make Alison’s disappearance fantastical, meaning that us obsessive theorisers have been getting cheated all of this time?

Anyway, ignoring Spencer and Toby’s trip to Ravenswood, there was still plenty of drama going on back in Rosewood. Hannah’s problems are only getting worse, making it clear to everyone that this new A isn’t messing around. It’s grown far beyond high school hijinks and now the girls’ nemesis is capable of murdering a thorn in her side and pinning it on one of their families. If Hanna says anything, then A swears she’ll pin the murder on both of her parents – plausible given that the gun she found belongs to her father.

The sheer amount of evidence stacked against Ashley Marin does nothing but encourage us to believe her side of the story, but sadly we can’t expect the same of the police. She’s arrested when it’s proven the gun Hannah tried to dispose of was the one used to kill Wilden, and Hannah’s told that she could face at least seven years jail time for attempting to conceal evidence. How is she going to get out of this one? Even if Ashley is proven innocent in the coming weeks, what Hannah did was still pretty illegal. Stupid, stupid Hannah.

Because all of Rosewood High’s gay students have to join the swim team, Shana decided that she should join both the school and the team in Emily’s place. Emily isn’t particularly happy about this, given that Jenna and Shana tried to burn them alive and run Aria over – inadvertently injuring Emily’s shoulder and, as a result, her whole future – but it’s just another one of those things they can’t do anything about. For some reason, Jenna has completely disappeared from the show and has been replaced by her girlfriend, but it’s possible that both girls were creeping around Ravenswood at the same time as Spoby.

As usual, Aria’s storyline has nothing to do with A and everything to do with her love life, as Mike’s little upstart of a teammate decides to try his luck with the girl who slept with her teacher. Aria politely brushes him off but, the next day at school, he’s told the whole school that they hooked up. This kind of thing has happened on every teen drama ever made, but what makes the slut-shaming worse is that Aria has, in fact, slept with her teacher – and said teacher isn’t allowed to make her feel better any more. She’s smart to tell him to leave her alone, but it’s entirely possible that he took it out on Connor’s car outside the cafe.

Emily’s plan to re-frame Jenna and Shana for Wilden’s murder via the video sent to Hannah backfires spectacularly when Red Coat, wearing an incredibly creepy Emily mask, is shown to have wiped the video and replaced it with an image of her own. Despite these moments still having an impact, the show really needs to start giving us some real answers soon. Its producers have said that the identity of Red Coat will be revealed in the fourth season, but whether that’ll be before or after the mid-season break is another question entirely. Are we destined to be eternally clueless? It’s getting as frustrating for us as it is for the Liars.

Next week we finally get to see the car crash that was teased a couple of weeks ago, and Caleb and Toby join forces to uncover the identity and location of A. See you there!

Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, Gamma Zeta Die, here.

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