- Title: Pretty Little Liars – Songs of Innocence
- wiki: link
After a brief stint in the hospital the Liars return home to rooms the mirror image of their prison cells and to families who, despite their need to help, have no idea what their children endured. Each reacts differently to their return. Aria (Lucy Hale) becomes obsessed with putting Andrew (Brandon Jones) behind bars, even going so far as to lie to the prosecutor to help her make her case. Hanna (Ashley Benson) strips her room down to the bare walls, removing all traces that remind her of captivity. Emily (Shay Mitchell) steals her father’s gun to take out some frustration on the gun range. And Spencer (Troian Bellisario), denied the drugs to help her sleep by her overprotective mother who is afraid of reawakening her daughter’s pill addiction, struggles to get even a single night sleep which will likely cause the very thing her mother was trying to prevent.
“Songs of Innocence” is one of the show’s more memorable episodes as it allows each character to process their ordeal in their own way, with both stunning visuals (Hanna’s room) and emotional breakdowns (Emily at the range), and I appreciate how the show isn’t quick to gloss over the lasting effect on each member of the group. It’s also notable for the Liars spending most of the episodes on their own, or with a parent or boyfriend, following the opening scene in the hospital as each struggles with what was done to them in A‘s dollhouse and what they may have been forced to do to each other (which we’re given glimpses of in quick flashbacks each Liar would rather forget) making it difficult to reconnect to each other back in the real world.
And after hitting a dead-end with her father about the name “Charles DiLaurentis,” Alison does manage to make a new friend in Toby‘s (Keegan Allen) partner Lorenzo (Travis Winfrey) in the only subplot of the week not directly tied to the Liars‘ captivity. I’m not sure where Lorenzo fits into the picture but I won’t be surprised if we see some questioning into his motivations and/or past before too much time has passed. As to who Charles is, it seems we won’t have to wait long for our next breadcrumb with Jason‘s (Drew Van Acker) return next week as the show’s “Summer of Answers” continues.
