Pretty Little Liars Recap: "The First Secret"

The Pretty Little Liars Halloween special aired last night, and it was really interesting to see how the characters we’ve come to know interacted together—or didn’t, before we met them in the pilot.  Aria (Lucy Hale) literally bumps into College Student Ezra (don’t think too hard on the timeline) when she visits her father at Hollis. Mona is a loser, as evidenced by her glasses and pigtails. In addition to Alison (Sasha Pieterse), Ian is also alive! 

As the girls prepare for Halloween ‘08, Hanna (Ashley Benson) and her mom areadjusting to her dad  more recently splitting.  Meanwhile, Officer Wilden makes it very clear that he wants to hook up with Mrs. Marin, in an inappropriate fashion to say the least.  He goes on to become the officer who gets Hanna’s mom to sleep with him for a time, to make Hanna’s shoplifting incident disappear, and investigate all four Liars as Alison’s killers.  (This begs the question: Really. Why is every Rosewood cop a shady creeper?!)
 
We see Aria and Alison stumble upon Mr. Montgomery having his affair, and the aftermath.  Aria’s dad asks her to keep it secret from her mother since he was ending it, and she does.  While Alison keeps quiet, she threatens to expose the secret if Aria keeps sulking.  When Spencer (Troian Bellisario) is worried she’ll lose the election for class president, Alison fixes the election in her friend’s favor.  This is also around the time when Alison figures out Emily (Shay Mitchell) is really gay, when she catches her checking Jenna out and flirting!
 
Alison scores her group an invite to Noel Crane’s Halloween bash, which excites them to no end since none of them think he may be a killer at this point, and he’s got a dreamy smile.  When she goes to the sdtore to pick up her “Lady Gaga” costume, Alison meets Not-Blind Jenna, who just moved in with Toby’s family.  When Alison sees Jenna going for a Gaga costume too, she makes it clear she’ll be the only Gaga at Noel’s party.  However, Jenna doesn’t care about appeasing Alison, and shows up in a much better Gaga outfit.  Instead of agreeing to be a part of her clique, she outright challenges Alison’s “Queen Bee” status, setting up their rivalry which only ended with Jenna’s blindness. 
 
Alison fakes being kidnapped, and gets the girls to “risk” their lives to save her.  Afterwards she congratulates them for “passing the test,” since she now knows they’d do anything for her.  But, Alison is shocked when her staged attack may have been the real thing.  She had a deal for Noel to be the culprit, but he swears he wasn’t the one who attacked her, was he telling the truth?  Her bullying victim Lucas and several others were also in the same deranged baby-mask costume.
All of this freaks Alison out even more, for reasons only she understands.  It seems “A” has started stalking her and sending her creepy gifts, threatening her life. 
 
Less than a year later, Alison really was killed, but she never told her friends about “A.”  Maybe if the cops hadn’t been such creepers, they would’ve dumped Alison’s phone and caught her killer before “A” ever thought about terrorizing Aria, Emily, Spencer, and Hanna (Hey, I’ve seen my Law & Order’s). But, then there’d be no show. 
 
This was a nice PPL installment to tide viewers over until January, but it was very weird seeing Alison as part of the story and running things in the flesh.  She’s so nasty, I’m glad she’s not normally around because I don’t know how we could tolerate the Liars being her friends.  You couldn’t see the girls treated like crap every week.  I hope one of the future Alison flashbacks shows audiences her human side… if it existed.    

Photo Credit: ABC Family