Lies My Parents Couldn't Quite Muster The Kindness To Tell Me

After a fairly brief hiatus, Pretty Little Liars began its second season last night, successfully keeping up the pace and the intrigue from the first season.  We picked up right where we left our girls - standing outside of the church, wondering if A was one of the people gathered in the crowd of gawkers, there presumably to watch a dead body carried out.  Disappointment all around as our heroines still haven't a clue who A is and there was no body for the creepy townsfolk to ogle because Ian's "corpse" mysteriously vanished. 

The girls spend the night together discussing who might be A, who to tell, what to do, and who makes the best coffee.  Then their parents all gather together to insist that they go to therapy because of how they're all nuts and when the girls ask the assemblage of parental units whether or not the adults think the kids are responsible for some or all of the tragedy that's befallen their acquaintances in recent years, the parents stand around making faces like "well, I mean, I want to say yes but I'm a little afraid you'll kill me and disappear my body."  Turns out the Pretty Little Parents have neither faith in their children, nor the courage of their convictions so they mostly just do nothing which is probably why their children shoplift, date adults, get run over by cars, and get arrested for murder. 

After some bitching and shoe buying, all the girls do go to therapy where their counselor is an unrecognizable Annabeth Gish.  She asks a lot of questions, they mostly skirt around the answers.  Then they decide to tell her the whole story and show her the videos but when they discover Ezra's diploma in her office they get all weird and bolt.  She stands there agape, clearly thinking about the career trajectories of her Mystic Pizza costars Julia Roberts and Matt Damon and wondering how she ended up here. 

That diploma, by the way, was pilfered from Ezra's apartment by A and placed in Dr. Pudge's office specifically to taunt our Liars. 

In other news - we are reminded that Emily's parents are still set on moving her to Texas for a year and that she and Toby are friends.  Spencer and Toby continue to be schmoopily in love but their parents still want them to stay away from each other because they don't understand that two people this bad at acting and this good looking NEED to be together. 

Lucas brings Caleb back to town and Caleb tells Hanna that he loves her and that Mona threw away the letter he left for her.  Hanna then tells Mona off who, it turns out, is now dating Noel. 

Melissa hates Spencer until the police tell her that while Ian might not be dead, he probably did leave her.  This news makes Melissa suddenly contrite so she tells Spencer that they're going to name the baby Taylor and promptly leaves her cell phone where Spencer can easily intercept mysterious text messages. 

Ezra does some of his most challenging work yet when he carries on a conversation with Aria, all the while keeping his stomach muscles flexed. Aria is pissed that he was still in love with his former fiance when they met.  That's such a teenage reaction and the fact that Ezra continues to want to date Aria when she persists in behaving her age, really grosses me out.