‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ Season 1 Episode 8 Recap: “Bad Blood”

By
Alison Helms
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Pretty Little Liars Episode 8 Recap
Malia Pyles, Maia Reficco, Zaria, Chandler Kinney, and Bailee Madison in ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ episode 8 (Photograph by Karolina Wojtasik/HBO Max)

HBO Max’s Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin episode eight opens with the girls freaking out as they head into their usual decision spot: the ladies room. Episode seven ended with A sending a text with a photo of Tyler, dead. Tabby (Chandler Kinney) admits she thought A would kill Tyler and Mouse (Malia Pyles) begs them to call the police.

Faran (Zaria) wants to forward the photo to the cops but Tabby thinks since A sent it to them, he’d know how the cops got it. Mouse points out that A’s killed at least two people and Faran adds they were all horrible people. Imogen (Bailee Madison) thinks they need to get back to the basics and investigate the sixth signature from the Radley log. That could be A.

Tabby decides now’s the time to reveal what happened to her and Imogen. The girls are sorry, and Imogen points out this happened to them after “jock-centric” parties. Mouse asks if that’s how Imogen got pregnant, and Imogen confirms it is.

Tabby’s devised a plan to use the blood drive at school to collect samples and compare them to the DNA of Imogen’s baby. Noa (Maia Reficco) agrees to ask her nurse mom for help with the DNA part of the plan. With solid proof, they can go to the authorities.

Noa will also talk to Shawn about getting the football team to donate blood. Imogen thinks they should ask Kelly for help, too, since she works in the nurse’s office.

Tabby and Imogen are planning on questioning Crazy Joe again since he sent them to the Radley in the first place.

Sidney (Sharon Leal) steps outside and finds a copy of The Scarlet Letter on her doorstep. Inside, the check-out card has Angela Waters written on it repeatedly, along with a note that reads: “Silence Kills.”

A flashback to 1999 shows Sidney (Kristen Maxwell) finding a crying Angela (Gabriella Pizzolo) in a bathroom stall. Angela claims something happened to her and Sidney heads to the library to tell her friends they have a problem. Davie (Ava DeMary) asks, “What did that dumb pudding do now?” Sidney says it wasn’t what Angela did but what was done to her.

Imogen and Tabby visit Joe and explain they found the sign-in book. Five of the signatures were their moms’, but they can’t figure out who the sixth signature belongs to. Imogen asks if it’s his and Joe orders them to leave. Undeterred, Imogen asks if he knew that Angela was raped.

“Someone told you that?” replies Joe.

Imogen realizes Joe didn’t expect them to learn anything, and she asks if he sent them to Rosewood because he thought it would be a dead end. Joe warns them they don’t know what they’re getting themselves into.

Joe refuses Imogen’s offer of more money and says, “I want you to drop this now or it’s going to be very bad for you! GO!”

Noa explains the situation to her mom, telling her Imogen and Tabby were raped and want to figure out who did it. Marjorie (Elena Goode) is shocked, and Noa reveals their blood drive/DNA plans. Marjorie points out that illegally obtained DNA won’t hold up in court. Noa still hopes it’ll be enough to open up an investigation. Marjorie agrees to ask a friend in the lab for help. She also suggests Imogen take a paternity test.

Tabby and Imogen return home and Sidney wonders if Imogen wants anything special for Thanksgiving. Imogen explains that she and her mom weren’t big on Thanksgiving and always volunteered at the soup kitchen. Sidney suggests she do that during the week and then have a family dinner with them. Imogen agrees, and they head upstairs.

“Oh my god, we are dealing with a serial killer and possibly serial rapist, and my mom is asking you what you want for Thanksgiving dinner,” says Tabby.

Imogen wonders if they can match the signatures to the ones in her mom’s yearbook. She admits it’s not just about Angela Waters and how she’s connected to all this. She wants to figure out who her mom was in high school.

Thanksgiving week arrives and Henry (Ben Cook) asks Faran to a movie. She can’t go because she has PT. He doesn’t give up and asks about getting together over Thanksgiving break, revealing his family will just be watching football and he’d rather be with her.

Mr. Smithee talks to Tabby about her project, and she explains her plans for a rape revenge story that will be restrained and metaphoric. He’ll discuss it with the principal, but she needs to get written permission from her mother to do that storyline.

Noa tells Shawn (Alex Aiono) what happened to Tabby and Imogen, and he thinks it’s horrible. Both attacks happened after parties with football players, and she wonders if any of them could have done it. Shawn’s adamant there’s no way any of them committed rape.

Noa doesn’t share the same opinion of the players as Shawn.

Tabby seeks permission from her mom for the film class project due to its subject matter. Her film will be about a woman who was raped and gets her revenge by carving an A on her attacker’s chest. Sidney, obviously taken back, is curious where this subject matter is coming from.

Instead of telling her mom the truth, Tabby says it’s inspired by Angela Waters. Imogen found out Angela was raped before she killed herself. Tabby claims Imogen’s obsessed with Angela and when Imogen told her the story, it stuck with her.

Sidney signs the permission slip.

Imogen lets Kelly (Mallory Bechtel) in on her secret and Kelly feels bad for being awful to her. Cutting to the chase, Imogen explains she’s here because they need her help with the blood drive. Kelly confirms she’s working it and Imogen explains they need to work it too.

Imogen fills her in on their DNA collection plans and Kelly stops her. “Wait…you’re asking me to steal my classmates’ blood?” Imogen confirms they just a few drops and plays the “we were friends” card, hoping Kelly will do the right thing now.

Mouse tries to talk to her mom, Elodie (Lea Salonga), who’s currently separated from Mouse’s other mom and living in a motel. Mouse wants to know why they broke up and asks if it’s because of Angela Waters. Elodie refuses to talk about that and also refuses to answer Mouse’s questions about the identity of her father.

Mouse secretly visits her mom’s pawn shop and locates her birth certificate. Aaron Stevens is listed as her father.

Imogen checks the signatures in her mom’s yearbook but isn’t having any luck. Plus, her senior year is missing. Tabby suggests she take a break since it’s Thanksgiving and they have the blood drive. Imogen admits she’s missing her mom, and it’s almost easier when she’s keeping busy.

Pretty Little Liars Episode 8 Recap
Zaria, Maia Reficco, Malia Pyles, Chandler Kinney, Bailee Madison, and Mallory Bechtel in ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ episode 8 (Photo by Stephanie Mei-Ling/HBO Max)

Tuesday: Kelly shows up with the girls and tells the nurse they’re ready to volunteer for the blood drive. The nurse sends them out to remind people to donate. Any student who does will get to leave school for the rest of the day and get a free movie pass.

Principal Clanton (Robert Stanton) informs Tabby she can’t do her project. “We can’t have our students exposed to such inappropriate content.” Tabby points out that the sexual assault and trauma in her story is something young women deal with 24/7. It’s the reality we’re living in and he can’t ignore it.

Principal Clanton sympathizes, but he cannot allow the assignment.

Chip (Carson Rowland) asks Imogen over for Thanksgiving and she says she’s already planned to join Tabby and her mom. She offers a counterproposal, telling him that every year she and her mom would volunteer at the soup kitchen. Before she can finish, Chips says he wants to volunteer with her.

Faran shows up in dance class and Madame Giry (Kate Jennings Grant) is surprised to see her. Faran explains she’s been studying Giselle but then Madame Giry breaks the news she’s pushing Giselle back until next year. By then, Faran’s back should be fully healed. Faran insists she’s getting better and has been wearing her brace religiously. Plus, when she isn’t doing PT, she’s exercising at home. Giry explains that even if she wears the brace double time, it won’t speed up her recovery.

Shawn breaks the news to Noa that the football team won’t participate in the blood drive. Some of them use performance-enhancing drugs – even though he doesn’t.

Noa has a Plan B. She tells the girls they should sneak into the locker room when the football team’s practicing and swipe DNA off their mouth guards and other things. If they isolate just the football team’s DNA, it will be easier to tell if one of them is the rapist.

The moms meet and Sidney informs them that Tabby and Imogen are still asking about Angela Waters. Elodie and Marjorie admit both Mouse and Noa are as well. The girls somehow found out that Angela was raped and Corey (Zakiya Young) insists Imogen and Tabby are clearly the ringleaders. Corey urges Sidney to find out how much they know.

Mouse tells Ash (Jordan Gonzalez) that her moms still aren’t speaking to each other. She wants Ash to lie to her that his family’s messed up too, and Ash confesses he was adopted. Still, his parents have been very supportive and loving, even when he came out as trans.

Mouse wonders if he’d want to meet his birthparents if he knew their identities. Ash admits he would, just to see who they are.

Mouse gets the idea to visit her dad and digs out her old Girl Scout vest.

At the theater, Tabby tells Wes (Derek Klena) that she needs to develop a new script for her project because Principal Clanton said it’s too controversial. Wes wonders if it has to do with their conversation about The Last House on the Left and she admits it is, partly.

“In that case, I think you should tell Mr. Smithee to f**k off and make your movie,” says Wes. He suggests she make two movies: one for them and one for her. Tabby agrees he’s right.

A disgruntled man causes a stir at the soup kitchen, and Imogen has a flashback to her mom speaking with a woman while they were volunteering. The woman got upset, and her mom rushed back and said they had to leave at once.

Imogen tells Tabby about the flashback and they both think it might have been Rose Waters. Maybe she came back to Millwood after the Radley Sanitarium shut down. (Sidney’s eavesdropping on this conversation outside the door.)

Wednesday: The blood drive is in full swing. Kelly uses a cotton ball on Chip but then replaces it with a Band-Aid and tosses the cotton ball in a bag. Noa then snags Kelly’s trash bag.

Imogen offers to get more cookies from the nurse’s office and quickly gets on the computer and looks up Angela Waters’ address.

Noa’s mom meets the girls outside and gets the bag full of DNA samples. Faran explains they have the names of every boy who donated blood.

It’ll take a week or two for the results.

The girls plus Kelly make plans for what to do next. Faran asks if they can take one night off from the horror show that is their lives to go to a club that doesn’t ask for IDs.

As the girls dance the night away, Sidney has a flashback to the night Tabby was raped. Tabby came home late and wasn’t acting like herself, but Sidney thought she’d been drinking.

Sidney decides to look through Tabby’s room.

Pretty Little Liars Original Sin Episode 8 Recap
Bailee Madison and Mallory Bechtel in ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ episode 8 (Photo by Karolina Wojtasik/HBO Max)

The girls have a blast and officially welcome Kelly to The Losers Club.

Later, Kelly quietly enters her house but her dad, Sheriff Beasley (Eric Johnson), waited up. He demands to know where she’s been until 2am and she doesn’t lie. She even texted her mom. He reveals her mom was asleep when he got home, and Kelly asks where he was. (We’re shown a brief scene of him making out with a guy.) He lies that he was working, and she points out he’s not wearing his uniform.

A giggling Tabby and Imogen come home to an upset Sidney. Sidney speaks with Tabby alone and Tabby demands to know what she’s doing with her laptop. Sidney shows her a shot of the boys locker room and asks if she took those videos.

Sidney can’t believe how much trouble Tabby could get in and blames Imogen for being a bad influence. Tabby cuts her off. “Imogen isn’t the problem, mom. You are – and your secrets are.”

Tabby asks her if she wants to have a real conversation because that’s something they don’t do. Tabby suggests to her mom that if there’s something she wants to ask her, just do it. Sidney doesn’t respond.

Thanksgiving Day: Mouse shows up at her father’s house pretending to be a Girl Scout. A woman and a little girl answer the door and Mouse claims the woman’s husband ordered cookies. The woman walks off to get money and Aaron Stevens comes to the door saying he didn’t order any cookies.

“Do you know who I am, Dad?” asks Mouse. Aaron doesn’t know what she wants but says she needs to leave. Mouse claims she just wants to know him. His wife returns and asks how much she owes, and Aaron says, “Nothing.” Aaron claims it was a misunderstanding and shuts the door in Mouse’s face.

Imogen heads to the soup kitchen and will be back by 6pm.

Noa has Thanksgiving with Shawn’s family since her mom’s working. She asks to use the restroom and goes through Shawn’s gym bag. In an odd turn of events, given that he was so against her mom using, she finds pills in his bag.

Tabby’s deleting all the locker room videos when she gets a text from unknown: “Silence kills.”

Tabby hears shouting downstairs and finds Tyler’s dad telling her mom his son’s still missing and that Tabby must know something. Tyler’s dad knows Tabby attacked his son and thinks she did something else to him, too.

Tabby admits things got out of hand that night, but she swears she doesn’t know where he is.

Imogen goes to the Waters’ house and it’s as run down and creepy as you’d expect it to be. She shouldn’t be going alone, but there she is…knocking on the door.

When no one answers, she walks in and calls out, “Hello! Anyone home?” – a true horror movie cliché.

She explores and sees a bed with restraints tied around the posts. She then spots some kind of animal cage. Instead of getting the hell out of there, she goes upstairs. She discovers the creepy mask hanging up and a body on a bed.

Joe walks in as she’s running downstairs. “I told you to let it go. Why couldn’t you?!” he asks while producing a knife.

A chase breaks out and Imogen gets away.

As Tabby and her mom wait for Imogen to come home, her mom asks if Tyler hurt her and if that’s why she punched him and is making her short film. Tabby admits Tyler didn’t hurt her but then she reveals she was raped. Her mom cries and hugs her.

Greg (Elias Kacavas) and Kelly are making out in his car when she tells him to call her Karen. So weird!

Imogen meets with the girls at the pizza place and tells them what happened at Angela’s house. They decide to confront Joe and end it tonight.

They show up at the Waters’ house armed with butcher knives, but Joe and the body are gone.

They go to the train car where Joe lives and find him hanging, dead. A note below him reads: “Angela Waters did not die in vain.”

Imogen finds her mom’s senior yearbook and Faran asks if they can finally call the police. Imogen agrees but suggests they do it anonymously.

Joe’s writing matches the sixth signature and he’s scratched out their moms’ faces in the yearbook. It’s obvious he hated them for what they did to Angela. The girls believe they’ve solved the puzzle and that Joe was A.




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