None of us made the best dating decisions when were 17, and Aria from Pretty Little Liars is no different. In the last episode, we saw Aria get into potential hot water with her beau, 23-year-old-and-ex-English-teacher-why-is-he-not-in-jail Ezra Fitz. You see, she freaked out about not being accepted to any college (it’s like a Huntington Learning Center commercial up in here) and lied on an essay to get in, saying that she regretted a relationship with an older man because it caused her to miss out on a lot in her high school life. Who read it? Ezra’s ex-fiancée, Jackie, who is an admissions officer for that very same school. Will Jackie tell Ezra all about it, causing him some pain and, probably, to end things with Aria? Since Tyler Blackburn (Caleb), hinted to Yahoo! that Ezra could date yet another student (can’t he meet someone his own age?), I’m thinking Jackie will open her big, fat, mouth.
It’s not like any of this romantic discord is a surprise. While Spencer-n-Toby and, for the most part, Caleb-n-Hanna, have kept flying high on the wings of love, Ezra and Aria’s relationship has suffered through many, many bumps in the road. At the beginning of the series, they had to keep their relationship a secret since, you know, he was her teacher (I will never stop stressing this). Cue the parental problems. Then, Jackie popped into the picture, as did Alex Mack, tagging Ezra as the father of the bowl-cut hairdo she called a son. Aria and Ezra split, Aria dated a wannabe Karate Kid, and, oh yeah, we figured out that Ezra dated Ali (how old was she then? 14?) and wrote a book about her. We also thought he was A. Ezria only rekindled their relationship after Ezra was shot and, much to my chagrin, lived. Do you think that all spells everlasting romantic bliss?
The love stories on Pretty Little Liars are a necessary-and-shippable contrast to the numerous murders, death threats, scheming, porcelain dolls, fires, and almost-buried-alive happenings in Rosewood, but Ezra and Aria’s relationship is the show’s most infuriating (second only to Paige and Emily, because Paige literally tried to drown Emily when they first met and now everyone has forgotten about it except for me). Luckily, their coupling has been rendered moot because A has finished using it as blackmail against the liars — Ezra is no longer Aria's teacher, and everyone pretty much already knows that they are doing the hibbity-dibbity.
Because all immediacy has been sucked out of Ezria, their plot lines are totally boring: Did anyone really care about Ezra's illegitimate child (which turned out not to be his)? No. That pseudo-romance that Aria had with Ezra’s brother? Just kidding, that was pretty fun. The most interesting development with Ezria over the past, let's say, two seasons was the is-he-A-or-isn’t-he-A arc, and even that ended with a wimper, not a roar.
Turns out that Ezra, like a high school emo kid, just owns a lot of black hoodies. Unlike Caleb (who is a hacker and part-time investigator for the liars) and Toby (now a police officer who makes Barney Fife look like Sherlock Holmes), Ezra brings nothing to the mystery-solving table. He is just dead air, that sad Matthew McConaughey-type who hangs around high school girls because he gets older and they stay the same age. Breaking Ezra and Aria up — yet again — is one of the best coupling decisions Pretty Little Liars could make. Without Ezria, Marlene King and company can focus on the more important issues, like solving Mona's murder and eventually revealing A's true identity.
Images: ABC Family; prettylittleliars/Tumblr; Giphy (2)
