Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 3 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT You Start Missing Everybody
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 23 | Aired on 03.12.2013
Spencer: "Right, because you didn't want either of them to stop blackmailing dad about how Jason was his bastard."
Veronica: "It is the Hastings way. But now I don't think it was Jason, who frankly seems like a cool kid. I'm still pretty Catelyn Stark about his whole deal, but really only in the same way Ella hates Ezra, which is to say: Because I feel like I'm supposed to."
Spence mutely turns toward the window -- as always, the weather in Rosewood is precisely calibrated to her emotions, so it's raining every time we return to her room -- but she nods, which was a welcome surprise. Not sharing more than that, just, Yes, part of why I am crazy has to do with Toby being bad, and also dead. It is one of the most moving scenes they've ever had together. I know I joke around about their family, but when you get down to it one of the most human dynamics in the whole show is how they're all these savant geniuses who fight and fight and then immediately drop their shit when it's time to care and circle the wagons. What looks disjointed from the outside, Spence's stuff with Melissa or her parents, is actually a demonstration of the most realistic continuity of all.
WOLF DINNER
Uncle Dad: "Enjoy your meal and jewelry, but I have to go get fired now."
Hanna: "Fat chance, Uncle Dad. I'm so sure I could enjoy either of those things."
Caleb: "But you love jewelry and free things."
Hanna: "Not as much as I love not constantly fucking over your birth parents."
MORGUE
Emily: "Aria, you stand guard because God knows you're worthless otherwise. If you see somebody coming, text me. Hanna will be taking a picture of a dead body, and/or texting madly about her latest grownup problem."
Hanna: "Where would you even unload a hot churchbell, anyway?"
Aria: "I dunno, maybe like melt it down or..."
Emily: "God damn it. You want me to be the Spencer, fine. I'm the Spencer. But you can't then ignore me like I'm the Emily, or else there is functionally no Spencer. Pull it together, ladies."
Hanna: "One thing about a morgue is, I am about to vomit."
Emily: "I'm not checking these bodybags by myself. You start over there."
Hanna: "Did you ever think about, like, the impermanence of life? I was fat, and now I'm skinny. I was poor, sometimes I am rich. Some episodes I eat constantly, other episodes I use food as though it were a credit union. And yet in the end, it all comes down to this... ephemera. Just bones. Merely the democracy of death, cosmic and prosaic at once."