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
Emily: "Actually, yeah. Just took a second because my friend kidnapped this... You know what, not important. See you at home."
RADLEY
All but carrying a candlestick, the incredibly Gothic Romance-looking Spencer walks through a beautifully shot hallway, all dark woods and strange light, all diaphanous nightgown and hooded eyes, through the steps of another one of Mona's treasure-map paths. Half-asleep and full-on nuts.
Alison DiLaurentis, a dead person who is no longer among the living, welcomes her to the anteroom of the spot, marked by a Mona-intense ballpoint star, and as usual I'm just going to present her shit verbatim, because I never have any idea WTF she is talking about. She puts on a record of that old song "I'm Your Puppet," which she's been humming while Spencer took this epic ten-yard journey into the heart of mystery, and gets sprightly as hell, as per.
Ali: "Didn't your mother have this [record]?"
Spencer: "Your mother."
Ali: "Really? I must have left it at your house, and didn't get it back. I left a lot of stuff there. Is it just me, or was sixth grade the best year ever?"
Spencer: "I didn't even know you then..."
Ali: "Oh, honey. You didn't even know me when you knew me."
So, something happened around about sixth grade, before Alison started collecting her dolls, and the evidence is possibly at Hastings Manor as usual. And possibly there's something to the confusion between their mothers? This is all coming to us live from inside Spencer's head, of course, so it's worth thinking about that. It's not Veronica who would sing this song about being a person's puppet, but Alison's awesome scary mom?
But this is coming on the heels of Veronica -- who spends most scenes, but especially this episode, as far away physically from her daughter as possible -- admitting to an undiscovered moment in which she metaphorically mothered the untouchable Alison. Which is, in turn, an embrace she now steals back from Alison, perhaps?
Ali: "Give it up, Spence. Let's pretend you're getting ready for your first boy-girl dance party. No one ever tells you that the practice is so much more fun than the real thing..."
They dance, so sweetly. Of all the relationships they had with her, I've always found Spencer's the most interesting, because they're both so confrontationally, openly strong. They challenged each other in a way that made them equals and she didn't really have that with anybody else. So to see them dance, it takes on a more adult shading than with anybody else. They seem like two grown people, dancing secretly in the night. Not sexual, necessarily, just... I don't know, have you ever had this experience? Sometimes you slow-dance with somebody, it's a particular kind of thing that is just what it is.