Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 3 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Free At Last
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 21 | Aired on 02.26.2013
This was not like that. This thing I was so surprised and weirded out that I couldn't believe what was going on until an actual hashtag appeared, hilariously, to confirm what was going on. It was a very dissociated, displaced, wonderful feeling. And, oddly, sad. Not sad for her, because it's her and her rock bottom is the molten core of the earth and the show has been taking her there for weeks; sad for him. What a sad, sick little life. And you can say this is a trick or a lie or a thing, but I don't know about that. I think it could go either way.
She comes upon a campsite: Motorcycle, puptent, sleeping bag, lawn chairs. Smoke going up from a dead fire. There's a body, face-down, on a pallet, wearing a motorcycle helmet. Blood on his hands, and Toby's tattoo on his lower back: 901, Free At Last. The day Alison disappeared. The day Jenna left him alone. Sick, sad little life.
And then just as she's reaching down to open the helmet, Mona says starkly, "He's dead." And she runs off into the woods, drawing Spencer away. It's that moment we linger on, when she's about to flip the faceplate up -- mirroring the moment in the police station when the database twice comes close to bringing up "E. Lamb" -- that makes me wonder.
Because it could be a twist, that Spencer goes running off before she knows for sure, and since we didn't see the face it doesn't count. But I feel like any time it's been like this we didn't see the face. Ian and Garrett, yes. But not Maya, or Alison. So maybe it's just a preponderance of overdetermined red herrings adding up to the obvious conclusion: He's dead. But either way Spencer falls down, having lost Mona, and abruptly seems to realize that everything is happening. The little hashtag pops up and she has to fit that into her brain, real quick, and it just drops her on the ground.
MONTGOMERY
Aria: "Sorry I lied about Ezra's baby and babymama for no reason."
Ella: "Well, it was certainly odd of you, but whatever. I wish I knew how to help."
Aria: "Am I just crazy to think that this could work?"
Ella: "Nothin' new there, honey."
Aria: "Isn't having a child, like, the worst thing that could happen to you?"
Ella: "Not really. It makes a space in you to care about someone else more than yourself. That's a pretty good thing."
Aria: "It sounds like a living death."
Ella: "Things are going to change. I know you and Ezra will work together, and maybe that will work. You've been through a lot. You know what, though, it is perfectly okay if you don't want that, necessarily."