Previously: Alison turned up dead. Mr. Fitz and Aria exchanged some awkward finger touching. Spencer begged Wren to tell her parents she wasn't a homewrecking slut Chad Dad's mistress got a little pushy. Toby Cavanaugh and his Chin Dimple returned to the hallowed halls of Rosewood High just in time to save Emily from being date-raped in the locker room by that dick Ben. Spencer couldn't process Russian history, so she stole a paper from her sister. The girls went trekking in the woods, heard some noises and found Alison's ugly old friendship bracelet. Hanna tried to hook up with Sean at Noel's seemingly endless party, but he insists on waiting, so she stole his car and crashed it.
Hanna is standing in front of her house, while her mom is talking to a cop. After the cruiser pulls away, Melrose Mom rounds on her daughter and says she thought they were done with the cops. Apparently, while having sex with a detective will get you out of some petty shoplifting, it won't get you out of being punished for nearly totaling the car of a preacher's son.
The girls walk in a park of some sort and ask Hanna how much trouble she got in for smashing up poor virginal Sean's car, and she shrugs it off, saying everyone is being cool about it. They arrive at their destination, which is a dirty old park bench. Aria informs us that it is going to be replaced by the town and the girls will just have to plant some flowers and someone is going to put in some "art tiles", that will share memories and whatnot of Alison. Hanna cracks that they will be like little headstones, and frankly, she's got a point. It's kind of creepy if you think about it. Also creepy, the fact that she's been carrying Alison's ugly bracelet around in her purse for days and she's afraid she's going to lose it or not be able to keep it hidden. She tries to pass the buck, but its sorta like a hot potato and Spencer's the only one willing to catch it. Spencer insists that if "A" decides to spill the dirt he/she has on them, it will only end up getting "A" in trouble as well. Interesting theory, unless "A" leaks stuff anonymously or through another source thereby hiding his/her identity and covering his/her tracks. "A" doesn't seem particularly stupid. Vengeful and vindictive, yes. Stupid? No.
Spencer whips out her computer and decides to set her phone preferences so that it will block all messages, texts, calls and emails from people that she doesn't know. She thinks this will make it harder to get in touch with her, but "A" is pretty crafty and has been known to leave old-fashioned paper notes on occasion. Methinks this isn't a solid plan, Spence. I thought you were smarter than that. Emily hops on Spencer's computer to change her own settings, and I wonder if she's smart enough to make it so that Spence can't later access this because she left it open, because like, what if Spencer was "A" or just wanted to find out Emily's secrets? As Emily's typing, Mr. Fitz rides by on his bicycle wearing shorts. Look, Fitz is cute and all, but he's no shirtless detective. Still, the girls all wave and make flirty catcalls in his direction. Well, exception Aria, who quickly grabs Spencer's computer to change her password (which I still maintain is something that should be done one her own computer) as the other girls talk about which of their teachers they'd like to see riding a bike. Hanna takes her turn on the computer, and Aria asks Emily if she's talked to Ben and if it's really over. Emily says it is and brushes her hair away from her face, and I finally realize who Brenda from Survivor: Nicaragua reminded me of all season. It is definitely Shay Mitchell. They're both gorgeous and have that perfectly shiny hair that I always envied. Phew, that was really bugging me. Hanna finishes up resetting her preferences and wishes for a drumroll as they pronounce themselves "A"-proofed. Yeah, right. Just as they all sigh in relief a piece of paper is whisked over in their direction by the wind. It's one of the missing persons flyers, that's got "Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead" written in big red permanent marker across Alison's face. Of course they look around and see absolutely no one. Big surprise there.
Right outside the school cafeteria, Maya spots Emily and gifts her a pretty red scarf that she thought would look "spectacular" on her friend. This merits a quick hug and a smile. And we move on to Hanna, Spencer and Aria, who are dressed far better than any high school students I've ever seen. Spence is in a frilly sleeveless top with a sleek pencil skirt and a smart bag. Hanna's wearing a gorgeous black-and-white dress (that looks designer) and a huge woven leather belt and a big gold chain. Aria's got on some hideous short-sleeved sweater thing. They are discussing why Melissa got whisked away to New York for a shopping spree and Spencer didn't. Hanna says that Spencer needed the retail therapy, too. Um, I think Spencer's wardrobe is pretty much set. Emily walks over, and the girls all gush over her scarf but she lies and says it isn't new. Hanna's phone starts ringing, and she lets it ring for a while. They all say they know it can't be "A," but she looks down and realizes that it's her dad. As she walks off to take the call, the other girls say they don't know if she's even talked to her dad since he split, and Spencer says it's don't ask, don't tell. Aria gets a message, but it is some sort of post from some random person named Arthur. She says she added him in a moment of weakness, but as this useless conversation continues, they bump into Toby in the hallway. When he passes, Aria wonders if that could have been "A". They agree that they aren't sure, but they'll avoid Toby and Jenna just to be safe.
Hanna's outside the cafeteria in an atrium-looking area, on the phone with her dad. He's in Pennsylvania and wants to see her, if she isn't too busy, and they make plans to see each other that night. She starts to ask if Melrose Mom told Deadbeat Dad about her recent run-ins with the law, but he doesn't seem to know what she's talking about.
Aria enters Mr. Fitz's classroom. OK, now I'm seeing her entire outfit, or what there is of it. The hideous sweater has ruffles on the bottom that barely cover her midriff. She's wearing calf-high black boots and a jean skirt that is smaller than the purse she's got over her shoulder. That's one way to get your teacher's attention. God forbid he drops a pencil and she bends over to grab it. Yet she still has on two necklaces. Maybe less accessories and more clothing? Just a thought. She says that she saw Fitz riding his bike around, and he said he spotted her and waved. He claims he would have stopped, but she wasn't alone. Their stilted conversation warms up a bit when she tells him that her friends thought he had nice legs. He wants her opinion on the matter, and she says she was embarrassed that they were talking about his legs. He basically asks for some sort of status between the two of them. She says it isn't smart, and he says it definitely isn't. OK, that's my official drinking game rule No. 2 (after No. 1, which would be drink any time they get a message from "A"), whenever either Aria or Fitz says that their whatever is a bad idea. She starts to walk off, but he says they need to talk. He invites her over for dinner. He wants to talk to her when he doesn't have to look over Dan's fauxhawk. They make plans for 7 that evening.
Hanna tells the girls that her dad's in New England for a few weeks, but that he's making a special trip to see her. The girls look at her skeptically, thinking that her father is probably only trekking all this way to ream her out for crashing Sean's car, but Hanna assures them that isn't the case. And if it is, well, at least he's paying attention to her. Some professor we've never seen before stops the girls to talk to Spencer to tell her what a remarkable job she did on her Russian history essay. He of course submitted it for some stupid award called The Golden Orchid. Yes, really. It's a competition, that if she wins, would look great on her applications. Or as Emily translates, it's more "academic bling" for Spencer.
Emily wanders over to her locker after the bell rings and takes off the scarf and leaves it behind. She heads into her chemistry class, and Toby is the only one in there. He's just joined that class. He wants to know what happened to the scarf, because he thought it looked good on her. Of course he ends up being her lab partner. Let the Bella and Edward awkwardness ensue. But not until after she opens her text book to see the photo booth pictures of her and Maya.
Aria walks into her kitchen, and her mom is whipping up some chicken dish, and offers up veggie burgers for Aria. She claims to be having dinner with Spencer, and Holly Marie Mom says that mostly-forgotten Mike won't be home either, so she and Chad Dad will have the place to themselves. Flashback to Chad Dad and Meredith making out and Alison telling Aria that she has to tell her mom what she saw. She gets a call from Chad Dad, and Ali swipes the phone and says that her dad will just try and talk her out of saying anything to her mom. Ali thinks Holly Marie Mom should find out from Aria before she somehow finds out. Given how oblivious Holly Marie Mom still is, Alison needn't have really worried. In present day, Aria struggles with telling her mom, and ends up awkwardly asking for a carrot.
Hanna's trying on outfits for her dinner, and she and Spencer are discussing the relative merits of having a smart older sister to steal papers from. Spencer says that if she withdraws the paper, the teacher will know something is up, but if she doesn't, she chances winning the competition and having her own thieving exposed. Spencer gives her a jacket to try on over her dress. Hanna wants to look smart to impress her dad, who hasn't seen her since she shed the extra pounds. Spence doesn't think that Hanna looks like herself in the jacket, which Hanna takes as a compliment. Then Hanna wants to know if Spencer has peeked at the blocked messages to see if they've gotten any threats from "A." Both girls claim that they haven't.
At a cupcake shop where Maya is working, Emily stomps up with the pictures and wants to know if Maya was the one that slipped them inside Em's chemistry textbook. Maya says she's not, but she doesn't care because she thinks they look cute. Maya thinks it isn't that big of a deal, but Emily is concerned that someone saw that they were kissing. Maya's not too pleased that Emily wants to keep their kissing a secret, so she goes back to work.
At house of Hanna, she and Melrose Mom are in front of a mirror primping away, anxiously awaiting the arrival of Hanna's dad. The doorbell rings and he walks in and is totally impressed by his daughter's transformation. He sees Melrose Mom, who is gussied up and clearly planning to go to dinner with them, and then has to break the news that he wanted this to just be a father-daughter evening. She seems to take it well, until they leave and then she looks pissed in the mirror. As Hanna and her dad walk down the front, he "jokes" that he's got a new sports car, so he hopes she's OK with him driving. She realizes that her mom called him and says if he's just going to scream at her he should do it inside and forgo the pretense of dinner. He says he's not going to yell, just help her get back on track. He says they can go to dinner or to a shooting gallery, and she agrees to go along. She's way overdressed for a shooting gallery.
In Mr. Fitz's apartment, Aria hasn't changed out of her jailbait outfit and she peeks around and sees his old-fashioned typewriter. She tells him that she likes his apartment and he seems pleased. He asks about her home life, and she says that her parents are having a date night. He thinks they could be working things out, but in her teenage "I'm always right" way, she insists that her mother is going to be broken-hearted when she finds out about the affair and that there is no earthly way her mother could know that her husband was a cheater. Fitz thinks that her parents could have an understanding, and he tells her about how his parents split up, even though they had an open marriage of sorts. She says that is totally different, but he tells her that it isn't her job to fix their lives. It is their own adult problem. She takes this as him saying she's not mature enough to deal with this. He has to tell her that he doesn't see her as a child, and they need to figure out their own relationship. She says she will, if he stops talking about her parents, and he reminds her that she came crying on his shoulder about her cheating father in the first place. Then she immaturely stomps off saying that she thinks that she made a mistake coming to his apartment (drink!) and that she wasn't acting maturely when she made that decision.
The day Hanna's all aglow about the fact that her father took her to the Jolly Rogers amusement park, and they walked around and talked about all her issues. It went so well that he's going to take her to dinner that night because he has something he wants to tell her. Five bucks says he's getting remarried. She thinks that he wants to spend more time with her, and invite her to summer with him in Maryland. The girls wonder if she'd consider this, and she says she would, but she'd never completely abandon her mother. Oh, so thoughtful. Taking care of the woman who slept with a detective so you could stay popular. And I'd like to note that even though the rumor mill has probably taken hold of the gossip that she smashed Sean's car, she doesn't seem to be ostracized by her fellow classmates. Though it is oddly suspicious we haven't seen Mona around lately.
Mr. Fitz walks into class and wonders aloud if anyone else is bothered by Atticus' hypocrisy at the end of the book, since he insisted on justice in his court case, but is willing to go along with a cover-up when it is convenient for him. Spencer says that he was protecting Boo Radley from the justice system, and Fitz says that it was covering up a crime, and letting his own son take the fall in the process. Aria says that Atticus' kids would have gotten killed if it weren't for Boo, so Atticus' let his son Jem take the fall (because of some residual guilt issues over a court case where someone was unfairly convicted) and let Boo the savior go. Fitz says that this is noble, but if Jem was wide awake, instead of lying unconscious he might have disagreed. Know-it-all Aria says that Jem would have gone along with the cover-up since he was brought up right. The rest of the class sits in uncomfortable silence. A fellow student says that Atticus knew he could get Jem off, since he was a lawyer, and it has nothing to do with how someone is brought up. Fitz, who hasn't taken his piercing eyes off of Aria, says that the whole book is about how we're shaped into adults, and says this other generic student must not have been paying attention. He says that at least Aria made an attempt to understand the book. Random student says that given Boo's race, it would have been hard for him to get Boo acquitted of the crime, but getting the charges against Jem dropped would be easy. More awkward silences in the class.
In the hallway, Emily opens her locker and sees Ben and some of his idiot friends cackling in the corner as Toby opens his locker to find it filled with shaving cream. Instead of offering to help him clean it up, she walks away. Emily might be a stone-cold selfish bitch.
At dinner, Hanna's dad says he hopes Sean's not going to be jealous that she's spending two nights with her father instead of him. She says she's not talking to Sean. He wants to know what the deal is, and if the crash was really more about Alison. She says that she sometimes wishes she could just get away and clear her head. He seems to understand, and says there are some matters to discuss. In walks Isabelle, his fiancée, and her daughter Kate. Woo-hoo, I was right. Cliché central.
Spencer is in her room, staring at the Alison bracelet, when she hears a noise downstairs. She goes down without turning any lights on. Has she never seen horror movies? She grabs a knife from the kitchen, and finds a drunken Wren with a potted rosebush that he picked up from their garden. He says that he's been trying to reach her, but she's blocked his calls. She says that's not the case, but then she realizes that he busted the door trying to get in. He says that he has been constantly thinking of her and wants to take responsibility for their kiss. He asks her to summon her father, but she informs him that the family is in New York with Melissa, leaving their teenage daughter at home and completely unsupervised. Anyway, he drops the plant, they both go to pick it up and end up in a tumble on the floor. He hits on her, they nearly kiss, but she offers him some coffee instead. He'd prefer Scotch, since he doesn't like to mix beverages. As she helps him up and shows him the knife that she was planning on taking down the intruder with, we see that their little interlude is being videotaped by someone outside.
Aria storms up to Mr. Fitz's door and barges in when he opens the door. She is all up in arms because he told her she was immature and then tried to protect her from a debate in class, and she thinks that everyone knew there was something weird about his comments. She continues her schpiel to say that she doesn't get him, he needs to shut up about her parents and how he thinks he knows her but he doesn't. He just agrees that he doesn't know anything about her. But then he closes his door so they can have their talk.
Spencer and Wren share some coffee, and he apologizes for getting her involved in this whole muddled mess and giving Melissa one more reason to hate her. She wants to know why he had to get drunk to talk Spencer's dad, and he claims it is mostly because her dad's a terrifying person, and also because he kind of screwed things up between the sisters. Wren thinks that things will eventually go back to normal, but she's not sure that's necessarily the best. She does say that even though she hates Melissa's guts, she didn't want to hurt her sister. Really? No one would blame her. Wren goes to leave, not to head all the way to Philadelphia, but to stay at a cheap nearby hotel. She says he's not fit to drive and takes his keys.
Kate is regaling everyone with her sailing stories, and Isabelle thinks maybe the two girls could go out on a boat together, since Kate is such a great teacher. Hanna jokes that they could see who comes back from their little adventure. Kate doesn't get the joke, and dad isn't all that impressed. He changes the subject by saying that he talked to Sean's dad and worked everything out. Do you think he had to sleep with him? He says that he just paid the estimated bill for repairs and she's going to work off the bill by working at Sean's mom's dentist office after school and on weekends. Kate says that could be interesting, Hanna snaps back that she's fascinated by dentistry, particularly fake-looking veneers. Kate quickly shuts her mouth. Hanna's phone rings at this point, and it is Spencer with an S.O.S message.
Emily takes her photo booth pictures out to the trash, and rips up the pics before putting them into the garbage can. Toby spots her and says hello, and apologizes if she hates having him as a lab partner. He realizes that people think he's just a freak with a Chin Dimple. She wants to know if the Bens of the world and their stupid pranks and lies get to him, and he admits that they do, but he can't do anything about it. She apologizes, and he remarks on how many times they say "sorry" to each other. Which prompts her to say sorry again. Then she asks if he saw the pictures before she shut her book during chemistry class, and he says he didn't look because he didn't think she wanted people to see them. He wants to know if she swims because she likes to, or because she wants people to watch her. She says she just likes the way she feels in the water, and he says that she should forget about the idiots and just do what feels right to her. The idiots don't want her to change everything, they just want her to go away. He said he didn't like that when he tried it, so now he's back. He gives her a smile and waves as he walks away.
Mr. Fitz and Aria eat leftovers while sitting on his floor, because he doesn't have a table? Or he doesn't want to get crumbs on the sofa? Or so he can get a little look up her short, little, ugly, butterfly-printed dress? Something. He apologizes for acting weird in class (because that was the mature reaction) and says he was just pissed that she stormed out of his apartment the night before. She says that she's the fixer in the family, because she wants everyone to stay together and the same. He thinks that keeping things the same is just human nature. She talks about a wacky aunt that had her dead cat stuffed so she could talk to it. She realizes that she needs to stay out of her parent's problems, but that she needs to just tell them the truth. She hops up to go talk to her mom, but he wants her to stay.
Spencer walks Wren to the hotel, and Hanna shows up to pick her up. Before Wren goes into the dumpy room, he says he wasn't lying when he told her that he wished he'd met her first. And then he gives her a big old kiss, which causes Hanna's eyes to pop out of her head. He invites her inside, but she said she's over her limit of stupid decisions lately. Inside the car, the radio DJ says he's got a request for Hanna from her best friend "A." It's the song, "I Don't Need You Anymore." When Spencer sits in the car, she tells Hanna it isn't what it looked like (but it is). And Hanna sits in stunned silence a minute before telling Spencer that they are way out of their league.
Outside the cupcake shop, Emily walks up to meet Maya. Maya says she doesn't know if she's allowed to hug Emily or not, since there are security cameras around. Emily apologizes for freaking out about the pictures, and then Maya wants to know if this is really about the kiss. Of course it is. Turns out that Emily actually liked the kiss but is worried about what it means. Maya tells her to stop thinking so much. Emily asks for some time and space... from everyone. Maya agrees, but says that she cares about Emily, so she'll wait.
Aria arrives back at home to talk to her Holly Marie Mom, but mom is preoccupied by a letter that she's reading. She doesn't say anything, but hands the typewritten note to Aria and walks out of the room. It basically says that her husband was having an affair before Iceland and may be resuming it now and that if she doesn't believe the note, she should ask her daughter. It's just signed "A." See, blocking messages is useless.
Hanna and Spencer fight about the course of action in the "A" situation, given that Spencer's blocking messages plan didn't work now that "A" is calling radio stations to leave messages. Then they see the potted rosebush, which was on the floor, all neatly arranged on the counter. They panic that this means that someone took Alison's bracelet and run upstairs. They find the bracelet, but are shocked when they turn around. Emily walks past Toby's house and sees a shadowy figure that looks like him in the window, as she gets an SOS message from Spencer. Aria's still reading the note when she gets an SOS from Spencer as well. The girls run over and see that the mirror has writing on it. "It won't be that easy, bitches. - A" Well, there's no comma, but when you are writing in lipstick, punctuation is probably not a priority. Hanna notices that it is in Jungle Red, Alison's signature color. They all look horrified, and we're treated to some more shadows moving around the house and another look at the artfully arranged shattered rosebush.
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