Previously: Toby seemed all nice and sweet about asking Emily to Homecoming, but his sister seems to think Emily won't be so keen on him after she finds out his secret. In this case, Jenna was probably right. Spencer flirted a lot with Chin Dimple the Second until Melissa came in and fucked that up. Bitch. Aria tried to stay away from Mr. Fitz, but some games of chance and a spiffy new haircut made this difficult. Poor, virginal Sean decided to bring Hanna to the dance, but she took off with the nerdily wonderful Lucas in order to do some light breaking and entering to get Jenna's therapy file. But they found Toby's and they found out that Toby was going all Cruel Intentions with his stepsister and speculate that he may have killed Alison in order to keep her quiet. And Toby realized that Emily wanted to be with Maya, said they've got secrets and ended up chasing her around the school.
We pick up right where we left off. Hanna, Spencer and Aria are desperately running around in heels looking for Emily. They want to split up, but they're all too scared. Aria tries calling her phone, and they find it ringing on the ground in the hallway outside of the chem lab. Inside the lab, they find the place in upheaval and blood on the ground and they jump to conclusions.
Then we see Toby in his car with blood streaming down his cheek and he's got Emily passed out in his backseat. Before we can ponder all of his nefarious plans for her, we see that he's pulled up at an emergency room to get her some help for her bloody head wound.
In the morning (or a morning, you know, this show and its timeline) we see a car that has that stupid paint on it saying Congratulations on the front window. I always hate that crap in high school. Like, how are you supposed to drive? There's also a cop, which I suppose is actually the larger issue here. Aria and Spencer are in Emily's room, regaling her with the details of Jenna and Toby's somewhat incestuous step-sibling relationship. They presume that Toby forced Jenna into this, but I'm not so sure about that. Jenna doesn't seem like a pushover. Anyway, they say that Jenna saw the two steps engaged in some sexual activity when she tossed a stink bomb into their house, and then threatened to expose Toby. Still doesn't explain why the stink bomb blew up the garage, though. Was there a chemical in there of some kind? Anyway, they think that Toby wanted Alison dead, and in turn wants them all dead, so he can keep his incestuous interlude a secret. Emily looks at them skeptically. She rightly points out that if Toby wanted to kill her, he had every opportunity, but instead he took her to get medical attention.
Nia is talking to the police, and they're explaining that Emily's date brought her to the ER, handed her off to a nurse and left. Nia doesn't think this sounds like Ben. Nia? Pay attention to your kid. That's been over for ages, and Ben's basically a rapist, so he's not the good guy you've painted him out to be. The cop says that the school guest list says she went with Toby and accuses her of being a bad parent, and she lies that she totally knew about that but got confused. As to Toby's whereabouts now, he dropped off the car and took off on his motorcycle.
Emily told the cops that she went out for air and tripped, and she didn't want to get Toby in trouble until she'd talked to the girls. Where's Hanna? Shouldn't she be at Emily's bedside? And whose car says Congratulations on it? I thought for sure it was the one belonging to the homecoming queen. Unless that was the car they were raffling off? Did Emily win? Spencer says that the truth about Toby is in the file, so that should get him in trouble. Isn't Spencer smart enough to know that a stolen file isn't admissible evidence? The cops won't do anything about the fact that a girl read something, went running and actually tripped.
Hanna shows up. Finally. Nia sends her upstairs, saying that Emily needs some rest. The cops want to talk to Emily to see if she remembers anything else, or if she forgot something, or is protecting Toby. I just realized that this thankfully isn't Det. Wilden. It's nice to see there are some other members of the police force, and they don't just do it up -style, where there is one person who has like every adult job imaginable to save money. Nia says that her daughter is totally honest and wouldn't have told a fib. The detective steals House's famous line and says that everybody lies.
Upstairs, the girls are encouraging Emily to tell the cops the truth, though Aria tells her she has to leave out the file. Spencer sighs and agrees. Spencer, I expected better than that. Hanna is impressed with the amount of people on the Rosewood police force as well. She still has the file because the cops were at the shrink's office doing some follow up questioning. Emily asks to look at it. Hanna hopes that no one saw her going into the office building, or she is "hosed." Don't worry, I'm sure that there aren't any security cameras or anything, and that awesomely nerdy Lucas is totally spellbound by your beauty and unable to put two and two together. Aria's phone rings, and the girls panic that it is "A," but it's just Holly Marie Mom, putting her daughter in the middle of a passive-aggressive fight with her father. She and Spencer take off, and Hanna wonders what to do with the file. They decide to throw it in Hanna's locker at school until they come up with a plan. Dumbasses. Lockers are public property and can be searched without a warrant. They should hide it in one of their rooms. Do teenagers not watch legal dramas?
Hanna asks Emily if the car outside is hers. It is! She won the raffle after she got her head wound. Sorta evens out. And makes me hate the writing on it slightly less than when I see it for sporting events or graduations. Emily addresses the elephant in the room and asks Hanna why she thought Emily wanted to take Maya to the dance. To her credit, Hanna doesn't lie and just says that she got a picture of them making out from "A." Hanna wants to know why she'd take a hot lesbian pic with Maya and then take weird Toby to the dance. Nia's probably downstairs, still wondering what happened to Ben. Emily says that she thinks she knows what she wants, and that's Maya, but she's afraid of being judged by the world. Yeah, high school sucks. Hanna says that she wouldn't have to pretend that she's happy with Toby. Emily worries she might change her mind, and the show carefully avoids using the word lesbian here, and Hanna insists that it isn't a contract written in stone, and that no one cares who Emily dates. Emily thinks that her parents might care. Honestly, Em? I get that your dad is in the military, but there's no Don't Ask, Don't Tell anymore, and your mom clearly has no idea who you are dating. No need to be perfect. And, frankly, Maya's way hotter than either Ben or Toby. Though I still think it is more than a little bit convenient that she moved into town and insinuated herself right into Emily's life so easily. Slightly suspicious, but not a rapist and not a guy who sleeps with his sister... so definitely an upgrade.
At the country club, Spencer looks for Alex, who's in the kitchen. The laundry service was apparently pilfering funds, so they're short-staffed, and now, in addition to working on the court, he's also a sous chef. Who knew that Chin Dimple the Second was a regular Jack-of-all-trades? Spencer asks him if he can take a break. What part of "understaffed" does she not get? I seriously thought she was smart. Spencer wants to explain about the night before, and Alex says that her sister took care of that. She insists that Melissa lied, but a waitress type says that Spencer can't be in the kitchen, since it is off-limits to members. Oh, just like Dirty Dancing. Is she going to carry a watermelon? Alex ignores her, and snippy waitress says that Spencer is violating health codes. Spencer says she won't touch the tartar sauce, and earns a chuckle from Alex. Spencer begs for another chance, the night. He agrees, on the condition that she let him plan the entire night. For a control freak like Spencer, this is a big deal. She thinks it sounds dangerous, but she caves when he smiles.
At Fitz's house, his answering machine goes off (he tries again to insist his name is Ezra, but I can't call him that and still find him remotely attractive), and we see that Aria is leaving a message, since he didn't answer his cell. Holly Marie Mom walks in with a box of flowers. Aria expectantly thinks that her dad sent them by way of apology, but turns out they are for Aria. Mostly forgotten Mike heads out to practice, telling Holly Marie Mom that Chad Dad is picking him up and staying for the game. He wants his mother to come, but since she's more worried about how bad it will look if she doesn't sit with her husband, than about supporting her son, she says no. Aria's very pretty flowers aren't from Fitz, they're from Sean. A thank you, because she hung out with him when Hanna disappeared.
Emily is laying in bed, and she wakes up sorta dazed and sees a dog, and Jenna in her doorway. Mom is there with a plate of cookies. They're from Jenna and her mom. Don't eat them! I'm sure they are poisoned, or something. I mean, you did steal her step-brother/boyfriend. Jenna weirdly says they taste better with milk, and then dispatches Nina to get milk. Jenna sits on Emily's bed like they are friends. Jenna says that she's worried about Toby and was hoping that Emily knows where he is. The dog is so cute and obedient. I can barely pay attention to the conversation, but Jenna thinks that Toby trusted Emily, and since he's a troubled teen, Jenna is afraid that he might hurt himself. Jenna says that the police are looking for the missing file and that she thinks if it falls into the wrong hands, it could be misconstrued. Emily says she thought Jenna would be relived that Toby was gone. Um, way to show all your cards there, Emily. Jenna picks up on this and says that her friends have shared it with her. She is worried that secrets have a way of getting out, like what Alison told her when she visited her at the hospital. What did Alison tell Jenna? Basically, Jenna wants the file, and says that she's kept quiet about a lot of things and if she doesn't get it... she hints that secrets will come out. Oh, Jenna. So manipulative.
Sweet Lucas sits on his computer looking at pictures from the homecoming dance, and smiling at ones of Hanna. Just then she shows up in her clothes from the night before. She's there to do a makeup picture, but says that the custodian didn't want to let her in. He says he told Carl twice, but 30 years of breathing floor wax must have made him forgetful. That and vodka. Hanna checks her appearance in the mirror and says that on three hours of sleep she looks terrible. He thinks she looks even better than the night before, though that's not really possible. She asks if he's sure Sean is coming... because he's kinda pissed at her for missing the big announcement. She spots the crown and says it looks smaller than she'd always imagined. He says that the girl who won last year had kind of a pinhead -- he knows, he took her photo, but it might have been perspective. He jokes that her head got bigger after she won... as the heads of homecoming queens are wont to do.
Sean shows up, wearing a suit jacket and a pair of shorts. He's heading off to a basketball game right afterwards. Hanna's phone rings, and it's Emily, and Sean tells her to get it and blow him off again for her friends. She doesn't though, as we see Emily pondering a plate of Jenna cookies and trying to leave a message for Hanna while Nia walks in and out of the room. Emily's arm is also in some sort of air cast, so she must have hurt that, too. Nia wants to know who Emily was leaving a message for, since it sounded so urgent. Emily makes up a poor lie about lipgloss, prompting Nia to take her phone away from her so they can have some mother-daughter magazine-reading bonding time.
Lucas tries to do the pictures, but Sean's not happy to be there and he has to force them to even stand to each other. Emily sits sipping tea while Nia asks if she thought that she wouldn't have let her go to the dance with Toby. Emily honestly says yeah, and Nia says that Emily is right, because Toby is trouble. Emily thinks she's misunderstood, and Nia gets all uppity about Toby being the reason that Jenna's blind and says that he's the reason her daughter has a head wound. Nia thinks that Toby must have something to hide and speculates that Toby tried to pressure Emily into having sex. Wrong boyfriend again, Nia. Keep up. Nia wonders what the neighbors are going to think, when they find out she went out with Toby. She claims that Emily needs to be honest with her.
Lucas tries to get Sean to sit with Hanna on his lap (even offers to Photoshop pants on him) but Sean's had enough. He's tired and annoyed that he looked like a jackass all alone on stage while his girlfriend was nowhere to be found. You'd think if she just said that she was looking for Emily, who turned out to need medical care, he might understand, but no. He says that she ditched him way before Emily and starts getting a little loud, so Lucas takes a candid shot and Sean threatens to stick his camera in an uncomfortable place. Then he takes off. Hanna follows suit.
Aria stares at her very pretty flowers and is interrupted by Chad Dad, who says that the game was a dud, but mostly-forgotten Mike played well. Mom never showed up, and he lies that she was missed. Aria wants to know if she is responsible for passing on that message as well. Chad Dad tries to explain that he and her mother have been together since college and were basically kids who had never really been out of their hometown, and Aria doesn't care, she just wants to know if he's moving out. He says that her mom wants some time apart. She thinks this means he's moving in with Meredith, but he says that Meredith is just a woman he works with and isn't the problem, and that he still loves her mom. Aria says he's leaving because its easier to run than to fight for something you actually want. He again tells her that she's too young to understand.
Nia gets up to get the door and Emily immediately takes the opportunity to grab her phone back. Meanwhile, the girls have the file and are out in the woods running around and totally miss her call. Hanna is planning on burning the folder; they try and talk her out of it, but she says that it could be traced back to her, and she doesn't want to deal with it. She thinks that if she gets a third strike, she's going to the slammer. Aria looks confused, so Hanna explains about the stolen sunglasses and reminds her about smashing up Sean's car. Spencer says that Toby could be the killer and the police need the file in order to prove it and to stop "A." Aria says they don't know that Toby and "A" are the same person, but Spencer says that no one has gotten calls from "A" since he took off. Hanna doesn't listen or buy the "we're all in this together" and says that not everyone has parents who can get them off scott-free. Spencer doesn't understand what she's talking about, and Hanna reminds her that when Spencer stole an essay, her parents let her pose for the newspaper. Hanna is stuck carrying around medical waste to pay for her sins. Aria grabs the file and tosses it into a stream and says they can pretend that they don't know it exists. As they walk out of the woods, Aria gets a text from Emily that says "Whatever you do, don't destroy that file." Whoopsie.
By the lockers, Spencer, who looks so much prettier when she wears her hair down, asks Emily is she's taking anything for the pain. She is, but she's more worried about her mother and her nagging questions. Spencer mostly wants to know if Emily ate one of Jenna's cookies. She says she didn't. Such willpower. Spence gets a text, but it's from Alex, and thinks they can all stop worrying about "A." Maya walks by and purposely ignores Emily. Spencer is mad that Alex blew off their date under the pretense of work, but she knows that the club is closed on Mondays.
Aria walks into Mr. Fitz's classroom to see a woman at the board writing about Madame Bovary. She introduces herself as Mrs. Shephard, and tells Aria that she's Fitz's sub and doesn't know when the cute teacher will return. Jenna makes her way down the lockers to meet up with Emily. Emily tries to ignore her, but Jenna is blind, not an idiot and says she knows that Emily is there. She wants the file, and Emily tells her that it has been disposed of. Jenna's not too pleased, and hopes that she's not being lied to.
Lucas is in the yearbook office and Hanna walks in because he left her a message. He wanted her approval on the photo for the homecoming page. The one he likes looks like Sean a bad burrito. She picks one where she's smirking and says she thought she'd look happier. Spencer goes to the club and finds Alex in the kitchen. She's shocked that he's actually there. He is hurt that she thought he was lying, but he's getting time and a half to make fruit kebobs and such for a bigwig breakfast the day. His boss walks in to say that he's leaving and wants to know who Spencer is. Alex quickly lies and says it is a friend helping out, and the boss doesn't care, so long as she wears a hair net. She's clearly never put one on and only puts it on the top of her hair and leaves tendrils out doesn't actually put the majority of her hair underneath it. She actually starts working, and Alex seems surprised and wonders what her parents would think. She says that they don't even think about what happens to her, and he smiles at her.
Back at school, (where you'd think Spencer would be, no?) Sean asks Aria if she got the flowers. She's all pissed off because she thinks that they send a "screw you" message to Hanna. He says he didn't mean to, but he kind of did, because he was mad that she bailed on him. Aria says that Hanna loves him and hasn't talked about another guy since the seventh grad. Just then, a fight breaks out between mostly-forgotten Mike and some other guy. She tries to break it up, and he shoves her away. Sean tries to defend her honor, but she says it is OK.
In the yearbook office, Lucas and Hanna are giggling over a cat playing ping pong video that they found on the web. She's apparently never discovered animal videos before, and he cracks that these people have more free time than he has... which is a lot. So he goes to pull up a video of a turkey on a snowboard and accidentally grazes her finger tips in the process. He apologizes, and she doesn't understand why. He says that he didn't mean to "invade her personal skin." God, I love this little nerd. She jokes that the leprosy cleared up. He tells her that he was really afraid of her, or girls like her... "Alison's coven." She says they weren't witches, and he says that Alison was just straight-up evil. He didn't like her because she called him "Hermy the hermaphrodite for three years," because she didn't like his glasses. Hanna jokes that his shoes weren't that great either. He looks horrified, and then she explains that Alison called her Hefty Hanna. He doesn't understand why they were friends. She claims that Alison did have a nice side and could make people feel special... if she wanted to.
In the kitchen, Spencer is looking for something and finds a cabinet that has pictures of the members with mean notes or, in Spencer's case, devil horns drawn on them. Alex says that it is something the staff does to blow off steam when a staffer is rude to them. Spencer looks hurt that she made the wall of shame, Alex says that he'd never seen her picture before. She turns to leave and he says that people judge, no matter if they are low or high class. Just look at Melissa. Spencer still leaves.
Emily goes into the music room after class to talk to Maya. Em says that she wanted to warn Maya that their kissing photo will likely be seen by a lot of people. Maya's not losing sleep over it. Emily says she is done losing sleep, too... she misses Maya and wants to make it work. Maya wants to know why she should trust her, and Emily insists that she's trying to be honest with herself.
Holly Marie Mom and Chad Dad are fighting in the school hallway about how to appropriately deal with their now troublesome son. He wants to know if she even realized that Aria was skipping classes, and she wonders if he thinks she's a bad mom. He says he's not moving out because their kids need stability, and she isn't having that -- they just need to work it out and not pretend that everything is fine. I'm so bored with these two. They fight more about sleeping arrangements.
Their daughter is knocking on the door of Mr. Fitz, she even picks up his key from under the mat. Who does that in an apartment building? She goes in and hears his machine going off, and it is someone from a school in New York confirming his interview the day.
Sean shows up at Hanna's house; he copied down an assignment from a class she skipped. He says he's over being abandoned at homecoming and then calls her Hanna Banana. She shows him the snowboarding turkey video and he doesn't think its funny, he just thinks its fake. He asks her to put music on instead while they work on homework. Then he complains that it is too loud. Alex is in the kitchen listening to the same music when Spencer walks back in and asks if he's going to share what he's cooking. Then they start salsa dancing... to a hot stove. Without hairnets around food. I guess I'm supposed to ignore that because they are kinda smoking together as they kiss. But I do worry about things being sanitary.
Aria sits in her room, reading a book that says, "When you need to, leave Rosewood... Ezra." Emily drives around in her new car and sees a police car and a truck with Toby's smashed up motorcycle on the back of it. Jenna is crying on her steps. Aria sees her brother, who kind of looks like a young Zefron in a weird sort of way. She wants to know if Mike said good-bye. He says their parents tried to lecture him on the art of fighting, but he doesn't care about them and says that they don't care about their kids. Especially mostly-forgotten Mike. At least they have the decency to use Aria to keep their secrets. Mom and Dad are sitting outside trying to politely deal with logistics, and then she gets in the car and drives off. Aria looks away sadly.
Emily, Hanna and Spencer sit talking. They wonder if Toby is dead, and Emily says she couldn't bring herself to ask, but that Jenna was so upset. Emily does say that the bike looked totally wrecked. Spencer heartlessly says she's not going to be shedding any tears about it. Hanna says she can cry if she wanted to. Hanna apologizes for her comment about Spencer's family. Spencer says a lot of people think that. Emily gets a text message, and they presume it's from Aria, since "something weird is going down at her house." (Hanna's words, not mine.) But it's not. It is from "A"! Thank God. An episode without "A" messages and, I was starting to get antsy. "Thanks for getting Toby out of my way... - A" The girls all look freaked-out as the camera fades out.
But we don't end there. We're above the stream with the files in it, and a gloved person is along the bank picking up the wet, and still legible, papers.
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