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Hanna's mom gets pulled over by her buds in the police department with her bucket of stolen cash, but it's just to tell her that her daughter got run over. Since she can't sleep with the hit and run driver, she doesn't know what else to do but hang around bugging the girls so they can't share info about the many other messes in which they're involved.
To wit: Hanna's mysterious hospital visitors. First you've got Noel, who did write "I SEE YOU" on Ezra Fitz's car out of Aria-related jealousy, but probably is not A. Then sweet Lucas, who looks even better in HD, comes by to give her a kiss and a tantrum about being in the friend zone. Then comes Ghost Alison in a dream, talking all kinds of clue-sounding mess and threatening to take out A once and for all. And finally, A herself, who writes a scary apology on Hanna's leg cast while she's out of it.
Spencer keeps everybody on an even keel for the most part, even after finding out that Aria is sleeping with their English teacher, but sort of loses it when Ian shows up half-dressed and marries her sister. (I know!) Aria also mostly just vacillates and wears horrible clothes and plays wounded music on the school keyboards and acts like an idiot with Fitz some more. Finally, we decide that A is multiple people and that we're starting over, essentially, from scratch.
But for all this rearranging in the wake of Camp Mona -- and it's a beautifully directed episode, full of swooping old-school pans and delicious lighting -- the only thing that feels really important in the end is Emily's big coming-out moment. After getting into a fantastic meow-fight with Jenna ("The only person who should have come between you two is a social worker"), her dad finally sits her down and berates her until she admits that she's not being harassed by Toby so much as her own gay feelings. He then goes and berates her mom about being less homophobic toward their awesome daughter, and it's just a bloody, awful mess... And something of a wonderful relief. One secret down, approximately 94,999 to go.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: Serial child-kisser Ian returned to Rosewood, probably to marry Melissa and then make out with some more children. I don't know what the Ben situation is at this time; I just miss Wren. Spencer doesn't really have any other problems, besides picking which of her sister's relationships to ruin or essays to plagiarize, but that's mostly because Spencer is the only person who ever knows what the fuck is going on.
In other pedo news, Aria dated a homosexual to make her elderly boyfriend jealous, spotted him glamping suspiciously at Camp Mona, and ran off to get statutory raped some more. Aria is still the very worst.
Emily's mom knows about her girlfriend Maya, but now Emily's dad is home to possibly make things worse, and plus she's involved in the super-creepy family life of her creepy friend Toby, who was at one point doing his creepy blind sister Jenna. Toby is now in the custody of either the cops or the FBI, which is probably best because the people of Rosewood are very Elm Street when it comes to poor Toby Cavanaugh.
Hanna found out her mom was broke but not that she was sleeping with the enemy, or that she was stealing money from gross old ladies. Hanna's old boyfriend Sean sucks all over the place, while her awesome hermaphrodite boyfriend Lucas can be moderately freaky but is not really a bad sort. Hanna figured out that Aria's gay fake-boyfriend Noel was A, which he is not, and then got her ass run down by a car.
These days when Ashley Marin's driving her car it's with two major fears: Number one, that Aria's wormy father will randomly appear and ask her on a date, and number two that somehow the cops or somebody will figure out that she stole the gross old lady's money. So when a cop pulls over, she assumes the jig is up. It's all very Psycho. But instead of handcuffing her and taking her off to jail -- thus necessitating she sleep with even more cops -- he just wants to explain how daughter Hanna got run the hell over.
Back at Camp Mona they're loading Hanna onto the ambulance and everything looks pretty dire. Mona comes running up to express sympathy, which she would only do for Hanna, and the three other Liars jump in the car -- but not before Aria spots Noel in the crowd, wearing a black hoodie and looking gorgeous as usual, and then he melts away into the shadows. What was Noel doing glamping? Did he run over Hanna? Is he A? Did he kill Ali? Why would he do any of these things? He's just a treasure trove of surprises. As long as he doesn't ever play guitar so Aria can sing again, I don't have a problem with him. That was a fucking nightmare.
The Liars -- still in their awesome Camp Mona gear -- are all pacing around the hospital waiting for Mrs. Marin to come with news. Of course, Lucas is there in the shadows, which weirds Ashley out even more since he is a big hermaphrodite secret and they haven't met. Everybody's on their phones, but they hang up when Ashley arrives and does some excellent acting about how Hanna has a broken leg and ankle and bruised ribs and endangered spleen. She keeps bugging the girls to find out what happened, because the story -- this car came zooming at her for no reason, she inelegantly rolled the length of the car onto her face, the car sped away -- is not that compelling a narrative. I mean, if you saw it, it was freakin' hilarious, but hearing about it is not so funny.
So the car was stolen from a campground lot, not helpful, and Spencer immediately starts yelling about how it was clearly Toby Cavanaugh, because Spencer always thinks it was Toby Cavanaugh. Who ate my Yoplait? Probably Toby Cavanaugh. Ashley explains how Emily accidentally sicced the cops on him at that church (I forget how that went down exactly, do we know who called the cops?) and sends the girls home. Of course, the last thing Hanna said was that she knew who A was, so they're not super down with that plan. They have one of those conferences where they explain basic shit to each other, and Emily wants to tell everybody everything, total disclosure, but Spencer's not having that, so they agree to leave Hanna with her very trustworthy mother and break.
Spencer runs home and straight into Melissa's arms, and Melissa stares weirdly into space the whole time she's telling her the story, as if she is A. Ian appears with his shirt hanging open, I guess from the barn, and asks if Hanna's okay. Because he cares about young girls and their welfare a serious amount, but also because he was fucking Alison and probably killed her and probably will kill everybody. He cancels practice on Monday and heads back out to the barn so that Spencer can ask Melissa why she is suddenly sleeping with Ian again. She says it's because she feels like it, and go to bed, but she doesn't make Spencer promise not to sleep with him which is her bad.
Hanna's finally awake and Ashley's doing her whole "when they find the maniac who did this to you" thing, I guess because she thinks she can sleep with car accidents now to get Hanna out of trouble, and immediately Hanna wants to talk to the Liars because she knows who A is, and doesn't care about Sean or Lucas coming to the hospital at all, because Stalkers Before Hos. Ashley gets all mothery about how she just needs to rest and she can see them when she sees them, and Hanna settles into a long night of feeling weird. It's hard to get your cardio in, when your whole body is in pieces.
morning you got Ezra throwing another damned fit about how maybe fucking a child is a bad idea. This time his evidence is the writing on his back window -- I SEE YOU -- which he finds unsettling and accusatory, because he assumes it happened while they were mugging down at Camp Mona before heading over to his little house. Aria says about sixty times that it doesn't mean anything, but I think what she means is, "This isn't about your statutory rape, it's just my stalker, don't worry about it." She wipes it off, getting dust all over her stupid outfit, and then probably sits on some steps somewhere and reads some poetry or something.
Emily's awful mom is all about A) Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, B) Call Ben and have some heterosexual sex with him as soon as possible, C) Toby Cavanaugh is a monster, and D) No cell phones at the table. Her usual things. But when Emily points out that her text might be from Hanna, her dad steps in and throws some patriarchy on it, so she's allowed to check. (Their family is kind of the worst people, but at least they're not racist like in the books. Which would be difficult, because they are like every race.) And indeed it is from Ashley, saying that Hanna wants company.
The Liars ask Hanna the usual questions, like does it get hurt when you get hit by a car, hoping that Ashley will get bored. Eventually, though, Hanna has to dismiss her, and she heads off to steal from more old ladies and fuck some more cops and loan Byron Montgomery some more toast, so Hanna finally gets to tell the gals that it was Noel that she decided was A. Specifically because he wrote on Fitz's car in a very A manner. Aria thinks about this for a second but she knows that Noel could never be A and that in fact this is just the age-old story where you play the gay musician off the pedophile English teacher.
And then suddenly she is busting out the whole story about how she did have a boyfriend in Iceland -- which I still don't believe -- but that she's been screwing Ezra since Labor Day, and did so again last night. Hanna's point is that she saw what she saw and then was immediately run over, but the connection does seem tenuous if you think about it. Then Noel knocks on the hospital door and Aria acts very dramatic and weird and jumpy and Noel is very pretty and super gay some more, and he lies and says that he was with Sean last night and not glamping, which proves that he's hiding something and is maybe a murderer. The girls are all over this. Especially Spencer, because if anybody's gonna get fucked by old guys.
Emily's parents have a sort of unbearable meeting on the couch about how Emily is hiding something and needs her dad, and how she's friends with Toby Cavanaugh and how Alison was murdered and everything but the fact that Emily is a lesbian, which Emily's mom thinks her dad will be as if not more ambivalent about than she is. And she has to clean the house, and everything is broken, and he's got to leave for Texas at some unknown point for training exercises. Emily's dad's final point is that if you want to know something you should man up and ask the person, and trust your daughter to tell the truth, but that is not how her mom rolls, so she gets off the couch and starts cleaning the house. It's all just a little too realistic.
Things are scary in the hospital room -- staring Noel teddybear with bright green eyes, doorhandle slowly turning -- but then Mona comes in, waving a white La Perla brassiere and being generally Monaesque. She points to the cast and goes, "That's, like, for a broken leg!" Heh. Hanna is kind to her as usual, admitting that she'll be out of heels for a little while, and letting her sit on the bed. They discuss how Mona feels super guilty for uninviting her to Camp Mona, resulting in her "desperate" sneaking "around the edges," which led to the accident. Since she can't explain about A and Noel and everything, Hanna just assures her she's got nothing to feel bad about, and then Mona gives her a makeover, because Mona is actually that uncomplicated. And actually pretty awesome:
"Do you remember that time you threw up on the trampoline? You did that backflip, and you barfed as you went over... Well, the thing I remember was your dismount. You knew everybody was staring at you. You got to the edge, climbed down, and looked at us. You wiped your mouth, and then you took a bow. I was in awe." Of me hurling on the trampoline? "No, of that bow. I mean, it was like this incredible life lesson. That's when I knew I wanted to be your friend."
It's funny because Mona is maybe even a little more awesome in the books, but Hanna is so fucking gross you wouldn't believe it. I kind of love her best, on the show, but I had to stop reading the books because I hated Hanna so much. She's like this bulimic Marissa Cooper, crossed with Elizabeth Wurtzel and Julie Powell and Anastasia and Drizella Tremaine. Horrible person. Not even funny-awful, just nasty. She even made Aria seem like less of a douchebag. Reading her chapters was like putting on an oily pair of pants.
Spencer assures Aria that Ali wasn't the one that wrote ALISON + IAN on that tree that time, because it's "tacky," but they know Ian isn't A because he was with Melissa, which brings them back to Noel. More explanations -- the Emily/Maya pics were stolen at Noel's party, etc. -- but Aria's not having it. And, as she points out, Spencer was just this solidly sure about Toby last night. Spencer doesn't care to hear it: "A or not, you still need to know what Noel saw, and what he plans to do about it." Which is true. Stalkers and murders and whatnot are all quite fun, but really, you are seriously helping Ezra ruin his own life.
After visiting hours, Lucas creeps into the hospital room like a creepster with mud on his shoes, and kisses Hanna on the forehead before ducking out again. Hanna is awake but doesn't do anything, and then when he's gone she's like, "What just happened?" Well, honey, what happened is that the guy you knew liked you -- whom you've been pushing toward the edge every single day since you figured it out -- has been activated to full liking of you by the fact that you got hit by a car and are dating a toolbox of unbelievable proportion. Whom you hate as much as Lucas does. Is that not exactly what you thought/know happened? Because you've been working his ass since he showed up. Come on. Boys are the easiest thing in the world. Own it.
Ashley shows up later to ask more inconvenient questions and point out the gorgeous orchids Sean brought by earlier, and then Hanna asks her if they really need to be in a private room, what with being broke ass. Ashley assures her that their money problems are over, due to a "professional courtesy" from the bank -- because banks love giving money to people in default, it's how they pay it forward -- and thus she should spend this money on an unnecessary hospital room. I mean, I guess Ashley makes sense but you also just have to wonder. I mean, Hanna didn't get to how she is on her own.
So this is what Aria is wearing. A magenta lace-top chemise like a hooker would wear, under a leopard cardigan, which I mean, with some belted black leather mini-shorts, fishnets, and knee-high boots. Only one necklace, but it weighs about six pounds. Of all the Aria outfits, this is the Ariest. How can people even look at you? How can people even deal with you, sitting in the music room playing plaintive tunes on the keyboard and staring wetly into space and waiting for somebody, anybody, to come and ask what's wrong? You'll wait forever, dear. Nobody cares. We've all got our own stuff to deal with, on any given day, and when we see something like you coming, with your ten-pound bag of bullshit, we know to run the other way.
But not Noel. No, not Noel. He just wants to find out if Hanna's okay, if they caught the guy, if he is going to jail, if those strange feelings about the other boys on the football team are ever going to go away. Aria asks him why he was glamping and lying about it, and Noel explains the pretty adorable truth that he followed them into the woods to scare them, but then he saw Aria getting in Ezra's car, and it hurt his little gay heart and that rather than writing I SEE YOU on the window he should have thrown a rock. Just scare them, and that was what ended up happening. Poor fellow.
...Or not. He immediately starts in about how he is going to have Ezra put in jail and "what did he promise you to get in that car" and "what he made you do" and all of this shit and it's like, yes, he's older and technically in a power position, but really don't you think you should ask Aria what she thinks about all this? Not only is it fairly insulting but if there is something hinky going on, making her feel powerless and creepy about it is probably not a better plan. You know how pretentious she is: It's not like you're going to convince her she wasn't having the greatest love affair of all time. Anyway, Aria makes him promise not to take action by swearing on his feelings for her, which is just so Aria, and he goes through with it, because that is his entire personality.
Emily calls the FBI to see if she can visit Toby, but don't you know Jenna Thing is lying in wait just around the corner, hissing and waving back and forth like a blind cobra, about how Toby doesn't want to see her because she sold him out (which she basically did, considering she knew he was right when he told her not to tell the Liars where he was) and then the cops came to their house and found that sweater, which... Mental rolodex thwipping... The sweater that 2) Toby gave Ali, after 1) the fight with Spencer, but 3) before she made the Kissing Rock video with Ian, and then 4) got herself murdered? Is that right? Busy damn night. Anyway, Jenna is pissed because now Toby's gone and she can never blindly fuck her own brother again. Emily then serves up maybe the best burn in the history of this show: "Somebody should have 'come between' you two a long time ago. Maybe a social worker with a bucket of ice water?" Jenna calls her a bitch and toddles off, but you can tell inside she's like Good one, Emily.
There's a gorgeous, spooky scene where Ali visits Hanna in the hospital, leaving a lipstick rim on her waterglass, but all we really need to discuss here is what Ghost Alison has to say. Hanna points out that Ali is dead and she says, "I heard that, too, but here I am." What happened to her? "It's complicated, Hanna. Really complicated. Worse than algebra." What happened when she left the barn? Everybody wants to know. "You already do. The four of you combined, you remember more about that night than you think you do." Where did she go? Did she meet a guy? Noel? "Pfft. Please." Like she needs one more gay person obsessing on her.
Hanna begs Alison for the truth, but she just shakes her head. "It won't make any difference, darling. You think the truth is some big shiny disco ball of purity? Then go ahead and try it. Be 'honest.' See what it gets you. Telling the truth to the wrong person at the wrong time is how I ended up where I am. Take it from me, you're always better off with a really good lie." At the door, she turns: "I was so scared that you were going to die. That's why I came back. I didn't care how dangerous it was, I had to see you." Mysterious and magical! And then again: "You know, I really should do something about A. That bitch is genuinely getting on my nerves."
Ezra and Aria go to the classroom they've apparently reserved for their nonstop secret meetings where anybody can walk by in the middle of the day so they can discuss how they should not have yelled or gotten all stressed out about the writing on the car, and how they should keep going out and feeling weird about it, and I guess probably they talk about some other shit too, but my God.
Did she tell Mr. Fitz about Noel? Well first of all, Aria will have you know, "His name's Ezra." Spencer points out that of course she can call him whatever she wants, but he's still a teacher, and the implication is that they are both gross, and Aria can't tell him about how Noel saw and wrote on the windshield, because then Ezra would freak out some more and she just got him calmed down. I think that's the whole reason. She admits she was never really dating Noel, he was just kind of her unwitting beard, and then says some awesome words: "I just don't know how hard to push him, but I know that it's a one-way street. So once I say something to anybody, I can't take it back." Even Spencer agrees that this is a sound sentiment.
Lucas brings Hanna all the pudding in the hospital, because I guess he's a feeder and wants her to be fat again or else just fat enough to date his loser ass, and because she's a freak ("I like the little bumps") she chooses tapioca, which nobody in history has ever actually done. She tells him to stop skipping school and he says he's doing community service and that he's practicing lying for when he becomes a politician, and then they have the Friend Zone talk. It's pretty much a bloody mess, but that conversation always is. Which is why you should just not say anything, I think.
Although Hanna is operating at a reality deficiency, what with people appearing and disappearing and dead people showing up, so it makes sense that she should find out if he really did creep into her room after visiting hours and kiss her forehead, so I can see how she got there. She admits she was awake when it happened, which for a second he thinks is a good sign, but then she educates him on how they are friends and she likes him a whole lot and doesn't want to jeopardize their relationship by being fake with him, which is pretty reasonable. And he throws a fucking fit, which generally would make him the loser, but as he's leaving he says the perfectly correct thing, which is that if he doesn't throw the fit she'll think he's okay with being in the FZ, which he is not. So I'd call this one a draw.
Emily relaxes on her bed, chatting with Maya on the phone about this and that and asking what life is like at the old folks' home where Maya lives when she's not pretending to be a high schooler, and then her dad comes in to bother her about Toby. So they have this whole conversation where he's like, "I know something is dreadfully wrong and I have to assume it's the sister-fucking murderer you took to Homecoming who is now in FBI custody," and just when you're getting totally frustrated with their inability to communicate, sweet little Emily starts crying and just goes, "I'm gay. I'm gay." It's stunning and beautiful and her dad is just standing there like his arms went numb, and then of course we cut to another scene.
Spencer and Aria head out into the woods to check out that tree for some reason, and Spencer messes with her endlessly about how she could be so stupid slash gross as to take up sex with a teacher, and her best line -- "Part of me thinks this is really self-destructive behavior, but most of me just thinks it's really hot" -- comes right before they discover the tree... Which has been cut down, because in addition to being absurdly ubiquitous, apparently A is also a lumberjack. I am sticking with the forum posters who imagined Melissa out there in the middle of the night chopping that fucker down, because it's hilarious and because you know she has the perfect outfit ready for some late-night lumberjacking.
Emily listens to her parents have The Conversation, in which her mom admits she had the photographs well before he came home, but also that she thinks Maya has brought her lesbian California ways into their home and that Emily is being brainwashed. Dad -- and I admit they got me with this storyline, I assumed mom would be cool and dad would come home all patriarchy and send her back into the closet -- points out that she is a pretty awesome kid, and that compared to being dead back in Afghanistan, having sex with ladies is not the worst thing he's seen lately. Mom is not having it. Not only is it not really Emily doing this, but also it's straight-up wrong to be gay, which means either her daughter is Wrong or just Confused. Dad's not so sure about that, and tries to stress the importance of compassion during a very stressful time in Emily's life, but you know, her mom just sucks. We'll see what happens there, but like I said: Dreadfully accurate.
Spencer and Aria go back to Spencer's house to freak out -- "A tree, Spence? An entire tree?" -- and then Ian comes in from the barn with a bottle of champagne, which he offers to share with the two teenage girls, because he is the biggest creeper on this show. But then Melissa comes in looking joyful and absolutely gorgeous in a white dress, and the scary truth is revealed: They have gotten married. Melissa's overjoyed because this means Wren didn't leave her, she is just getting back together with her old flame like the last year didn't happen, and they both babble so much that the girls don't really say anything until they're gone and then Aria's just like, "The fuck just happened?"
Back at the hospital everybody is trying to be supportive about Emily's big coming-out and how horrible her mom is, and then talk turns again to the tree ("So, the whole tree?" It's just funny every time) and decide that either A has a split personality ("That's great, homicidal and nuts") or A and the person who killed Alison are two different people. Hanna is weirded out about this, they all are, but then before they can explain it over and over to each other like usual, they notice the blatant A message on Hanna's leg, left while she was out of it, and they all go crazy about cleaning it off:
Sorry about losing my temper. My bad. Love, A.
week: Ezra and Aria break up but then get back together. Mona and Hanna, same deal. Spencer manages to sleep with Ian on their wedding night even though it already happened. Holly Marie Combs looks tired some more. Mike Montgomery has more emotional troubles and then busts Toby Cavanaugh out of jail. Ashley Marin kills some people for their jewelry, and then makes a stir-fry for Aria's wormy dad. Emily is sent to But I'm A Cheerleader Camp, where she runs into Noel. A and Alison's killer get together and stage a movie musical of her death, starring everybody that has ever been on this show, because they are all Ali's killer and also A. Jenna comes to the rescue after Maya gets caught renewing her Boniva prescription.