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Sometimes just when I'm wishing Norman Buckley directed every TV show, it starts seeming like he does. This episode, brought to you by The Great Gatsby, features clues like a clown piggybank and a golfbag tag from Hilton Head. Also, they've confirmed the blood on Toby's sweater, so it looks like he won't be free for very long. (Creepy Jenna was the one that turned him in originally, so he'd end up on house arrest, so she can have more incest with him.)
Spencer's back on with Ben, dressed like Jordan Baker, freaking out about Ian, and stressing over Toby's release from jail. Ben's having some kind of Poor Joey Potter issue about choosing work over a summer tennis clinic, and then he dumps her after A submits his application behind his back. Back home she and her dad agree that Ian is a loser, and then she gets the first step to figuring out that Ian and Alison were fucking as lately as the day before she disappeared.
Hanna's home from the hospital and, on a mad dash for carbs, finds her mom's stolen money almost immediately. Mom confesses, and then Mona throws a big party at Hanna's house to welcome her home. Everybody is there... Including A, who steals the stolen money in order to turn Hanna into her unwilling double-agent. She and her mom start popping pain pills together, which should turn out awesome, and things also come to a head with Lucas. He starts some drunken shit with Sean at the party, but when she takes him outside to yell at him from her wheelchair, he goes on a violent rant about how terribly Alison always treated him, and finally admits to trashing her memorial.
Aria continues to defend Noel to everybody, even after he starts blackmailing Ezra for grades, and Jenna makes it creepily clear that she's onto the star-crossed idiots as well. Later at the party, she and Spencer figure out that A is trying to turn the Liars against each other, and Hanna yells at her about dating a teacher. There's a fantastic flashback to this time Alison broke up Noel and his girlfriend so Aria could have him -- "I only kill when I need food. Or when I'm bored" -- and that's about it for Aria, not that I'm complaining, because the reason she gets so little screentime is that most of the episode is, honestly, 100% situations of Noel being scary and beautiful and gay in various rooms of Hanna's house.
Not at the party is Emily -- whose episode it once again is -- because tonight's the night Maya Meets The Fockers. Dad's being awesome again, Mom's trying really hard, everything is super fucking awkward, Mom is horrified by Maya's California liberal ways and footsy-playing with Emily, and eventually she just heads into the pantry for a few hysterical sobs.
After Mom interrupts their goodnight kiss with a gift for her future in-laws, and gets a big old lesbian hug for her trouble, Emily thinks it's all golden so she hits the Cavanaugh house to get yelled at by Toby, who still thinks she turned him in at this point in the game. Heading home to thank Mom for being so chill, she learns that Dad is leaving for Texas much earlier than expected... And that her relationship with Maya makes her mom physically ill.
(Which actually makes her Mom even cooler for even entertaining this whole debacle, but I know personally that it's impossible to explain that thing to a gay teen. Emily remains under a roof and unbeaten, and her mom clearly loves her, so let's give the lady a hot minute to get her shit under control, shall we?)
week: Noel straps on his old wrestling outfit to teach Lucas some self-defense moves, making Sean so jealous he forgets how to read and write. Aria wears a barrel-and-suspenders to protest predatory lending tactics, accenting it with some cute chunky rings and a fake bird in her hat. Hanna's mom starts getting ideas after A drops off the collected works of JT Leroy: Create a lucrative literary hoax, befriend and bamboozle celebrities, or just go ahead and turn Hanna's ass out. Emily and Maya get married in a secret ceremony administrated by Aria's father, and the music is Sarah McLachlan's instrumental "Touch," from 1989's Touch, because that's how lesbians roll even to this day. Spencer burns down that motherfucking barn once and for all, because it has caused her nothing but bullshit her entire life.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!So to cover the felt-tip evils of A, the Liars have decided to slap a big sticker on Hanna's leg reading HUMPTY DUMPTY WAS PUSHED. She keeps messing with it because it won't stick -- and probably because it's not the most flattering reference for the formerly Hefty; Aria barfily wishes it read SAVE THE PLANET -- but Spencer says it was the only choice besides JESUS IS COMING, LOOK BUSY, which is probably worse if you're Hanna and you have to wear it around school. Emily's mom would probably love it though. Probably that would crack her right up.
About five seconds after affixing the sticker, Hanna peels it off to check if the message is still there. Astonishingly, it is, which sets her off again into last week's freakout. I don't know what she thought would have changed in those five seconds, but also she's on major pain pills. Other things that don't make sense: We learn she's been in the hospital for three weeks. Three weeks! Considering last week was the night she went into the hospital and it ended with the text-by-leg, I guess those three weeks took place at least partially after the message appeared? I'm just glad she's okay after her slow-motion lazy river ride over the top of a stolen car. Emily thinks it's cute that Lucas brought Hanna a panda bear, because creepy stalkers hated by the entire town are her favorite kind of people.
They leave Hanna alone for a second to bring her stuff in, and she goes looking for carbs and ends up finding her mom's stolen money in an old box of dry lasagna noodles. The most intriguing thing, besides the sheer amount of cash, is that they are like, filed between the noodles. Noodle, stack of bills, noodle, like that. Hanna's mom is secretly the most interesting person. Also, A texts her the second she finds the noodles, because A can do anything and sees everything as it's happening and right now A is standing over your shoulder watching you read this on the computer. Don't turn around.
The Liars come back to see Hanna looking shocked and holding the lasagna box to her bosom like a starchy baby, and they remind her that she doesn't have to keep a brave face on. After all, she's being stalked by at least two people in addition to the person that kidnapped her best friend, and one of them ran her over with a car: Hanna has it hard, in many ways. She tells them to leave and Spencer kisses her forehead and then I guess she takes a nap or just stands there staring at the noodles and being high, because her mom comes in after the jump with a bunch of like body pillows and slankets so she'll be comfy on the couch. Hanna looks even lovelier than usual in this scene. Also, her mom has got a rocking body. It comes as a surprise every time I see it.
"You know what would make me comfortable on the couch, or in this wheelchair, or anywhere really? Financial security." Mom talks about how it was a loan from the bank, and Emily is like, "They give you money in envelopes, not in lasagna" Mom immediately cops to the whole thing and assures Hanna that it's going to be okay: They are now not homeless and have a cushion until the old lady comes back in a year to check if anybody stole her gross money. (Although I suppose if the old lady died, that would really call attention to things, right?) "You just need to worry about getting better, okay? Okay." I like it when she does Hanna's voice like that.
Emily's family is chowing on turkey sausage when we learn that the Fields' are having her girlfriend Maya over for dinner. Why, I can't imagine that going horribly for everybody. What an ill-conceived notion! Her mom -- who seems to be engaged in chewing off her own lips at this time -- asks is Maya has any food allergies or preferences, and Emily panics and says no, and I was going to make a joke about seafood or tacos or something until I remembered I have class and that no matter how ingratiated you feel with a particular community or how liberal your bent, it doesn't make it any less monkeyhouse or hurtful when you point and laugh about their sex lives, so somehow I restrained myself.
Mom runs off to clean the shit out of the entire house because she's nuts and because it's what she does, and Emily asks her dad if possibly her mom is planning on killing her girlfriend at dinner. They sort of chat about how Mom's trying really hard and wants this dinner to go well, but even her dad has to laugh at just how insane the mom is going, because the mom is going insane, because of values and things, and honestly she's being pretty realistic and pretty kind about all this. First they fooled me thinking the dad was going to be mean, and now I feel like the mom is the most sympathetic person because honestly, you deal when you deal.
That country club guy Alex whose name I thought was Ben even though that's a totally different person, he has apparently scheduled a date with Spencer in the middle of the street while her mom is getting coffee, because that's where we find them, kissin'. Mom comes out and sees them and thinks about that time she was tore up from the floor up and he was nice to her, but clears her throat mommishly anyway, and then gets on the phone with Spencer's dad, who apparently exists.
Seems Ian moved all his stuff out of storage and into their house... While he and Melissa are gone on their mysterious honeymoon that might be taking place somewhere in Rosewood. Which is double rude, and also what barns are for, but more importantly it's what condos are for, and they are fixing it up just so that he will have a place, essentially, to put his boxes of stuff and the stuff they contain. Ian takes some liberties, I've noticed.
Spencer and Mom agree that their elopement was pretty retarded and that they shouldn't really even be getting married, but Spence gets her pragmatism from her mom, who's just like, "What's done is done and long engagements lead to divorce just as easily." Melissa sends them a text of him and Ian standing outside "that mall near dad's office," which: Why would you document that? Perhaps it is a clue. Anyway, Spencer thinks the whole thing is just dumb and stupid -- "trading in her princess gown and pink champagne for a food court Slurpee?" -- and Mom points out that this is the one thing in Melissa's life that Spencer hasn't slept with, besides the barn, so just chill.
Spencer: Chillin' out. Imagine it. Even in this Jordan Baker business-flapper outfit she's wearing in all-matching maroon. From a distance I thought she was Aria and I feel so bad about that that I am confessing to you now. But before she can even try, who's that coming out of the jailhouse looking like a free man? Toby Cavanaugh. She feels the Yoplait rage rising from her solar plexus and thinks about going over to beat him up, because even if she's convinced Noel did it -- whatever it is, it's now Noel that did it -- she still gets to hate Toby the most. Mom chimes in that Toby's out on bail and tells her to stop staring, and they head off down the quaint street.
At school they all chat and snigger about the hysterical unlikelihood of Hanna really doing her homework, which they are bringing her, because I guess she is the stupid one. Just goes to show how many definitions of stupid there are. But no, actually they probably say the same about Aria when she's not around. Girls are the best.
Maya comes up and asks what she should wear to the big dinner, and Emily tries to be cool for like five seconds before blurting out, "A dress! Stop saying words like 'butch' and never wear jeans and put on a goddamn dress and don't act so gay all the time!" Aria gets the funk on up out of there (with a so-so exit line about ironing your jeans if you do decide to wear them chez Fields), because an anxious lesbian is the most unpredictable kind.
To be more specific, the Fields have been: Whispering, closing doors, changing the channel when Ellen comes on, etc. So yeah, now is the time to introduce them to Maya. Three weeks after your dad comes home and you come out. "Got it. I will wear the girliest dress I own. I'll tell them I sewed it myself," Maya says, because she is a good sport and she has that wisdom of the aged. "Maya, this isn't a joke. My mom isn't your mom, okay?"
Ezra talks about Jay Gatz a little bit -- explaining Spencer's fashion -- in a way that I think might make sense later, considering how everybody on this show is a liar and lots of them in the same way as Gatsby: "...[M]ore than just a pretty face, he was ambitious, ruthless, charming..." If Noel ends up being... Wait, he grew up with them, never mind. Oh, but he ran a girl over... I got nothing. If we're talking about phonies I would say that always goes to Aria, but she is ambitionless, charmless and full of useless ruth.
Whoever ran Hanna over, that's your Gatsby. Or rather, the Daisy, but either way that makes Hanna the Myrtle, which in turn makes... This is a pointless exercise, much like Ezra's teaching: "...And the themes of change and loss are central to both novels." Haha! High school is so fucking stupid. What's this book about? A little change, a little loss. You know. Themes.
Ezra hands back papers and says teacher things and then the second everybody's cleared out Aria slinks back in to "get Hanna's assignment" and have one of their nonstop secret meetings they like to have in public. So yeah, Noel admitted to writing on the car window, and to being stupid and angry and jealous. Ezra's like, "Jesus, Aria, I know what he did it for! Teenagers are all the same, what, like he invented writing creepy things? God, you are such a child sometimes... Such a perfect, alabaster example of woman in the very first blush of bloom, such a bewitching nymphet. I just cannot stay mad at you."
So while Aria promises Ezra that Noel won't tell or otherwise to anything to benefit from the knowledge that the girl he loves is boffing an older gentleman in a position of power over her, everybody runs around being nervous for Emily and wishing her luck. "Make sure Maya doesn't do all the talking. If she starts going over a cliff, you grab the wheel." Guess who said that. Just guess.
Mona comes running up to Spencer and Emily to invite them to a party she's throwing at Hanna's house. It is to be a "Surprise!" kind of party, with the theme Welcome Home Hanna, We Love You With Or Without Your Spleen. Also, Sean is "totally down," because for some reason she checked with Hanna's kinda-boyfriend but not, you know, Hanna. Which is pushing it, even for Mona. Unless she is the Killer(s) or A(s), in which case it's pretty low-key.
Oh, and Ashley's going to be in Scranton, is why she's throwing this party. So really, Mona just wants to have a party and knows Hanna can't do shit about it. She tells Emily and Spencer not to bother coming if they're not going to support her in totally overstepping Hanna's boundaries, which is all Spencer needs to hear to make her write it down in her dayplanner. Oh yeah, that's going on the calendar with a vengeance.
Noel comes on into Fitz's room smiling so brightly and beautifully and chirping so gaily that you might for a second think it's possibly not Aria that he's so darn jealous of. And just when you think he's the perfect boy in every single way, he blackmails Fitz to give him a better grade on his paper, and then awkwardly crosses out the C on the paper and writes an A. In a sort of anarchy-symbol way where the crosstie goes out on both sides.
(So if you've seen anybody write an A like that, send your guesses along with a $5 money order to PO Box 5309, Springfield IL, to enter the ALL OF THESE PEOPLE KILLED ALISON & ARE ALSO A Sweepstakes, offer not valid in the US.)
I am so sad that my perfect Noel has feet of murder clay. I mean, I realize that this show is about what to be teen is really like and the subjective reality and alienation and obsession with your own secrets and feeling like you're the only one who ever X, and so all the guys on this show have to be pedophiles and cheaters and psychos, because being a teenage girl is to be the proud owner of girl sexuality, the most important and most denigrated commodity in the universe, and honestly it seems like all guys are gross sex monsters a lot of the time because a lot of the time they are, which is the entire reason Twilight even exists. But another part of the teen girl bummer is dating the gay guy. So: I say you take two wrongs, make a right, stop with the blackmail, give Noel a boyfriend. Hell, give him Matt Dallas and we can get the whole conversation over with inside of ten minutes.
Aria drops by Fitz's for at least the second meeting of the day, and he tells her about the blackmail I recently related to you, and Ezra tells her that her gay boyfriend is really putting a crimp in things. Aria's immediately all about fixing things or talking Noel out of it, because who needs one half-boyfriend when you can have two, but then Jenna! Appears!
And is spooooky, about nothing really, she needs something signed, and then she smiles and she's like, "Sorry to interrupt!" I love how the main ongoing mystery of this entire show is whether or not the creepy blind girl is even blind. It would somehow be more interesting to learn she were faking it than to watch her fuck her brother, somehow. Anyway, Ezra Fitz is really good-looking from certain angles and then other times, head on, his eyes are really far apart and it makes me want to tip him over in a field, so I watched an interview with the actor who plays him, and he is fantastic. Total charmer. That like .3 points off for the eyes, he gets back with interest when you see him speak.
Alex has been offered the chance to do a tennis clinic in Sweden that may lead to a spot in the Swedish Open, but has decided not to apply because he is poor or whatever and wants to work all summer and possibly some or all of it also involves Spencer. She tells him one hundred times what a great opportunity it is, and says she'll get an internship, "like in Stockholm or something," but he's not up for it. He tosses the application and she makes some tender-hearted declarative statements about the importance of dreams that sound, to him, like opinions about his class and future and why they can never be together, and she agrees to let it go.
Maya's getting along well with Emily's dad, but when her mom tries to serve the seafood entrée, she begs off. Seems she has an allergy. "It's not a moral thing, I get hives." Mom feels bad and tries to smooth it over, all, "Emily said you could eat anything," not in a defensive way just in a sort of "and here is where we find ourselves" summing-up, and it's awkward.
Are both Maya's parents from California? Was it even a state way back when she was born? Yes, they met in 1) Berkeley, at a 2) no-nukes rally, and after 3) Maya and 4) her brother were born, they got married. Mom's like, "The fuck you say?" Yeah, Maya was the flower girl at their wedding; apparently they wanted to make sure it was real. "Two children wasn't real enough?" Mom says, because California is just the tip of the iceberg of problems she has with this whole anti-marriage agenda. Emily thinks to change the subject, only not really at all: Tell us about the disrespectful, flaky way your dad proposed! "So my dad's this raging, crazy romantic? He proposed to my mom with a sharpie. He didn't have a ring, so he drew one on her finger with a felt pen." My mother was wearing slacks at the time, Mrs. Fields, which you've probably guessed is why I have asthma.
The parents try to be all like, "That's so cute! Because they were poor hippies but later on they got a real ring!" Nope, mom -- insufferably -- got a tattoo when the sharpie [MAYA'S DAD IS A!] wedding ring wore off. Which is when I started siding with Mom, because her whole deal is starting to sound a lot like that family of a-holes in Rachel Getting Married. I love how this entire scene is both a believable dinner with parents, but also a checklist of the most inventive possible ways to break Emily's mom's heart. Just the whole thing, not even the gay part, just the Maya of it all and why she is in my house and all that. Well done.
You can see Maya desperately trying to like climb inside Emily's mom and make her feel okay, and like why isn't my charm and beauty working, I have no other tools and mom's getting more and more freaked and dad's being great and getting into the spirit of things, but it's all just so sad. I mean, it's not just that they're weirdos, is that's the things they... Yeah, okay: The things they don't think are important are the only things that are important to her. You know what I mean?
Everything her life is built around -- the covenant of marriage, housewifery, keeping down the house while her husband defends our country -- are the exact same things their lives are built around disregarding. I mean, personally I think they're maybe a little more right than she is, in terms of lifestyle, but it's really easy to see where she's coming from, for me. No matter how dumb those things look to me personally I don't really think they're dumb or mean she's dumb. I just think there's four Houses at Hogwarts, and they all think they're the best one, and that's fine for everybody.
And I'm not trying to do a Red/Blue or false equivalency here, I'm talking about this particular lady. Like back in the '80s when the SAHMs were like, "You don't love your baby!" and the working women were like, "You don't love yourself!" and they were both kind of wrong but neither of them were totally right. In this case, Emily's mom has built a pretty full life about the things she is about, and Maya's existence spits on it. And then on top of that, her one daughter is never getting married to a guy, which was supposed to be the entire second half of her life.
So when she jogs out to the pantry to sob hysterically, I mean. She's a trooper. She invited the girlfriend over for dinner and she tried really hard, no matter how many offensive things happened in a row. And then she saw you playing footsie under the table, after you crapped on marriage and the military, the two things she is made of. I don't think it's lowering the bar to give her a little time or room to have her own thoughts, much less adjust. Keep it to yourself when there are gay kids present, but other than that I say you get to have all the tough times you want. It gets better.
Anyway, Mona comes on over to Hanna's house to get her "up to speed," which Hanna thinks means learning math -- Mona probably is really good at math, that kind often are -- but is in fact about... Talking shit about some girl in their school named Claudia Rice (played by Kirsten Dunst perhaps?), who wears skinny jeans and tight everything. Right up until intruders begin to lurk about, shadows on the walls and windows, and Hanna starts to lose it bigtime: "Mona! No, Mona! Don't open the door, Mona! Call the police, Mona!" But of course it's the surprise party; Mona grins as she opens the door to them, "Oh hush, Baby Jane."
Later. Party. Hanna can't even take her eyes off Noel Kahn at her own Spleen Party, that's how gorge... Oh, got it. He ran her over with a car. It is weird that he is at her party. Of course, he didn't do that, so the rest of this episode of people staring at Noel and him smiling super-cute and super-creepy at them is more of a visual thing than a step forward. Oh, and I guess he's a bit creepier now that he's blackmailing Ezra Fitz. Except here's my deal on that: Somebody needs to blackmail Ezra Fitz. Or just turn him in for no reward at all. For the rewarding feeling of being a good citizen.
There are plenty of situations where things are blurry: Aria is not one of those situations. She's not old for her age, she's immature for literally any age, and this reflects well on absolutely nobody. The reason in real life guys like Ezra go for age-appropriate empty vague quirky hipster dreamgirls like Aria is precisely because they have no personality besides being terribly interesting, so they can project all their shit onto the girl, Scott Pilgrim style, without getting any blowback. The Perfect Girl is perfect because she's a five-foot mirror to a door in the boy, and if the girl is lame she'll never understand that's a problem, or even notice. But doing that to a child is twice as gross, because they're not even done cooking yet.
"B-26"? How about you wait until she B-26.
As Lucas enters, looking spooky, Noel finds some red cups* adjacent to the cash lasagna -- which really should probably go somewhere, don't you think? -- and Hanna has a flashback to him drinking from a similar red cup at a similar party before Alison disappeared: Somehow, before Iceland, Alison schemed to break up Noel and his girlfriend so that Aria could have him. It didn't work, and she doesn't tell what she did, but I'm sure it was awesome. Noel knew that Alison was to blame, which is interesting. He was also beautiful, if you were wondering, in the past. Also, Aria was wearing the pigtails with pink stripes in them. As if anyone could ever love her: "I did it for Aria. I only kill when we need food! And when I'm bored." They don't even register how awesome that was, because amazing things come out of her mouth at all times.
*(Yes I know it's blue, but they're called red cups. It's a blue red cup. Little outfit name of SOLO? Makes red cups in all colors? They make beer taste better? Or at least taste like kissing frat guys? You better be glad I'm not drunk, or I would be educating you about this in a much more intense and repetitive fashion.)
Hanna is so happy to see Lucas -- last time was weeks ago when he ran away screaming from her hospital room -- but he is just drunk and waving back and forth and being weird. He tells her he's no stranger to drinking, and is just real stand-offish and rude and when Hanna asks him to come back to their study dates, he either lies just to be mean or has been on quite the downturn since we saw him last: "I'm kind of off studying at the moment. Been there, done that. This semester, I plan to go from Honor Roll to toilet roll." Hanna warns him about the Mona Punch, I'ma call it Munch, and he calls Hanna Mom and acts like he's been drinking his whole life and it's just douche, douche, douche, all the way down. He starts shit with Sean that is so nerdy and hard to look at that I'm bleep-bloop ...Emily's front porch. Whew.
Maya's like, "I am so sorry I didn't eat the shrimp and then vomit just to make a good impression." Emily says that Dad is totally into her, of course, and that Mom liked her dress, or that she wore a dress, or something along those lines. "Wait till she sees the crease in my jeans," Maya jokes, and I'm sorry. I know the thing to do is hate Maya, but I just never have. Yeah, she looks older than a teenager, like most TV teenagers, but also she's gorgeous and a good actress and a goddamn Vampire Slayer and now she's a hug-crazy lesbian on the tied-for-best show on ABC Family, I mean... What else? She's great. So Maya's exhausted from the pressure and doesn't want to go to Hanna's after all, so once Emily's mom accidentally and awkwardly interrupts their goodnight kiss with a gift for Maya's parents (pleasebeaBiblepleasebeaBible), and gets the usual giant Maya hug from her, what's a girl to do besides... Roam over to see Toby Cavanaugh.
I love that Emily still wants to stick up for Toby and be his friend; the same way Aria will always try to negotiate with or defend Noel; the same way Hanna puts up with Lucas's bullshit; the same way that Spencer... Nope. Can't think of a one. Has not yet slapped the teeth out of her bitch sister's face is not really the same thing, and Melissa just married a child-fucker, so hers is coming. Spencer needs a creepy stalker buddy she can turn to whenever she wants to be brutally rebuffed and/or spied upon. I nominate Alex, so she can get a real boyfriend.
But most of all, I love it with Emily because Toby is so very troubled and she is in no danger at all and, I guess she's the Sweet One? But it's flattering, in a way, that they gave her such an inordinately fucked-up woobie to show it off with. You know? Like, your regular weirdos all over town just are not weird enough to show how truly vast, and open, and compassionate, is Emily Fields' big gay heart.
Which is why her mom is so dreadfully important to me, I guess. Everybody knows that you can't love other people until you love yourself, but nobody ever tells you that the opposite is also true: You can't really love yourself until you love everybody else, because they're just the pieces of yourself that you said no to.
Spencer invites Alex up to her parents' "little place up in Bucks County," but then gets distracted by the menacing queer beauty of Noel for a good long while, and then she tells Alex to wait for her outside so she can jump him, but then it's too late and Aria's having a little meeting with him, of her own, all about how one boyfriend should never blackmail another boyfriend of hers. Noel pulls this amazing/insane move where he's like, "Ezra Fitz accused me of that obvious thing I clearly did? You better think about the kind of person that would say that." (But then also, isn't it true that Alison broke up him and his girlfriend one time, and he knew all the Liars were in on it, and maybe he is killing everybody and sending mean texts.) Aria heads in that direction even though she wasn't the one that had the flashback, and Noel doesn't know what she's talking about, and then Sean pulls him away for some bromance. Aria's shrug is both cute and eloquent.
Emily's like, "Hey, Toby! How was jail?" He's just sitting on the steps of his Boo Radley porch looking, as usual, like the craziest person in the universe. Just chilling out and being super weird with all the lights turned off, while his blind sister knits baby clothes up in the attic. She tries to tell him that she didn't turn him in, et cetera, but he doesn't believe her or care. Well, he does, but he twists the knife for awhile and talks about how he is the Fred Krueger of Rosewood some more, and when she asks if he believes her he's like, "I'm not telling you, because I asked you to trust me and the cops came before you could prove that you did," and it's devastating. Emily takes off, he pulls out a knife and fusses with his house arrest anklet for a bit. Sad Toby.
Aria helps Hanna with her wheelchair and then tries to beg off the party, and Hanna gives her shit about Ezra, all, "Where ya goin', hot faculty party?" They talk about the weirdness a little bit, and Hanna's trying to be cool, and then she says the sweetest, truest thing: That it makes her feel a little bit stupid in comparison. "Parties like this must feel like you're babysitting," she says, and if Aria were the kind of person you could respect she would be honest and say, "There has never been a time I didn't feel that way. That's why I get to date these old guys."
But Hanna's not done feeling made a fool of, by this foolish liaison: "This whole time, I thought I was helping you get over this Viking boy in Iceland. Who it turns out, doesn't exist." (JACKPOT! I LOVE THAT. I love that Hanna finally said it. Aria doesn't even protest at this point.) "I mean, I thought we were close. We tell each other everything!" Except for the tons of shit you guys are constantly not telling each other all the time, sure. Anyway, now Hanna is pissed and Aria's like, "I have literally fucked it up with everybody I know." I think Hanna will be sympathetic.
Spencer comes out to flirt with Alex about how she was in the bathroom line forever -- "Mona was spending quality time with her eyebrows" -- but Alex is strangely sullen. Seems she was upstairs just long enough for A to submit his application to the tennis clinic online and email him the confirmation. Which yeah, that looks bad. "Spencer, get real, okay? You and I want different things. And you say that you're okay with that, but you're not, and you never will be." Nice speech, actually.
Of course, Spencer is a stand-up chap and she's not going to play this game -- to push is human encouragement, it doesn't mean you disapprove -- so she just looks him level in the eye and says she did not send the thing, but that she's sorry if she made him feel weird about his choices. Alex, of course, runs away, because this is all his nightmares coming true, and you can't blame him, and A immediately texts Point, set, match! and then there's this amazing push on Spence's terrified face that is total '60s suspense.
Man, this A person will ruin some shit. Have you ever noticed that?
More boring Sean stories about skiing with Hanna, and more Lucas being totally awful, although the way he pronounces the word goofy is about as cute as anything Seth Cohen ever did. Key dialogue includes Mona going, "I think Hermie the Hermaphrodite needs a jumbo coffee!" while Lucas compares Sean to a "slobbering beast" and this hilarious impression of them where he's Sean as a St. Bernard going, "Let me get you drunk so I can lick your face," so eventually Sean really has no choice but to beat his face in, much to Mona's hilarious delight. And then Noel jumps in to save Lucas -- "It's like fighting a kid that needs a telethon!" -- and Hanna drags him outside.
Every time you think Noel's gonna zig, he zags. What a spell he casts. What great one-liners everybody's pulling tonight. Anyway, Lucas is gearing up for a major meltdown, and Hanna is like, "Are you here because of my spleen, or to start shit with Sean? Because it's not Sean you're mad at, which common mistake is one of the main stupid things about boys." He's all, "Breaking news, princess: Not everything is about you!" Um, except it is, and if it isn't, how come he cut her off and wouldn't answer her emails or be her friend after their fight?
For Lucas, it's more like she broke up with him by not doing what he wants, which is another gross true thing about boys, and she tries to walk him through that one, but he is not having it. Young Mr. Lucas is officially off the rez. "NO! You people just think you can push me around like some kind of mop! And you're no different! You're no different from the rest of Alison's anointed! You let her march around and act like some 17th-century torture squad! And considering what that bitch did to me, I should have done way worse to her!"
That one hits Hanna so hard her wheelchair rocks back a little, but then he babbles enough in his nonlinear rant that she figures out he's talking about trashing the memorial. Remember? The shoes? So yeah, not as bad as what she thought at the end of the last paragraph. She finally just gives in at this point like, "What am I gonna do with you, Lucas." He stumbles off toward the night talking about how she can call the cops, whatever, it's an eleven minute walk from her house to his (or vice versa, aw) and whatever, and she's like, "Girl, I am not calling the cops. You have been through hell."
Of course, that's unacceptable too because Hanna's being nice, and this time Lucas really does leave: "Don't make me like you. It's too hard." You know, I don't think there's a person on this show that I don't love, or at least feel such compassion for that it equals the same thing. Sex Cop, Aria's creepster dad, Ian. That's basically it. For such a completely unreal show, they are so spot on about the weirdest, ugliest, saddest things. Acting and direction play a giant part, duh, but the dialogue, especially in this episode, is just too, too real. The only measurable difference between this show and my senior year of high school is like, almost nobody had a cell phone in '94. That's basically it.
Sean comes out to check on Hanna -- "You shouldn't be alone with him" -- but now that they're alone, she can finally ask him about Noel. Old Sean gets pretty antsy when you ask him about his relationship with Noel. I'm not saying anything, it's just interesting. Of course Hanna's being super strange about it -- "Who is Noel when he's not with you?" -- and can't explain why she's asking, so it's just a totally weird contextless thing.
("Um, I assume he does what all guys our age do: Avoid sex with their girlfriends at all cost, for no real reason. You know, normal stuff. We do normal things together, we do normal things when we're apart. Which is most of the time. Football practice and like, the occasional... I mean, I barely know the guy. Noel... Noel... Not ringing a bell, Hanna. Hanna, I have to go.")
At first Sean tries to figure it that she's feeling bad about her crazy friend so she's attacking his friend, and then just sort of goes, "Hanna, you're freaking me out." He asks her back inside, but she's had it. She tells him to throw everybody out, party's over, and he does, and actually that is a very good reason to date Sean. Things like that.
Aria wants Spencer to call Alex, but she's in the same bind: Can't explain the ridiculous circumstance that somebody murderous and crazy sometimes impersonates her to do sick, filthy deeds like submitting applications to overseas tennis clinics. Spencer offers to go over and tell Noel, whom she now thinks is A, to call Alex himself, and Aria immediately jumps to Noel's defense for no reason, just like always. I mean, is she secretly still crushing on him? That would be cool. It didn't occur to me before just now. Underneath the Fitz layer -- where no teens are cool -- is the Iceland layer -- where Noel can suck it because she's gone global -- and then the football v. pretentious layer. But under that, maybe she likes him liking her enough to still like him. I can totally see that, it's simplicity itself when you look at it that way. I will like Aria so much more if that's the deal.
But more interesting is Spencer and Aria realizing that they have no idea what A even wants anymore and that really they just seem to be the victims of nonstop arbitrary hell for no reason. "You know what happens when you stick four lobsters in a tank and cut off their food supply?" The Real Housewives Of New Jersey. "They start to eat each other." Only Spencer would be like, "You know what we remind me of? Crustaceans." Noel winsomely tries to get past them to the bathroom, and Aria's like, "Even if he's A, we still don't have a plan." HE IS NOT A. He is a normal kid on this show. Better than most really.
Oh hey Jenna, how come you didn't tell Toby that Emily tried to contact him in jail? "Because we hate her." Oh but Jenna, she wasn't the one that turned Toby in. "I know that, duh! I did it." Oh wow Jenna, why did you do that? "So you would stop running around like a criminal long enough to prove you didn't kill that girl. Also, mostly, so you will fuck me." Oh see Jenna, that is gross and never going to happen again. "We. Will. See. About that. (Speaking idiomatically, of course.) In the meantime, enjoy sleeping on the porch... And this bitchslap, courtesy of my weirdly excellent reflexes."
Everybody's gone, the house is a mess, and once more there are people moving around in the night. Hanna works herself up to her third horror-movie freakout in two weeks, quite effectively indeed says this scary movie buff, but it's just her mom. Looking sternly at the Spleen and what it did to her house, and her daughter's horrific electric-youth blue nail polish. And then running straight to the lasagna box. Which is empty.
Emily comes home -- Did we even see her at the party? -- and her mom's like, "So your dad's going to Texas like way sooner than expected." They share sadness about that for a while, but Mom knows the drill. Emily thanks her very politely for inviting Maya over and that Maya had a good time, and Mom uses Mom Code: "Your father thinks she's very sweet." Which is like a rattler shaking its tail, which Emily should know since she used the same code on the porch when she was all, "Dad loves you. Mom loved your dress." Step away from the rattle, lady friend.
But Emily's too overjoyed in the afterglow of not being exorcised or thrown out or physically attacked or driven to suicide like most gay teens, so she doesn't hear it. "And I'm glad you're okay with it." Um, no. Mom is not okay with it. And that's okay, although the thing is a little TMI: "The whole thing makes me sick. Sick to my stomach."
I've always said I was glad I was never a teenage girl -- I don't have the balls for it -- but God. You're only a gay teen once. And we can't even really share or talk about it, because being a teenage anything is a slow-motion car accident so there's no basis for comparison, no control group. But actually I bet it felt the same for everybody, just with different words and different scary things you figured out eventually, and different things you're still working on figuring out. Maybe a control group isn't necessary.
Spencer comes home and she and her dad bitch good-naturedly about Ian and his stuff for a while, but Dad's of the opinion that Mom's of the opinion that sometimes Melissa needs a little nudge every once in a while, and that Ian might help with this post-barn life of hers because he's so "impulsive" and "passionate." They are both grossed out, by that whole concept and by Ian himself, but there's only so far you can go with that before you're actually just starting problems.
In other news, a cop friend of Spencer's dad says the blood on Toby's sweater was Alison's. Which he gave to her that night, after the Spencer fight but before the Ian part, so it doesn't really prove anything. But the cops, of course, will think otherwise. So Little Miss Toby Cavanaugh Did It is now faced with the possibility that he'll be connected and the case will be closed. Which won't shut A down one bit, even if he was the killer, which not even Spencer really believes at this point. And just as Spencer's about to go to bed and feel weird about this some more, another clue: One of Ian's storage-space things is a golf bag from Fairways Resort in Hilton Head.
...Whence Alison was coming back the day she disappeared. She got out of the taxi with all her bags, having supposedly been visiting her grandmother in Georgia, and played off her tan by saying her grandmother golfs, and played off the fact that they were golfing at that same Fairways resort in Hilton Head, which is in South Carolina, with some other gambit. And then it was all tequila and making the girls take her bags in and being just a little sweeter and a little more vicious to Hanna than the others, and then they drank and fought and she disappeared, and now it's a year later.
So in addition to being a pedo with Alison -- which we also knew, because of the sex tape -- Ian was also with her that summer. Which I think is the first indication to any of the Liars about the Alison/Ian thing we already knew, right? Well, thank God it's Spencer on the case. Not that it won't look like another attempt to ruin Melissa's life, no matter how she goes about it. That is going to be delicious, actually.
Hanna's stressing about the missing money and finally her mom just goes, "Don't. Talk. Anymore. Please." She gives Hanna one of her broken-leg sleeping pills, and then asks for one for her own, and they down them together, and it's verrrry creepy and wicked sad, and they both know it.
But then in one of the other pill bottles there's this note from A wrapped around some cash, saying essentially Now you are my bitch forever. I love me some Hanna, but she is the weakest link as far as shit like this. You don't want her as your triple agent. Not even Aria would put up with Mona, you know what I mean? She doesn't have the gumption to successfully evade this latest move. Especially in that chair.
And then there's A, popping hundy after hundy into a creepy little clown bank that screams CLUE so loudly it's almost certain we've never seen it in the background of any episode, any set, at any time. But if we have, you know where your send you guesses.
week: A possibly leads Hanna on some kind of literal treasure hunt, Spencer follows up on the Fairways clue, Aria and Emily have lots of feelings about their love lives, Jenna and Toby have a bunch of duck babies with webbed feet and bury them in the backyard, by the central air... to Alison DiLaurentis. Oh, and I think the girls see more of the Kissing Rock tape than we've previously seen: Maybe Ian? Probably not the murder itself... Dare we hope for yet another insane twist?