By Jacob
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Aria, convinced that her parents are hiding something, engages Hanna in a game of cat-and-mouse that reveals not only Ella and Byron's continuing secret affair (yay!) but also the fact that Cyberwolf Caleb is living in the walls of the high school. By episode's end, Hanna's taken Caleb home with her... Which is good, because she needs a friend once Aria dumps her ass for sending Ella to Philly. (Thanks, A!)
Also making new friends are Emily -- whose stalker Paige shows up waterlogged in the middle of the night, chock full of remorse and crazy and the Well of Loneliness -- and Spencer, who decides she'll be Toby Cavanaugh's home French tutor. Kind of like an apology, but with that Spencer edge where she'll gladly see him dead or maimed, so long as he can help her figure out who killed Alison, and doesn't really take pains to hide that fact.
Note that Spencer still is not entirely sure that Toby isn't a serial killer, but of course that doesn't stop her from being pretty sweet to him, tossing off "C'est la guerre" -- like anybody but Awesome Fucking Spencer Hastings would ever say that in casual conversation -- and wearing not one but two completely different, absolutely insane outfits. (A: Sorceress-Nanny à Go-Go, B: Madeline & Le Mauvais Chapeau.)
Later, Spence and Melissa fight about Ian's creepiness as usual, but then Big Sis drops two bombs at once: Number one, she knows about the kissin' that summer, and number two, she is having a devil baby. Which makes Spencer's desire to see Ian rot in prison somewhat trickier. Then she sees that the French copy of Catcher she gave Toby -- in sympathy for his Graham Greene existence, and which Jenna made him give back -- includes a smuggled clue we'll find out about week.
There's not much more to say about Emily, because mostly what we got from her was: Swimming, swimming, oddly sexy face, swimming. So much swimming. Two entire shitty sub-Paramore songs' worth of swimming. I don't know who that's for, if it's for jocks or to titillate or what, but damn it was intensive. If you weren't familiar with what swimming looks like, you can now consider yourself fully informed. You have graduated from the Watching Emily Swim University.
But with Em, I think she is going to make Paige McCullers her new Toby Cavanaugh and defend her to the dying breath, because man was Paige a pitiful fucking sight this week. I'm always happy when we learn to love the villain, you know that, but I was kinda hoping for Paige to act like a crazy bitch for at least an episode or two.
week: No idea. Everybody's mumbling in the previews but it looks like Spencer wears crazy clothes and Aria bullshits around some more. Oh, and Jenna pulls some righteous shit, no doubt.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Byron's going somewhere secret -- and looking quite nice, to be fair -- which means it's just Aria and Mike for dinner. Mike's feeling like Sausage Heaven, about which we will not be making any jokes, but Aria whines about that, then remembers she needs her dad's pledge for the Danceroony where Emily got wasted and amazing. In his coat pocket is the museum ticket Hanna gave his wife, which is a strange place for it to be, and Byron's every bit as jumpy about it when Aria asks, as his wife was last week.
I was having trouble at this point knowing whether or not Aria was connecting the dots correctly, because everybody's so suspicious all the time that you could really just as easily assume the Montgomerys were A, but I forgot that Aria is a genius and immediately assumes that her parents drydocked in the museum parking lot while she was getting kisses from her pedagogical paramour.
Emily can't find her Chem textbook but Spencer is too busy staring out the window at Toby Cavanaugh's destroyed mailbox -- in its lifetime, it was every bit as fucking creepy as the house in front of which it stands -- and thinking about how Toby deserves a little of her mercy. But since that's a rare currency, Spencer-mercy, she's got to be very smart about where she spends it.
(Also, how come literally everybody lives within sight of Emily's bedroom window? Am I making this up? Do Emily and Spencer actually live in a duplex? I need a map: From Emily's house you can see Maya's bedroom -- which used to be Alison's bedroom? -- and also Toby's mailbox. But then also from Alison's window, you can take a picture of the Barn in Spencer's yard, and from Spencer's house you can see wherever Jason was creepin' last week, which I thought was Alison's/Maya's house also, even though that makes no sense either... All of these facts cannot be true at once, this show is way too smart for that. I messed up somewhere but I can't figure out where.)
Anyway, the first image this week was somebody taking a bat to the Creepy Cavanaugh mailbox, and from what Emily says it's not the first time. "Every time I come home Toby's out there cleaning up some new mess," she says. I guess as long as he's not putting his time at home to waste -- and getting some sun while he's at it. Spencer's feeling pensive, but Emily's not looking at her face so when she muses, "Do you still think that somebody framed him?" Emily assumes she's starting some rabid Junkyard Spencer shit with her.
There's an awkward, badly written transition as to why Spencer is feeling sympathy -- seems being told she bought the Bracelets of Doom, which she clearly did not do, made her understand what it's like to kill a girl, stalk a lesbian and then become Public Enemy #1, forced to Boo Radley yourself into madness in the creepiest house since Elm Street -- but I guess it gets the bracelets expo out of the way. Which would be more useful if they mattered, at all, which they still don't.