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Aria's hate-on for Hanna lasts about five minutes, and then they're back to being besties. Which is good, because Aria's situation just got insane: Not only is Ezra taking Ella to some book signing week, but Byron's got word of it and thanks to some coy shoulder-shimmies on Ella's part, he thinks Ezra's a romantic rival. Once Aria dresses him down for being mean to her favorite teacher, Byron decides he wants to be BFF with Ezra, resulting in the best Aria/Ezra episode to date.
Like for example, when Paige McCullers's hot dad shows up screaming about the Gay Agenda, Ezra takes him down manfully and awesomely, catching Ella's attention. Then when Pam Fields shows up at school, Ella totally tells her that McCullers is after her lesbian daughter and Pam Fields takes the motherfucker out. She admits she's still totally confused by Emily's gayhood, but horrified that Emily would be confused about her motherly feelings. It's really sweet, without some kind of flippant turnaround where Pam joins PFLAG, which is exactly what's to be expected of this excellent damn show...
...As is Paige hopping in Emily's car in a scary parking garage, laying a kiss on her, and then vanishing into the haze of hairdo and madness from which she invariably appears.
A self-proclaimed distant relative of Old Mrs. Potter shows up demanding her accounts, but of course he hits on Ashley, so of course she goes on a date with him... During which Hanna and Caleb Rivers figure out that this new lizardy dude is impersonating the person he's pretending to be. Ashley gets some awesome scenes with him, as they circle each other like the shysty carnies that they are, and Hanna gets about this close to kissing Caleb. (Whom, hilariously, is the new Toby to Emily's paranoid version of Spencer. But whereas Spencer's rabid weirdness about Toby always made sense, Emily's crazy talk about not trusting Caleb just makes her look like a loon.)
And what about good old Spencer? Well, her outfits this week include Annie Oakley Ingalls Wilder, Psychotic Snow Bunny and a jean jacket, if that tells you anything. She and Toby get closer, deciphering the Braille message (B-A-D is also #214 in Braille, and #214 is this mysterious hotel room only we know about) and then -- when they find out Toby's off the hook because the sweater blood was, like everything else in Rosewood, "corrupted" -- celebrating by making moon eyes at each other and running off to get his ankle jewelry removed together.
Which is fine, because he's tall and everything, but I can really only deal with one of their insane faces at a time, so having them get together is kind of a muchness -- "Let's mush our crazy faces together" -- but at least it keeps Bat Boy Ian out of our hair for a while. Too bad for Jenna, though, who bought herself some scary lace lingerie -- picture, like, what a slutty widow might wear to a wizard orgy -- to celebrate the occasion with some brother-type sex. So now Jenna's after both Spencer and Emily for befriending her man, who informs Spence that Jenna's been afraid of the entire PLL club ever since that time they, you know, blinded her.
What else? Emily was dressed super-dumb this week, but Aria looked pretty great. She's kinda growing on me, finally. Lots of creepy dolls and sunlit dust motes and snowglobes at Jenna's house, which were all very much appreciated. Also, A might have killed Old Mrs. Potter, but I doubt it.
week: More Toby/Spencer and Hanna/Caleb schnoobies, possibly the latter including heavy petting; Paige acting like a freak, presumably; Ella and Byron finally send Aria off the deep end by having their inevitable threesome with Mr. Fitz; and some other mysterious thing that makes even less sense than the Braille clue. Oh, and Noel Kahn and Jason DeLaurentis debut their amateur short film -- about a friendship between two members of a high school wrestling team -- entitled Saturday Night Ride.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Last week Toby smuggled Spencer a three-letter (or -number) sequence of Braille in a French copy of Catcher in the Rye, while Hanna fessed up to sabotaging Aria's date with her pedo boyfriend and instead of finding out why she did this, Aria stomped about. Well, actually, we never see Hanna explain exactly what A has on her, last week or this, so who knows how much the ladies know. Oh, and Caleb is living in Hanna's basement, and Spencer's mean sister is pregnant with a devil baby, and Emily befriended her stalkertagonist because "befriend" is the only thing she knows how to do.
Hanna wonders how Melissa got pregnant with Ian's baby, because isn't he mostly in this for the molesting? "It's not really a how question, it's more of a why question," Emily helpfully explains. And the why of it all is still TBD, because Melissa hates babies and cookies and nice things and long hugs and wants life to be like Danish Modern furniture all the time, which is why she and Ian are so close and yet so inscrutable.
Spencer's obsessing on her little clue from Tobes, and this whole time Aria is sitting in the window seat looking vapid and petulant, because her life is now an art project about making Hanna sad and alienating her other friends by not explaining why she's being such a bitch. Spence asks her if she would like to see the mysterious Braille, and Aria's like, "I can fucking see it from over here on this window seat, just like I can see Hanna's big fat betrayer ass."
As though A) She doesn't already know Braille because she's Spencer and B) She didn't think immediately to crack its blind code using the internet, Spencer does that. B-A-D. Shamone. So what does that mean? Well, it could be Alison's monogram if her first name was Bitch, but that was her middle name. Spencer can't stop worrying at this preposterous clue because also it means getting closer to Toby's insane membrane by proxy. Nobody else really cares, to be honest.
Aria assumes it's Toby fucking with them, but Emily points out how Toby would never do that, because he is her pet puppy and because he does not have it in him to do things. "You'd be surprised what people are capable of," Aria says darkly, and then bounces with about fifteen mean looks at poor Hanna, who just looks like she wants to crawl into that money-filled popsicle box she uses to hide her money, instead of the lasagna box a yard away that was so much less intelligent a place to hide shit.
Speaking of, Ashley is emptying out the popsicle box so she can take that pittance of A shame dollars and put it in the old lady's account to replace the much larger amount she stole and then had stolen from her. Hanna points out that it's hardly a big deal now, given that God/A/Same Diff struck Old Mrs. Potter down on her way to the jig being up, but Ashley mumbles something about how she wants the nightmare of having money to be over.
Even though it's a random unrelated amount that won't solve anything, and also money is not a nightmare. It helps you buy popsicles, and everybody knows those come in boxes which can be used as a bank until Glenn Beck gets us all on board the gold train and America is wonderful again.
Caleb is wolfing out in the pantry during all this, so when Hanna finally -- adorably, with some Seth Cohen-type physical cuteness -- lets him out and tosses him a box of granola, he seems weirdly uninterested in the entire Hitchcock conversation she just had with her mom. He's been tinkering and hacking and snarphing and things, and almost has enough money to get to Flagstaff, where everybody -- I can confirm -- looks exactly like Caleb, which makes it an awesome place to run away. (But where is the town in America where everybody looks like Noel Kahn? I'm going. Unless it's in Florida, I'm afraid it might be Florida.)
"Gonna miss me?" Caleb grins, and the answer is yesssss but Hanna just says she likes knowing the things bumping in the night are Caleb, and not any of her various stalkers, blackmailers, murder victims, blinding victims, virgin boyfriends, hit-and-runners, creepy old bead ladies or cops banging her mom, or the other fifty things that make Hanna's life so interesting all the time.
But then Caleb has to scoot! Ashley is back, having forgotten something! Hanna's idea of stealth is to grab that stupid gray wool cap he always wears and plunge it into some hot soapy water. Totally necessary move, Hanna. I mean, that mystery hat still wouldn't be an issue even if it weren't your clueless mom, who literally this is all she says: "Honey, put on gloves if you're gonna do the dishes."
Dishpan hands, you know. Moisturized is to godlinized. "Boys don't make passes at girls with chapped asses," as my grandmother used to say, in her cups. "Hangnails are the hallmark of a fallen aristocracy. It makes everyone uncomfortable. You wouldn't announce at dinner, for example, I am afflicted with syphilis and yet, when we see you biting your fingernails, this is the effect that you have created."
It's been five seconds, so it's time for Hanna and Aria to make up. Hanna feels terrible, but Aria is willing to admit that Hanna looked her right in the eye and said, "I am the least intuitive person we know, and I am telling you this museum thing is a terrible idea." Which still: Bad on Hanna. But Aria has updated her self-image to be Totally Forgiving Girl, so she won't even let Hanna apologize for what was a fairly horrific thing.
But then Aria makes an excellent point, which is: Why did A specifically make it happen that way? If the aim was to bust Aria, then just give Ella the ticket -- or film them and GG that shit. But no, it had to be Hanna, because A always has it out for Hanna, and specifically to split these particular two of them up. Which is a very interesting train of thought, because they're the weak links: They are the two most compromised people right now, and need the PLL more than anybody else.
But Hanna's on an interesting train of thought on her own, which is that essentially when it came down to it, she screwed Aria: "I don't like knowing what I'm capable of." Which is the theme song of this entire show, isn't it?
Aria says that the bottom line is that she didn't go through with it, which is the correct and very sweet thing to say. Even though, um, she totally did, but it all worked out so bygones. I don't know, you guys, I'm sort of falling in love with Aria the last couple weeks. I thought it was just Lucy Hale's amazing talent at first, but both she and Ezra are just awesome recently.
And as long as I'm saying weird shit, I also have to say Ezra is probably my favorite person in this entire episode. I mean, even given that it's a major part of this episode, a plot point in fact, that Ezra's awesomeness can no longer be ignored; I buy it. They accomplished exactly what they set out to accomplish, and did the job of making me love Ezra Fitz more than anybody else for a little bit. Which I never thought I would be saying, but most especially on a show which contains both Emily Fields and Spencer Hastings, whom when combined are basically Iorek Byrnison.
So Fitz has some shit going on where, it was never really clear to me, but either there was a silent auction and the prize was, or there will be a silent auction which also is: A private book signing and coffee with this famous author Leonard Adams. We're sitting in the lunchroom and one of the teacher ladies at the table is like, "I love that guy!" and then Ella's all fake, like, "I did like that one book of his, what was the title?" Loose Leaf was the title. (If Leonard Adams is actually a character in a future episode, I will do a backflip for this show.) So anyway, Ezra can take as many people as he wants, and Ella is all over that. Is she crushin'? Maybe a little, but like in that coworker way.
The question at the PLL table is, what if Aria was right when she was being a bitch for five seconds and Toby is screwing with them? Spencer takes the Emily role* of being all, "No, I can see his soul, the soft and bright within him." But anyway we want to talk about Hanna and the Artful Dodger (nice; Spencer of course) and how she is always with him now and this very morning was spotted handing him a wet oven mitt.
*(It's kind of sad actually, as somebody on the forums pointed out, that this whole new Spencer/Toby story really seems to box Emily out for no good reason. It could just be the idiom of the show, or the particular episode, but it comes off weird and loose-thready, because of all the times for Spencer and Emily to form an Iorek Byrnison Voltron it would be about Toby, but instead it's like we just met Toby and he's a part of Spencer's storyline and not, you know, a huge part of Emily's entire story. Not sad in terms of the show universe, but just as a viewer it's weird.)
"It was his hat! Why shouldn't I have his hat?" Spencer awesomely points out that Caleb is kind of the anti-Sean but his darkness is a little too dark. As if this show would ever stop telling us how "dark" Caleb is, despite any evidence to the contrary, which further goes to the idea that Caleb is somehow going to sketch out in the future, just like every other guy on this show.
Which is what's so weird about Caleb, because in a literal world of sketchy motherfuckers -- the show might as well be called A Young Girl's Guide To Navigating Teenage Tailhook Hell -- he's the only one that we've had it rammed down our throats that he's a bad guy, bad guy, bad guy, with no evidence. Just zero evidence of this (beyond his hacker stuff, which is itself a force for good not bad and I am sure the show knows that).
I mean, personal feelings aside, even I could see that Noel was a problem citizen. But Caleb? Lotta tell, no show. Which is not something this show usually pulls, which is why I think it's foreshadowing rather than shorthand. (For e.g., if A got her hooks in Caleb I could see him doing massive damage and everybody including Yours Truly being pretty bummed about it.)
Anyway. Hanna, of course, is like, "Caleb is no Arthur Dodger, whoever that is," and they all share a look because of how sometimes Hanna's Hanna.
Aria jumps to Hanna's defense, not just because they are tender with each other right now -- and they are, and Spencer notices, and the whole interaction is just super sweet -- but also because she's the only other one who was there to see him living in the walls of the school and they had that three-way bonding time after Hanna hairsprayed his eyeballs, so she knows he's okay. And anyway, Hanna points out that they all said the same thing about Toby, right down to the middle-of-the-school hoodie-massacre chase-scenes, and see how much they all want to darn his socks these days.
Some hot dude from some show comes in, looking keyed right up and yelling about how he wants to talk with my beloved Coach Fulton. (I've never actually seen that show but I always said if I did, it would be because of this dude, to the point where I recognized his name in the credits. He's a snip of gristle, I love him.) Ezra immediately stands up to defuse the whole situation, and the guy yells about how Coach is avoiding him, and that's how we learn that Space Hottie is Nick McCullers, father of Paige McCullers, haver of crazy hairdos and doer of intermittent drowning attempts.
So to paraphrase, Nick feels that Paige is being passed over not because of her hair but because of the Gay Agenda that privileges Emily Fields over other, less-lesbian swimmers. And the really amazing thing about that is, they cover so much of that ground just by saying it out loud, like how Ella talks about it later and how everybody knows he's a crank and how Pam calls him out (spoiler of sweetness!) for being a "professional victim" that it's like there are so many moving parts that a thing directly about Emily's gayness turns basically into a momentary school-wide scandal about everything but her gayness. Which makes me proud not only of fake Rosewood High School, but again, proud of this show.
Because say what you will, but homophobes are: Gay. It's a cliché, maybe I said this before, not because writers are lazy or liberal but because it's the truth. The hateful person is the one being the cliché, because they are a self-hating gay. I will not say this is 100% true, but I will say it is 75% true and the rest of them were either molested (and think that has anything to do with this, which is two tragedies that didn't need to happen) or raised by monsters. To call the show out for riffing on this very true thing, or to call it out for being "timely," -- even suggest a comparison between this and, say, the Glee stuff -- is to submit evidence of the degree to which you have been sheltered in your life. The world is not TV. TV is about the world.
And so having a story where this Nick dick is a blamer and a whiner and a jerkoff and a crank situates the homophobia and Paige's entire neurosis in the exact right place, which has nothing to do with homosexuality and everything to do with whether or not you are capable of loving other people even though they're the parts of yourself you said No to.
I don't honestly think any of us, even the worst of us, care that much about what goes on in other bedrooms. But I do think that painting anybody monolithically -- as Emily says later -- makes it a lot easier to make things that have nothing to do with it somehow central to it. Like, the fight about gay marriage is something both sides have been fooled into thinking is about gay people, when really it's about how much money our parties are willing to pump into making us think it's an issue by getting our various feelings involved.
And this story illustrates that beautifully, by having his homophobia be just a drive-by on the way to his GOP entitlement. You could substitute "Jew" or "cultural elite" or "multiculturalism" or "Aria" into his complaint and it would be and feel the same, because he's picked his pony, but there's no real ideology behind it, because he has none. He just hungers. Palin's Rosewood.
All of which, I think, Ezra and Ella know the second his horrible ass walks in. Ezra does this -- Ian Thomas really is a very talented man, and a very charismatic one out of character, regardless of the distracting distance between his eyes -- amazing kind of equestrian shushing of Nick the whole time he's ranting, like some kind of hostage negotiator specializing in dicks, and it's... Beautiful, is an appropriate word.
Facts as follows: Number one, don't you fucking touch Emily. Obviously. Fact two: Rarely do we see anybody in Rosewood besides the PLL close ranks the way the faculty and parents are doing here and will continue to do. Fact three: This has nothing to do with gay stuff and everything to do with Emily, because fact four: Emily is the heart of this show and absolutely must be protected, but fact five: Regardless, this is how we do. As people, this is how we do.
So Ezra sticks out his hand and gives a firm handshake, and then explains the fairness policy of Rosewood, all in this very even and respectful and even bright/friendly tone, and then tries to get Nick to the principal's office, which is where Nick flags the first semiotic sign of where we're headed -- the phrase "politically correct," which never meant anything but whose usage always and only means you're a bigot in 2011 -- and then right before Nick refers to Emily (who is a child, okay, and whom he doesn't know is sitting right there, with Hanna sort of stroking her elbow in horror) as a dyke...
"You're in a cafeteria, Mr. McCullers. Filled with kids. Trying to have lunch. I don't think that's the audience you want, is it?"
Reader, I married him. I am generally offended by shippers and shipping -- it's like judging a house's architecture based on the taste of the color when you lick the house -- but I can foresee myself being much more lenient with their gaywad relationship in the future, because that was hot in a West Wing way. The Aria part of me -- and I think we all know how gigantic that part secretly is based purely on how much I bitch about her -- responded to that shit like whoa. The actor and character both at once performing just an amazing job of what's going on.
Anyway, I know I'm super digressing this week and that wasn't really my plan, and after Valentine's Day I'm barely street-legal so I should be wrapping this shit up and not going on and on, but there's so much in this episode that really touched me, and it's funny because the homosexuality is, again I would stress, not the issue here: It's the way that everybody sees around the gay thing to the actual thing, and then they act like adults. Like a community, a family, of grownups.
I don't think of Emily as some unkickable puppy, I just think -- totally separate from her sexuality and its associated storylines -- she's one of the best things you could hope to be. Smart is handed to you, good is not. Everybody thinks Griffyndor is the goal, but really it's Hufflepuff, because that's the hardest thing to be. So as a smartypants -- which you obviously are, my darling, this readership is self-selecting -- it's our job to become strong in other ways. Being a bitch is easy; being Emily is very, very hard.
(And since you asked: Gryffindor is Aria, Spencer is Ravenclaw and the good side of Slytherin, Hanna is the bad side of Slytherin plus a lot of Hufflepuff -- unlike, thankfully, in the books where she was just gross, gross, gross. Jung tells us that four is the number of completion, which is why there are always four basic characters in every television show, but inevitably Slytherin gets shit on -- Blanche Devereux, Jackée, Santana -- which is why Hanna and Spencer are both such a breath of fresh air. They are actual real people for once, which in a world where Barney from HIMYM is the best we Slytherins can do, is a real damn accomplishment.)
Whew. This episode got to me, which is rare in a non-Buckley episode. So this total lizard man comes to see Ashley Marin at the bank, and she is truthin' or PLLing when she says she's not clear on what he's there for due to it being another assistant that made the appointment. What's James Leland there for? Why, to settle his [long story] great-aunt-by-marriage's accounts, GABM in question being, of course, Old Nasty Mrs. Potter.
Do you watch Syfy's Being Human? You really should, it's at least as good as this show. (And I say that as a person who was obsessed with the original BBC3 pilot and never really fell in love with the series, despite Russell Tovey who is like Britain's Noel Kahn as far as I'm concerned.) They had a priest character recently who reminded me of this lizard man. Blonde, tall. Lizardy is the only real word I can think of that's not totally hateful. Kissing the lipless. He's got a certain attractiveness.
So they do a whole back and forth and he clearly knows nothing about his great-aunt but all you care about is what Ashley cares about, which is basically OMG, and she's like, "Oh, you're an architect, oh, here are your documents you already have available, oh, I will pass these to the authorities but probably they will stall for awhile since that's my plan while I figure out what to do, oh, yeah I really couldn't say much about your distant relative besides the fact that she was a gross old bitch who showed up once a year, but oh, now you're asking me on a date. Well, this is familiar territory."
I always figured this show would be Ashley Marin Sleeps With Blonde Guys To Cover Up Various Crimes but it's kind of amazing that it's actually happening. So yeah, he'd like to see the contents of the safety deposit box, into which Ashley has recently deposited some bellybutton lint and some of Mike Montgomery's old Pogz. (Remember ALF? He's back!) It's a great scene, but only because of Ashley's total sketchy fear which I don't know if I can get it across. You don't know the guy himself is sketch at this point because of how this show makes you instantly hate and fear everybody, especially men. Which is its genius.
Paige comes running up to Emily about how this was not about her exactly, or Emily's gayness, but that he just "wanted to know how somebody could beat" her and whether she had somehow "slacked off," and then the total sadness of Paige: "But I didn't. You know I didn't. I told him we tied but you got the slot." Emily's all out and proud these days -- "Because I'm gay?" -- and Paige's jaw drops because how can you be talking in public about exactly what this is about? (I told you we'd love Pam and I told you we'd love Paige but I think it's stretching to say we'll ever love Nick, which is kinda sad if you think about it.)
Paige assures her she was not the bearer of that good news. It's just that her dad is awful, like the kind of awful where you show up at your rival/girlfriend's house in the pouring rain looking like a kicked pony and act all weird and then drive your bike into a volcano to get out of life. Emily is remarkably diffident -- wrong word, but it's Emily, she's a quiet one when she hates you -- at this juncture, but I don't know how you could possibly play sympathetic to "Sorry about my dad's homophobic swears that I totally tossed your way two weeks ago."
Ella! And Byron! He's a little too busy recapitulating his daughter's ontogeny (oh I went there) to make it to every single one of Aria's parent-teacher conferences, but Ella's just like, "These are the two major ones: French, because Aria is precious to a grotesque degree; and Mr. Fitz because our daughter, and myself, and all those
of the ovarian sisterhood, and also Noel Kahn, are sweaty in love with him."
Of course -- because Byron's entire life is about getting back into a "stable" nuclear family unit -- all he hears is that Ella is saying one million great things about the one million great things about Ezra, which I thought were urban legends until just today at lunch. Turns out Byron is aware of Nick McCullers and totally knows what Ella's talking about when she says, exasperated, "Very same paranoia. He was about to launch into the Gay Agenda right there in the cafeteria. Ezra totally calmed the waters, completely defused the situation. It was something to see!"
But even though she's only minorly crushing the second Byron bristles, Ella realizes she's got some currency now. After all, it was Byron who had bought a new shirt for a date the night of the art opening, which caused her to go all Mirror Has Two Faces and take Aria shopping, because she wants nothing more than an ironclad guarantee that taking him back won't blow up in her face, which means she needs Byron fully brainwashed before she comes home.
And she pushes on that bruise with three fingers -- "Oh, I'd love to schedule another makeout sesh but I'm going to this thing with Ezra" and conveniently leaving out the part where like the entire faculty is invited to this thing -- and you know what, it's totally okay and meet that she should do this. The only reason her high school games with the love of her life are at all a narrative problem is because of the Aria/Ezra thing, which she doesn't even know about. She's doing it right.
And Byron, because he is a cliché like most men, picks up the scent: Ella likes Ezra. Not in a sex way, not in a real way because he is basically a child -- chronologically and emotionally -- but just enough that it makes Byron feel weird, which is exactly where we want him... If it weren't for Aria. Which works both for the story and in a grander sense, because Ella is using Ezra for certain uncool purposes, the idea of her liking him, about which he will never even know, in order to put her family back together.
When I said we're all just Pretty Little Liars in our own households I wasn't only talking about teenagers. The fact is that men are raised thinking they're owed everything, and it's on our asses to make them feel that way at the same time we're constructing lives of our own making. That's not even feminism, it's just two thousand years of culture. It defines us.
Spencer goes to Toby's house, but he's busy dealing with "something" having to do with the DA, who has summoned him via his lawyer's towncar to discuss things. Spencer's -- first of all, she's dressed even gayer than usual, in the good way, the best way really, with one Temple Grandin braid down the side and a bunch of bricabrac'd cowboy gear happening -- and she's like, "Okay but WTF with the Braille? There's no reason for you to be weird about this." Instead of saying the proper response, which is "For no narrative reason I know that you should be looking at numbers and not letters because the first ten letters of the alphabet in Braille also correspond to numerals" he's just like, "It's not BAD, it's that you're reading it wrong, I can't explain now, our storyline doesn't start in this act, come see me verbatim Saturday morning when Jenna's out at her flute lesson."
Never Enough Jenna. Just hearing about these little tidbits and stuff about how she spends her day make me feel insane. 9-10 Flute Lesson. 10-12 Lingerie Fitting. 12-2 Attempted Brother-Fucking. 2-3 Nap. 3-6 Being A all over the place. (A sends Spencer some text about how Jenna's going to be pissed once she finds out that Spence is the second PLL to befriend Toby, but it almost seems like icing on the cake at this point. Toby has made us well aware of this obvious fact.)
Every time they say "Noel Kahn" the closed-caps say "an old con." Brilliant, no? That is some Ellen Raskin shit, courtesy of the universe. So Emily jokes around with Hanna about how if she's such a good judge of character, Caleb-wise, how do you explain Noel? Um, because he is totally fucking awesome. That's how. Pam shows up with laundry baskets begging her daughter to eat some cobbler, offering to bring it directly to her in bed if she will stop hating her, but all Emily can hear is how her life is disgusting and she is not pretty on the inside and Pam will always be grossed out by her. Which is totally understandable, even with Pam's face outside her door clearly with her gay-hating heart in a million pieces desperate to reconnect, but it's not like Emily doesn't have a point.
"Paige is such a knob," says Hanna, but Emily knows better -- and that it has nothing to do with Emily, really, at all; but the weirdo arrival of her is still too fresh so Emily just changes the subject to the Hanna/Aria weirdness of the past week... And that's the transition to the conversation between Aria and Spencer, which is more exciting only because of Spencer's insane cowboy outfit. They discuss the useless Toby clue and Aria dismisses the breakup with Hanna and I dunno, it's hard to imagine a conversation between Aria and Spencer that wouldn't be about clues and murders and stuff. It's their common thing, their whole Hardy Girl sisterhood. Well, that and dressing like lunatics from an insane asylum.
Suddenly, Spencer is able to deduce -- from like the Doppler Effect of a siren going past -- that Aria is not only talking to her from Ezra's house, but is currently sitting on his bed. Spencer = magic. The best part of the conversation is when she gets very intense and goes, "Is he taking a shower?" Like, of course Spencer would find zero wrong with Aria's relationship and think it's adorable, both because she is a dirty old war vet in the body of a young girl but also because older men are her snack cakes: You just pretend Ezra's dating Melissa, and it all makes sense.
Anyway, Ezra comes home with takeout and immediately starts chundering on about how Byron is meeting with him tomorrow and it's going to be weird because he can't compartmentalize the fact that he's raping Byron's daughter, statutorily speaking, the way he can with Ella: "I can see your mom as a colleague. She's safe. But your dad is your dad, which is complex." Since Aria can't very well say, "No it's fine, he fucks his students too -- that's why I'm here as a matter of fact," she just hands him some bull about how he is amazing.
Ashley's dressing up for her date with Great Nephew, so that she can once again fuck her way out of theft charges, and Hanna's all suspicious about GN even though she hasn't even seen his sketchy self yet, and then who shows up at the door? Not the lizard man, but in fact Caleb. Caleb from the basement. It's awkward and Ashley immediately gets a weird vibe off of Caleb, I guess because he's smartassy and dark or something, a minority, and then she runs off to tell Hanna not to study with Caleb in the house, to get out in public because he's a motorcycle kind of boy: "I knew Sean. Sean was a minister's son. Sean called you Hanna-Banana." Aw, Sean.
Lizard Leland arrives and Caleb answers the door and is cocky and edgy and x-treme some more and Ashley needs Leland to sign some kind of paperwork, and because everything on this show is so suspenseful all the time and everybody acts so weird all the time you might not even notice Caleb staring suspensefully at Leland's pen that he pulls out of his pocket. But first: Why did he come to the door? To meet Ashley, in whose house he is squatting. Why? Caleb likes Hanna, obvs. But he changes the subject to how Hanna doesn't like Lizard Leland, gets a vibe, and she's right, because Leland was carrying a crappy plastic pen when everybody knows architects are pen snobs and draw for a living and are quote "strictly Montblanc and beyond," and whatever. The trained eye of the detective.
Aria is, according to Ezra, "excited by the idea of fiction," which is annoying on many levels but provides Byron with all the ammo he needs to 1) Accuse Ezra of dating his wife, 2) Mean Girl him about Leonard Adams's literary cred, 3) Imply essentially that Ezra is a toddler/retarded, and 4) Threaten.
Hanna and Aria finally find time to explain about the museum tickets and Caleb stalling Ella's car and how that's why he lives at Hanna's house now. Which part of the story not even Aria knew about. Also, Hanna never actually tells them what A has on her mom, which keeps being noticeable to a degree where it is oppressive.
But no, because at this very time in this very store, Jenna is trying on a scary lace nightie with a scary lace merry widow or whatever, underwear words, it's black and looks like creepy spiderwebs but that could just be the effect of Jenna.
"I want it to be perfect. He likes lace!"
Toby does not like lace to any particular degree, I don't think; and Jenna is meeting somebody in a motel room tonight to show him her scary outfit. Any guesses? I mean, we know it's going to be somebody inappropriately old because that's how this show does things, but I can't imagine that Ian is/was actually fucking every underage girl in the entire high school, even the blind incest ones, I mean, that would just strain credibility.
It's hard to explain what is awesome about the scene of Ezra explaining to Aria that her father came after his nuts, but it has to do with the acting of Ian Thomas. It's absurdly funny and Aria is so not having any of it and Ezra just keeps saying, "The man is crazy! A crazy person is your father!" I don't know, it's adorable.
Pam Fields shows up at school and Ella, of course, runs directly to her: "I was going to call you, but then I saw you were coming in for the parent-teacher conferences. I just want you to know that the school is not going to be bullied by Nick McCullers. Everybody here loves Emily!" Pam's like oh shit, what now because everybody in town hates Nick McCullers because he's not pretty on the inside.
"He came in making a big deal about how he thinks Emily's getting special treatment because she's gay, everybody knows Emily's the better swimmer except McCullers..." You know, basically getting the story across and not really watching Pam's face turn all different colors. Pam's like, "He said that shit?" Yeah, in front of everybody, at lunch. "Was Emily there?" Oh girl. Ella's like, "It gets better?"
Um, inside Jenna's house it's bright and airy and everything is homey and sparkling clean and you feel good just being there. Not every house can be a home, but this house is every home.
Just kidding! It looks like a place where a giant spider would live after her husband was killed at sea. There is an entire wall of snow-globes and music boxes in one room that is 95% Victorian dolls with knives in their hands and blood on their petticoats. That kind of furniture where you know it would maybe be soft to sit on, but also kind of crumbly and old and uriney maybe, or with a secret hard piece of wood just where it looked softest, and when you sat down a huge dust storm would happen. One room is crawling with snakes and the snakes all have bedbugs and the bedbugs all have Hep C. There is a sex dungeon, one room filled with taxidermied fowl, and there is also a giftwrapping room. One room is just spikes.
Toby's like, "Jenna will know you touched her snowglobe and then she's gonna Annie Wilkes your face up." There's a super fake moment where Spencer "nearly" "drops" the snowglobe she was looking at, and he helps "catch" it before it is "destroyed." This part is lame. Also, when Toby smiles it's kind of like a nightmare. His intensely weird face is doing so many tricks at all times that it's disconcerting to see a trick his face can't do.
So the DA is dropping the murder charges because the sweater blood was "corrupted," and so now everything is going to be fine. Until they discover new evidence, so he's still a POI. But at least he's "free," he smiles freakily, which is nice. You can tell how pleased Spencer is for him, which is neat. I mean, he'll still be a pariah and he'll still be rocking that face of his, but I guess being chained up in the yard with your incest sister probably changes the units of measurement on your scale of "free" pretty drastically. Spencer even offers to take him to the courthouse to get the ankle bracelet removed, which is I think when they both realize that they are friends somehow.
Ashley blew Hanna off when she said Leland was shady, so Caleb has called Syracuse University looking for a James Leland connected with the School of Architecture, and there was, but see he dropped dead two years ago. "You ask a computer Is James Leland related to this Potter lady, the computer says yes. But you didn't ask if James Leland was still alive. Knowing the right questions is better than having all the right answers." Yes. That, and knowing Braille.
Jenna Thing comes up in a cab, sweetly overjoyed about the news -- "Did you hear?" -- and she wants him to jump in the cab and get "that awful thing off [his] leg right now," but he says once that he's got a ride and Jenna's like, "Fucking Emily Fields" and Spencer says no, it's Spencer, and Jenna is like, "That's nice of you to offer but I'm here now and in charge of this shit." Toby holds Spencer's hand for strength and reiterates that he is going with her, and sad little creepy Jenna is like, "I see." I never felt sorry for her before because she's such a freak, but it occurs to me she hasn't really done anything bad. Getting blown up, basically, is the only thing that has happened to her.
Ashley is intrigued by the fact that James Leland is so sketch, but realizes they can't really do anything about it, because they don't want to draw attention to the situation. "I'm not doing anything based on what this boy Caleb says," Ashley Emilys. "Leland's coming to the bank this afternoon, I will show him the safe deposit box. And we will go from there." There's a neat little shorthand moment where Hanna and Ashley really come off as a team and it's sweet.
Aria: "So what did you think of Fitz?"
Byron: "I really liked your French teacher."
Aria: "But what did you think of Fitz?"
Byron: "Okay fine. I thought he was a wuss pretty-boy trying to bone your mom, and it made me jealous in the way of an old white man thinking about masculinity and his declining virility, so I showed my ass."
Aria: "So wait, what did you think of Fitz?"
Byron: "I thought he was awful, silly. I just said that."
Aria: "So what did you think of Fitz?"
Byron: "Honey, are you okay?"
Aria explains to Byron that A) Ezra is a good teacher, B) Do not question his "depth," ever, C) He has been published in online journals, D) She knows him better than Byron ever will, or anybody ever will, because she can see his heart beating in his chest like a compact fluorescent lightbulb of feelings, E) Everybody in the entire faculty was invited to this book signing thing. The only person that actually thinks it's a date is Ella, and she knows damn well it isn't a date. So stop playing high school games and relate like the adults you plainly are.
How much money is in the safe? $3275.00. That's hilarious. Even Leland thinks it's hilarious even though he keeps basically repeating, like, "Wow, yeah, I thought there was going to be more in there but there wasn't." There's a lot of logistics about how Ashley's an officer but you would also need Esther's key, or the master key, just like any other bank. "Where do you bank, James, in Syracuse?" Ashley is wily. What a great way to do that. He refuses to tell her and finally she's like, "Yeah, I was just saying, because of how the regulations are the same everywhere -- certainly not trying to verify your identity now that you're here to steal the money that I stole that got stolen from me." It's all very sneaky and neat. Who are you really, James Leland?
Pam comes running up to Emily at the meet and she's like, "Did Mr. McCullers actually pull this shit on you?" Emily doesn't want to talk about it. "I know what you think of me. I know what you'd say: It doesn't matter who I am, I better get used to people looking at me only one way." Well, throwing Pam's bigotry in her face at just the right time. She gets in his face and he's all, "I was wondering when I'd hear from you. This isn't personal. You deal with your family problems any way that you want."
This is apparently about what the school is "doing to" his daughter, which is when Pam goes off: "Oh yeah, it's about your daughter. It's about you trying to make her into some kind of professional victim and using my daughter to do it... You always think there's someone else to blame when things don't go your way..." Finally Nick's like, "Lady, you're upset" and she goes, "I am not even upset yet. But I could be. Leave my daughter alone, she's awesome and principled and never got anything she didn't earn. Drop it, or I'll show you what a real agenda looks like." Fuck Yeah, Pam Fields.
So she's just kind of dazed by all this and Emily's touched and everything, but Pam can't really process anything right now. She keeps offering to take Emily home and Emily keeps reminding her that her car's in the parking garage and it's sweet. Pam's like, "I do not get the gay thing. I don't get it. But I will be damned if anybody hurts my kid, and the idea that you didn't know that makes me angry with myself."
Spencer finds out that the Braille was 214, which Toby doesn't know what that means. Toby used to be scared of Jenna and she's in control of their household, but he's outgrowing that. Also, Jenna is scared of the PLLs because of that time they blew her up and caused her to go blind.
After a long, suspenseful walk to her car, Emily is joined by a figure! Who is Paige! Who is sorry that her dad is a jerkwad! Emily's like, "My mom is spacing out real bad so I better go meet her at home and we can be close again" and Paige gets all Paige on her about how everything is so super easy for Emily, she has a mom who is protective and she gets to be relay anchor and she doesn't ride her bike into traffic on purpose, and Emily's like, "The fuck you say. I am a lesbian and spent most of my life in denial, and then my first girlfriend got shipped off to Crazytown and just dumped me. Yeah, Emily's stock is real high right now."
So of course Paige kisses her and then runs off all crazy. And that basically starts the cool-down: Caleb and Hanna have a very sweet conversation about how neither of them is really interested in him splitting for Flagstaff, and just when you're thinking this could work, A sends an exterminator to get rid of the "infestation in [the] basement." Hanna, you know you don't get to be happy. Stop tempting her. Over at Ezra's, they're rounding third when Byron calls his answering machine and asks him out for a beer and apology, and it's so weird for both of them that their eyes bug out and they eat a bunch of egg rolls. Spence and Toby drive right past the motel of which Room 214 is, even as we speak, playing host to Jenna and her lace-loving lothario. And in the tag, A leaves flowers at Esther Potter's grave while the creepiest music box music plays forever and ever.
week: Emily does a sexy angry dance, Caleb shakes off and air dries in front of Hanna if you know what I mean, somebody gets their brains knocked out by a trophy from the trophy case, and Spencer wears some weird-ass clothing. And presumably we get to see Ella's intentions as far as the pedophiliac love rhombus she and her husband are busily constructing around their marriage.
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