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Hmm. Some very strange writing choices w/r/t the characters' voices as established, but it's fine because there was so very much plot happening the entire time -- and some truly amazing moments, most of them involving Hanna being awesome after her breakthrough last week -- that you don't even really notice.
The action centers on the lead-up and follow-through of Ian's funeral, after the girls' grisly discovery of his apparent suicide last week. Hanna wants to wear red and dance on his grave, while Spencer just wants to get the funeral done so Melissa will stop being so scarily comatose -- and because, with Ian in the ground, she's increasingly wary of letting A lead them down this path of obsession for the rest of their lives. Aria, of course, views the funeral as the chance for her to debut her relationship with Ezra publicly, because have you met Aria.
Emily, though, Emily just can't let it go. In the wake of Spencer suddenly chilling out -- requiring a new head to grow back in her place to contain the crazy -- and given the fact that she was in love with Alison and always cared more about solving her murder than the rest of them, eventually figures out that the suicide note/confession was a creation of A -- most likely to get the cops off her case once and for all, while still using the Liars to solve it while also torturing them.
With a little further investigation, Emily also figures out that Ian wasn't even involved in the whole midnight bribe situation that nearly got Spencer killed -- and, it seems, killed Ian after all -- but she doesn't figure out that Garrett and Jenna are behind that part. I guess maybe the Jason Thing had to do with getting Ian out of town, but then A murdering him threw them off? Anyway, Logan Reed reappears for about five seconds of tender and gracious Emily-style interrogation before leaving town again.
During the brief calm, Hanna has a really neat moment reconnecting with her mom, and threatens Caleb's foster mother -- so she'll stop extorting his state checks -- in an absurdly beautiful, totally Hanna fashion. End result, Hanna's finally back together with Caleb.
Jackie makes her first move on Aria and Ezra's secret love affair, but between Ezra's weenieness about going public and Aria's intensifying attraction to Jason DiLaurentis, she needn't have bothered. In other news, it was Mikey that was breaking into everybody's houses and bodyslammed Aria that time, but we're still not clear on why he's being so awful all the time.
But the most effed-up one is definitely Spencer, who's getting a face full of awful from A this week, like, Hanna amounts: First her mom gives her the most wonderful, loving speech full of praise and vindication, so you already know something awful is coming. Then A threatens to tell everybody about the ring unless Spence comes clean, so she spends the whole episode trying to do that.
But then she doesn't even get to, because just as Melissa is about to tell her something dreadfully important, Ian's phone starts ringing! Inside her purse! Where it's been since they found the body, and which now implies that Spencer's been texting her sister as Ian, after he was already dead! Melissa goes ballistic, like it's honestly pretty scary... And all the calm and cool that Spencer finally located this week goes draining out into the ether.
In the end, the girls follow Emily's blinding flurry of detective work to the cemetery, where it's confirmed -- via A's stylish projection of it onto a nearby mausoleum -- that the Kissing Rock murder video is a sex tape after all, and that Jason had nothing to do with Ali's death!
Anyway, week: Fashion show! Gone horrifically wrong! The most beautiful words in the English language!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously, Jackie Molina rose from Ezra's past to stare and be weird, but luckily Aria had embarked on a pre-collegiate womanhood experience and forgot to be neurotic about that for just long enough to piss Jenna Cavanaugh off all over again. Oh, and Jason DiLaurentis took his shirt off, which seems to have thrown Aria's game -- such as it is -- completely. Emily fell into A's web of recruitment deception just as her mother was on the verge of joining P-FLAG, and it was this whole swimmer drama and Texas mess.
Hanna took up matchmaking full-time -- between Lucas and that girl, her old set of parents, and herself and Caleb -- but has not yet found Mona a new boyfriend to distract her from her Hanna obsession. Spencer stole her sister's engagement ring for some fast cash and now it's gone forever, and even though Ian is irrevocably dead, scary people are still cruisin' around her house all the time doing mayhems. Melissa's mood has yet to improve. The mystery of Alison's murder was solved, for all of five seconds, when Ian's suicide body was found with a note whining about how it's hard out here for a girl-killing pedo.
QUAD
Aria: "Is this a suicide note? Or a confession?"
(It is both.)
Spencer: "It's both, duh."
Hanna: "Turns out I snapped a photo of the confessicide note and sent it to Emily's iPad, because occasionally quick thinking is my deal."
Emily: "I just don't want anybody thinking that we can relax or act normal for even a minute."
Spencer: "I certainly was not planning on that."
Melissa, who is probably in the booby hatch by now: "I wish one of you had hocked your iPad, instead of my precious heirloom, to buy that truck for Toby."
Garrett: "Hey it's just me, your neighborhood baby-faced policeman buddy with ill-defined relationships to all of you and who is secretly dating Jenna."
Spencer: "Great. What are you doing here?"
Garrett: "Dropping off some evidence or whatever, various things covered in rat blood that we thought the school could use. Sorry about how your molester's body has been dead for at least a week."
Wait, what? Okay, in fact A has been texting Melissa on Ian's behalf this whole time and just perching there near his dead suicide corpse, stealing horseshoes and writing weird notes and whatever. You think A can't get creepier and then you find out she's been babysitting dead pedos and chilling out in abandoned barns. For some reason this causes Emily to go abruptly batshit:
Emily: "BUT WHAT DOES A WANT?"
Hanna, bouncing: "I don't care. What Hanna wants is a drink."
Spencer: "Em, what's going on?"
Emily: "A is involved with Ian's murder, isn't that so scary?"
Spencer: "Honestly, gift horse. He was always scarier to me than A, because A never really came after me like you and Hanna, whereas Ian was constantly coming after me."
Emily: "No, we need to be insane right now."
Spencer: "I think we should chill and just be grateful for each other and act sweet. Pet puppies, provide amnesty and succor to accused murderers. Kiss some chicks."
Emily: "So we are turning into each other? That would be a little bit scary, except for how turning into Spencer Hastings means losing it altogether, which makes it a lot scarier."
A texts Emily a little hint about how Ian's suicide note looks like something else. I surmise that she's going to Flashback City presently, in order to remember how Alison couldn't write a lower-case letter T either. I bet that's what is coming up.
HASTINGS
Mariska Fauxgitay: "Man this phone has been ringing off the hook ever since your babydaddy killed that little girl and shot himself."
Melissa: "I have lost my shit and now I just stare at the wall."
Spencer: (In an ill-timed demonstration of loyalty, manages to cuss her grandmother out on the phone.)
The 'rents figure out that nobody is going to help them bury Ian, so of course Spencer jumps in to be cool and sweet and Emily-esque by making a big deal about them doing the funeral. Which: He was their son-in-law, right? He's family? Not a huge leap. Either way, it's nice to see Spencer being so proactive about putting Ian in the ground for Melissa's sake. Less nice: How obviously it will somehow blow up in her beautiful face.
MARIN
Caleb twinkles at Hanna for awhile and she tries to busy herself with making him breakfast or something, but there's no food in the house -- because Ashley's been too busy worrying that her daughter told her therapist something incriminating I guess -- and Hanna tells him to stop checking on her every time she finds a dead molester or gets run over by a car.
Caleb: "I saw a dead body once."
Hanna: "I'm not going to follow up on that interesting thing."
Ashley: "Hanna! I left you a million messages about secret things! I will yell at you later! Hi, Caleb."
Hanna: "Mom, what's going on, why are you stressing? Dad? Work? Steal from any old ladies? Fuck any cops?"
Ashley: "Bitch every time you leave my house you get run over by a car or pimped out by a serial killer or you bring home itinerant werewolves or find dead pedophiles rotting or you set fire to your therapist's office. I was honestly just worried."
Hanna: "I am a handful, that's true."
Ashley: "Being a mother feels weird in my tummy! It is stressing me out!"
Hanna: "Oh my God. I honestly believed you thought we were roommates. That is so sweet. I think I'll call you... Mom."
They: (Hug because everything's over and it's going to be okay. HA!)
Caleb: (Leaves, sulking, because he never had a mommy. Just wolves.)
ROSEWOOD COLLEGE FOR HAND-HOLDING & OTHER NAUGHTY SEXY STUFF
Ezra: "Aria, tell me all about how hard it was to find your best friend's murderer's corpse. Use small words. Be brief."
Aria: "Well it all started back in 1958..."
Jackie Molina: "-- HEY GUYS SORRY TO INTERRUPT!"
Aria: "Hi, Jackie! Sorry I iced you out at that party. Why are you dressed like you're pregnant? I didn't notice that little update on your Website Page."
(Oh my God remember the Website Page? That was so amazing.)
Jackie: "I know exactly what is going on between the two of you, but I'm more interested in being super vague and creepy about that. Bye!"
Aria is hilariously rude to her; hilariously obnoxious once she's gone. Then they are sort of cute. I guess, begrudgingly, that there is nothing to complain about here. Which also holds true for them, and yet somehow still they are angsting now. About their non-secret relationship, which is no longer a problem. We're onto them, those two.
SPEED DEMON EXPRESS
Emily takes a delivery slip to the postal place and the attractive, dead-eyed fellow -- I believe the one named by the fans, remember, who delivered the bribe money that time with Garrett, in the woods, when Ian went missing, the fourth time out of the seven times that happened -- acts all vague and weird with her. I guess the package, which is for her mom, will contain yet more poisoned college paraphernalia... No, it looks like plans for a housing development, like the kind that Texans might live in? (Or for a cemetery? This comes back at the end but I still didn't understand it at all.) She sees Logan's picture on the wall, under Speed Demon's Soulless Employee Of The Month, and remembers that night with the bribe money. Logan Reed. Thanks, fans! Good one.
HASTINGS/FIELDS
Veronica: "Have some tea. It contains less caffeine than the black espressos you constantly slurp, so maybe you will sleep like one time. Oh, Wren called to see how you guys were doing. I don't think your dad would have been too nice to him on the phone, seeing as how he did your sister unspecified dirt that time."
Spencer: "How the hell are you trying to bond with me over Wren?"
Veronica: "Fine, let's bond on how you're so industrious and such a hard worker and how you've always been so dedicated."
Spencer: Unfurls like a fiddlehead fern at the first praise she has ever received from her mother.
Veronica: "You were right about the funeral, we are giving him the barebones treatment because we're glad Ian is dead. But your dad and I are really impressed by how cool you're being about all that. We thought you'd end up killing Melissa, so your compassion is really kind of mindblowing. I'm sorry that I let that molester live here for so long and kept calling you crazy and wouldn't let you see your friends. Please forgive me."
Spencer: "You are full of surprises. Well, I have one for you! I am capable of crying."
Emily can't concentrate on her Carson McCullers book because she has to stare at a suicide note on her iPad and then at the wall and then dial a phone but never hit send and generally act insane. On the verge of figuring something out. Emily is so streets ahead in this episode that I honestly felt like I should be as crazy trying to figure out what she's doing as she is crazy-focused on doing it.
Spencer tries forever to find the precise ring that she stole from Melissa online, but can't figure it out. A loves this, and immediately threatens to tell Veronica if Spencer doesn't come clean about the ring. Oh, that's good. The one time Veronica was ever nice to her daughter and A's going to pull some Hefty Hanna mind games on her to ruin it. Maybe A is as disconcerted by Spencer's newfound sanguinity as we are.
SOMEBODY'S HOUSE SOMEWHERE
Somebody in a hoodie makes to smash somebody's window with a rock, but Jason stops him or her. It's the act out and that's so interesting, because there's a certain amount of suspense I guess? But science has shown that all of their houses, every house in Rosewood, occupies the same point in spacetime, to Jason's house, and thus it's impossible to tell whose house is getting saved by Jason. Maybe all of them. Maybe Aria's. If so, something is going to happen to his shirt pretty soon I bet.
YEP, KIND OF
Jason shows up at Aria's with Mikey Montgomery in tow: Seems it was Jason's house that Mike was trying to break into. Aria thinks about parenting him and then realizes that not even she is insufferable enough for that, so she elects to linger on the porch being mystified by her bro and gazing into Jason's absurd amount of a face.
Jason: "Apparently Mike thought nobody was home, because of how people constantly die or move into or move out of or dress up like Alison in my house, so the fact that the lights were off was inviting to him."
(He stares at her for ten minutes like a fucking psycho.)
Aria: "You know what's inviting to me? Your dead-eyed, unblinking sexual staring."
Jason: (Stares at her until Labor Day.)
Aria: "Yeah, like that. Anyway, sorry my brother's the worst. He's been bluetoothing like a bastard lately and I'm afraid he's going to cause another divorce."
Jason: (Stares at her until her hair catches on fire.)
Aria: "Seriously, with the staring."
She closes the door; he continues to stare until the wooden door buckles and the glass in the windows starts to crack with a sound like tiny silver bells. Somebody needs to call 911 and tell them Jason DiLaurentis is having an event on a porch.
EMILY HASTINGS #1 DETECTIVE AGENCY
You need black nail polish for this part.
1) Print out every text message, email, or chat you've ever received.
2) Using an X-acto knife, cut them into tiny slivers. Remember to be careful with the knife, because it is sharp. If you don't have one, ask your mom who is into scrapbooking. Do not tell her what this is for.
3) Gluestick the tiny slivers of message into a notebook with fun blank paper in lots of different designs. You're going to want to remember this wonderful time in your life.
4) Write cryptic, crazy notes to the pieces of words so that people will understand that fully becoming Spencer Hastings has become your full-time deal.
5) Invent entire new symbological and cryptographic systems in order to make sense of the unordered chaos that is now your life. Every message or part of a message could easily, for example, map onto phrases from the Old Testament or Shakespeare's Second Folio. Try it lots of different ways, noting with your crackhead-looking red marker whenever things almost fit.
6) Stare at the mess you have made. Realize you may have misplaced your marbles at the schizophrenia store.
SCHOOL
Hanna: "Sorry my mom and I had feelings the other day. Women are so weak."
Caleb: "I thought it was nice that your mom stopped acting like your foster parent. I wish my foster parents would act like foster parents."
Hanna: "I thought you were living with Lucas? In bunkbeds? Did I dream that? Was that just a dream some of us had?"
Caleb: "No, I am -- and it is tremendous -- but part of the deal is that she is letting me live there in return for cashing the checks. Please don't tell anybody that. Or please don't have an omniscient stalker who might use it against me in a complicated game of cat and mouse."
Hanna: "Well, it's unjust. And I think you could be living it up with a great foster family."
Caleb: "I kind of like the system I've got going now."
(He says a thing about how Hanna's Eat Pray Love chick-lit life of weak woman feelings can turn quickly into Drink Snap Slap, which is kind of glib but also sad. Unless he is talking about Lucas, because we know that bitch gets nasty when he drinks.)
MCCULLERS 102
I guess Ezra took all the copies of The Great Gatsby because we're studying The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter now, which fits this show so awesomely from what I remember. Not only do you have the same role-as-character-as-destiny thing as this show (like, there's a deaf guy who's BFF with a blind guy, and there's four pretty Jungian types that run the show) but also that whole Southern Comfort/Sleepy Gothic thing that goes with this show, and then also the constant feelings-feelings-feelings. Great book. I don't know why they don't teach it. Well, I guess sometimes they do. Once Ezra goes to college.
Emily: "So get this. The whole suicide note is actually composed of texts we've received from A."
Spencer: "So wait, Ian didn't even confess to killing Alison all of a sudden?"
Emily: "It gets worse."
Liars: "How?"
Emily: "I won't answer that question right now, for some reason."
She goes back to Logan Reed's place of employment and he begs her to leave him alone, but no. Not with The Spencer burning in her as it is right now. Um, so he was making the bribe delivery that night on behalf of somebody else, a lady, whom he also never met and who paid him through a PO Box. In fact he never even knew this had to do with Ian.
I am so confused. Wasn't this the night that Ian was killing Spencer and then was killed? That all happened at the same time, yes? Yes. That's why Spencer was alone. Jeez, The Night(s) Ian Died is getting more complicated than Alison's whole terrible death night.
This is the best part, though. This shit killed me so hard:
Emily: "Can you describe her voice or estimate her age?"
Logan Reed: "I don't know. I don't know how to describe voices!"
It's so great and amazing when he says this that Emily just gives up and walks out of there. Just fuckin' bounces.
GUIDANCE
Foster Mother Janet abuses Caleb right there outside the school office, using words, because she is so irritated that she had to drop off paperwork at the school. Hanna listens and dreams up ways to make Caleb's life worse. Through helping.
Aria: "Mike, why are you avoiding me?"
Mike: "I'm not avoiding you! I am just scared of your shoulder pads! And bored."
Aria: "Seriously, you're just bored enough to break into Jason's house? A place where teenagers die all the time?"
Mike: "You know how this show has no shame about wandering blithely away in the middle of storylines that are actually important, and yet never fails to close loops you don't care about? I am the Camping Equipment Burglar of 2011. That was my spree."
Aria: "You are the boob-puncher! You punched me in the boob!"
Mike: "Yeah, that was bad. Sorry. Please don't tell on me or our parents will break up."
Aria: "They keep gettin' me with that one."
Mike: (Broods smoothly away.)
Aria: "...Wait, Mike! Wait up! I still don't understand why we even had this conversation! Or what is going on with you! You are mean to everybody, even Ella Montgomery, and you have the bluetoothing thing, and you're also stealing camping equipment from all of my friends? And punching boobs? That is so many things! Pick a thing! I got Jackie Molina and Jason DiLaurentis on my plate right now, I can't be screwing around with your generalized acting out right now. Unless there is a Noel Kahn at the end of this story, somebody* is gonna freak."
HASTINGS HOUSE OF CONTINUALLY DIMMER LIGHTING
Spencer: "Hey, Melissa. It's time to talk about how we always fight but secretly love each other, and then we can promise that things are going to be different from now on. Like in every episode."
Melissa: (Drools, silently.)
Spencer: "Okay. Here goes. As part of this new honesty deal, I am going to ruin everything because I'm being blackmailed. Remember a few weeks ago when we had that contrived fight and you implied you'd choose Ian over me by not remembering that inane story about the jump rope? Long story short, I hocked your precious..."
Veronica: "-- Cockblocking honesty is what I'm all about! Go set the table."
Spencer, verbatim: "I'm going to go set the table."
EVERY DAY AT SUNDOWN ASHLEY DRINKS ALL THE WINE THERE IS
Hanna: "Mom, how do you like this hooker dress?"
Ashley, verbatim: "Absolutely not."
Hanna: "Are you kidding me, check out the girls! Boom! Boom!"
Ashley: "Hanna. You are going to a funeral."
Hanna: "He molested everybody and killed everybody. I want to wear a red dress and dance on Ian's grave and throw confetti."
Ashley, loving it: "It's already weird that we're burying somebody we all hate, we don't need to call attention to it."
Hanna: "Is that how grandpa's funeral was?"
Whoa.
Ashley: "...I didn't go. I just paid for that shit."
Hanna: "Do you regret not going?"
Ashley: "No. Leaving home at seventeen was about five years too late."
Hanna: "Why didn't you leave home sooner?"
Ashley: "Freedom costs, Hanna."
Wow. Did we know this? Any of this? I'm not making fun of the show, I'm frankly impressed -- it's a little too real for my personal comfort, in fact -- and just as pleased by the subtlety of that exchange either way. Just wondering if we knew that part. Wait, she did say something to Caleb about having a bad home life, I think. And it was like, Duh. But interesting that we've mentioned it again.
Did you see Super 8? You know that part where the dad does a surprising thing? That's what I want from Ashley at some point. Just 100% burn the mother down.
PUTTIN' THE FUN IN FUNERAL
Hanna, as the bells toll: "Who's ringing it this time?"
Nice! Hanna is so on top of shit today, it's gorgeous. Um, Melissa is still drooling -- they leaned her up against a wall, in fact -- and Garrett's there just in case Nancy Grace shows up to club the casket. They're all wearing tea-length black cocktail dresses, Hanna's got a cute hat and veil, Spencer's wearing a choker and Emily's bangin' bod doesn't need your bourgeois sleeves on her job interview sheath, thank you very much. Aria's has a little flare at the bottom, like an Alice Liddell-type cut, while Spencer's is more along her usual Prairie Dawn silhouette.
Emily: "Let's talk about Ian and A and murders and whatever, okay?"
Spencer: "Dude it is a funeral."
Emily: "Okay but the information."
Spencer: "No seriously. Ian was my only dog in this fight. Like I give a shit about Alison or who killed Alison. As far as I'm concerned we can just ignore A from here on out."
Emily: "I see things drastically differently than you do. Especially considering we're the ones getting it up the A from A so far, this season."
Spencer: "I've decided that A is trying to keep us going in circles so we can't ever lay Alison to rest -- and we cannot negotiate with that kind of terrorism. The years will pass by and we'll just continue to be scared and crazy, and at some point Therapy Anne is going to be correct. We will be obsessed. And it occurred to me, looking at that dead body, that possibly we've already reached that point. Do you not remember how fucking insane I went last week? Red flag, Fields."
Emily: "But the truth!"
Spencer: "You cannot bring her back. By acting crazy like me, you are not going to bring her back. I know that's what it's about for you but seriously. I need to worry about my family and the Liars and Toby. Alison can rot."
Aria: "Ezra! This funeral is like a date! A chance for us to be together in public!"
Ezra: "I don't see anything insane about that, at all."
Ella: "Ezra, why are you here?"
Aria, psychically: "Tell her! Tell her that we are in love. I couldn't possibly do it myself, for reasons that are clear only to me!"
Ezra: "I'm trying to be a good teacher and support the children. Certainly not here to hold hands with your daughter if that's what you're suggesting."
Byron: "Come sit with us, fellow magister. And not with our daughter."
Aria: "Aw, nuts."
Emily: "Hey Garrett, can I lay some insane paranoia on you?"
Garrett: "Yeah, that seems appropriate at this funeral."
Emily: "Okay, well, it wasn't Ian that hired Logan Reed. It was a woman."
Garrett: "Well I'm sure it was a sighted woman. Anyway, let's go bury that killer, okay?"
Emily: "Thanks, authority figure. I knew I could count on you for the first time ever on this show."
They bury the bastard. Nobody cries. Melissa drools. Ashley looks bored and thinks about her dad. The Liars try to feel some sense of justice. Then they throw dirt on the coffin instead, and wipe the dirt off their hands -- that whole thing was awesomely done -- and then Aria spots, off in the distance, Jason DiLaurentis. He is not wearing black, but I guess he's thinking about justice too.
It's so weird because you know the show is not over and it's always something with this show, but like if you could just pretend and see it the way they see it: The end of the story of Alison's death. How relieved their parents must feel; how bad Spencer's mom must feel. How hard it would be -- how hard you would be trying -- to be sad for Melissa Hastings. How hard they're all trying, to believe that it's really over. That they found the right answer, finally, by never giving up, and the whole town forgave them, and they're back to just being the friends of the girl who died.
How after Rosewood pitchfork-and-torching everybody, for months, with that tribute thing and coming after poor Toby and then even Spencer, and then coming after the Liars for being obsessed, and now finally they can all just breathe and attend to the billion other hassles of living and be a town again.
And then the perversity of knowing that it's not over, that it's never over, that like even if you could get Emily to shut up about the inconsistencies -- knowing in the back of your head that she's right, that it's not over, that nothing was solved -- you're still getting blackmailed by A about the ring, or worried about Caleb's foster mother, or tormented by Jackie Molina's Website Page and Jason DiLaurentis's hairless torso, or in over your head with this whole college scholarship thing. You know?
AFTER
Emily: "Hey Aria, why are you staring at Jason? Why's he even here?"
Aria: "At the funeral of his sister's murderer?"
Emily: "I'm so sure Ian killed her. Anyway, I still don't like him. I didn't like him at his sister's funeral, and I didn't like him when we thought he had Ian in his yard, and I don't like him now."
Aria: "Or else he's just a sad hunky dude that I crushed on and secretly crushed on me back and now is in need of a hug."
Ezra: "Aria, I so wish that this funeral could have been our date."
Aria: "Ezra, if a funeral for a pedophile murderer who killed my best friend isn't the appropriate place to declare our love for each other, I don't know what is."
Ezra: "Yeah, I see things from your perspective."
Aria: "I need a hug. You should have hugged me. You can hug me now if you want."
Ezra: "Nope, sorry."
Aria: "Cool. Jason's right over there, so have a nice life, okay?"
Ezra: "Are you dumping me one more time again?"
Aria: "No, just using the weapons at my disposal."
LOCKERS
Foster Mother Janet makes crazy eyes going down the hallway, and totally ignores Hanna like six times until she calls her by name and then slams her locker to yell at her about the deal they have.
Hanna: "See that lady over there? That's my mom. She's also a partner at the firm of Dolce, Gabbana & Liebowitz [There are no words!], so I think you'd best stop taking my friend's foster kid money."
Then she calls her mom "Erin Brockobitch" and it's so weird and amazing. Janet stalks away to go get a drink and rain hell on Caleb's head, but at least Hanna's happy right now. Therapy works! Therapy makes you awesome!
FUNERAL
Aria: "Hey, new boyfriend. Why did you write off Mikey's B&E so easily?"
Jason: "Ali used to threaten to turn me in all the time and it was a real drag."
Aria: "Did she?"
Jason: "She was too smart to actually call the cops on me. She was as fearless as she needed to be, which I was jealous about because she was so awesome. I agree with my parents that they lost the wrong kid."
Aria: "Don't say that. Do say that. Keep saying things that make me want to give you a handjob while you cry."
Jason: "Done."
Jason: "You know how everybody in Rosewood loses their memory about important stuff? I might have killed Alison. I still carry around this note from the AM that says I know whaT you did. I don't know what it means, but it almost destroyed me. How hard is it to make a lower-case letter T?"
Aria: "Dude, so you just kind of went around thinkin' you killed your sister this whole time?"
Jason: "Drink Snap Slap, babe. My substance abuse is no laughing matter. I'm just happy Ian confessed, because now I know."
Aria: "Oh no. You killed my friend, maybe."
HASTINGS
Melissa: "I'm back! I'm having a daughter! Sorry I picked my pedo husband over you!"
Spencer: "Sorry about ... Um, everything."
Melissa: "No, I feel bad. I lied to you and our parents and the cops and everybody this whole time because I thought I was defending an innocent man. Not a serial killer impersonating a texting corpse. Boy, whoever has Ian's phone off his corpse that was texting me our daughter's name and other privileged information sure did play a mean joke!"
Spencer: "I make mistakes too, Melissa. Sometimes on that same egregious level, if you can believe it. Like, this one time I pawned your precious..."
Melissa: "-- God, stop interrupting me! These pills are gonna keep me lucid only so long. I love you so much and I have to tell you this thing that's incredibly import..."
Ian's Phone, from Spencer's Purse where A stashed it: "RING RING RING!"
Everything goes to motherfucking hell.
MOULIN MONTGOMERY
Ella and Byron decide that only the Green Fairy can take away the grossness of having the coach at their school, nice guy, fun dude, be a killer pedo...
Mikey: "I'm going out to do some mean junk with my mean friends! Hate you!"
...And then too, the grossness of their dickhead son. And here you thought Mikey would be the one you didn't wanna strangle.
SPEED DEMON
Garrett drops a bunch of money off with Logan Reed, who exits the show as weirdly as he entered it. I guess Logan was an actor the whole time? Anyway, Garrett calls Jenna and tells her it's taken care of and I don't even have time to figure out what is going on here. Possibly I do not have the brainpower to figure out what is going on here. I know I say that every week, but almost every week I turn out to be right.
MARIN
Caleb comes by Hanna's house with takeout and some inside jokes and cuteness and she thanks him for taking care of her. She offers to pay for dinner and he tells her Janet gave him money and Hanna's like That's so weird and Caleb doesn't look into this and then Caleb has to leave for his date with Lucas. They are going to watch The Goonies. God, Lucas really is the best boyfriend.
Caleb kisses Hanna's forehead and then finally lets on that he knows Hanna was the one that threatened his foster mother! And then takes off with that as his exit line, which is so hot! But she stops him at the door! And they kiss! Finally! It is awesome!
FIELDS OF CRAZY
Sometimes the shortest distance from Plot A to Plot B is the long way around, says A, and because Em is operating on a whole other level at this point she knows instantly that these words mean something and aren't nonsense, and in fact that she needs to compare the Speed Demon-delivered map with the map of the cemetery they give you at the funeral. I guess one of the houses or things from the first thing matches up with the plot labeled IAN THOMAS on the second thing? Hence the pun? I still have no idea what is going on or what any of this means. But then, you apparently can't trust Logan Reed anyway, so the realty thing is still up in the air. It's all about getting her to Alison's grave, that's all that matters I think.
So Emily drags the girls to the cemetery and Aria demands to know what's going on, and Spencer backs Emily up that they've been set up and the whole A thing is still an issue.
Emily & Spencer: "A took Ian's body weeks ago, then made it look like a suicide, so that Ali's murder would be solved."
Aria: "So wait, why would A help us prove our case?"
Spencer: "Because it's wrong, because A hates us."
Aria: "But the video and the tree and whatever!"
Spencer: "Therefore Ian did not kill her."
Ali's tombstone says Beloved Daughter, Trusted Friend: Tis A Fearful Thing To Love What Death Can Touch, which was already creepy just as a funeral quote but is ten times creepier now. Then a projection jumps up on the side of a mausoleum across the way, so scary: The giggly Kissing Rock video we haven't seen in a while, where she's all "You know you want to kiss me!" and you see Ian, and then she's getting strangled (or fucked)... And then she giggles! She wasn't strangled at all! Ian kisses her goodbye sort of sweetly, and she laughs, and the film ends. Ends right before the part of the video where every single person on this show murders her, one by one, in a queue that stretches back as far as Hilton Head.
The girls are just as horrified as you can be, and it's so great, just all the fog and lights in the cemetery and everybody staring with their mouths hanging open, and then there's A, watching them search for her, holding the projector, being sassy. Just relaxing there, in the cemetery. Crunchin' it and brunchin' it at the old Rosewood Boneyard.
SO LIKE WTF?
Well. I just don't know. I mean, you got the sense last week that things were out of control and that the whole story was moving around on this fundamental level and that the gamechangers were coming. And now it's so chaotic that there's no way to tell what's going to happen, which is very exciting and disturbing in the same way that this show is exciting and disturbing. But trying to figure out what actually happened? Still a challenge.
Aria is getting pulled into a thing with Jason and also being disappointed by Ezra's lack of gumption and the presence of Jackie Molina. Mikey is going nuts in an unspecified way. Spencer has "betrayed" her sister for the "last" time, thanks to having Ian's phone in her purse, and probably at the expense of the pittance of affection her parents were finally showing. Ashley just got a hell of a backstory, and Hanna's back with Caleb finally.
All the girls get a pass from Rosewood because Ian's finally in the ground, and was stalking them, and confessed that he killed one of them -- but thanks to Emily, we and the Liars now know that he neither confessed nor killed her. Which means that A probably did kill Ian that night in the clock tower, and has been using the Liars to set up his guilt so that Alison's actual murder will be officially solved but not really.
What's confusing is that Garrett and Jenna have been working with Logan Reed this whole time to lead them there, even before Ian died, and ... this has something to do with Jason?
What's not at all confusing is that Alison was on pleasant terms with Ian Thomas -- her stalker, pornographer and lacrosse coach -- until the very hour she died. Of course she was. He was probably her favorite person on earth. She probably loved him for how gross he was just like the girls loved her. Creeps probably did it upside down watching Bumfights, or competing to see who could drink milk in the creepiest fashion.
Anyway, week: Fashion show! Gone horrifically wrong! The most beautiful words in the English language!