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So the deal with Emily is that there are two deals with Emily. Number one, she has an ulcer that she developed in reaction to lying to her Texan parents about the Danby scholarship, which is funny because I assumed that everybody had the same experience I did in high school, where your ulcers go away the second you figure out you're gay. But then, I've never been embroiled in any matriculation scams, nor have I been stalked by ninja ghosts very often. Number two, props to those perspicacious viewers who assumed A was juicing her because that's what was going on this whole time: HGH, apparently topical, in her IcyHot.
Whatever A's plan was goes down the tubes when Emily hits first the floor and then the ER, though -- unless A is also empowered with ulcer-giving -- and the whole Danby thing ends up being taken off Emily's plate altogether by her wonderful dad. After all, he explains, it's not worth eating yourself from the inside out just to get one crappy college scholarship when there are plenty of colleges that would want Emily just as she is. Not only is she brilliant and an absurdly hard worker, she's also gay and she's like every race. Plus, if those things don't cover her essays, she can always write about her best friend that got murdered that time.
Spencer finds out some facts about that, since Emily's hospitalization proves the perfect pretext to slip past the suddenly very present Wren, dress herself and Aria up as candy stripers, and go rooting around in the morgue files*. There's a page missing from Ali's, but the girls are more focused on the fact that Alison was murdered with the hockey stick for sure, and then BURIED ALIVE. Of course, everybody assumes that this indicts Jason, as illustrated by the gruesome x-rays of Ali's bashed-in skull, but nobody wants to tell Aria that because she is crushed out.
Besides, Aria's too busy avoiding Ezra and her family, which is in meltdown thanks to Mikey's ongoing delinquentism. Ella delivers some powerful -- and pretty heartbreaking -- acting as she gets stonewalled again and again by the implacable fury (and well-placed nastiness) of Mike's continued resentment. Ella correctly identifies his issues and attempts to elicit his thoughts, but is brutally rebuffed because of that time she moved out and then moved right back in again. Still no word on why he's stealing guns and objets but I think I spotted a manifesto being written on his computer at one point.
*(Which, welcome to the very scariest A-Tag of all time! Because the page that is missing was stolen by one of the morgue bodies under one of the morgue sheets, because it was A! Right there being a dead body! And then she slowly sits up in the tag and looks at you and throws the sheet at you and GAH! The only thing that could make this creepier is if it were Jenna under there!)
Jenna and Garrett creepster around in their usual Moose-and-Squirrel way, talking about how the girls must not apply pressure to the Thing of how Jason maybe killed Alison. It doesn't feel like they're protecting him, exactly, but there's something once again about throwing the Liars off the track, which is even more mysterious since he obviously did not kill her. There's such a surfeit of gorgeous creepiness in this episode that they almost feel like an afterthought.
Which is saying a lot, considering the episode starts with the Liars watching Jenna do a blind girl striptease in full view of her porch windows before making out with Garrett, causing them all to gasp, because even with the plethora of clues it still took Jenna and Garrett fully doing it in front of them for the Liars to realize something was up. I don't know what it means, though, and despite the great deal of discussion this engenders I don't get the feeling the ladies really do either.
Hanna thinks everything's going great on the homefront when her Dad sleeps over -- freaking poor Emily right out once again -- but then a save-the-date arrives for his wedding and Ashley does some personal inventory. Turns out she's not interested in flipping the script on Isobel -- Dad's Other Woman that he's now marrying -- and in fact is not interested in getting the band back together at all. But Hanna's problems do not end there! There's also a dude following Caleb around town, looking very undercover and probably related to Caleb's sketchy past.
Once Hanna screams his head off though, in her usual revolutionary fashion, we get the feeling that the poor guy is actually just privately trying to get Caleb to deal with a family member and he's not a cop at all. I'm guessing Mom, because Lord knows Hanna's got enough daddy issues for everybody. They end the episode on a bittersweet note, musing how they are both feral aliens who were raised by wolves and will probably never be normal or happy, which is probably like 99% of their conversations anyway.
In the end, what really matters is that even for a show that's about very pretty girls and boys wearing very pretty outfits and doing very ugly things, this episode saw the Liars and moms particularly looking twice as gorgeous as usual. Emily's on the mend and the Danby pressure is off, Aria couldn't give less of a hilarious shit about Ezra but her family's imploding, Spencer is torn between Toby and Wren and acting even more ghoulish than usual, and Hanna's back to hating her mom. Something truly insane is going to happen week; meantime, check back Thursday for the full recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: It was discovered that Officer Garrett was in possession of a mysterious lantern created by Jenna Thing, which caused Spencer no amount of heartache since she was sitting alone in his car with him when this terrifying (?) fact was discovered.
Liars: "You were just sitting alone in his car with him? What happened then?"
Spencer: "It was truly death-defying, as only cliffhangers on this show can be. I got Aria's text about the lantern..."
Liars: "Yes? YES?"
Spencer: "...And then I told him to take me home. So he took me home."
Liars: "Whew, that was a close one."
Liars: "Why do you think she gave him that lantern? I can't think of a single reason, especially with the ample clues we've been given for the last twenty episodes that they are dating."
Spencer's Autism: "We don't know positively that she gave it to him."
Hanna's Realism: "Yeah, maybe he bought it at the Blind Girl Craft Fair."
Emily: "Samara volunteers for that."
Liars: "Firstly, why would he even know that girl?"
Aria: "Because he lives across the street from her. Remember how we all live across the street from each other? How everybody on this show lives across the street from everybody else on this show, and yet all we ever seem to look at is Spencer's yard and that one window of Alison's house?"
Liar: "Maybe he just brings raw meat to Jenna's cat."
Spencer's Autism: "Toby lives there too, and they don't have a cat."
Hanna's Realism: "Then maybe he was bringing over raw meat for Jenna."
Emily: "Thanks for stopping our roving Mystery Machine Conspiracy Tour outside my old house so I could once again turn off the new owners' alarm."
Hanna: "They're going to need that in working order since Aria's brother is constantly robbing people."
Spencer: "Hanna, be nice."
Hanna: "I'm just saying he's a psycho delinquent. It's not judging and it's hardly hypocritical, considering I'm a sociopathic shoplifter and my boyfriend is a grey-hat hacker and surveillance expert."
Emily, hilariously narrating what they can all plainly see: "Oh my God, it's Garrett's car! Pulling up outside his house! Which is across the street from Toby's house! Oh my God, it's got red racing stripes! Oh my God, he's getting out of the car! Oh my God, he's crossing the street to Toby's house! Oh my God, he's going inside! Oh my God, trees turn carbon dioxide into oxygen! Right there in Toby's yard!"
In a rare show of stealth, the girls all get out of the car and slam their doors as loudly as possible, then clop-clop across the street to peek inside Toby's windows. This actually happens:
Spencer: "Hanna, walk quieter."
Hanna: "She can't hear us! She's blind!"
Inside the house is abruptly Jenna, who abruptly takes off her clothes in front of the open window with a scary grin on her face as though she is attempting to seduce the Liars. Then, she takes off her giant shades so you know she's still blind or else she would never do that because she looks crazy with them off. Then Garrett grinds her from behind.
Liars: "Oh my God, Garrett and Jenna! We have solved the case of whether they are dating, and the answer is that they are dating! No wonder he had that lantern, it's probably her creepy way of saying thanks for the sex! That's so Jenna."
AM
Emily is in the Marin kitchen, doing crunches and grunting because -- just like every day of her life -- today is the day of the big swim meet that defines her entire future. At every point in this episode she slathers on more pain cream, like, every time you see the punctuation mark we call a period (".") just assume that she's dabbing some on.
Hanna: "Emily, stop it. You know physical exercise is a trigger image for me."
Emily, rolling around in a puddle of pain cream: "I-cannot-ever-stop."
Hanna: "Let's discuss the whole thing we already discussed last night about Jenna and Garrett and how finally finding out they're dating proves nothing and solves nothing because we still have no idea what she has to do with anything and we've already decided fifty times not to trust Garrett."
Emily, squirting pain cream everywhere: "I-need-to-carb-load."
Hanna: "Have this thimble of OJ."
Emily, workin' that pain cream: "That-is-too-much-OJ-I-have-to-watch-my-sugar-intake."
Hanna, awesomely: "Oh yeah? Watch me intake this big-ass bowl of Cocoa Puffs!"
Hanna: "Hey Emily, are you always this psycho before a meet? Ya givin' me Spencer Eyes right now."
Emily, pain cream in hand: "Between whatever poison is eating me from the inside out, this pain cream to which I've clearly become addicted, the most important swim meet of all time, the fact that I'm lying to my parents in absentia -- not to mention the fact that I am growing nards -- I do not have time for anything that slows me down, like thinking or feelings."
Hanna: "I never bother with those things. Listen, are you still feeling Jiminy Crickets about lying to your parents? Because a conscience is also not something I have time for."
Emily: "I actually take lying to my parents seriously, because my parents can be trusted. But I understand where you're..."
Hanna: "-- Pause. Apparently my dad stayed over and fucked my mom last night?"
Dad: "Hey, girls. Awkward?"
Hanna: "Moderately. For you. Me, I'm overjoyed that you're going to live here again from now on."
Ashley: "Hey, girls. Hey, ex-husband. Awkward?"
Dad: "Hanna says no."
Ashley: "Postman says yes. Check out this save-the-date for your wedding in six weeks that just arrived in the mail."
Dad: "These things are bound to happen when all we ever do is drink."
Hanna: "Bloody Marys all around!"
'ASTINGS 'OUSE OF H'ELOCUTION
Wren: "Oi, guvner! Oi'm just here to deliver me flowers, Oi am."
Spencer: "Wren. Weird. You certainly are British today."
Wren: "It's a lovely 'oliday wif Spencer, it is! Oi brought these flowers for Melissa in the boot of my lorry."
Spencer: "Mmkay, quit it. Why are you here."
Wren: "S'a roit plummer of a problem, guvner. Seems Oi requested to work at Rosewood General before the weddin' to your sister went pear-shaped, and now Oi've been called up to transfer, Oi 'ave. Now Oi live alone in a garret, wheezin' and barely able to leave me 'ouse for the damp. Oi fink offen of the days when Oi could find you sunnin' yourself out on the deck and simply gaze at your young and naïve self. Fought Oi'd swing by and pay me respects to the missus on the occasion of 'er paedophile's 'orrible suicide."
Spencer: "I did not catch any of that. What can you tell me about the autopsy procedure for blunt trauma?"
Wren: "Oi'm not that kinda doctor, me luv. You'd 'ave to take it up wif the 'ospital pafologist. Now, 'ow about some tea and light spanking?"
Spencer: "I think I understand that one? And I've got an age-appropriate boyfriend these days. Unless that was some kind of rhyming slang and you're actually just asking for a snack or something, in which case I need to get to school ASAP."
SCHOOL
Aria: "Well, if my life is anything to go by, your parents will totally get back together."
Hanna: "That's what I was thinking."
Aria: "So first of all, is that even what your mom wants? Would she move forward with that? Stranger things have happened; Ella and Byron, for example."
Hanna: "We'll figure it out. They. Them. They'll figure it out."
Emily: (Is either on coke or using those Hermione things to turn time around so she can do even more crunches; like, she just goes sailing through the scene without even really stopping or slowing down beyond a lovely blur.)
Hanna: "Emily, seriously. Spencer is a virus you don't want to catch."
Emily, zooming away, applying yet more cream to herself: "Swimswimswimswim!"
Hanna spots two things at this point: One, Caleb doing his dirty cyberbusiness; Two, a dude watching Caleb from the street who fully has a file with pictures and charts having to do with Caleb. What she does about these two things and how they are connected only makes sense if you're Hanna: She runs up to Caleb, scares off his customer, yells at Caleb until he runs away telling her she's not the boss of him, and the stares as he walks away. At no point does she tell him that the car he is now walking about a foot away from contains a detective. As we will see, this is a choice she's making and not just weird Hanna behavior: Her abandonment issues are at red alert because she just got both her dad and Caleb back, and if one single thing goes wrong she's going to fail life.
LOCKERS
Garrett: "Hi, Spencer. Fun hanging out the other night discussing bludgeoning in my cop car and then abruptly having to take you home."
Spencer: "HEY DUDE I AM OVER BLUDGEONING."
Garrett: "Really? Because you're kind of laser-focused about everything and you seemed to have a whole list of questions to ask me."
Spencer: "I AM TOTALLY OVER QUESTIONS. PASSING PHASE."
Garrett: "Okay. Glad you're not acting suspicious in the slightest."
Spencer: "NEWSFLASH I AM ALWAYS LIKE THIS."
Some Dude: "Mikey Montgomery, is it true that you are assuming the new personality of being a house robber or dangerous anarchist?"
Mikey: "Leave! Me! Alone!"
(They weirdly start fighting even though Dude has a point.)
Ella, appearing and hissing authoritatively at them: "Get to class, tools."
Mikey: "Fine! I love class. I was going to go to class anyway, Mom!"
Ella: "Hey, wait. You missed our family meeting all about you and now you're starting fights in the hallway and you've been stealing shit from everybody in town. I'm beginning to get a little worried."
Mikey, sprinting away: "I don't want to talk about it!"
Ella: "Well, okay then. Parenting for the day, check."
ROSEWOOD POTTERY UNIVERSITY OF POTTING
Ezra: "Hey, remember me?"
Aria: "Nope."
Ezra: "Somehow when I touch you now it seems really molesty."
Aria: "Yep."
Ezra: "Will you come to my house?"
Aria: "Nope."
Ezra: "Talk to me?"
Aria: "Nope."
Ezra: "Look me in the face?"
Aria: "Nope."
Ezra: "Acknowledge our relationship in any way?"
Aria: "Look, I'm potting here."
Ezra: "I'll just go fuck myself then, huh?"
Aria: "Whatever, bro."
Ezra: "Stop by the apartment later?"
Aria: "Ugh. Fine."
Ezra: "Yes!!!"
Punches the air, skips off obliviously.
LOCKERS
Emily's Dad, as she puts on some pain cream: "Emily! Surprise visit from Texas! Let's discuss my travel itinerary at unbelievable length as though suspending disbelief weren't clearly the main skill of our show's viewers."
Emily, squirting pain cream directly into her own mouth: "Dad, I am unbelievably stressed out by your sudden appearance. But I can't tell you why. And you aren't allowed to glad-hand the Danby rep, and I can't tell you why that either."
Dad: "Well, the painful angry squint in your eyes tells me nothing's wrong. Break a lung*!"
Emily, shooting pain cream between her toes with a dirty syringe she found: "Okay Dad, it's nice to see you but please wear a disguise to the meet in case that recruiter recognizes you and my web of lies falls apart."
Dad: "Whatever you say, sport!"
*(Or whatever, I don't know swimming words. Also, he keeps calling Pam Emily's "Ma" in this really weird Dorothy Zbornak way that I don't recall their family usually doing.)
Immediately after her dad takes off, Emily -- while heating up a spoon full of pain cream -- drops to the ground in a writhing death spasm and the only person that can help her is Garrett, who is still roving the halls because he's teaching Driver's Ed this week.
LACUNA TO EMERGENCY ROOMA
Emily, waking up and feeling around immediately for her pain cream: "Dad? Why am I in the hospital? What about the swim meet? And where is that fucking pain cream?"
Dad: "Turns out lying to us about this recruitment scam has caused you to develop an ulcer. Also the stress of your parents abandoning you. Also the stress of being gay in high school maybe. Also the stress of a ghost is trying to kill you through text messages."
Emily: "I gotta get out there! I gotta slap on some pain cream and get out there!"
Dad: "Um, you have a hole. On the inside of your body. Where you keep powerful churning acid. How about you sit tight."
Emily: "SWIMMING IS MY LIFE! [But not like you think. Actually, I've been entrapped into performing at my best by a ghost ninja who lied to you about my collegiate prospects.]"
Dad: "Okay, why don't I call the recruiter and make sure your offer's still on the table? Or I could have Pam do it. Sorry, your Ma."
Emily: "No, I'll call him. He's my imaginary friend anyway, I should be the one."
ELSEWHERE IN THE HOSPITAL
Hanna cannot get over ulcers: What they are, how they work, who gets them and why. Unsurprising, considering she's always viewed her own body as a pet Chow that might go rabid at any time, but it's still annoying for Spencer, who views her own body as a collectible muscle car that requires constant maintenance and assessment.
Spencer: "Okay, why are you avoiding Caleb? Anything to get you off the ulcer thing. And get that face off your face, you're going to scare Emily if you look at her all grossed out and fascinated like that."
Hanna: "I am not talking to Caleb. Essentially I'm afraid I'll accidentally tell him that the cops are following him and noting his every move, and then he'll move away again."
Spencer: "Fuck the police, first of all. You have to know they're following you before you can start with your evasion techniques. And secondly, if you don't tell him you'll probably lose him anyway. To prison."
Hanna: "Telling Caleb about the cops is like telling my dad he has a fiancée. Either way, I lose. Hence my conundrum."
Spencer: "Girl, there is no conundrum because you can't argue the facts. Your dad already knows he's engaged, and Caleb is getting followed whether or not you tell him, so tell him. The end. I thought you stopped being crazy this season. Lord knows I didn't."
THE MARVELOUS MARIN MANSION
Tom: "Hey, Ashley. Shall we continue our delirious midlife folie à deux? It hasn't actually sent our daughter screaming over the edge yet."
Ashley: "Listen, I wanted to talk to you about that. You know how your fiancée is a dirty whore that stole a married man?"
Tom: "Yup! What of it?"
Ashley: "I sort of feel like the Her now."
Tom: "As it was explained to me by our daughter, I am still in love with you."
Ashley: "See, right there. I think maybe I've been a real asshole about this."
Tom: "I don't see why I can't have everything I want and just leave entire families in the wake of my selfish desires!"
Ashley: "That was the perfect thing to say. Have fun being married to a whore. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have all this wine to drink."
Tom: "I still don't get what the problem is, but okay."
HOSPITAL ROOM
Hanna: "Remember when I got hit by a car and was paraplegic for like a week?"
Emily: "I think that maybe lying to my parents has caused me this ulcer. It can't just be the stress of being constantly stalked and attacked by a dead girl, or else you guys would have ulcers. It's got to be something having to do with how I'm the only person out of the four of us who is actually a good person, and that means this big lie. So I better face up."
Aria: "Emily, to cheer you up I brought coffee! Delicious, deep rich bitter acidic coffee, so strong it's eating a hole in this cup!"
Hanna: Explains ulcers like she invented them.
I will say, though, that for some of us the greatest wisdom in this episode is to be found in this scene, where we discuss the fact that thoughts and fears and deception have a physical weight and physical consequences. I had myself some ulcers and some powerful GERD in the years leading up to figuring out I was gay, and if I were the kind of person who was able to keep a secret -- or a single damned thought quiet, obviously -- I can only assume that staying mum after that point would have increased them.
But it's a tricky thing to approach, from the Before side, because it centers on Thoughts You Can't Think. If you find yourself coming close to a thought you can't think, you will reroute your processes just to stay safe. And a huge part of growing up is learning to feel yourself pulling away from the thoughts you can't think, because we go through much of our early lives just following the mental path of least resistance. Some of us live our whole lives that way, unexamined and under the thumb of ulcers and mood swings and irrational fears and miscommunications.
You have to actually train yourself to look at that stuff, turn over the rock and see the grody underneath, do the Alison thing, do the disclosure thing -- silence the internalized voices of everybody else's judgment and disgust, because they're imaginary anyway, and realize that you don't have to tell anybody the thing until it's time -- if you ever want that ulcer to go away.
Because what the ulcer is telling you is, "This is how much it hurts to avoid the thought you can't think." And what the ulcer means is, "Nobody's watching, you're safe in here to think whatever thoughts you want and nobody will know." And what the ulcer wants more than anything is to go away, so your body stops hurting from the fear, because there is nothing inside you that you need to be afraid of. It's all you. It's all pieces of you that you're allowed to understand and know; it's all pieces of you that come together when you learn to love yourself completely.
Liars: Discuss Emily's options, even though she's already made up her mind, as though she's not in the room.
Emily: "Guys. This part is over. Move on."
Spencer moves on, all the way out into the hospital, to find the hospital pathologist so she can steal Alison's autopsy report and see if she died from a hockey stick to the head. Wren immediately finds her.
Wren: "Spencer! Your mate is on the second story, or what you Yanks call the third floor. Shall we take the lift, or the apples and pears?"
Spencer: "What are you ever talking about?"
Wren, like she's never been on an elevator before: "Looks like we're going for a ride!"
Spencer: "Hey, what's that one floor that is lit up all green like the Matrix or that one time I visited you at the hospital to grill you about the drugs Melissa wanted for her corpse husband?"
Wren: "Pafology, Morgue, Kitchen, Laundry, Radiology. Fancy a curry takeaway? Oi can do up a nice English breakfast if you loik."
Spencer: "I just want you to look away for like one second so I can sneak away and dress up like a candy striper and break into the Morgue. Look over there! Etchings of schoolboys getting spanked by upperclassmen."
Wren: "Wotcher! Every Englishman's secret Kryptonoit!"
IN WHICH GARRETT THING & JENNA THING DISCUSS THE JASON THING
(Verbatim, because who the hell knows.)
Jenna: "What makes you think they know?"
Garrett: "Last night Spencer was hammering me with questions about the murder weapon, whether the coroner could tell if it was used by a man or a woman."
Jenna: "What did you say?"
Garrett: "Nothing. Didn't get a chance to say anything. She cut me off and ran home. But then when I saw her again this morning suddenly it was off her radar."
Jenna, with disgust: "She's playing you."
Garrett: "I don't think so."
Jenna: "Do they know about Jason?"
Garrett: "I'm not sure, but they're definitely questioning whether Ian killed her."
Jenna: "We need to take care of this."
...And scene. You tell me.
WRENTERVENTION
Wren: "Oi Emily, Oi was just stoppin' in for a chat about your illegal performance enhancers."
Emily: "You are mistaken. I am Emily Fields, I don't roll like that."
Wren: "You've more HGH in your bloodstream than a Scotsman does resentment."
Emily: "Yeah, there's a mistake. I don't do that shit."
Wren: "Why wee girl ye've got more steroids in your tissues than the Queen Mum's got purses."
Emily: "I am just going to eat some hospital food now..."
Wren: "Ye may never eat a curry takeaway again! No bangers, nor yet any mash! Toad In the Hole will rip a hole in your toad! And so forth!"
Emily knows, obviously, that somehow A is slipping her performance drugs, but of course she can't tell Wren that, so she just asks to take the tests again and leave her parents out of it. Wren either agrees or disagrees, I don't know, I don't speak that.
HANNA GOES HITCHCOCK
Hanna comes screamin' around the corner wearing sunglasses and a huge scarf over her hair, screams at Caleb to get in the car, and then goes peeling off not the sunset, leaving a very distracted undercover detective in their wake. Why do anything normal when you can do it Hanna Style?
SPENCER GOES HITCHCOCK ALSO
Aria arrives in the Matrix basement and is abruptly dressed up like a candy striper by Spencer, despite the fact that the morgue is unattended and a few feet away.
MIKEY MONTGOMERY'S ONGOING MELTDOWN
Ella: "I hope you're doing homework, on that radically different computer setup from last week."
Mikey: "Oh, it is. In that I am working from home on my five-thousand page manifesto. Hand me that copy of The Catcher in the Rye, won't you?"
Ella: "Why did you fight with that boy today?"
Mikey: "He's a tool of our capitalist oppressors, Mom. All football players are."
Ella: "I thought you guys were friends."
Mikey: "Yeah, then came praxis. Who has time for friends when you could be robbing people?"
Ella: "Let's talk about that. You seem to be going balls-out insane."
Mikey: "I don't feel like talking about it. Besides, it's almost time for me to get out my tinfoil helmet because the Fox satellite is getting close to overhead."
Ella: "We are damn well going to talk about it."
Mikey, bouncing: "Oh, like that time Dad cheated on you and you moved out for five seconds? PEACE."
Ella, crying on his window seat: "If only parenting amounted to more than just gently asking open-ended questions and then watching them stomp away to their weapons stockpiles."
SOME LUXURIOUS CABIN WE'VE NEVER HEARD OF
Caleb: "Wait, so this castle belongs to the Hastings family? I guess that makes sense because they're rich, but it must be pretty far out of town considering how often those two fought over that hotly contested barn in the yard."
Hanna: "This is just where I take the boys I kidnap. Don't ask questions."
Caleb: "How about you take off that ridiculous costume and start making sense?"
Hanna: "This detective is following you. I wasn't going to tell you because I am losing grip on every part of my life and my mother only taught me to look at men as possessions, but then I realized you're in a better position to stay here if you know to avoid the cops."
Caleb: "Thanks for the info. But -- and I'm addressing your abandonment issues directly at this time -- I am not going anywhere."
Hanna: "That's what guys always say."
Caleb: "No, that's what your Dad says, and if you think for one second about how creepy it is to assume every guy is your dad, I think we'll be in a much healthier place."
Hanna: "Is this about the cage fighting or car-stealing or whatever that was?"
Caleb: "I'm going to say yes. Possibly I don't even know that it's about something else."
Hanna: "Well, how do we get rid of him?"
Caleb: "Let him come to me, say whatever he's going to say, deal with it then."
Hanna: "That all sounds very unlikely. Also, my ADD would never let something just slide like that, so stay tuned. And when you do run away, take me with you. You know I am good at camping."
Caleb: "If by camping you mean doing it, then yes. We will enjoy lots of camping."
PAIN CREAM, IT'S A PAIN SCREAM
Emily opens her hospital food thing -- for some reason she has decided to dine in the dark this evening -- and right there is a big old tube of that pain cream so of course she thinks she's detoxing like in Trainspotting and Melissa's devil baby is going to crawl across the ceiling but then no: It's another trick by A, who is like, "Um, how did you not see this coming?"
A just wants us to do our best.
Aria: "That is fucked up! Pain cream!"
Spencer: "How long has this been in your system? Did it damage any organs? What are your phosphate levels? Follow my finger. Wiggle your toes. Push back against my hand. Open your mouth and let me get a look at your..."
Emily: "-- Stop! Who cares that I've been slowly poisoned by performance enhancing drugs? This is on my permanent record!"
Spencer: "Dear Audience. Your medical records are private."
Emily: "They'll tell my parents and my parents will go straight to Danby and then many lies will happen all at once and I will be lined up in front of an execution squad for lying to adults and where the motherfucking fuck is my pain cream?"
Spencer: "We can't let A win. Remember when she ran over Hanna? Fuck her."
Emily: "She already won. She is winning all the time. She is taking us the fuck down. Aria is probably !"
Aria: "...Did somebody say my name? Sorry, I wasn't paying attention."
Emily: "I said A will probably come after you in Season Three."
Aria: "New plan, we all move to Texas."
Spencer: "You bitches better man up. I am not taking on this ghost alone."
Emily: "Wait, why are you dressed like Alison in my fantasies and Hanna's weird hallucinations?"
Aria: "Get a load of Lucy Ricardo over here wanting us to sneak into the morgue."
THE MORGUE OF THE MATRIX HAS YOU
While Emily's Dad abruptly removes her entire recruiter/HGH storyline off the table by telling her that college can go fuck itself, Spence and Aria make their way to the basement.
Aria: "It sure is cold in this morgue."
Spencer: "Yeah. That's a good thing?"
Aria's Realism: "Oh my God, the ME eats Oreos down here? Hell."
Spencer's Autism: "Bet they stay fresh longer."
Luckily*, Rosewood is one of those hospitals where there are no computers and only one person dies each year, so Alison's file is immediately available.
Spencer, verbatim, going through the alphabetically ordered files: "Okay, there's gotta be some kind of system..."
*(SPOILER: Less luckily, one of the bodies down there with them under a sheet is totally not a body it is a living person who is lying there under a sheet listening to every word they say! FUCK!)
THE MARIN MATRIMONIAL MEMORIAL
Hanna: "Mom, why are you cleaning out the fridge of all that stuff? Please don't say it's Dad's favorite foods. Please say you're doing it for when Emily comes home so she doesn't have to look at anything but porridge and we all have to live on porridge. That would be preferable."
Ashley: "I kicked your dad out, kiddo. Again."
Hanna: "That's really going to kick a hole in our plan where he comes back to live with us and you guys get remarried and Alison never dies and I never get run over."
Ashley: "See, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."
Hanna: "He doesn't even love her! He told me he hates her and she hits him! He said his new stepdaughter spits indoors! He only loves you!
Ashley: "Those are some absurd lies, but you're sweet."
Hanna: "Just tell me you want to be with him, and I will go to war to make that happen."
Ashley: "The kicker is that I don't. Your dad is kind of a douche."
MORGUE, WHILE A FAKE DEAD PERSON IS TOTALLY LISTENING! OH MY GOD
Aria: "Spencer, use your FBI-level forensics skills to decode this autopsy report."
Spencer: "It looks like somebody bashed her bitch head in with my hockey stick with my name on it -- probably me, or my sister, or Jason -- and then they buried it in the yard and then got amnesia about it."
Aria: "Well, not Jason obviously, but other than that I follow. Go on?"
Spencer: "And then... Oh, this is awful... Aria, she had dirt in her lungs. She was aspirating dirt when she actually died."
Aria: "You don't mean..."
Spencer: "-- Yes, Watson. Our friend Alison DiLaurentis was buried alive!"
RANDOM STREET, OUT OF COSTUME
Hanna has fucking had enough.
Hanna: "Hey. HEY! YOU! IN THE CAR!"
Detective: "Ma'am?"
Hanna: "STOP FOLLOWING CALEB AROUND!"
Detective: "But I just..."
Hanna: "[Some bogus vague wording where she thinks she's telling him Caleb is a new man and will not pay for his Allentown mistakes, but is clearly also meant to convince the detective that whoever his real client is -- probably a millionaire dad or uncle or something, because most homeless people are in fact just doing it to be jerks -- will think that Caleb has made his own decision not to reenter the family fold, so the guy drives off.]"
Hanna, at large: "Anybody else? Frankly I'm not even sure that was the same guy! I will take all of y'all down! I swear! Whattaya got? Come at me, bro! COME AT ME"
REPOSE FOR EMILY
Emily: "You guys were just telling me that medical records were private, and now you're stealing the most intimate medical records of all?"
Spencer: "I'm going to return it later. I have a whole scuba costume picked out. But look at all this information. Be informed by it!"
Emily: "It looks like Jason killed his sister and then buried her and then forgot."
Spencer: "I know! Thank you! And Aria's being so fake about it, too."
DOWNSTAIRS
Ezra: "Is there anything I can do? For you? For Emily? On this show?"
Aria: "Not really."
Ezra: "Can I bring you a magazine? Some coffee? Pain cream?"
Aria: "Covered, dude."
Ezra: "Can we just hold hands?"
Aria: "I am like so busy with stuff."
Jason calls and I swear to God she thinks about answering it right in front of Ezra for a second.
Ezra: "Is that Jason DiLaurentis?"
Aria: "Maybe. No, it's my Dad. No... I don't know. I have to go, dude."
Ezra: "When can I see you again? Can I bring you flowers? Put on a costume? Lounge around naked and flexing and holding my breath? How about that gaywad thing with the grocery sacks, can we do that again?"
Aria: "We'll see, okay."
Ezra: "I am hanging by a thread here Aria."
Aria: "And yet I could care less. Sucks to date children, huh."
You should read Lolita. It's not about what you think it's about -- we've talked about this before -- but it's really amazing when this part happens in the book, like, Lola just loses interest because he's not actually that interesting and it's like duh, reason #not to be a pedophile is that kids get bored super easily.
PRIVATE DICK & FERAL CHILDREN
Detective: "I'm telling you, he knows I'm tailing him... I'm sorry, but from the awkwardly vague way the crazy girl's threat was worded, I don't think he wants to see you."
Ed McMahon: "Well, I guess we'll just go to the person on the list. Load the balloons and the giant check back into the van, boys."
Hanna & Caleb, watching a scary ginger family eat ice cream: "I wish we had parents."
HOSPITAL: UPSTAIRS
Emily: "Hey Spence, where's page five?"
Spencer: "Did you forget to count again?"
Emily: "Um, that's Hanna. It's a hole in my stomach lining, not my brain. See? One, two, three, four, dot dot dot, six. Fill in the blank, you patronizing motherfucker."
Spencer: "WHERE IS PAGE FIVE?"
HOSPITAL: DOWNSTAIRS
A-Tag: "Maybe it has something to do with my impersonating a corpse right there in the room with you!"
I told you! And then she throws the sheet at you slash the camera, and it's SO SCARY!
Week: We see if the whole Page Five thing even matters. I hope it does and I hope it's something amazing like, "the weapon was wielded by a blind left-handed woodwind player," and they'll be like GOTCHA, and then it's like, "...or a right-handed stoner related to the victim," and Aria will start crying and whining about how she unceremoniously dumped Ezra for no reason, but Spencer will still keep reading, "...or a black hipster lesbian in a blonde wig who is cult-susceptible," and the teddy bear in the corner will slowly rise up and out will come Maya, Christian wolf-bite chunks taken all out of her, and she'll shoo the girls out of the room and say, "Give me that pain cream, little lady. You got a lotta pain, and I aim to take it allll away."
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently also recaps True Blood, Gossip Girl, and Desperate Housewives for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, most recently A Friday Night Lights Companion.