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It's Evil Stepsister's first day in Rosewood, and she's being eerily kind and meek around the Liars. Which is not as comforting for Hanna as it could be, considering the other Liars and her boyfriend Caleb have been having all kinds of secret meetings behind her back trying to find the clue in that video he keeps showing them. Finally, they do: A fake ID belonging to Alison in which she has dark brown hair. Some really bizarre stuff happens there, it's a long story involving wigs and pseudonyms and Nabokov and fake IDs, but the gist is that Spencer gets ahold of an old Alison claim check for yet another storage or pawn place, the contents of which we will find out about week.
The now constantly weeping Spencer figures out some dirt on Kate, which she uses to protect Hanna from her while also trying to allay Hanna's fears that she's being iced out of the group. This in addition to threats from A to stop Caleb from doing his video magics. Hanna puts these mysteries together and figures out that he's an Honorary Liar, and freaks out on Spencer, but in the end it's okay -- they hug, and cry, and so forth. It's odd but not entirely surprising that, at this point, Spencer really is probably the only one that's worried about Hanna.
In maybe bigger news -- at least in terms of Caleb's imminent demise -- Hanna tells him about approximately a third of the whole deal with A, which sends him to Jenna's house, where he gets menaced by Garrett some more. So I'm guessing he's going to be more, not less, suspicious moving forward. God, at this rate the mysterious architect could turn up, still clutching lasagna boxes and mechanical pens.
Oh, Aria. Right. So Byron engineers a promotion for Ezra that would involve him moving to New Orleans. I think they have young girls in New Orleans, so it should be fine. Less fine, though, is whatever's going on with Holden: On one of their fake dates, Aria spots some pretty gruesome bruises on his body. So I guess he's going on secret dates with a puncher or kicker and that's his big secret, probably. It just keeps getting weirder and more charming with that kid.
Speaking of Noel Kahn, he is omnipresent and doing nothing wrong at all -- even helps Maya with her phone! -- which as usual sends the Liars into paroxysms of rage and hatred toward him that still don't make any sense to me. And Jenna is still MIA, and Toby is still gone, which is half the reason Spencer's being so weird. (The other half is: She is a crazy person.)
On the Emily tip, Pam Fields comes back to town and gamely offers to take Emily and Maya to dinner. What a great idea, you're thinking, and you're right. Maya is her usual horrible self, Pam swings shut like a trap again, but in the end I guess Maya redeems herself by redecorating a bedroom, and they do more making out than you have ever seen. This was the lesbianest episode I can think of, actually.
So yeah, did things happen? Hanna telling Caleb about her stalker and the lasagna money, that was a biggie. And Kate is now fully deployed, which is exciting. Holden getting beat. Ezra being presented with some bogus decision about his future that will go nowhere. Maya has a gift for redecorating from the dollar store, and admits that she's being passive-aggressive toward Pam because she is a terrible old crone. Noel Kahn is still wonderful. Wigs are...
You know what, that's the big one. Wigs are now in play.
week: Jenna calls everybody bitches, Noel Kahn is menacing, Holden bruises more and Aria turns a whole lot of nothing into total instant drama.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Ashley Marin stole a bunch of money and then killed a succession of architects and their family members and impersonators to keep it out of the news. Hanna's rival stepsister moved to Rosewood, and Aria's mysterious beau Holden returned to same. Caleb came ever closer to becoming a Liar, Noel Kahn dumped Mona and took up with Jenna, and Ezra Fitz once again succumbed to his perversions.
LIAR'S CLUB
The Liars -- plus Caleb, minus Hanna -- sit around watching that video of the NAT Club investigating and/or lying in wait for good old Alison DiLaurentis. When Ian reveals his double-crossing surveillance and scuffles with Garrett, the box that Jason gave Aria falls to the floor, along with the camera, so now the gals are very interested in seeing what fell out of the box that night that maybe isn't in the box anymore.
It is at this point -- as Caleb is learning about the nitpicking downside of being part of this particular conspiracy -- that lonely Hanna starts calling them. First Emily, then Aria, then Caleb, and finally Spencer. Heh. Of course, it's Spencer that's got the ADD problems, so while the rest of them pressed Ignore with an alacrity that seemed near hateful, Spencer immediately answers the phone. So that she can lie to Hanna about how they are her friends.
Hanna: "Let's watch a movie! Even one of your artsy foreign ones, where all they do is stare out windows."
Spencer: "First of all, I'm not Aria. Second of all, I am busy spending time with my family."
Hanna: "Like you have a family."
It's a battle of wits between the smartest one and the dumbest one, but there is a twist in this battle when Emily randomly drops a bottle of sparkling water -- understandable -- which causes Aria to loudly exclaim, "Emily!" Not understandable. Aria, you worthless idiot.
Hanna: "Now I have figured it out. The reason you are all ignoring me is because you are all together in secret."
Spencer: "Did you figure out the other part where we are hanging out with Caleb? Like you asked us not to? Because of what we are clearly doing? And you just called him too?"
Hanna: "No! I have to go!"
Spencer yells at Emily and Aria equally, which is unfair because that was all Aria, and then they notice a thing on the screen in the video, which Caleb magically enhances to several billion times its original size, and then magically enhances to several billion times its original clarity, so they suddenly can see the object. You know, like how things work in real life.
At first they think it's like Melissa's driver's license or something, but once it is magically enhanced you can see that it's a fake ID of Alison, but with brown hair. Why, she looks like her own twin! They all wonder what that is about, why she would have multiple IDs with different hair colors, which is A) Fruitless, because the answer is that she was a crazy bitch that was probably running guns and B) Odd how they do it, because they just go, "That was weird, I wonder. Hmm." And then they all abruptly leave.
Spencer: "Please don't leave me alone! I am having Toby-related anxiety!"
Emily: "I have to go give Maya her insulin shot."
Aria: "I must give my own elderly lover medication."
Spencer loses her shit and Aria just stares at her and then they say the funniest things.
Aria: "I'm so sorry, I don't know how you're holding it together."
Spencer: "Believe me, I'm not as put together as I seem."
Okay? Can you believe it? Beneath the rock-solid exterior of Spencer Hastings -- that girl who is so miraculously holding it together that she regularly accuses people of murder, and calls the cops at least twice a week for no real reason -- lies perhaps a flightier, paranoid, more emotionally wounded version. Of a girl that gives Jenna Thing the creeps. Holdin' it together. The mind boggles. And again:
Spencer: "Tell me the truth. Am I the reason we're lying to Hanna?"
Reality: "Yeah. Completely and totally. You strong-armed everybody into using Caleb as your human hacker bait and they're still going along with it, because you are fucking compromised."
Aria: "There are just certain situations where you have to lie to your friends."
Reality: "Nope."
GROSS
Ezra: "Why won't you concentrate on me in our yucky makeout in my car?"
Aria: "I am okay with lying to my parents, but lying to my friends..."
Oh yeah, that's right. For some reason she told the Liars that Ezra never showed up that night in the middle of traffic in the rain, like an idiot. Maybe that's why, maybe she doesn't want them to know what an idiot their favorite teacher actually is.
Ezra: "Aria, I'm not ... asking you to lie to your friends. Why are you like this?"
Aria: "Because if anybody knows that one of us Liars is dating somebody, they eventually get murdered. So this is another one of those situations where you have to lie to your friends."
Ezra: "Are your parents ever going to accept that an adult man is molesting their child?"
Aria: "...Apparently this is a third of those situations. Yeah, that's coming right along."
Actually, what they say in reality is so much goddamn worse, you should hear it.
Aria: "I've been 'burned' before."
Ezra: "I thought you said your mom was 'warming' to the idea of us being a couple."
Aria: "She's... 'Thawing'."
Ezra: "And your dad?"
Aria: "How fast do glaciers 'melt'?"
Ezra: "Not very. That's why they call it the 'Ice' Age."*
Aria: "Well, you know what that means. It just means we have to generate more 'heat'!"
I mean, they are just the very worst. Aren't they? Do people take these assholes seriously? Are there people on this big blue marble that can sit through that and not snort their beverage immediately?
*(Jacob: "The fuck? What the fuck does that even mean, bro?")
MARIN
Ashley: "First of all, why aren't you with my friends? It's well past drinkin' time."
Hanna: "No idea. It's kind of annoying, how they're all isolating me, but also reminds me of how life used to be, so I'm kind of resigned to it."
Ashley: "Well, whatever. The second thing I wanted to talk to you about is how you're not allowed to throw up on your sister anymore."
Hanna: "Mom, she is a bitch. I am not being emotional or overstating the case when I look you very rationally in the eye and tell you that girl, that Kate? She is a stone cold bitch. If the ghost don't kill me, that girl is going to do it."
Ashley: "Well, be that as it may, Betty Buckley isn't around to save your ass, and the fact is that fighting with Kate will make us look trashy. She rides horses and that kind of shit, while you and I live in a halfway house for ethnic curiosities and hide our money in pasta. That's not the kind of comparison you want happening in public."
Hanna: "Does that mean you're not going to beat Isabel's ass if we run into her on Rosewood's one street or in its single restaurant?"
Ashley: "Hanna, Mommy needs a drink. Just don't embarrass yourself, okay?"
POST-DATE
Aria is late coming back -- from her thermogenic activities with Ezra, which apparently went into overtime, which barf -- but not so late that Byron notices. Just Holden. Holden, who is doing mysteries of his own in Philadelphia -- which apparently is not so very far away from Rosewood that your dad wouldn't bitch about bringing you into the city three-plus times a week -- and now wants to collectively imagine, out of Byron's hearing, the meal they might have had together, had they gone on the date. So that takes a while, and then Aria cracks a joke about how Byron's on a low-cholesterol diet, and obsessed with their feeding habits, and then his first question is what they had for dinner, and the only reason I bothered telling you about all of that is that Holden made a cute face when that happened, like a dog that's heard a sound it doesn't recognize. That's why.
LUNCH OR BREAKFAST OR SOMETHING
Hanna: "So what did you guys, collectively, do without me last night?"
Liars: "Well, we studied for a Chem test, and ignored your calls, and lied to you a lot."
Hanna: "If only I were not still in Earth Science."
Liars: "And today is Kate's first day of school. You are getting shit on like usual, it's true. Or maybe Kate will be nice now."
Hanna: "No, this is my impending death. At first I was stressed out about it but then I was like, 'I don't have friends anyway, so...' In some ways the embrace of death will be a welcome respite, considering you guys are being bitches, and my boyfriends are doing each other, and I keep getting run over by cars."
Liars: "Point taken."
Liars: "Going down the checklist by how crazy we are... Spencer, you're up."
Spencer: "Well, I am wearing Toby's underwear."
Liars: "Check."
Spencer: "Do not look at me like I'm one of those dogs with wheels for legs."
Liars: "That would be putting it kindly."
Kate: "Hello, Liars. It's my first day of school and I'm feeling a little nervous about it. This high school is like an Edward Hopper painting."
Liars: (Stare at her, google-eyed, unmoving.)
Kate: "Sooo... Good hang."
Spencer: "Kate, you look familiar. Did you kill anybody we know?"
Kate: "No, but I met you at that wedding you barely attended because you were too busy obeying dolls."
Spencer: "No, I'm pretty sure you're a murderer or a spy."
Hanna: "I'll walk you to class. I have nothing to look forward to in life anyway."
Kate: "That's really cool of you to not take revenge on me just for being 100 percent awful."
Hanna: "Actually, you didn't go nuts on me until I made that speech to Mona about what a fake bitch you are, so I guess we're even."
A: Something about Hanna's "Techno Boy Toy" and how putting the USB drive in the blender didn't actually help protect him, because he's still going down, and also because what are you, an idiot?
Kate: "Are you okay? You look like a person who just got a text from a conspiracy of ghosts impersonating her dead best friend."
QUAD
Liars: "Thank God Hanna's off getting killed by her stepsister so we can talk about that fake ID we saw."
Noel Kahn: (Is out in the atrium doing literally nothing of note.)
Liars: "God, that asshole."
Still mystifies me, to the point where I think he actually did something bad at some point besides play the guitar, and I simply forgot what it was. Although there's a line in this scene -- "He's A's new eyes" -- that seems really incongruous except for how people are always talking about A's eyes and then Mona said that thing about his eyes being hypnotic like Kaa.
Liars: "It's so frustrating! He and Jenna are always just out of reach! Them and their eyes."
Liars: "Maybe Ali wasn't scared of the NAT Club or A, and was actually engaging in spycraft to figure out more about them?"
Liars: "Like by creating an alter ego so she could get close enough to investigate. Or maybe even to expose A. Only on this show would 'maybe she created a complex alter ego, in our small town, to investigate her own murderer' make sense."
Hanna: "Two things. Number one, I'm now fairly certain Caleb still has those videos, and two, you all are lying to me about it. Mostly I'm pissed you were hanging out without me."
Liars: "Maybe A just has the wrong idea about Caleb still having the videos. You know, because the omnipresent and omniscient character that overhears our conversations and even our thoughts, and is able to turn invisible, is so often realistic and fallible."
Hanna: "Maybe. Can we talk about this later?"
Liars: "Sorry, we all have Chemistry class now. Enjoy your vocational training."
Hanna: "Janitorial Tutorial. Reach for the stars, Marin."
Spencer: "Nobody understands your problem better than I, because I'm literally willing the fate of my boyfriend onto your boyfriend and forcing everybody else to go along with it, but you have got to pull it together. Why, look at me!"
Hanna: "Me? You've been blubbering for the last three episodes at least."
Spencer: "I'm just saying you are becoming a real downer."
HOME FOR RETIRED VAMPIRE SLAYERS
Maya: "Thanks for visiting me in my assisted-living community. It gets lonely."
Emily: "Can we talk about how I got thrown off the swim team after falsifying a recruitment bid, got caught juicing, and went to jail?"
Maya: "Do you want to do horrible things to your ex-teammates?"
Emily: "You don't really know me at all. Further to that point, I was wondering if you'd like to spend some time with my mother, who hates you and kidnapped you one time."
Maya: "That sounds like it could go terribly wrong, due to my horrible personality."
Emily: "Maybe she was just having P-FLAG anxiety, and your horrible personality wasn't the problem?"
Maya: "Pretty sure that's not it, but whatever you want."
LUNCH
Liars: (Honestly trying to be nice to Kate, both because they care about Hanna and also because they don't care about Hanna.)
Kate: "So I can go back to Baltimore and visit my real friends on weekends, I mean, I'm not completely isolated and alone like Hanna here."
Spencer: "Have you ever been indicted for crimes in but not restricted to the following states..."
Kate: "-- No, girl. You don't know me. Let it go."
Liars, verbatim: "So Kate, will you be joining any clubs or sports teams?"
Kate: "What a strange way to phrase that question. I was thinking about..."
Spencer: "-- Debate! You were on TV in a debate with John McCain! And then killed a person!"
Kate: "Um, I was going to say Orchestra. What is wrong with your friend? Anyway, I'm going to go curry favor with the faculty in order to cement my WASP privilege."
Liars: "Even for you, Spencer Hastings, that mess was very Spencer Hastings."
Spencer: "No, I know that I know her. I am crazy, it's true, but I am also almost always right."
Hanna: "You have a point there, but you need to back off her. Stop giving her the fourth degree."
Liars: "Third degree..."
Hanna: "-- Whatever. Just stop giving her degrees, okay? What part of I have fucking had it with you three are you not getting?"
Mona: "I exist purely for situations like this. Why am I not in this episode? COME TO ME, HANNA MARIN."
MRS. FIELDS' COOKIES
Pam has left a note on Emily's locker -- Did you miss me? -- that Emily post-traumatically assumes is, like everything else, a cruel taunting threat from her stalker. But no, just her mom. It's nice to see old Pam.
Emily: "Chocolate Macadamia cookies! My favorite, possibly because of our ethnicity!"
Pam: "Canadian? Anyway, is there anybody you want to bring to dinner at the one restaurant in this entire town? The Liars, perhaps? Or a Special Friend?"
Emily: "Thank you for opening that door, you're a good mom. Yes, there is a person."
Pam: "Somebody new?"
Emily: "Kind of. Also kind of the opposite."
Pam: "Oh, Christ. You're dating Maya again? That girl is the worst!"
LOCKER ROOM
Everybody bounces around the locker room naked for a million years, and that includes the Liars since this is one of those episodes where they all have identical class schedules except for poor stupid Hanna. Eventually it's just Spencer and Kate, and you can already see the crazy activating in Spencer when they have this cute conversation:
Spencer: "Having trouble?"
Kate, with her locker: "It'll come to me..."
Spencer: "You know, it's funny. I can remember every single locker combination I've ever had, going all the way back to middle school."
Kate, cutely: "Impressive! But ultimately useless."
Spencer uncoils herself from the bench and strides into Kate's immediate facial area, looming taller and taller until she's brushing the ceiling, eyes glittering like poisonous diamonds, teeth becoming razor-sharp.
Spencer: "Sheckomocko Horse Ranch. Summer of 2006. My sister Melissa was a junior counselor that year. You were in her bunk."
And just as you're thinking "Holy balls, somebody died at summer camp," Kate goes all flinty and WASPy and is like, "Yeah, that's me. I am the girl to whom you allude. I am willing to bribe you to shut you up." And I mean, it's probably going to be something lame like she was fat or had acne or a Liz Lemon backbrace connected to her leg braces, but whatever it is, they both act the shit out of the scene.
Spencer: "I'm not gonna tell anyone. But just so you know, Melissa sent me a bunk photo that year. So if you being nice to Hanna is just an act, you'd better keep it up."
Kate: "Why are you giving me a break?"
Spencer: "Because judging from the way that you treated Hanna, everybody's gonna see how ugly you are without any help from me."
Which would be class, except again, Kate wasn't the original asshole in this scenario. Hanna was exhausted after a long day of dealing with Mona's screamin-meemie craziness in the woods, and cut loose in a private rant that pretty much cut to the heart of Kate's insecurities. Like a hilarious mixup that kept spawning and re-spawning more and more horrible things. But Spencer doesn't know that, Kate doesn't even know it, because that's how these kind of things work. On the other hand, though, Kate was acting out of retaliation, whereas Hanna was acting on the orders of ghosts and talking dolls, so.
GRILLE
Noel Kahn: "No problem helping you with your phone apps, pretty stranger. Call me sometime, I'm very friendly!"
Maya: "Why, what a perfectly pleasant young man."
Emily: "Why were you talking to that asshole?"
Maya: "...What?"
Pam: "Maya. It's. So. Good. To. See. You. You. Look. Lovely."
Maya: "Nice work getting a table for us at the only restaurant in this town..."
Emily: "-- Don't call her Pam! It's Mrs. Fields, you have to call her..."
Maya, in awkward dubstep slow-mo: "...Paaaaaaeeeerrrrrmmmmmm."
FAKE DATE
Holden and Aria try to split up for their real dates but then it turns out that Ezra is going to a faculty thing we'll see a bit later, so she just brought some magazines to read so that she wouldn't let Holden down... But, hilariously, Holden's mystery date also is not happening, so now they're stuck at this pizza parlor until eleven o'clock holding the bag for each other. Some utterly charmless dialogue ensues, and they play air hockey.
GRILLE
Emily: "One of the many ways, Mother, in which Maya is horrible is that she has joined her high school's Jazz band!"
Pam: "I briefly flirted with having that personality before. I was really into Miles Davis."
Emily: "So wait, are we black now?"
Pam: "I worshipped that man!"
Maya: "Really?"
Pam: "No, that would break a commandment! It's just a figure of speech."
Maya: "I guess I just figured you'd be into something like classical music. You know, because of how sophisticated you are. Lots of barefoot and pregnant ladies who can't exist outside the home, I feel, are really sophisticated in that way."
Pam: "First of all, Jazz is sophisticated..."
Maya: "Yeah, but they also smoke doobies. You know, like the one you used to blackmail my parents into kidnapping me and sending me to Gay Bible Camp."
Pam: "Yeah, this is going swell."
(Maya gets a text from her ex. An ex-text.)
Maya: "Sorry, just my stalker!"
Pam: "Oh my God, do you need my help? Have you told an adult?"
Maya: "Just a figure of speech, because I'm annoying and you're old-fashioned enough to be alarmed by that. But now that you mention it, it's a boy I fucked at True North. You know, the Gay Bible Camp for Druggies that you engineered me being kidnapped to."
Emily: "First I'm gonna back up the U-Haul and then I'm gonna..."
Maya: "...And yes, I did say 'boy.' What with you being so progressive and willing to explore these issues, I'm sure you have no problem thinking about the concept that a woman's sexuality is a moving target, right? Or your daughter having sex with me?"
Pam: "It's like you exist just to hurt my feelings."
MOVIE NIGHT
Spencer: "What movie do you want to watch? Since I'm taking the night off being Kolchak the Night Stalker long enough to babysit you, it's your pick. Do not say The Notebook."
Hanna: "Ooh! The Notebook!"
Spencer: "...Cool. Put it in. Mostly I'm just happy to see you."
Hanna: "So we're back to being friends?"
Spencer: "There was no point at which."
Hanna: "Good, because between my boyfriend trouble and my stepsister wanting me dead -- and also that ghost who is trying to humiliate us to death, and the conspiracy of people covering up our friend's murder -- I was starting to stress out a little."
Spencer: "I don't want to tell you about this, because covering for you has quickly become second nature, but trust me when I say Kate is off the board for now."
Hanna: "You're just saying that because she was acting nice! It's a trap. Do you remember in Bio we learned about those animals that can change their appearance to look harmless and then they lull their prey into a false sense of security and then they just bite their heads off? That's Kate."
Spencer: "Fangblennies. Kate isn't a fangblenny, she's a boil-in-baggie."
Hanna, verbatim: "I don't remember that one. Is that like a blowfish?"
Ugh. That would be the breaking point for anybody, so Spencer just up and shows her the picture she got from Melissa years ago when she still had a family and wasn't just this wild-eyed orphan haunting her own house while various nefarious blackguards and brigands constantly let themselves in to just go rummaging around all over the place.
Hanna, verbatim: "God, it looks like something laid eggs on her face and then exploded!"
Spencer: "Melissa said she was a real bitch about it, too."
Hanna: (Flips through Spencer's pictures and reaches the fake ID picture, which is two problems. Don't ever do that with a friend's camera phone unless you are absolutely prepared to see some things.)
Spencer: "That's just a picture of a fake ID."
Hanna: "Where did it come from?"
Spencer breaks open like a dam for some reason and spills the whole thing, indicting Caleb and the other Liars and creating this huge monstrous conspiracy in Hanna's head that rightly freaks her the fuck out, even if she still has no knowing that all of this is Spencer's doing. Hanna runs screaming out into the night awkwardly screaming these ill metaphors of like, "I was worried about Kate backstabbing me! But you were the one holding a knife!"
GRILLE
Pam: Flees.
Emily: "What the fuck is wrong with you? It's like you pushed every button you could think of and then went back and pressed them again and then created new buttons so you could push them. Do you realize how much painstaking work I've been doing with Pam this season?"
Maya: "Don't be such a kidder, kid! It's just the twenty-three skidoo!"
Emily: "No, seriously. You have ruined the shit out of my mom's visit to Rosewood, not to mention setting back her personal journey w/r/t to my sexuality like ten years..."
Maya: "...Or maybe you're really upset because I dated a guy while we were broken up!"
Emily: "Fuckin' what? I have the worst taste in women! Ack!"
FACULTY PARTY
Cute Old Man: "Ezra Fitz, since you have the rich background of teaching high school English for almost a semester, and you've been teaching at this college for going on three whole months, I think it's high time you were given an Associate Dean's position."
Ezra: "That seems believable, sure."
Cute Old Man: "Except it's in New Orleans..."
Ezra: "Hmm."
Cute Old Man: "...And this whole thing is Byron Montgomery's idea."
Byron raises his scotch in a silent and sort of quasi-Noel Kahn salute from across the room. Byron's the lamest, don't get me wrong, but that was pretty awesome. "Choose, monkey!"
Ezra: "Well, tell me about New Orleans. Do they by any chance have little girls there?"
MARIN CANDLE EXTRAVAGANZA
Surrounding yourself with the contents of an entire Yankee Candle store is, at least in my house, a definite sign that you are going through something. And thus we know that Hanna is in the Depths of Despair. Caleb, having received Aria Montgomery amounts of calls from his girlfriend, finally deigns to visit. He enters the conflagration warily.
Caleb: "Hanna, why are you acting like the new Spencer Hastings?"
Hanna: "Caleb, why are you acting like the old Spencer Hastings? Do you not remember that whole period of time where I caught you spying on me with a teddy bear for that girl we blinded, and I threw you out of my house? I seem to remember honesty being a factor of our reconciliation."
Caleb: "Yeah, but this time I was doing it to protect you. Obviously you girls aren't going to solve this mystery on your own, which is why you needed a man's help."
Hanna: "First of all, eff you. Second of all, I don't really care about the murder. That's between you and me, but frankly when A gets distracted and gets off my jock for five seconds I try to enjoy it."
Caleb: "Tell me more about the complex system of blackmail and degradation that has haunted you for nigh these many months."
Hanna: "We were poor this one time..."
Caleb: "I lived literally under the stairs when you met me. Please don't get your privilege on this. You're the one who's mad at me, remember?"
Hanna: "Okay, for a gorgeous rich white girl, things can only get so bad. You are right about that. But in this case, it was bad, and comparing poor-people sob stories is not what I am trying to do right now. The punchline is, my mom stole a bunch of money from an old lady."
Caleb: "Are you saying you need money? Because Lucas won't stop giving me money..."
Hanna: "No, I am saying that a certain ubiquitous and all-powerful, vengeful personage knows about this, and you're not the only person I have to protect. I also have to protect my drunken, reckless mother."
Caleb: "Thank you for letting me be the first person you told this to. Who is the threat?"
Hanna: "No idea. But it's whoever's phone you're hacking slowly, so that means everything you do is going to screw me, my mom, you, the girls, Toby, everybody."
Caleb: "I'd better keep a low profile, then..."
Hanna: "Yes, thank you."
Caleb: "...Or else the opposite of that."
FAKE DATE
Aria is the worst.
JENNA'S HOUSE
Speaking of the Filth, guess who surprises Caleb angrily knocking on Jenna's front door but the one person who exists only outside Jenna's house, Officer Garrett. All grinning menace is gone, and now he's just openly hostile. Caleb tells him he was just there to tell Jenna to fuck off being creepy to Hanna, and Garrett -- tipping his hand a bit? -- assures him that Jenna has no need of his cyberwolf spy skills. Not anymore. Caleb spits on the ground and rides off into the night, and Garrett fades out into the darkness to haunt her yard some more, in his little cop costume.
Where is Jenna? What is she up to? Is she really going out with him? Very important information like this -- and constantly denying us it -- is the lifeblood of this program.
MARIN
Spencer arrives to beg for Hanna's forgiveness, and after a while Hanna remembers that she was mad, and then forgives her for whatever it was she was mad about, and it's so sweet.
FAKE DATE
Holden has a really gruesome bruise all along his side, like somebody took a baseball bat to him. As though he knows this is the prime way to ensure Aria gets well up in his business, Holden goes full-on "My Name Is Luka," like, immediately.
As if this is that kind of show. You know what's more likely than his parents hitting him? Literally anything. He and Mikey Montgomery are in a Fight Club together. His dates with Aria have been actually about #OccupyPhilly, and he got into it with the Filth. He is a Real Life Super Hero, who patrols the city streets, looking to fulfill a longing inside for order and peace that his home life cannot bring.
Oh my God if Holden was a Real Life Superhero.
VIVIAN DARKBLOOM
Spencer: "To review, I thought having A's cell phone -- pertinent numbers, dates, and endless video footage of A committing crimes -- that it would somehow help us solve all these mysteries. And yet this is turning out to not be the case. Which is weird, because usually at this point in the episode somebody has a flashback that produces some random bullshit piece of..."
Hanna: "-- Okay, I didn't want to tell you this before, but I have a flashback to do."
About two years ago, Hanna was uncertain about herself and her position in the world. Ashley wanted her to feel good about her looks, so she sent her to a salon in town where the people never leave so they never know when people are wearing disguises inside the hair salon, even if the hair they are cutting is a wig -- ? -- and the person refers to herself by ludicrous names like, "Vivian Darkbloom." One of those salons where they're able to play Lykke Li songs from the future that haven't been written yet.
So it took a while, because Hanna was still nervous back then, but when the strange dark-haired young woman whose ass they were all kissing finally spoke -- "No cream or sugar, I don't like it sweet" -- Hanna recognized her, and bravely spoke her name.
Hanna: "I didn't know you came here. Your hair looks great, I didn't even recognize you."
(Alison pulled off her wig, like a crazy person might do.)
Ali: "Just trying something new, testing the waters. Here's the thing. I'm pretending to be someone else, so play along."
Hanna: "Sure. That makes sense that you would wear a wig to a hair salon and call yourself Vivian Darkbloom. I can buy that, and will happily play along. Except but why?"
Ali: "Because I'm bored. I do it a lot. You should try it some time. I mean, aren't you just sick and tired of being you?"
Hanna: "Yes. It is high time you taught me bulimia."
Ali: "And so I shall."
And how does Hanna explain, as they always must, why she never remembered this ass-pull? "Guess I never told you guys before because I thought it was just typical Ali weirdness." That made me laugh a lot. So then Hanna and Spencer Google "Vivian Darkbloom" to find out where she used the name, because they don't recognize it, and eventually figure out that it's a Nabokov reference: Vivian Darkbloom = Vladimir Nabokov, an anagram.
He did that a lot, because he liked to put himself into all the stories he told, and because he loved doubling characters, putting mirrors up to their faces, letting them fall apart in the in-between space. Humbert Humbert's name is an anagram of itself, and he was himself doubled with Clare Quilty, who was like the Byron to Ezra's Humbert. But Clare worked with a woman, a female twin, that Lolita used to confuse Humbert during their chases, because Vivian and Clare are both names that can go either way.
And every single word in his life, in the texture of the book itself, woven in just like the names are woven into each other, like twins, is trying to warn him that Clare is just behind: My favorite of those is when Lolita's friend Mona writes to her, "Ne manque pas de dire à ton amant, Chimène, comme le lac est beau, car il faut qu'il t'y mène. Lucky beau! Qu'il t'y -- what a tongue twister!" Sometimes it's right there in front of your face. Right there in the mirror.
Hanna pulls down Ali's copy of Lolita, which she borrowed a long time ago and never had the chance to return, and there's the clue, of course: A claim check for some snow globe or bracelet trove or a stump or hockey stick or something, to be sure.
MAYA'S HOUSE
Emily shows up fairly early in the AM to explain to Maya that -- passive-aggressive bitchiness be damned -- she's upset about the boyfriend not because of sexual weirdness but in fact because she doesn't want Maya dating anybody. (Or as Daniel Tosh says, "It's not you versus some skank, it's you versus every skank. See how that changes things?") Maya leads her inside, where she's redecorated it to look like they are under the sea -- because of Emily getting kicked off the team, you see -- and then they do it. And I mean they do it.
DAY
Spencer doubles Vivian Darkbloom again, calling to redeem the claim check for week. I can't tell you how happy I am they went there, finally, because I can't think of a book more... Well, I guess Scarlet Letter and Crucible were both pretty brilliant books to reference for this show, but if you want the real shit? It's easy to be smart and it's easy to be perverse, even easier to be perversely smart. But to be smart about perversity, that's very hard, and it's something he was able to do and something that this show, in its frequent high spots, nails just as well.
I love Lolita. I haven't read it since I was a lot smarter than I am now, but I still remember a lot of it because I liked it so much. I was into smartypants wordplay and stuff back then, more than I am now, but the thing that I loved about it most was that it was so surprisingly moral.
Everybody acts like it's this Human Centipede of perversion but actually... Robertson Davies, who is right as often as he's wrong but always just as loudly, described it as something like, you get confused and think it's a story about a child being exploited by an adult, but that really it's the story of a weak adult being exploited by a corrupt child. Not a Byron coming after an Emily, you understand, but an Alison coming after an Ezra. A Jenna, coming after a Toby.
And you could easily just rename this show that -- Weak Adults & Corrupt Children -- but I felt a little differently about the book. More like, it's not a story about one person getting what he or she wants most at somebody else's expense -- like you rub the lamp and wish and this is what you get -- but two people getting what they think they want most. Only they're both too immature -- literally -- to wish for anything good. So they both become the wish of the other one, and it destroys them. Just destroys the shit out of them.
And so for me, what the book's about is a couple of people who deserved to wish for better things, but didn't grow up quite fast enough to figure out that was possible.
HALLS
Everybody in school has received a photograph on their cellular mobile telephones; I know not of what.
Noel Kahn: "Thanks, Marin. You made my day!"
Well that's nice. It's nice to know you did something to brighten Noel Kahn's day. Why, by the smirk on his face you'd think it was incriminating photos of the hot new girl, or something. Before Hanna can even process this, the Liars come running up at her in a hilarious freakout shitstorm, yelling at her and pecking at her like birds, and she still can't figure out what she did:
"What the hell were you thinking? If that's taking the high road, what's the low road? Did you have a stroke? You promised you wouldn't say anything! Hanna! Why would you do this? You're gonna be in so much trouble!"
What she did is, send maybe the bug picture but definitely a naked-ass locker-room picture of her stepsister Kate to everybody in the entire world. And they are all loving it, especially the message that says something like, "Kate is a bitch" or whatever. Good thing Spencer's got all that leverage to protect Hanna, right? Yeah, like that was going to last more than five seconds.
Hanna: "Guys? I -- of course -- did not do this."
Liars: "But then who on earth would do something like that?"
Liars: "...Oh. Right."
A-TAG
A: "No big deal, just roaming around Spencer's house rooting around in drawers and whatnot, like everybody in this town does. What's in her dad's office, besides all the secrets? Let's find out what's really... No, on second thought I'm just going to take this gun I randomly found. Like I would ever shoot anybody anyway."
WEEK
There is Rosewood High a lock-in to discuss feelings, Jenna screams her feelings, and probably somebody chases Emily through the two classrooms they have at that school.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Gossip Girl, The Good Wife, Pretty Little Liars and True Blood 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 and Fringe Science.