In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Hahaha! That was amazing! Did you ever see a thing like that in your life? What a thing!
Okay, so somehow -- with Melissa wandering around the place eating yogurt as least as creepily as her late hubby used to drink milk -- the girls get the clue: A Psycho hotel outside town where a hot stroke victim does taxidermy and the usual Norman Bates stuff like that. Alison was stalking A and stayed in the room door to her lair... The day she died, of course, in between hot-air balloon rides and starting her own small business and winning the Preakness at Pimlico and whatever.
The girls spend the night, getting stalked by A and watched from door, Hanna takes a shower, the whole thing. No dice. So then there's a Masquarade Ball, of course. Mona produces Caleb for Hanna, earning herself a very sweet speech from Spencer about what a good friend she is, and then Spencer drags her back to the motel in the middle of the Ball so they can sneak into A's lair.
A's lair is fuckin' great. There are pictures on every surface, with Ali's eyes painstakingly cut out, there are Bratz dollz and burlap baby-face monster masks and a clown and music boxes and whatever. It makes you feel like Fiver when you walk in there.
Mona finds a picture of A's masquerade gown: The Black Swan, complete with black anonymity bar across the face, and supposedly lets Hanna know to look out for somebody dressed like that. And there is somebody at the dance dressed like that, but I don't know if that matters. I do know that she is on a team of buds that includes Jenna and Lucas, the former of whom ain't even trying to hide her newfound sight and the latter of whom is still: Adorable.
Less so: Ezra and Aria, who blah blah blah. It's even stupider than usual, which is saying goddamn something.
So while everybody is running around in the dance -- Emily entertaining thoughts of Paige, Aria acting like a gaywad with Ezra, Hanna wandering around looking bewildered and occasionally making out with Caleb, Spencer's at this motel, figuring out who A is. Mona runs out to the car for some gum, and when she comes back she's wearing her signature hoodie. YEAH!
You know how awesome Mona is usually? Times that by about a million once she puts that thing on and spitting out this staccato insanity monologue about all manner of things, including how the A-Team is a Blood In Blood Out situation. Yes, see, Mona invites Spencer to be a part of the A-Team, or die, but Spencer's too busy Skyping their entire conversation to Hanna to really think about the offer.
How come she did all of this and ran over Hanna and made Spencer break up with Toby and whatnot? Because she loves Hanna so much that she hates the Liars for being involved in taking Hanna away from her. Not sure what that means or how it works out -- was this during the Alison period, or the A period? -- but she doesn't really need a reason. She is too awesome for your "reasons," as I will shortly explain. Anyway, the Liars arrive just as Spencer's escaping from Mona, Hanna very nearly runs her best friend down for being a crazy bitch, and then Spencer accidentally tosses her off a cliff. But don't worry! You know that hot mess is okay!
As Therapy Anne (hey!) explains, once they've got Mona's ass in a straitjacket, the reason A seemed to be omniscient and omnipresent is because Mona is a mental genius whose adrenaline spikes were keeping her in a constant state of hyperreality.
YEAH! That's why! I am not making that up! The reason A is magic, the show explains, is because A IS LITERALLY MAGIC. I love that so freaking much. It puts me -- this show -- it puts me into a state of hyperreality. I can see you right now as you are reading this! I hid a doll under your bed that has instructions and a key to open a secret snowglobe in a storage locker off the interstate! I know what you did last Saturday!
Pam comes back to town, Toby comes back to Spencer, we still don't know what Jenna's involvement is with the A-Team, but we do know Mona was working for a bigger A, and one thing more: Maya's body has been found, probably buried, at Emily's house. Which means Hanna lost a best friend to craziness, Aria was utterly uninvolved once again in the TV show she is on, Spencer got Toby back, and Emily has to find a new elderly person to care for.
See you in June!
Check out an interview with Mona.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Sorry this is so late, but I was abducted by Mona Vanderwaal!
..Who gives us the Previouslies, as a first shot across the bow as we come close to figuring out the smallest but most immediate facts about the elusive A: How Hanna finally got hers back by running A down, producing her phone and pissing her off more than ever before; how Melissa turned out to be creepier than Ian even; how Paige tried to make her move on Emily in the dubious absence of Maya; how Ezra got fired no matter how much Aria bitched about it; and how, finally, Jenna got Garrett Reynolds arrested for Ali's murder.
REGROUP
It's been a week since Garrett's arrest, and he's pleading Not Guilty -- because he is clearly not guilty -- just as the Liars are realizing that A's nefarious actions overshadowed the death of their horrible friend Alison DiLaurentis several miles back.
Liars: "So I guess the big piece of evidence was Page Five of the autopsy?"
Spencer: "Yeah, and guess who turned it in? Miss Jenna!"
Emily: "So I guess everything's okay now. Except for the ghost that stalks us by night."
Liars: "Or, alternately, this is just A taking down all four of her murderers, meaning Jenna and Melissa might still be joining Garrett and Ian in jail or hell respectively."
Melissa: "Speak of the literal devil! Too bad about their love gone wrong."
Liars: "What are you talking about? And keep your hands where we can see them."
Melissa: "I knew Ian didn't kill her, pervo that he was, and I know you guys didn't do it. You're pretty and little and liars, but you're not killers. Hey, can I have this giant tub of frozen yogurt?"
Aria: "I wasn't really going to eat it anyway. Too upset about my separate TV show that goes on while this show is airing sometimes."
Melissa: "Two things. Number one, we all know who blinded Jenna. Number two, therefore, Ali deserved to be killed by him. If he did it. This TOFFEE FRO-YO is a clue! And delicious. Later bitches. I'm taking the yogurt. Eating for two, you know. Staring in the mirror upstairs, as creepily as possible, if anybody needs me."
Liars: "So Melissa knows about the Jenna Thing. Not a shock."
A Text: "Bring me my phone, or somebody ends up in a body bag."
Spencer: "The messenger who just came to the door delivered these spooky invitations to the Masquerade Ball. Be there when the clock strikes midnight, it says. I wonder who could have sent them, and from what century?"
Liars: "We should probably go to that dance so A can murder us at that precise time and place."
Spencer: "Hide & Seek was my favorite game with Melissa. You wanna know why? I always won."
Liars: "...Yeah, nobody know what you're talking about, crazy."
TO SCHOOL
Liars: "It was so amazing how scary Melissa was with that yogurt! It was like Ian with the milk, all over again. I bet when that baby drinks its bottle it's going to be as scary as both parents at once, spookily slurping on dairy. Slurrrp."
Emily: "I don't trust Melissa as far as I can throw her and Ian's fetus, but you know who also knows about the Jenna Thing? Jenna Thing. We're not done yet."
Liars: "Another thing to remember for this episode is that A is crazy smart, like, genius on steroids. Adrenaline hyperreality smart. And the only person smarter than Spencer is..."
Spence: "-- Don't even. Melissa did score higher on the Wechsler Scale, but when you take into account my scores and the Flynn Effect, combined with real-life accomplishments, the gap in our IQs is virtually nonexistent!"
Amazing.
So I guess the new plan is, they're going to go back through that dufflebag they've already been through a million times, just to try once more to figure out what Ali knew about A before she died. Problem: Everybody's house -- between Byron's shittiness, Ashley and Ella's awareness of the A Factor, and Pam coming back into town, to evict their poor renters I guess -- is sort of out of the question right now. Where they eventually do go, I will just tell you since it's hilarious that they're going to Ezra Fitz's house. Because I guess he just left everything exactly where it was when he skipped town, so Aria would have somewhere private to draw faces on paper bags and eat takeout and whatnot.
MONA
Walks up at this point, and even though she's totally involved and is an honorary Liar that has A all over her like everybody else, they switch to talking about the Masqued Ball. Let's listen in on the amazing things Mona has to say today!
Mona: "Can you believe Blind Jenna's going? A week ago, that would have made me a no-show, but since she dumped Noel Kahn-man for Seeing-Eye Toby... Sorry, Spencer... I decided to go. Let's all go get costumes at this great vintage store I know about in a little haunted hell-town hellmouth I know called Brookhaven."
Liars: "It's not because you mentioned the Town Without Pity, and it's not that we hate you, but we all have other shit going on. The real truth is that we are meeting up later to figure out who's stalking all of us, but to 'protect' you we're going to lie about that and just fake it out. Hope that doesn't push you in a sociopathic rage or adrenalized state of hyperreality or anything."
Mona: "I am already in and made of those things, so don't worry about it."
FITZ'S FORMER PIED-A-TERROR
Liars: "I love how Ezra's entire bookshelf is like Tristan & Isolde and Abelard and Eloise and whatever Classics of doomed romance."
Aria: "Open up that armoire and it's just different film versions of Lolita, and like L.I.E. and Mysterious Skin and Wild Things. He really just has the two interests. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. To Sir With Love: The Porn Parody."
Liars: "Please don't tell us about your boring rela..."
Aria: "-- I think we really broke up this time! I have to process! Hanna, we did it on that sleighbed! What Ezra calls 'the real way'!"
Hanna: "Yeah, Sean used to call it that too. It's how he stayed a technical virgin for so long."
SAVED BY THE BELLE
Caleb Text: "Mona has abducted me! To Brookhaven! We're trying on cute outfits, help!"
Hanna: "Well, shit. Ever notice how my burgeoning protective instincts mean I have to lie to everybody I care about, all the time?"
Liars: "It's either that or two Tory Burches and a drinking straw."
It's deceptively complex, but what happens is that Spencer finds a branded ballpoint pen that leads them back to and explains that postcard, which leads to Duncan's story about flying Alison all over the eastern seaboard while she was being murdered, which now explains that -- this being A DAY and the season finale -- all the answers will be found in Room #1 at the Lost Woods Resort, which is the Bates Motel of Greenview, which is apparently the third and newest haunted town making up the Pennsylvania Rape Triangle.
LOST WOODS
Are easily found, thanks to Spencer and GPS, and after nearly running over a deer, they get to meet the Norman Bates of the Resort -- actually a scary motel -- who is a very cute dude named Harold, with a very paralyzed half-a-face, or what my visiting mother (girlfriend did not know what she was getting into) pointed out is called Shaman Face among the Native Americans. This is expected behavior. So I told her he was almost certainly going to be going on a shamanic journey into the shower to kill little naked girls before too long, which she found only moderately funny.*
Spencer signs in as "Mary Smith," tempting the guy to crack her code, and then asks for Room #1, which she says was recommended by a Miss Vivian Darkbloom, of the Philadelphia Darkblooms. He pretends not to recognize the name. Or at least half of him does. I feel okay laughing about the palsy because the guy is very cute. I have a thing about guys that remind me of John Ross Bowie.
*(She liked it more when I explained that Mona Vanderwaal is my Spirit Animal, because even for her very first and only episode, it is immediately obvious that this is true.)
ROOM ONE
The girls flop around with their bags and act entitled for awhile, before Spencer finally says it's time to go steal the motel's registration book: Her reasoning is that maybe Ali wasn't here to hide from A, exactly, but maybe to hide something or do something weird. Considering that Spencer and Toby did the exact same thing as Ali, to spy on Jenna, not five minutes ago -- remember how there was a recording of the recorder, and Toby took off his shirt for no reason? -- it's a little irksome that she takes most of the episode to figure out that Ali was actually there spying on A, who has been long-term renting Room Two as her private lair.
Aria: "Well, obviously I'm coming with you."
Spencer: "What now? You're volunteering to take part in this television show we are on? I am proud."
Aria: "It won't last. Ladies?"
Emily & Hanna: "The emotionally fragile lesbian and the pampered dumb blonde are not leaving this room, thanks."
A: "Which is perfect, since I'm totally watching you through a rather huge hole in the wall."
Hanna: "I'm going to take a shower, in case the Psycho parallels are too subtle."
Emily: "Cool. I'm going to get a mystery call from that person pretending to be my dead girlfriend and wander off like I always do, leaving you all alone, naked, in the middle of the actually-called-this Lost Woods."
A: "For my part, I am going to stare at Hanna from right outside the shower, because this show can be real fucking eerie sometimes."
LATER
According to the book, Ali stayed there twice. The first time was when she set up that meeting with A in Brookhaven -- as we'll see later, via unbelievably unreliable narrator -- and then I guess the second time was on the day she did every single thing that a person can do, all in one day. Took up Zumba. Taught a looming class. Made a breakfast quesadilla. Sold some books back. Cobbled.
Emily & Hanna: "For this episode, we are best friends. Which is lucky, because Aria and Spencer are going to end up fine as usual, and as usual we are going to have the shit kicked out of us, body and soul. Let's go to the Dance together, since my boyfriend is bi-coastal and your girlfriend is among the elderly. And the vanished."
BACK TO ROSEWOOD
Spencer: "Toby, I'm really sorry about breaking up with you that time and then making out with you and then you fell off a building so I broke up with you and Emily told you I was with Wren. Right up until then I was a hero, but the Wren part makes your anger make a lot more sense."
Toby: "I don't want to talk to you overmuch."
Spencer: "Are you taking your sister as your date to the Masquerade Ball? That's me trying to be totally cool about your sick, sad life."
Toby: "I don't dance. That involves jubilation, which is the one thing my crazy face can't do."
Spencer: "Well, Jenna likes me now. Not to be That Girl Who Talks Like A 2008 Shonda Rhimes Character, but you don't have to be That Guy Who Won't Let People In!"
Toby: "I'm not being That Guy. I'm not being any Type of Guy. I just hate you. It's pretty simple."
Moments later, Toby gets a call from Dr. Therapy Anne. Which... Who knows. Just who the fuck knows.
JENNA GOES FOR A DRIVE
Blind people totally can drive. It's actually quite ableist of you to think otherwise. I'm surprised, frankly. So Jenna drives her car all over the place, bumping pedestrians, overturning applecarts, on her way to some lovely park where she hands a mysterious person a mysterious package and says mysteriously, as though anybody can hear them talking: "I've thought about this moment so many times, wondering what I would say to you if I saw you again. They're all gonna be at the party. You know what you need to do."
No idea. Something to do with the Black Swan, maybe? It's A-Team work, that's for sure, but I couldn't tell ya more than that. Jenna slinks around the dance her own crazy self, and nobody's the wiser even though she stands around chattin' up Lucas and looking at things with her eyes, but I think this is about the Black Swan, and we don't find out who that is -- although I'm glad it's happening, because Swan Lake makes even more sense as a PLL reference than it did with Gossip Girl, where it was awesome.
MASQUERADE
Liars: "Ironically, we're trying to track down somebody at a dance where we can't tell who anybody is. Hey, where's Melissa? At home? Cool. Now, it would be dangerous for us to split up, and A told us not to split up, and none of us have dates so there's no reason we would split up anyway, because that would be awkward, so I guess the first thing we should do is ... split up."
They split up.
Caleb immediately appears to Hanna! Even though he was supposed to be hanging out with his mom, who flew into town today -- Therapy Anne? -- Mona got him to Brookhaven and picked out his costume and presented Caleb to Hanna as a gift. Like a pigeon she tore the head off of. As is their wont, Hanna and Mona immediately make Caleb's presence more about them than noticing him standing there.
Hanna: "Sorry we all lied to you and totally burned you yesterday, but I mean, we always do that."
Mona: "No problem, because I have a feeling you won't be keeping any secrets from me ever again."
Hanna: "What?"
Mona: "I said, Something stupid about Caleb being a hot toddy!"
Hanna: "Oh, okay. I love you!"
Mona: "I love you too! In a scary way!"
Oh man, I just remembered this one time where I talked about how Mona loves Hanna so much she wants to scoop out Hanna's insides and wear her like a sweater and pilot her around town like a giant robot! How could I know that?
STATE OF ADRENALINE HYPERREALITY IS HOW
Spencer: "I have to admit, you had me fooled, but I've got you figured out."
Mona: "Oh shit, you know I'm A?"
Spencer: "What? No, just that you're pretending to be a superficial bitch but you're actually a really good friend. Rewind to what you just said?"
Mona: "Nope. But thanks for saying that. When my blood reign begins, you may not be the first to fall."
Spencer: "You're being so random tonight! Anyway, sorry I stood idly by and let Alison torture you for so many years. She kind of worked our insecurities."
Mona: "Don't be silly! I haven't thought about that bitch since I murdered her and started stalking you. Although it's weird that you mention her, because I have a flashback to tell you about Alison that is maybe a lie or maybe it is the truth."
FLASHBACK TO BROOKHAVEN
Mona: "Alison, what are you doing here, a week before you die?"
Alison: "Oh shit. Martha without her Dumptruck. Go away."
Mona: "Being in the same town with you is like we're shopping together!"
Alison: "What are you, in an omniscient state of hypperreality, which is not a real thing?"
Mona: "Why are you wearing your Vivian Darkbloom wig and outfit? Are you playing a game? A Lying Game? A Pretty Little Lying Ga..."
Alison: "-- First of all, shut up and stop babbling."
Alison: "Second of all, I am a little nervous, so I'm going to throw you an unlikely bone. Can you keep a secret? It's for real, and it's for keeps."
Mona: "This is how you got those four girls to fall in love with you. Shit like this. Good thing I'm highly susceptible to brainwashing."
Alison: "I'm spying on a spy. Stalking a stalker. It's important work. Now scat!"
Mona: "You owe me a favor, if I do quit bothering you."
Alison: "What do you want?"
Mona: "Teenage popularity."
Alison: "Fine, call this number."
She writes it on the other half of that ripped-up postcard, if that matters. I tend to think this conversation mostly went down the way Mona says, but that when she called Ali they actually hatched some kind of plan. That's what I think -- that Mona was at one point Team Ali. It doesn't make sense, really, but neither does this show so I'm just trying to kinda flow with it.
MASQUERADE
Mona: "...Anyway, I got her voicemail that night, which made me think she was a bitch, but then she [quote] went all MIA on us, and she never called me."
Spencer: "So who was she spying on?"
Mona: "I somehow didn't think to look. Probably Noel Kahn. That's what I'd be doing."
Word, sister!
Spencer: "A wasn't watching Ali in Brookhaven, but vice versa!"
Mona: "What do you mean? Everybody on this show talks so inscrutably."
Spencer: "I just figured out something obvious, which is that Ali was doing the same thing Toby and I did that time."
FITZ INCOMING
Jenna spookily follows Aria, who has been summoned outside, to where Ezra obviously is waiting, wearing a mask so the authorities won't notice him smooching the children.
Ezra: "No matter how hard I try... I can't stay away from you."
Mom: "Yikes."
EN ROUTE TO GREENVIEW
Spencer: "Keep your friends close, Em."
Emily: "That is not how you have a phone conversation! What are you talking about?"
Spencer: "That's what Ali was doing, keeping her enemies even closer."
Emily: "God damn it, Hastings. What are you talking about? Where are you?"
Spencer: "On my way back to the motel. We've still got a couple hours until midnight and I just figured out that A is renting Room #2 as her personal Lair -- that's why Alison got the one over."
Emily: "I'm just going to let you keep talking until you make some damned sense."
Spencer: "I'm going out there, you guys stay on the A trail at the dance. And don't worry, I'm not alone."
Mona, driving her: "Mwah hah hahah!"
HAROLD SONG
Harold, on Kindness: "It's kind of you to take the time to sit with me."
Harold, on Loneliness: "I find myself talking to these stuffed creatures."
Spencer: "Well, I guess you really only have to worry if they start to talk back to you."
Harold, on Humor: "What's that supposed to mean?"
Mona appears with the key to Room #2, and Spencer abruptly puts down her clearly roofied teacup because she doesn't have time for any monkey business right now.
EZRIA
Ugh.
Instead, I will say that Spencer is wearing a lovely sparkly black thing, Emily has some boob problems going on in her lovely blue gown, Hanna is wearing a white Juliet number with a garland of flowers in her hair, and Aria of course is wearing a geometric Queen of Hearts red/black dress that somebody noted looks a lot like one of the foreign posters for Black Swan, the movie. Hmm.
PEMILY
Even though Emily made a joke about how she wasn't going to dress up as a guy to complete Hanna's Romeo & Juliet costume -- which Caleb ended up doing anyway -- Paige shows up dressed as a dude. I'm not a lesbian, but I think I get it more now because Paige looks fine as hell.
A-LAIR
Is a-mazing, a-stonishing, and a-bsolutely bananas. Clown head! A million pictures of Alison with the eyes stabbed out! Dollhouse with Bratz dolls of the Liars sitting in it! Every photo we've seen and tons we haven't, tons of spycraft and surveillance equipment, the burlap Babyface costume from Halloween, monsters and demons and shadows everywhere! Newspapers arranged hilariously in chronological order: GIRL LOST! GIRL STILL MISSING! GIRL FOUND STRANGLED WITH SKULL CAVED IN!
Mona: "Oh my God. This is crazytown."
Spencer: "Bingo."
PEMILY
Paige: "Sorry about kissing you the other night while you were flipping out about Maya."
Emily: "No prob."
Paige: "Sorry about stalking you that time in the rain and acting like a loony-bird.
Emily: "No prob."
Paige: "Sorry about the time my dad tried to punch you in the caf."
Emily: "No prob."
Paige: "Sorry about dumping you for no reason but my own internalized homophobia."
Emily: "No prob."
Paige: "Sorry about when I drowned you."
Emily: "When you put it all together like that, you are the Worst!"
Paige: "Sorry."
Emily: "That's okay, we can still be friends."
Mona: "Spencer, I just randomly found these fashion sketches of a Black Swan dress. I will call or not call Hanna to tell her to look out for that."
MASQUERADE
Either she does or she doesn't -- there's a lot of tricky transitions between scenes so we don't know what calls get made or not made -- but when we cut to the Dance, instantly or moments later, the Liars are staring at the Black Swan. Who is just chilling out with Jenna and Lucas, of course. But what else is going on is, there's this other girl at the Dance who is unmistakeably but subtly in like every shot at this Dance: Red dress, gold mask. At one point she physically turns her mask toward the girls so they won't catch her face. I think this is the A-Prime, the A+, the person behind the A-Team. And I don't want to say more just yet, but if you think about Swan Lake some things come to the fore:
You've got the dark-haired Black Swan, and then golden-haired Red Dress. Spencer points out that Melissa wore a Black Swan costume to a charity ball last year, which brings the whole thing about Dark Sisters back from Halloween, which completes the story: Alison was sometimes the golden Alison and sometimes the brunette Vivian; Spencer and Melissa are sisters but Spencer and Alison are also quasi-sisters in at least two ways; you've got the Twin story going on; and all this comes back to Swan Lake too -- Odile replacing Odette at the Ball, masks and illusions confusing identities, creepy bad-touch wizards in charge of everything -- and then even Black Swan itself, the story of a girl who was so tired from being perfect that she tried to be everything. Cover the whole board, black and white all at once, innocence and experience, whore and virgin, and ended up knowing God, in the ecstasy of her own death.
I know I bring up the Jungian thing a lot, but it's so relevant here, because the whole reason for the four Types, the Hogwarts Houses, is that you live in the house of your best accomplishment and your life is about stretching out to learn the other things you weren't born doing, until you know everything. But there will always be one corner opposite your House that you can't ever totally get to, because -- this is how I say it, this is not necessarily how a psychologist would say it -- if you ever got the whole thing at once, essentially, you would know the mind of God and would go crazy or die. Which is what I think Black Swan is really about: She finally accomplished being everything at once, and that's when you go to Heaven.
Or for a more realistic example: Spencer is naturally a Ravenclaw -- actually delivered a whole speech about it earlier -- but has spent this season learning to feel (Hufflepuff) and even coming to grips with her shadow intuition, which presents as faulty or scary visions and dreams. She's always the one jumping to odd scary conclusions and pulling the tablecloth down with her, because her intuition can't really be trusted. But through the actions of A, and Alison, and her relationships with the other Liars, and the serious emotional trauma with Toby, she's gotten in touch with her intuition this season in such a dynamic way that Alison finally appeared to her -- which is always the sign that a Liar has accomplished something, think about Hanna's therapy session, how she's the only one Alison has visited twice and the second time was at Hanna's command -- and that she's going to be the one who solves the mystery in a little bit.
This season has seen Gryffindor Aria grow ever more present in the world, like a Slytherin, making choices and decisions like a Ravenclaw, and bringing her private dreams into reality, as Gryffindors so seldom really do. I think a lot of this is just her development into a grownup, but I also think it's partially a reward for the work she did being Anita with Jenna that time -- and again, the emotional work of negotiating her relationship and her family bonds, including Mikey.
Hanna has gone from being A's favorite victim to being one of the most powerful Liars, because A has forced her to step outside her own selfishness and protect everyone -- starting with Ashley, then Caleb, then the world -- to the point where her wisdom now far exceeds her knowledge. She took the scary step into Gryffindor authenticity with Anne's help, and has been busily rejecting the physical world and consumer objects that used to define her.
Emily started out this year taking it in the body, which is the one thing that was always hers to command, but she had it even rougher last year, doing the heavy lifting of figuring out who she was and what she wanted. If anything, she's now more in the position of negotiating with shadow intuition -- lately she's been doing Spencer's suspicious, paranoid, nasty stuff -- and being haunted by the unreal fantasies and fears of what's going on with Maya. She's had to think harder, and faster, and be braver in a more active way, ever since the day they got that phone -- and that journey started with her own visit from Alison. And so on.
So you've got the Black Swan, who sometimes represents less the Dark Half than she does the Totality of a person, which is what this show is always driving towards: Not the things you want to define you, but the things that you hide away and end up controlling you. If Alison is an Angel of Disclosure, it's because the natural action of life and the world is about driving you away from the safe places and into the zones where you're less comfortable, and that means -- especially on this fever-dream of a show that's entirely about secrets and surveillance and the terrible fearsome loneliness of forging an identity -- that the Black Swan isn't what we're running from, but what we should be running to.
Alison, Red Riding Hood, was about the beautiful lie. Vivian Darkbloom was a double agent. But I think the Black Swan is really the goal. It's the wholeness of seeing Jenna as she is, in her complexity, and it's the wholeness of looking past grief to see all the ways you were in denial about Alison's sickness, and it's about realizing that love and cruelty aren't exclusive opposites. That the people who love you can also hurt you, and still love you -- and that you're no different from them.
The Liars are Liars because they each have areas of weakness, but if they were just strong enough to look at those areas directly, they'd have all the power they wanted and more. We just want to appear lovely to ourselves and others, so we keep the harder sadder scarier shit locked away... Which is ironic, because that's exactly where it can continue doing the most damage.
The Black Swan is scary looking because you're not there yet. You keep her in shadow. But once you find her, you realize two things: That she is you, and that you are beautiful.
LAIR
Mona: "Want some gum? It's noticeably retro in its packaging."
Spencer: "No, I'm too busy looking at this hilarious diary of Alison's."
Mona: "Honey, do you really think your sister would ever hurt you?"
Spencer: "That was a random, terrifying thing to say. Oh, and speaking of terrifying, here's a noticeably retro gum wrapper keeping A's place in this diary. Hey, can I have a piece of gum now?"
Mona: "Sure, I'll just go out to the car and get more, even though I just told you I have some. It should take about as long as it takes a tiny little girl to put on a hoodie and become a shapeshifting ghost ninja."
(At the dance, the Liars all marvel at the fact that the Black Swan -- leggy, brunette, not pregnant -- is chilling with the A-Team of Jenna and Lucas, both of who are acting sketch as hell. And the whole time, Red Dress is just stalking them around the room -- which makes me wonder if the Swan really matters at all, or is just a plant by Jenna, to keep them focused away from Red Dress. Right?)
Spencer: "Oh, and here's that shopping bag of cashmere twinsets Mona offered me a while back. So fuck."
Mona: "Got the gum!"
Spencer, without turning: "So you're A, huh?"
Mona: "Congrats, Spence."
Is she ever! In that black hoodie, hair pulled back, she's a Black Swan all her own: Androgynous, feral, all eyes and cheekbones. You'd think pretty little Mona would look silly, like a British person trying to be a ghetto American or something, a cat burglar, but no: She is just simply fucking terrifying.
EN ROUTE TO LOOKOUT POINT
Mona knocks Spencer out, and when she wakes up -- another lacuna -- they're driving somewhere scary. Meanwhile, the Liars lose sight of the Black Swan and decide to get marching orders from Spencer -- which is when somebody figures out that Hanna's new phone -- a gift from Mona, you see -- has been set to record everything, every time she turns it on. Which has got to be hell on a battery, but I guess you'd expect that from some charity burner your best friend gave you.
Mona, verbatim: "I had to get you out there alone, so we could talk... You had to earn it. The right to be a part of it."
Spencer: "Just to clarify, Ali was spying on you in Brookhaven, yes? Or wait, you just made that story up so it doesn't actually matter."
Mona, verbatim: "We're in this together now. I admire you, Spencer. That's why you get to decide how this ends tonight. You can join the A-Team, or you can disappear."
Dumb Spencer ignores all the clues there, even though Mona just totally told her A is a group of persons and that you have to get jumped in and that she's being invited to become part of A, to focus on the fact that Mona is out of her freaking mind bonkers... While answering Hanna's call so the Liars can all hear this conversation. Ha! Sometimes simplest is best.
Spencer: "Uh, you tried to kill Hanna? Me, I get, but Hanna? Aren't you like in love with her?"
Mona, verbatim: "It's easier to forgive an enemy than it is to forgive a friend."
Which is insightful on its own, and I think a fairly deft way to explain Mona's take on all of this, but especially interesting in light of the Black Swan amplification above, because the reason that's true is the same reason I brought it up: You can deal with enemies, with Alison, because you don't let them in. They are not a part of you, but the uglier wider darker universe. But when Hanna hurts you, that's coming from inside -- from your own dark places. Which is always when we do the craziest shit.
And then too, I've long held the belief that all great friendships are first and foremost great romances, and all great romances are first and foremost great friendships. That one tells the story of the other. You fall into friendship love at a faster and more vulnerable rate; so fast a drop it's nearly silent, because you don't need to protect yourself in the same way as with a lover. And when you fall in romantic love, you'd best do it slowly, and softly, because you love the way the person's soul is like your own, and let those points of attraction and mutual respect be the ones that lead you.
There's more to both, of course, but the most successful relationships in either case, I find, are best nurtured by treating each as though it is the other. Fall madly in love with your friends, and deeply into friendship with your lovers, and you're way more likely to stay sane -- unless you are Miss Mona Vanderwaal, I guess -- because the right parts of you stay on your side of the fence. It's easier to forgive an enemy than a friend, because an enemy doesn't need forgiving, or grieving, to keep ourselves alive. It's easier to cope with Ali's death than it would be Emily's, or Hanna's, because she was always both.
Spencer: "Okay but like for real? You were omniscient and ubiquitous. You overheard shit you could not have possibly heard. I don't understand how this works. What, were you in an adrenalized state of hyperreality?"
Mona: "You are not the only genius in this car."
Spencer: "Oh shit, do you have Melissa in the trunk or something?"
Mona: "No, you asshole. I'm talking about me. You bitches have always underestimated me."
Spencer: "Listen, if you keep driving all crazy like this, we're never going to get to Lookout Point."
MASQUERADE
Aria: "I know a shortcut to there!"
Hanna: "I think I'm having a brain hemorrhage. This is really sad. Mona's A. My heart is breaking."
Emily: "Hanna, snap out of it. Mona's A. Move your ass."
Marlene King, the actual authority on this, says that all but two of A's actions were done by Mona. I mean, this show is about swallowing crazy things on the regular, so I'm not sure why this would be a particularly unbelievable dealbreaker on the show that brought you such hits as:
- Somebody Stole Thousands Of Dollars From My Lasagna
- Snowglobe, Secret Key, Talking Dolls, Storage Space, Birthmark
- I Totally Forgot That Time Our Best Friend Snapped A Girl's Neck At A Frat Party
- Lucas Though He Merely Has A Gambling Problem
- Congenital Holden Learns The Foot Fist Way
- Here's Some Hundred Dollar Bills Taped To The Paper Towels In A Random Bathroom
- While You Were Peeing I Set Up An Entire Origami Display In The Sink For No Reason
- The Noel Khan/Aria Montgomery Music Hour
- I Had These Stalker Pictures Of Your Nostrils Framed As A Gift
- Rosewood Forgets The Time A Fashion Show Was Overtaken By Demons
- Per Pennsylvania Statute, The Fine For Finding A Shovel Is One Million Hours Of Community Service
- Ezra Fitz, Well-Adjusted Heterosexual & Tenure-Track Professor
- Duncan Heinz, Teen Pilot
- Toby Cavanaugh, Teen Contractor
- Maya St. Germaine, Teen
I mean, Paige's haircut alone was less believable than Mona being a mastermind.
STILL ON THE CASE
Spencer: "So then is this some kind of payback? Because we let Ali treat you like that?"
Mona: "I keep telling you guys, I don't care about Ali! Easier to forgive an enemy, don't you listen? It's because you bitches took Hanna away!"
Spencer: "Mona, you nutcase, she is still your best friend and staunchest ally! Don't you know how annoying the rest of us find you? She sticks up for you constantly! You drove Caleb out of state, and she forgave you. My God!"
Mona: "I cannot hear you. For once, I am not listening to words you are saying."
Spencer: "Okay, so A always has a plan. What's the plan now?"
Mona, verbatim: "Yes. She does."
Spencer: "What happens if I don't join the Team?"
Mona: "I shoot you with your dad's gun. When Ali left, it pulled you guys apart. It'll be the same if you go away too."
First of all, Spencer's right: We're way beyond that point. Secondly, I'm still confused as to the timeframe here. And third of all, holy motherlode of clues. Is Mona referring to herself as "she," or is she referring to A+? Does Spencer not hear how they keep talking about the A-Team as a group you can join, or does she think Mona just means Team Spona? Did Ali "leave" or was she murdered, and if so, does Mona really think murdering Spencer is going to make Hanna be her friend? Which she already is?
I mean, I know that last one, which is that Mona's been playing us since the show started, but it's still really sad to think that she had exactly what she wanted, and just couldn't help herself from secretly hurting Hanna anyway. All of a sudden, it makes total sense why Hanna always bore the brunt. I thought it was because Ali's Ghost wanted her to become the strongest -- which is how it worked out -- but now we find that it's also because she hurt Mona so terribly bad that it made Alison look like nothing. As if Mona and Hanna's transformation into beautiful bitches, during that lost year, was all part of the plot too. That Mona got her Teenage Popularity wish, and the whole thing was just a mean lie by the time she got it.
Every time Mona tried to weaken them or tear them apart, they just got stronger and closer to each other, and to her. And you can say that's the unbelievable part too, but if you tone it down a notch and think of it in normal-life terms, you can see yourself doing shit like this regularly. Most fiction is about shooting yourself in the foot over and over, because most life is like that. It wasn't Jenna that got blinded by Alison DiLaurentis. It was Mona.
NEAR MIDNIGHT
Even weeping, even behind the wheel where she typically does the most damage -- and still wearing the beautiful crown of flowers in her hair -- Hanna somehow manages not to run over Mona, once Spencer jerks the brake and goes tumbling out into the road near Lookout Point. Her first instinct is to save, still. Save Mona, save everybody. They lock eyes, and she stops the car just in time. I guess Hanna's allowed to drive from now on.
There's a great and mighty struggle on the cliff's edge, Mona at this point just trying to rip Spencer's face off, and then she abruptly goes over the edge. All four Liars scream for her, terrified, but who knows if she's dead or what when the cops arrive, with Dr. Anne Sullivan in tow.
Therapy Anne: "She threatened my son. I didn't think I had a choice. I needed to leave. I'm so very sorry."
Oh, no problem. No big how you knew we were being stalked by a killer and just sort of wandered away without telling anybody. (Is her son Caleb?) But given how sketchy every single thing she says is, God knows what is really going on.
Hanna finally just loses it completely, mortified and sad for Mona and betrayed and hurting -- I'm glad fantastic Janel Parrish is coming back a regular year, but scared to death at what they'll put her through -- and Dr. Anne gathers her up. It's the saddest part! There's a big tragedy to come, once you think everything's safe, but this made me sadder:
Hanna: "She was my friend!"
You said it, girl. What a senseless awful thing. What a perfectly tragic, monstrous turn of events, that A is Mona. And Mona is dead.
Or is she? It's midnight now, her wristwatch beeping out somebody's death knell, as the cops finally find Mona -- still alive! -- down in the ravine.
PSYCHO
There's a neat transition from Mona looking crazy down there to Mona looking crazy in a padded cell, doped-up and angry and amazing. She looks like Needy at the end of Jennifer's Body, only not as validating.
Therapy Anne, absolutely fucking verbatim: "She was living in a perpetual state of hyperreality. The adrenaline rush that accompanied her feelings of empowerment and her high level of intelligence fueled Mona's ability to be seemingly all-knowing and omnipresent."
You don't say! Well, that's not a thing.
But if you don't get the A-Team part of it -- which again, Mona painstakingly explained to Spencer in simple English -- and you know that Marlene says it really was almost completely Mona doing that shit, I guess it will suffice. I actually pretty much love it: Like, this is the Matrix and Mona is Neo. We know she can think fast, we know she's capable of absolutely lying to your face so well she believes it herself, we know she's a gifted psychological profiler that can read people's shit like the Mentalist, and we know she's a technowizard, so the all-knowing thing doesn't bother me so much. And I think they threw in the adrenaline part to explain how she was constantly hurling grown men over her head and punching through mountains all the time.
I dunno, as hilarious as the whole thing is, I think they covered their tracks pretty well. Especially for a show that doesn't ever feel the need to make any logical sense -- being, as it is, less a "logical" "story" or "TV show" and more of a subjective sequence of juxtaposed dreamlike images, like a Malick movie or a Hooper painting, like the poetry of Amy Lowell or the fiction of Gertrude Stein -- I think it shows serious effort, and I am impressed by it. It could have given a lot less, to be satisfying at this late hour, than it gave. It's been one of the hottest shows on any network for awhile now, so I guess they can do whatever they want, because they are definitely speaking to something.
God knows I loved it for a long time before I felt even slightly like I understood it. I still don't understand understand it, I just feel like it gives you the keys to negotiate it, if you look for them. The language is maybe more flowery than how I feel, because I don't know the words to accurately describe what I'm saying, but these words aren't really meant as praise: I'm saying what I think the deal is, the plainest way I can think of.
Helene Cixous talked about how a story written entirely by a woman, without the phallogocentric grounding properties of the institutional male principle, would be unrecognizable. My friend Rachel Pollack has written extensively about theoretical languages -- of the angels, or the other side, languages of witches and women -- where the meaning and feeling behind the sounds trumps the phonemes and syntax of what we thought was language: That when people speak in tongues, or the loa ride them, they're speaking the language of heaven, which is universal because you don't have to learn it.
We tell different stories in the daytime than we do at night. There's a difference between Trump XVIII, the Moon, and almost every other card, because almost every other card tries to clarify the truth and the Moon takes you to places where that conversation doesn't even make sense. This isn't, I'm saying, a show for...
I tend to think of it as the antidote to Lost, which say what you will but that show was plot out the ass, with maybe two characters that had more than half a dimension between them, and God knows that's usually considered the high bar, at least among the autistic males that decide these things -- whereas this show is just feelings, dreams, shades and shadows, momentary situations -- the kind of feelings you get when you watch a really good movie trailer, or a particularly skillful fan-made video about a TV show; the kind of reverie you go into on long car drives, where a song on the radio somehow suddenly encompasses all meaning, or the exact feeling of something you forgot -- and then on top of that just the slightest dusting of the suggestion of plot.
Just enough of a semblance of plot to where, when you watch it, you don't actually feel like you've done a bunch of drugs. And no more.
THE END
Liars: "Will she always be like this?"
Anne: "With therapy and the right medications, people with these imaginary fictional personality disorders can get better. Often they become series regulars, acting as sort of like a Teen Hannibal Lecter."
I know they're watching me. I don't look bad, considering. I like this lipstick. What's it called? Toffee Tango? They think it's over. Loser Mona's going to the nuthouse, and those precious liars are going home to sleep with their windows open and their doors unlocked. Don't they know that's what we want?
So that's two awkward mentions of toffee. Hmm. And then, the A-Tag this week is pretty stellar too, along those lines. Mona gets a visitor in her padded cell, still looking like ten miles of hot mess crazy, and of course it's Red Dress, and of course these are the last words we hear for the season:
Mona: "...I did everything you asked me to."
BUT FIRST
Anne thanks Toby for giving her the courage to come back home to help them, and then abruptly Toby reveals that he was only pretending to hate Spencer for some reason, and then they make out. So that's fine. So now Aria and Spencer have their dudes back, no matter how little sense it makes.
Hanna's still a fucking basket case, so -- less because of the very real threat Mona just reminded us about than the fact that they have post-traumatic heebie-jeebies -- they take her to Emily's...
Where Pam's waiting, to tell her Maya's body was found at midnight. Just when Mona's watch was going off.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. Find him online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. Also of recent note, and containing a lot of the themes we talk about with this show: An interview with a great pop-focus feminist blog, Girls Like Giants, and a guest review of The Hunger Games.