So much happened! I am going to leave something out, I just know it. And then there are things -- like a guy dressed up as the corpse of Alison running around his yard just for fun, or Lucas lurking around with an old-timey camera, or a weird face of Jenna at one point -- that might not mean anything yet. Adam Lambert was on the Halloween train, that was interesting. He was a vampire plus Adam Ant plus with a gom jabbar. Very high concept.
Much to Toby's chagrin, Garrett drops by with flowers for Veronica and a promise of many explanations for Spencer. This was one of the more linear* stories, so here's the gist: In fact, Spencer has always been Garrett's favorite of the Liars and in fact he has been trying to save her, but no dice. What happened the night Ali was murdered was, Blind Jenna and Garrett left Ian and Melissa upstairs in Ali's room and went downstairs to talk about how creepy the NAT Club is. Ali surprised them, and got into a shoving match with Jenna which Garrett ended by threatening Alison with the hockey stick. This resulted in Jenna thinking Garrett killed her, although he did not. Later, Garrett saw her arguing with Byron about presumably her blackmailing schemes, and of course sometime after that she was murdered several more times. Also, somebody was buried alive in her yard at some point during that night.
*("Linear" being a relative term, with this show.)
After spilling this absolutely bonkers story to Spencer, Garrett is summarily killed and loaded into a crate with a drugged Aria Montgomery, which multiple members of the A-Team come close to hurling off the train and into the night. Of course, Aria is saved, but a particularly anvilicious moment toward the end of the episode throws all-new and tremendously exciting suspicion on poor old Ezra Fitzgeraldwater.
Caleb, who is recovering nicely and still on the DL with Hanna, dresses up as the Phantom of the Opera and boards the train in secret but -- proving the whole Hanna/Caleb sneak-around plan has always been stupid -- Mona dresses up in the same exact costume except with an Alison DiLaurentis mask under her Phantom mask, and spends the episode seemingly molesting Hanna just for fun before (engaging in any of the other five things going on and) returning to the insane asylum. Weird.
But not as weird as the B story, which was about Ashley and Pastor Ted running into one of the little dead ghost girls from last year's scary story about the twin sisters. Remember that one time the little psychic boy at the scary doll shop turned out to be just another hillbilly? Well, it was like that, but without the comforting part where it's revealed to be a fake ghost situation and/or Alison in a ghost form. Her hair was really weird too, like a wig wearing a wig. Anyway, I guess there's ghosts now.
What else? The main A of this episode, a giant doll-clown, might be a dude with fake press-on nails. Paige now knows the full A story, and also saved Spencer from A. Toby and Spencer both showed momentary worry when Noel Kahn seemed to choke on a peanut, but later Toby pushed Noel Kahn down for being a choad, indirectly revealing that Alison's missing corpse was just chillin' in the beverage cooler the entire time.
It is sad that Garrett is dead -- and he looked very cute tonight, maybe the cutest he has ever looked -- but I never really understood his significance anyway so maybe there are levels to this that I am not getting. Otherwise, it seemed like a major tablet-clearing for a lot of the stuff from the first half of the season, it's always nice to see Toby acting creeperly, and of course there is nothing more exciting than finding out fifty new things that happened on the night of Ali's death. See you in Jan.