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Aria's dealing with Ezra's absence as well as she might -- mostly by putting on her most ridiculously infantile outfits and lounging around -- when little brother Wesley appears, clearly on the run from prep school. After some sudden violence, we learn the truth: Wesley attempted to sleep with one of his teachers, and got thrown out. The only thing more unbelievable than that? Aria's response, to wit: "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Girl, we know. We have been saying that for three years.
Hanna forces a very shirty Caleb into helping go through old crap from his mean aunt's house -- the one that tossed him into the system -- with help from her brother, the foxy Jamie Doyle. But what Hanna eventually figures out, and Caleb cannot accept, is that Jamie Doyle might well be Caleb's father. For a person with no parents, I gotta say Caleb sure has a shitload of parents.
Now that Alison's body has been found on the Halloween Train, it's time to put her to rest for like the tenth time. This time she's going in a mausoleum, presumably due to some kind of diminishing returns situation where there's probably not a lot of left of her after all this constant molestation of her remains. Jason seems a little miffed that Spencer isn't more interested in her latest memorial, but the other ladies are on board.
Aria and Emily are kind of paranoid about being in receipt of their mementoes (Ouija planchette, those ubiquitous earrings), since it makes them look like graverobbers, but it's actually Emily's that take center stage this week: Apparently she popped 25 postcards in the casket, remembering one beautiful flirty day with Alison when postcards were a thing. Of course, now that means that A has 25 chances to blackmail the ladies, and the first one starts with a message in French reminding Emily that she killed a dude.
Which is all it takes to send her down the rabbit hole. She heads off to Therapy Anne to deal with her murder situation, and while it's eventually good old Pam that fixes the problem, Anne loads Em up with a host of new issues (before receiving a suspicious visit and orchid from Miss Vanderwaal): Namely, some random false memories of that night Roofie Emily did one thousand things. One of those things, turns out, involved helping A and Red Jacket Girl dig up Alison's grave. She muddles the memories, though, and spends most of the episode thinking she was the one that killed Ali, but once they hit the mausoleum she works it all out. And not only that, but the nature of Red Jacket's role as A+ on the A-Team.
Spencer, on the other hand, continues her downward spiral into crazytown, letting little things like Mona's continuing menace and the iffiness of her private investigator send her reeling. When the guy eventually tracks down Lair 3.0, she's somehow got it in her head that Toby might still love her and/or be sticking around, but 3.0 turns up as dry and depressing as the rest of her life, so she somehow goes even more crazy over the course of about five different musical montages. In the end she goes on a rampage through the mausoleum, making all the girls cry and telling Jason about Ali's pregnancy from sleeping with Wilden in Jersey, before finally carving Toby's name on his mother's own gravestone in some kind of firing-blindly act of desperation.
In the end, the Liars focus on the fact that they're losing Spencer, but may have figured out the basics of a third A-Team member -- and that possibly she is Alison DiLaurentis, who not only stalked herself backwards in time but is now also digging up her own grave from the future.
week: Spencer flies through the air like the Vampire Queen, burying her teeth in Mona's neck. Aria and Wesley continue to moon about, while Hanna devises some kind of ill-advised scheme to reunite Caleb with yet more of his many parents, which will probably result in their near-deaths also. Emily's therapy reveals more flashbacks to lesbian yearning and/or gravedigging, and she helps Jason figure out the shitstorm Spencer just stirred up.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Ezra's child came to light, with zero consequences, and now -- while Ezra's off making nice in the secret world of Alex Mack -- Aria has one more part of the Babysitter's Club fantasy she calls a life: Her elderly boyfriend's awesome unoccupied studio apartment in the city. (up: An Alfa Romeo Spider, just like the Wakefield twins.)
A box of junk from Emily's latest stalker/cousin revealed a Bio notebook (containing 100% Chem notes) and the news that Detective Wilden most likely knocked up Alison DiLaurentis in Cape May the summer she died, so like an idiot Emily immediately walked this evidence over to the RWPD and put it directly in Wilden's hands.
Spencer figured out that Toby is on the A-Team and it has driven her to new heights of madness. Her new obsession: Finding him, so they can talk it out and everything can be okay, which is nuts on its own but because Spencer is a crazy person this takes the form of hiring a private investigator. I guess her theory is that if he stays in town and/or doesn't warn the other As that she's onto them, their love is real? Something bonkers, anyway.
The point of this episode is what you do when somebody moves on, because other people's lives are much larger than just your part in them and this is hard to accept. Some of us go looking for answers, like Spencer's current existential crisis: A story big enough to contain you both. Some of us go about our business, like Hanna, who already had this conversation with Ali's ghost and Mona's shade. Some of us shove it down and repress, like Emily who still hasn't dealt with her murder of Cousin Nate because she's too busy dealing with his murder of her girlfriend Maya. And some of us, like Aria, just roll around in the bed of the departed, waiting for his hot age-appropriate brother to show up.
THE BREW
Aria: "Guys, just so you know, Ezra arrived at the secret world of Alex Mack and has ceased all further communication."
Spencer: "That's so interesting. I too am being constantly abandoned by the man I love, in various ways. Pay no attention to the fact that I currently look like I'm on bath salts."
Liars: "Anyway, do you think Wilden has read that notebook about how he knocked up and/or killed Ali?"
Aria: "Think about it this way, all we really know is what CeCe Drake thinks happened."
Emily: "I'm going to go take a picture of that picture of Wilden at Cape May, for evidence."
Aria: "Maybe I will take a picture of you taking that picture of a picture, and enter it in an art fair."
PI: "Dear Spencer, I have found evidence of Toby and some other things. Love, PI."
Spencer: "What will happen with that? I bet it will make me crazy."
Jason: "Speaking of, ladies, I am here to tell you that we're burying Alison for the eleventh time, in a mausoleum. You can come if you want."
Spencer: "Fuck that, and fuck you. I am so tired of dead Ali."
Liars: "Spencer! Oh my God, she was our best friend and torturer! Dial it back!"
Spencer: "She's St. Ali now? Are her bones fully relics or something? You dial it back!"
Jason: "Also, the Pennsylvania police think that whoever took the body is keeping your mementoes -- those earrings, the ouija board planchette, etc. -- as a sick trophy. Finding a shovel is nothing compared to the hell of justice that will be visited on whoever has those objects."
Liars: "Huh."
Hanna: "Okay, Aria. The only ones with stuff from that casket are you and me, so let's do the Spencer thing and burn them."
Aria: "Not so fast. I want to hang onto those earrings for no reason."
Hanna: "Because you feel like they're an objective correlative to the destruction of your parents' marriage?"
Aria: "No, because every time Spencer has burned any evidence it has come back to bite us on the very asses at the top of this recap page. I refuse to spend another summer picking up garbage on the side of the road. And don't bother calling me after school, I have an appointment to roll around in Ezra's bed and act morose."
LOCKER HALL
Mona: "Spencer, hi! You look like you're on bath salts. I was just dropping by to give you your hotel and schedule info for the decathlon away trip week."
Spencer: "Eat me, Vanderwaal."
Mona: "Speaking as Team Captain, I gotta say you've been off your A game lately."
Spencer, so enraged she sounds like she's about to barf: "Nice wordplay, asshole. Listen up, because I want to be very clear. This is not a game to me. At all."
Mona: "Pretending I don't hear you! La-la-la! In other news, Toby will probably be there. I'd hate to see him cheering for me and not you, just because you have gone too crazy to answer trivia questions."
Spencer slams her locker door and stalks away, punching extras in the full-on face without even looking. She is so scary!
COMPUTER LAB
Caleb: "Hey Hanna, I got a text from my mom. A real one, not a lie this time. She's saying Aunt Petunia is moving to Australia and they're selling the house I grew up in."
Hanna: "Isn't that the aunt that put you in foster care? Why do we give a damn about this?"
Caleb: "We don't, actually."
Hanna: "I kinda feel like we do. Welcome to me girlfriending the shit out of you on this one. I feel empowered to force you into this because of this one time I talked to a ghost in a chair. Also, because this episode is about doing this exact thing. So even though you are right, and Aunt Petunia can go to hell, I still feel like it's necessary to force you to relive your entire shameful werewolf childhood."
FITZPARTMENT
Wesley: "Hey, why are you rolling around in my brother's bed?"
Aria: "Don't ask me questions. Why are you here in your brother's apartment?"
Wesley: "For reasons of lies. You're so pathetic, come by anytime."
Aria: "As soon as I figure out how to top this airbrushed-kitten t-shirt and stirrup pants."
PI
PI: "Toby has been buying sandwiches and hydrangeas, mainly. Not the act of a person who is about to close down Lair 3.0 and start it up again somewhere else. So I'm guessing he is still in love with you. Do you want me to find Lair 3.0 and see if he still exists?"
Spencer: "I'll let you know, after a few musical montages of me freaking the hell out."
RWPD
Pam: "Being a businesswoman is stressful! I ate Corn Nuts for lunch. I thought they were a food."
Emily: "Wow, without a man around you really do just completely fall apart."
Pam: "Let's go out to dinner right now. I don't feel like cooking, because I work now."
Emily: "Can you just leave like that?"
Pam: "What are they gonna do, arrest me?"
Emily: "Good one. Hey, where did you get this Eiffel Tower postcard from Ali's casket?"
Pam: "I guess it was slipped into my briefcase that I got for work as a businesswoman. Probably by A, given the red-marker writing on the back with all the letter As pointedly capitalized. Do you know anywhere around here that offers a Businesswomen's special? You know how some places have like a lunch special? For Businesswomen?"
SPENCER CAVE
Emily: "Smells like crazy in here. How you doing?"
Spencer: "Crazy. Show me your evidence so I can decide to burn it."
Emily: "It is one of twenty-five postcards I left in Ali's casket. Which sounds nuts right now, but will make more sense later."
Spencer: "And on it, in my beautiful French, I see it says Stop digging, the cops already know you're capable of murder. So I guess we stop digging."
Emily: "Oh my God, I killed like one guy. A is such a bitch."
Spencer: "Like everyone else on this show, I just want to say that yo
u shouldn't feel guilty about killing Cousin Nate."
Emily: "Like I'm gonna tell everybody else on this show, shut up. I gotta go."
Emily: "Wait. Spencer, are you sure you're not going nuts? Because like, I don't know what happened with Toby exactly and every time we bring it up, you shatter whatever you're holding in your hand. But think about how last week Hanna saw Paige with a cute girl and assumed she was cheating on me, when it turned out she was just a Halloween Store employee from the webisodes trying to figure out who bought the Queen of Hearts costume..."
Spencer: "AND? Was it Toby? Were those Toby's man-hands wearing those fake acrylic nails? Because that is just one more thing I cannot fucking handle."
Emily: "Who knows. My point is that things are not always as terrible as they seem."
Spencer: "On this show, that is a patent falsehood. But still, you've given me much to go insaner about."
MONTGOMERY
Hanna: "So this brother, is he cute?"
Aria: "Shit yeah he's cute. Not only in looks but in every way, he's like the weird perfect mix of me and Ezra put together, kinda like how Superboy was Superman's kid with Lex Luthor and nobody ever notices how bizarre that is. It's hot, I won't lie. But he's kind of pretentious."
Hanna: "Ironic. Anyway, I have to go railroad Caleb into werewolf reminiscences. Give me those earrings so I can burn them."
Aria: "No. Still for no real reason."
THERAPY ANNE
Emily: "Thanks for letting me come to your temporary office."
Anne: "Thanks for trusting me with your mental health after I screwed you over a bunch of times."
Emily: "You're no more compromised than the rest of us. Hey, remember that girl who blackmailed you and was A? She's back at school. Wearing amazing outfits."
Anne: "My therapy can work wonders, it's true. Are you here to complain about that girl? Because I'm pretty sure we're being watched, and I don't want to end up just another pair of Tory Burches and a drinking straw, buried outside a barn."
Emily, verbatim: "You may have heard I killed a guy."
Anne: "I heard that you and a classmate were attacked by someone, the same person who killed Maya, and you defended yourself. Emily, what you did was incredibly..."
Emily: "Bitch, this is not how therapy works. Just shut it and listen. Because everybody keeps acting like I'm some big hero for stabbing that kid to death, and I don't really know that I agree. I snuffed out a life. Me, Emily Fields, the sweetest person in this town."
Anne: "Do you want to try hypnotism?"
Emily: "Uh, random."
Anne: "It's not just for revealing false memories of ritual satanic abuse anymore. We use it therapeutically so that you can examine and re-experience your trauma from a mental remove and dismantle the damage it's doing to you."
Emily: "Oh, well in that case go ahead. I am perfectly fine putting myself in an altered state and letting people I don't trust do whatever they want to me."
Anne: "How is Paige?"
SPENCER
Freaks out for a while, in various locations around her bedroom, and eventually agrees to give the PI five hundred more bucks to track down Lair 3.0. This episode is, in some ways, a mission statement about the whole show: You can't simply grieve, you have to make meaning. You have to deal with the ghosts because they're not going anywhere; you can do it on your time, but if you don't they'll come for you. True as much for Alison as for any of their ghosts.
Spencer's always had the least patience for emotions and dreams and visions -- the things this show is about -- so it makes sense that her trial or initiation or whatever would take this Slytherin shape: Like an autoimmune disorder, the show itself taking up arms against her to force her out, or change form. Peeling wallpaper, rooms that appear and disappear. The "real" world suddenly, violently wrenching out from under you, the second you find a place to stand. If she survives, she becomes her opposite, and she could easily end up stronger than even Hanna Marin, but right now it's just so brutal that it's hard to imagine her surviving at all.
JAMIE DOYLE
Is the relative hottie who is Petunia's brother and thus Caleb's uncle. He is helping them go through her stuff. It is crappy stuff and the whole thing is sad and takes place in a barn, which I guess is why Hanna has dressed herself like a farmer.
Caleb: "I am really not into this. Werewolf memories, tearing me apart."
Hanna: "I guess I get that, but you're being really rude to your cute uncle."
Caleb: "I barely know that dude. He took me to a few Phillies games and otherwise just left me alone with his bitch sister the squib. Once I got put in the system, I lost all contact with her seemingly endless number of siblings. We're only here now because my mom married well and has decided to get back in touch with various family members who did various shit to me."
SPENCER
Goes to the ATM to get some cash for the PI, and runs into Jason, yet another of the endless Rosewood parade of people who completely overlook the fact that she is looking ratchet as hell and keeps doing her Carrie White pyrokinetic head-cocks at everything.
Jason: "So the Liars are coming to the cemetery tonight at seven..."
Spencer: "Sounds fuckin' great. Let me know if there's a sex tape getting projected on anything."
Jason: "You seem awful crazy lately, Spence. Need I remind you that Ali was my sister and your best friend, making her basically your sister also, by the transitive property?"
Spencer: "The only sister I need is the Black Swan, genetics don't work like that. Even though I admit it's still intense how much you do look like if Alison and I had a child."
Jason: "Tell it to me straight. What is your problem with Ali's latest corpse issue."
Spencer: "You don't want to have this fight with me, Jason. Not now. I'll win, and it won't feel good for either of us."
Jason: "You mean fighting about how Ali..."
Spencer: "No, cocksucker, I mean an actual physical fight. You have no idea what's going on with me right now."
She heads off down the lane, things exploding and wreckage flying everywhere from her totally crazed rage.
WOLF BARN
Jamie Doyle: "If you find a copy of Mike Mulligan's Steam Shovel in there, I'll take it."
Hanna: "Word, that is like the best book of all time."
(Truth. To this day that book is the reason I only date blue-collar pre-war guys, such as Jamie Doyle here. And, yes, the occasional steam shovel.)
Hanna: "Jamie Doyle, what can you tell me about your brother, Caleb's father?"
Jamie Doyle: "Well, he's clearly me. Did Caleb inherit my emotional immaturity?"
Hanna: "No, living in the walls of a high school in the form of a wolf seems to have really made him a good boyfriend. He's tender and sweet, and usually cheery."
Jamie Doyle: "Not today, though. I'm glad meeting back up with his mom helped."
Hanna: "Hey, I'm a complete stranger but super nosy, so just go with me here. Did his parents love each other?"
Jamie Doyle: "They loved each other -- briefly -- but that father of Caleb's who is me, he said he needed space. She deserved better. Everybody did, especially Caleb. He's not somebody we need to mourn."
Hanna: "That's kind of harsh."
Jamie Doyle: "Think of it this way. Even if he did come back, when you leave people behind they keep going. Keep on having a life. You'd be meeting a new person and have to start from scratch. It comforts me to think it's usually true, that they don't really wait."
Ali: "Well, some of them. Others just go crazy, or date my stalker..."
Spencer: "Yeah, not everyb
ody is capable of that. Trust me on that one."
Aria: "I like to roll around in beds and hit on little brothers."
Ashley: "I just drink a lot of wine since my divorce."
Ella: "I have sex with hot baristas since mine."
Pam: "Emily's father and I are actually the same person, just in different clothes."
Emily: "I engage in mesmerism."
HYPNOTIZZLE
Anne: "Oddly, the show has started with you already hypnotized, so it's possible I'm still messing with you on A's orders. It's too bad I'm not Caleb's real mom, that would have been great. Anyway, remember everything about That Night."
Emily: "You mean the night at the lighthouse, but when we say That Night on this show we're talking about the night I was discovered at Ali's dug-up gravesite after being roofied and kidnapped by no less than like five different individuals over the course of things."
Anne: "So I guess it's about to get weird, then. I didn't know that information."
FITZPARTMENT
Aria: "I know you're staying here and you're in hiding, and all, but I thought maybe I would just skulk around for a little while."
Wesley: "It's okay, I was just writing a poem on this old black typewriter."
Aria: "I have a feeling we're going to be good friends. That's exactly the kind of horrible thing I would do in your situation."
The phone rings and Wes gets scared and Aria's like, "But what if it is Fitz, calling his own home for no real reason on a landline?" so he answers, and it's a hangup call. And I guess you're supposed to think, "Is this A?" but you know it isn't, because this is an Aria storyline and thus has nothing to do with the show we're watching.
THAT NIGHT(S)
Anne: "Do you see the lighthouse? Are you walking around with a knife?"
Emily: "No, I'm at a gravesite with a shovel. They just turned on the sprinklers. Oh! I see her!"
Anne: "Paige? Is she roofying you?"
Emily: "No, Alison. She seems really scared. I keep saying we shouldn't be here, and it's bad, and we shouldn't be doing this, but she's just hanging out in her yellow hoodie down in the open grave. Oh, and now I'm killing her. This sucks."
I love Emily so much. She literally, when it gets to this part where she's bashing Alison's head in, she goes, "I'd like to wake up now!" You can take the Canadian out of Canadia, but you can't hypnotize that shit out of 'em. Runs deep.
Emily: "I have the murder weapon!"
Anne: "The knife you stabbed that kid with? What is going on right now in your hypnotism? I am so confused!"
Emily: "No, the shovel. THE SHOVEL!"
Emily busts herself out of the hypnotism and immediately zooms out the door without explaining a damn thing to Therapy Anne. But I guess Anne would know the significance of a shovel in Rosewood, so maybe she's protecting Emily from that whole client-privilege loophole where if a patient tells you they found a shovel, you have to report it to the authorities even if it was under hypnosis.
Mostly, I just want to pretend that some time, maybe week, we'll get a flashback to the scene before we joined them, when Emily was already under and Anne will be like, "When I count to three, you are going to think you killed Alison. And then Mona Vanderwaal will stop trying to murder my son, who is Caleb Rivers, and I can finally get back together with Jamie Doyle, and we will be the hottest fucking couple in town."
WOLF BARN
Caleb: "Well, this was stupid. Bye, Uncle Jamie."
Jamie Doyle: "Do you guys want to get a hamburger or something? I want to buy you things."
Hanna: "Anybody who knows Caleb would know he's about to start crying and punching things, Jamie Doyle. Just let us leave."
Jamie Doyle: "Oh hey, I just found this photograph of Caleb from when he was six months old."
Hanna: "Really? Because you clearly pulled it out of your wallet just now."
Jamie Doyle: "Yeah because clearly I am Caleb's father and feeling awkward about it. I feel okay putting this burden on you."
Hanna: "...Yeah, I can handle that actually. I'm pretty reliably the best person on this show, so."
HASTINGS
Emily calls Hanna, no response, so she just chills in her room for a while remembering the explanation for those postcards: Alison was laying them out like a Tarot spread, for their future together, when they would run away and make out on top of the Eiffel Tower. It's one of the more compelling Emily/Ali scenes ever, I love it when you get to see Ali's sweetness as more than just manipulation, but it's also nice to know they're not just going to stick us with twenty-five ticking postcard timebombs and leave it at that, like they're the new bracelets bracelets bracelets. Also, any time Alison shows her vulnerability and desperation to be free of the whole Rosewood stalking situation and you can see how afraid she was. I give it a ten.
Pam: "Emily, why are you just chilling here about postcards? Is this about that time you murdered a boy? Because you're really bumming everybody out."
Emily: "Yeah, I went to therapy for it."
Pam: "And how did that go?"
Emily: "Not well, Pam."
Pam: "Honey, you need to stop feeling guilty and just celebrate your stab-happy heroism..."
Emily: "Stop acting like I'm innocent. I'm not this sweet little baby everybody always acts like I am. You never meet the same person twice. That girl is gone."
Pam, verbatim: "Sweetheart, I know who you are. And you would never deliberately do anything to hurt another person. Emily, I am your mother. And that means that I can see you. All of you. Sometimes better than you can see yourself. And there's only good there. Look at me! I promise you, there's only good there."
And a little lesbianism, that will eventually send you to hell. Just kidding, what a wonderful scene. One of the strongest through-lines of this entire show has been watching the reconstruction of the always very human Pam, watching her do this exact thing -- "I see every part of you" -- and come to terms with the fact that her daughter is pretty incredible in most ways, and let her be who she is. Support that continuing process.
I mean, that would be a killer speech in any context, in any family, but knowing the Fields family history it really makes it powerful. Can you imagine if somebody said that to you? "I know exactly who you are, and I have the actual knowledge and authority to assure you there is no darkness there."
PI
PI: "Found your Lair 3.0. What do you imagine is there, Spencer?"
Spencer: "No fucking idea. Probably a simulacrum of a simulacrum."
PI: "Okay, what do you hope is behind that door."
Spencer: "For a gross heroin-looking skiptracer you sure do have a light touch. It's incredibly comforting right now, I'm not gonna lie. What I will say is that we had a secret, the two of us. And if he's still there, if it's still in play, that means he kept our secret."
PI: "It took a while and multiple viewings, but I guess that makes sense."
Spencer: "Did you ever play the game with the flowers when you were little? He loves me, he loves me not? The trick is, you just find a flower with the odd number of petals."
PI: "Buttercups. Marigolds. In addition to my caring nature I also know how many petals each kind of flower has. I am pretty complex."
Spencer: "How many petals on a hydrangea?"
PI: "The number is infinite. I think I get your point. Hydrangeas are the flower of heartlessness. They change color quickly and often. And if you open that door...?"
Spencer: "I open the door. And if it's full of the things that I think it is, then it means that there's h
ope. That means that he loves me, and that I wasn't wrong about us. And if not..."
PI: "Then it's time to let him go. You never meet the same person twice. But what kind of self-respecting person goes looking -- this hard, or at all -- for reasons to forgive their torturer?"
Spencer: "The kind of person who has already lost their grip, sir. The kind of person who is acquainted with desperation, and knows the hits just keep on coming."
WEZRIA
Wesley: "Ezra taught me to drive when I was twelve."
Aria: "When we were twelve."
A random man approaches them, looking insane and blowing the usual "your mother paid me off" trumpet that attends the Fitz/geralds everywhere they go. Wesley tries to play it off in front of Aria, but the guy gets so intense -- "Let's see that pretty smile after I bounce your face off the curb!" -- that Wes eventually clobbers him over the head with a pizza and they go running. Right back to the apartment where he knows they are.
Wesley: "Okay. Truth is, that was my Physics teacher's husband."
Aria: "Gross, you must go to public school."
Wesley: "It's an incredibly long, boring story, its only virtue getting to look at me while I tell it, but the basics are that Ezra inspired me to rebel against our parents and the concept of money. He did it by using his cultural capital to become a white success in academia, as though that didn't also come directly from our class and parents, and I decided to do it by getting thrown out of prep school."
Aria: "This is stupid, but it's my kind of stupid."
Wesley: "Well, first I stepped on the school's insignia, then I made friends with a Jew. No dice. I knew I had to step it up, so I tried to fuck my Physics teacher."
Aria: "I have the most amazing coincidence to report."
Actually, that's not even how she plays it. Because she is Aria, and thus the worst, she actually calls him out for being stupid enough to sleep with a teacher. ARIA! And then, because it's just something you have to accept about this show, she is immediately rewarded for her outlandish hypocrisy by Wes telling her this incredibly mortifying, blush-inducing thing about how Aria is the best thing to happen to Ezra and the worst thing that ever happened to their family, both for the reason that Aria is simply amazing. I mean...
It's like... My first impression of Game Of Thrones was, I looked those books up on Wikipedia like eight years ago just to see why the kerfuffle. And the impression I came away with from that first expedition was that the main characters were: An ugly dwarf who covers up his emotional scars with irony and is constantly forced to have sex with beautiful women and has a wonderful heart, a virgin who runs off to join the army because his mommy is mean and eventually becomes king when people realize how amazing he is inside, and an utterly raped girl who can talk to dragons and has silver hair and purple eyes. Does the silver carpet match the silver drapes? Well, there's no way to know, because despite her enormous breasts she will never reach puberty. And I said, "No thank you."
Because obviously that sarcastic ugly emo dwarf is every boy that reads the books, and that virgin guy is who he wishes he were and someday may become, and that purple-eyed dragon girl is every anime cartoon he has ever masturbated to. And those impressions were not entirely off-base? I get it better now, and I love that show now, but these are still not entirely incorrect assumptions.
In the same way, we have Aria here, who -- although she dresses like a feral toddler set free to roam a Forever 21 and has an unlimited credit line at Claire's Boutique* -- now has an apartment owned by her fabulously rich, conflicted boyfriend who is also a teacher and also an heir to a fortune, his younger brother just showed up with all kinds of problems and is even hotter than the boyfriend, and both of them are constantly telling her how fantastic and beautiful and talented and special-special-special she is: Aria Montgomery is the Tyrion Lannister of Rosewood Pennsylvania.
MARIN
*(The Yelp review that popped up just now when I was doublechecking the name of Claire's starts, "So we took my four-year-old to Claire's to get her ears pierced..." and I reflexively closed that entire browser window with a single click, because that is an internet dealbreaker, even if it does prove my larger point. Also, Google automatically assumes now that when I type Clai... I'm once again googling what the fuck is up with claire forlani, which I'm not gonna lie, there is substantial precedent for that assumption.)
Caleb: "That was awful. Thanks for making me do that."
Hanna: "Sorry, I just thought it was important. Because of this episode's themes."
Caleb: "Shut it down, Hanna. I've moved on."
Hanna: "Have you? Because here's a picture of you as a baby."
Caleb: "I was adorable even then."
Hanna: "I'm pretty sure it came out of Jamie Doyle's wallet. Because he is your..."
Caleb: "Uncle. No way. Drop it. Shut it down."
Hanna: "There is absolutely no way I'm letting this go. Dealing with my own daddy issues caused more fucking chaos than anything I've ever done, and I want you to have the same opportunity. You too can know the glory of making a girl barf shrimp onto a wedding dress."
ANNE SULLIVAN
Mona: "Therapy Anne! I was just lurking in your office waiting room with this orchid that clearly has a radio transceiver in it."
Anne: "How nice to see you, A. Emily was not kidding about your fantastic outfits."
Mona: "I just wanted you to know that I'm doing so much better. I want to really repay you for what you did for/to me! Just repay the shit out of you. Put this bugged orchid in your temporary office immediately!"
Anne: "I will totally not be doing that. Also, I'm getting the fuck on up out of Rosewood for a while, so don't bother stalking me. Unless we're working together, and this whole scene is a red herring."
SPENCER
In her like third music video moment of the week, she opens up the Lair to find that Toby is completely gone. This occurs to the soundtrack of like the Offspring. I humbly suggest that all of Spencer's scenes from now on are scored completely with ten-year-old sounding screamo punk. It really lends this Toby shit some texture, especially now that we know about his prison yard roots. (Or maybe this?) I want to feel bad for Spencer because she's phenomenal, but watching her lose her shit is so, so satisfying that I also kind of want more and more horrible things to continue to happen to her. Emily and Hanna respond so reasonably to the shit that happens to them that it's really only Spencer you can rely on to go bughouse with any regularity.
BURIAL
Liars: "So I guess after the fiftieth funeral we don't really stand on ceremony, huh? I mean this is some gorgeous set design, but why are we the only people here?"
Jason: "Everybody else must have moved on."
Gravestone: "Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality."
Hanna: "Huh. That's creepy."
Aria: "Uh, it's Emily Dickinson?"
Everybody, Forever: "Shut the hell up, Aria. Jesus."
Spencer comes in and all the candles gutter and the shadows climb the walls and everybody shivers and the bodies in their boxes writhe and it's altogether a bad scene. I can't help wondering if this entire storyline were actually inspired by that one fucked-up face she made that time in the interrogation room on the day of the shovel. Remember that face? I sure do. It's burned into my memory, like I'm Emily Fields over here. And it seems to me that one single face is more than enough reason to wipe off the entire writers' room whiteboard a
nd put in huge letters:
SEASON 3-B IS NOW SPENCER JUST GOES FUCKING NUTS OK
Spencer: "Hey fucker, guess what?"
Jason: "Spencer, so glad you could join us."
Liars: "Just noticed Spencer is bonkers. Literally this is the first we're noticing this."
Spencer: "Your sister was pregnant when she died!"
Jason: "Do go on."
Liars: "Spencer, no! You're just being weird and mean!"
Spencer: "Guess who the father was? Detective Wilden!"
Jason: "BRB I have to go threaten a policeman now."
Liars: "Spencer, that was the most fucked up thing you've done in a while."
Spencer: "Ha! That you know of."
The whole "people move on" thing comes into play, now, in a new way: Spencer's become the largest advocate for letting Ali go, forgetting about Mystery B, but it's happening just in time for her to get completely caught in the web of Mystery A. The other three have gone through a lot of good, hard work to come back around to this place where they're allowed to mourn her and say goodbye, because so much of what they went through has been about that, about putting her to rest in their hearts so they can say goodbye in the real world. And now Spencer's so tied up in other shit she can't come with them -- and out of them all, missed her the least to begin with -- so they all look just as lost to her as she does to us.
So now that she's alone, having alienated everybody at this sad little goat-rodeo of a funeral, Spencer does the logical thing, which is notice the relatively fresh hydrangeas at Toby's mother's mausoleum spot, take a second to pull it together -- just kidding! -- and then uses the Lair key to scratch Toby's name over Mrs. Cavanaugh's. People move on. He won't meet the same Spencer again; that girl is gone.
OUTSIDE
Emily: "First of all, Spencer is a bitch. Hurt people hurt people, but right now it's really hard to be compassionate."
Aria: "Yeah, that bitch is gone. We should probably help her out of this spiral just as soon as we get over being pissed at her."
Hanna: "I'm still confused why we're all so protective of Jason right now. That's usually Spencer's bag. I guess we're just closing ranks because we still miss Alison."
Emily: "Hang on, I'm getting another transmission from my ongoing amnesia!"
Hanna: "This again?"
Aria: "What, were you roofied and abducted by more people? Because there isn't anybody left. You literally hung out with every single person That Night, even like Jenna and Noel Kahn that are barely on this show."
Emily: "You're forgetting one person! Alison DiLaurentis!"
Aria: "The fuck?"
Hanna: "Oh my God, I'm so glad somebody said something. Have you guys been spending, like, a lot of time with her? Considering she's dead?"
Aria: "Ah. Yeah, I did chill with her recently when I was being poisoned and chased around my house by a substitute teacher."
Hanna: "I have been hanging out with her pretty regularly ever since I got run over that time. Do you guys remember that?"
Emily: "Yeah, I saw her on your dad's wedding day, when that mean doll talked me into locking myself in a garage with a car that was running."
Aria: "Should we, I don't know, maybe discuss this further?"
Emily: "No time! Incoming!"
Apparently That Night, one thing Emily got up to was helping Alison dig up her own grave. Sure, that checks out. But then somebody showed up, and Ali started screaming. Who was it? Red Coat Girl.
Emily: "Thank God, I only imagined the part where I bludgeoned her..."
Aria: "When would you say this happened? Before or after Jenna picked you up at that underground drug rave/time-traveling '50s diner from the Hopper painting and drove you around town in a kerchief, despite being blind?"
Emily: "Still fuzzy."
Liars: "I wonder if that was Alison in the red coat. Digging up her own grave, hitting her own self over the head."
Emily: "All I know is the bitch was blonde, wearing a red coat... And that she is A+."
Liars: "Did you seriously just intuit not only the existence of the A-Team, but also its leader?"
Emily: "This is why my chronic amnesia is a good thing. Good shit like this, sometimes."
A-TAG
One of the A-Team buys a bottle of whiskey, producing ID on request. We do not see the card itself, but we know that one of the As -- probably the same one that took the field mission to kill Caleb's mom -- is of age. Is it CeCe Drake? I hope to God it's CeCe Drake.
WEEK: SPENCER JUST GOES FUCKING NUTS OK
If they have a single clue between them, clearly their step should be administering Emily with various medications at measured doses, to see what else she comes up with, or else they should all take drugs together and see if Ali or her ghost or her red-coated twin or somebody in a blonde wig or Ali in a brown wig or some other ghost or even Mikey Montgomery shows up. Clearly the answer is psychotropics at this point. Which could explain the scenes from week that involve Spencer launching herself through the air at Mona's face with a guttural howl.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Deception, and Pretty Little Liars 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, and a novelette, "The Commonplace Book," appeared this fall on Tor.com.
nd put in huge letters:
SEASON 3-B IS NOW SPENCER JUST GOES FUCKING NUTS OK
Spencer: "Hey fucker, guess what?"
Jason: "Spencer, so glad you could join us."
Liars: "Just noticed Spencer is bonkers. Literally this is the first we're noticing this."
Spencer: "Your sister was pregnant when she died!"
Jason: "Do go on."
Liars: "Spencer, no! You're just being weird and mean!"
Spencer: "Guess who the father was? Detective Wilden!"
Jason: "BRB I have to go threaten a policeman now."
Liars: "Spencer, that was the most fucked up thing you've done in a while."
Spencer: "Ha! That you know of."
The whole "people move on" thing comes into play, now, in a new way: Spencer's become the largest advocate for letting Ali go, forgetting about Mystery B, but it's happening just in time for her to get completely caught in the web of Mystery A. The other three have gone through a lot of good, hard work to come back around to this place where they're allowed to mourn her and say goodbye, because so much of what they went through has been about that, about putting her to rest in their hearts so they can say goodbye in the real world. And now Spencer's so tied up in other shit she can't come with them -- and out of them all, missed her the least to begin with -- so they all look just as lost to her as she does to us.
So now that she's alone, having alienated everybody at this sad little goat-rodeo of a funeral, Spencer does the logical thing, which is notice the relatively fresh hydrangeas at Toby's mother's mausoleum spot, take a second to pull it together -- just kidding! -- and then uses the Lair key to scratch Toby's name over Mrs. Cavanaugh's. People move on. He won't meet the same Spencer again; that girl is gone.
OUTSIDE
Emily: "First of all, Spencer is a bitch. Hurt people hurt people, but right now it's really hard to be compassionate."
Aria: "Yeah, that bitch is gone. We should probably help her out of this spiral just as soon as we get over being pissed at her."
Hanna: "I'm still confused why we're all so protective of Jason right now. That's usually Spencer's bag. I guess we're just closing ranks because we still miss Alison."
Emily: "Hang on, I'm getting another transmission from my ongoing amnesia!"
Hanna: "This again?"
Aria: "What, were you roofied and abducted by more people? Because there isn't anybody left. You literally hung out with every single person That Night, even like Jenna and Noel Kahn that are barely on this show."
Emily: "You're forgetting one person! Alison DiLaurentis!"
Aria: "The fuck?"
Hanna: "Oh my God, I'm so glad somebody said something. Have you guys been spending, like, a lot of time with her? Considering she's dead?"
Aria: "Ah. Yeah, I did chill with her recently when I was being poisoned and chased around my house by a substitute teacher."
Hanna: "I have been hanging out with her pretty regularly ever since I got run over that time. Do you guys remember that?"
Emily: "Yeah, I saw her on your dad's wedding day, when that mean doll talked me into locking myself in a garage with a car that was running."
Aria: "Should we, I don't know, maybe discuss this further?"
Emily: "No time! Incoming!"
Apparently That Night, one thing Emily got up to was helping Alison dig up her own grave. Sure, that checks out. But then somebody showed up, and Ali started screaming. Who was it? Red Coat Girl.
Emily: "Thank God, I only imagined the part where I bludgeoned her..."
Aria: "When would you say this happened? Before or after Jenna picked you up at that underground drug rave/time-traveling '50s diner from the Hopper painting and drove you around town in a kerchief, despite being blind?"
Emily: "Still fuzzy."
Liars: "I wonder if that was Alison in the red coat. Digging up her own grave, hitting her own self over the head."
Emily: "All I know is the bitch was blonde, wearing a red coat... And that she is A+."
Liars: "Did you seriously just intuit not only the existence of the A-Team, but also its leader?"
Emily: "This is why my chronic amnesia is a good thing. Good shit like this, sometimes."
A-TAG
One of the A-Team buys a bottle of whiskey, producing ID on request. We do not see the card itself, but we know that one of the As -- probably the same one that took the field mission to kill Caleb's mom -- is of age. Is it CeCe Drake? I hope to God it's CeCe Drake.
WEEK: SPENCER JUST GOES FUCKING NUTS OK
If they have a single clue between them, clearly their step should be administering Emily with various medications at measured doses, to see what else she comes up with, or else they should all take drugs together and see if Ali or her ghost or her red-coated twin or somebody in a blonde wig or Ali in a brown wig or some other ghost or even Mikey Montgomery shows up. Clearly the answer is psychotropics at this point. Which could explain the scenes from week that involve Spencer launching herself through the air at Mona's face with a guttural howl.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Deception, and Pretty Little Liars 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, and a novelette, "The Commonplace Book," appeared this fall on Tor.com.