While Aria's off dealing with a strangely acquiescent Maggie and an even more strangely forceful Ezra in Daddy Bear mode -- on which more in a minute, because what -- Spencer gathers the rest of the Liars and finally tells her horrible secret: Toby swiped her v-card as a massive A game and their whole relationship has been a sham.
This leads to a hilarious metafictional scene where Emily tries to commandeer the narrative and remind everybody how Toby is her best friend and always has been, to which Spencer is deliriously, nastily, sexily averse. It's a whole new flavor of Spencer in this scene, and it's brilliant -- but not as brilliant as the bit, when she remembers "Oh yeah, and by telling you this probably I have gotten one of you killed, per A's last threat."
Emily spends the episode replaying all of Spencer's steps in trying to reconstruct a sensible version of Toby, and it's as troubling if not as heartbreaking as Spencer's last few episodes in this boat, but the parallels are really pointed up in a smart way. Meanwhile, Spencer gets last week's funeral wreath and determines from it that Emily is the one who is going to die. So then Emily has to split from the typically protective Spencer in order to track down Toby and figure out what's going on: Is he an unlucky Lucas in A's game, or a straight-up Mona Vanderwaal?
These two ladies on their two different paths to figure out the Toby situation is a miniature of the whole show's grand epic mythology of creating meaning in the wake of Alison (and Maya)'s murders, and it leads to some really dark places. Emily ends up in a mysterious midnight mockup of a woodworking warehouse, reminiscent of Synecdoche, NY and -- just as Spencer's discovering Mona haunting Toby Cavanaugh's Dead Body in the woods -- receives a memento of her own: A future funeral announcement for our favorite homie-turned-A-Teamer.
Aria's babysitting goes awry when Ezra's son falls off a bed by accident, earning him some stitches and Aria a very serious freakout about the responsibilities of step-parenthood that, Ezra's impressive kindness and understanding about the whole thing aside, help her see the wisdom in Ella's suggestion that maybe this is not her problem and she should just go back to being a teenage girl. It's actually fairly moving, as Ella helps her navigate the waters of this very difficult choice, and we're left wondering along with old Aria just what her move should be.
Hanna leads her shellshocked mother down the primrose path to full Hitchcockitude by telling her to stay quiet about last week's hit-and-run, even as Ashley ghost-whispers Wilden around town, just like on Halloween. Eventually, so disturbed is she by the implications of his cop car randomly showing up in the Marin garage with that footage playing on a loop, she takes it to the level and gets Aria's help in sinking the car to the bottom of the lake. (For at least the five seconds, which is how long it takes until this week's A-Tag, in which Wilden's policeman's hat is randomly fished out of said lake.)
And as if the car thing isn't bananas enough -- it just sits there on this abandoned road with its turn signal blinking for three episodes, then randomly shows up in Hanna's garage with a video playing, and then she pushes it into the lake, where it is still blasting its lights and that video well after the deeps have made their claim -- you also have Spencer, who after discovering Toby's dead body and chasing Mona for awhile spends the rest of the evening wandering the forest in full Brontë mode until finally they find her, call her a Jane Doe because she's in like a nightie, and go ahead and put her in Radley.
That's incredible, right? That's insane. I love this. I love everything about this, Ezra growing up and Toby growing dead and Spencer growing insane. Perfection. Dangerous.
Week: Three episodes left, nobody knows where Spencer is because she's checked in anonymously, and only Mona knows what's going on. Recipe! For! Disaster!