What a fantastic episode! It had everything! Everybody was awesome! There was a magic parrot eating a rotisserie chicken! Spencer recreating the night at the Lodge using everybody's dinner in a breadstick-and-cherry-tomato simulacrum matrix! Paige and Emily back having an actual story arc! Alison demonstrating strange new powers! All this plus Ryan Guzman from Step Up: Revolution, the very greatest dance-related film about the Occupy Movement.
Mona, fed up with the girls' continued Mean Girling, offers to take them to the RV that is no longer there, which looks pretty bad. But luckily, A tries to murder her while everybody's standing right there, so then they are only mostly awful to her. (And fascinatingly, it's Aria that ends up spending the most Mona time this week, which is a new and very cool chemistry.) In the process of the attack, two interesting things happen.
Number one is, Emily injures her shoulder. After a sweet scene with Paige about their future life together, and a stepped-up offensive from Halloween Shana, Emily is so stressed about getting into Stanford that she ends up going down a big drug spiral before her big swim meet, and ends up in the hospital. Dark Emily is a scary Emily to watch, but the degree to which her problems are normal problems is actually very refreshing. (This thing and the thing were both like, oh right, this is a teen show and not just a fever nightmare we're all having at the same time.)
Number two is, Aria makes it all about her and immediately decides that she needs martial arts training, on the off chance that something bad ever happens to her. This results in, awesomely enough, probably the best Aria episode of all time -- besides obviously the time Meredith drugged her and chased her around her house -- because she starts training with the aforementioned Ryan Guzman, Jake, and accidentally kisses him, and is just generally very funny and self-aware and mortified in a way that she rarely is. It ends on an up note, and it's a joy from start to finish. (I feel kinda bad for the shippers, but then that's nothing new.)
Spencer finds out that she is not getting into UPenn, the first person ever to do so, and because she is having a meltdown and Toby's acting super sketch, she ends up crying to Ezra about it. (So distraught is she, in fact, that she does not decipher his code and realize that every time he says "safety school" he means that he wants to date Spencer now that Aria is moving on.) Ezra tries to help with her essay for other schools, but when he tells her that this isn't the Nineties and Girl, Interrupted autopathology is no longer a substitute for being an interesting person -- since he doesn't know that, with A involved, honesty about your weird secrets is the best policy -- she flips! Spencer interrupted all over again!
It's tough to see Spencer feeling down, but pretty cool because it's a completely different down from last season. (A lot of people seem to be regressing back to their first-season selves, come to think about it. Worth considering further.) Anyway, good thing Toby's there to flip twice as hard, revealing his many questions about his mother's suicide and explaining his RV-moving deal with A, who has provided him with her file from Radley. (Sad.) We are doing this, and it is certainly interesting to see him going internal with all this stuff -- and a hugely nice surprise that he comes clean about all of it almost immediately, which is especially good now that Spencer is ramping up to her old powers again.
Hanna's got a lot going on, her own self. Although Aria spends the episode being the Mona contact for some reason, there's still the fact that Ashley (who is back!) is lying about all kinds of shit, putting everybody in danger. Mrs. DiLaurentis saddles her with this crazy parrot and won't stop dicking her around about her body issues, but does give us a flashback that was one of the most harrowingly real things I've ever seen on the show. (I don't know if I can explain it right, but trust that there is this mother/daughter meltdown with Ali that was just chills, like Black Swan style, just completely scary... and banal, and sad.) Anyway, Hanna stomps around being bitchy to everybody and eventually gets stonewalled by a hard-drinking Ashley about her whereabouts the night of Wilden's murder, and it's just a tough night all around for ol' Hanna.
In the end, Spencer figures out that the parrot has had a certain phone number drilled into its head, but there's no answer when she calls it: And when the girls try to confirm it, the parrot is gone, kidnapped by A, who feeds it chicken, which is where mad cow comes from. I am not a scientist but that is my understanding.
Week: The taskforce is closing in on the Liars, with a whole yarn-and-photo corkboard like something from The Wire. Ali masks everywhere, which is always good. And a field trip to Radley with Toby, which will probably be sad and super weird. How great is this season, man?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Mona engineered a trip to the loony bin for old Spencer to get her on the A-Team, but once the B-Team (the NAT Girls) got involved, even Mona jumped ship and joined the Liars (or did she?). But understandably enough, the Liars are not buying it, so now Mona is just 24/7 trying to earn back their trust (or is she?). Toby moved the Lair Van for A, which made her look bad but opens up his storyline for the season; A stashed Ashley Marin's phone in Wilden's casket and now the Liars are under investigation in his death, with A poised to pull the trigger on Ashley if they don't cooperate with her madness. Oh, and a mysterious Lady in Black maybe has something or nothing to do with any of this.
DINNER
Liars: "Wait, so how long has A had your mom's phone?"
Hanna: "Shut up! I don't know!"
Liars: "Are you going to be edgy and rude the entire episode?"
Hanna: "Don't threaten me with a good time! You are not my supervisor!"
Liars: "Is the Lady in Black maybe Melissa? She does put on costumes and go places for no reason, we've seen it before."
Spencer: "I am feeling defensive about her ever since she visited me in the mental hospital and my parents never did. She is in DC."
Hanna: "Interning for the Devil I bet!"
Aria: "Spencer, what are you doing with my fries and all of our food?"
Spencer: "Obviously I'm recreating the geography around the Lodge to determine the likelihood that the person who jumped out of the plane could have pulled you all out of that fire, or if there were multiple Alisons running around the woods."
Liars: "Is this you going crazy again?"
Spencer: "No, I'm more Spencer in this episode than I have been since Toby went to Bucks County, it's okay. Remember my cyberspace Lair simulacrum? It's like that, but with breadsticks and fried mozzarella."
Liars: "What we're really saying here is, Alison DiLaurentis is alive and flying planes and torturing us but also saving us."
Liars: "Depending on the day, or the scene, one or more of us does not believe that! Which one kind of changes. Emily seems to be most firmly on Team That Was Not Alison, despite having had more contact with her ghost than maybe anybody else."
Emily: "No, in this scene I kind of do think maybe she has come back to life."
Mona: "Hey guys! Sorry I'm late for our meal together as friends!"
Liars: "Ugh, this bitch. Why are you here. Why don't you go die."
Mona: "Nice to see you too!"
Hanna: "Did you put my mom's phone in Wilden's casket?"
Mona: "No, that doesn't even make sense. Look, you guys, I'm trying to work with you here. I've cashed in every one of my redemption cards, you saw my computer get hacked, and I handed over that cop car tape free and clear..."
Spencer: "You should take us to the RV then, like you've already done multiple times. Maybe this time will prove it."
Mona: "And then you guys will stop being awful to me?"
Liars: "NO!"
Liars: "Ugh, this bitch. Why are you here. Why don't you go die."
Mona: "Nice to see you too!"
Hanna: "Did you put my mom's phone in Wilden's casket?"
Mona: "No, that doesn't even make sense. Look, you guys, I'm trying to work with you here. I've cashed in every one of my redemption cards, you saw my computer get hacked, and I handed over that cop car tape free and clear..."
Spencer: "You should take us to the RV then, like you've already done multiple times. Maybe this time will prove it."
Mona: "And then you guys will stop being awful to me?"
Liars: "NO!"
One of the points I loved about Jenna Thing the most was that whether or not she was a monster, the Liars turned her into one by virtue of being horrible to her at all times. I like the idea that right now Mona is trying -- that once she started with the cargo cult stuff about Redcoat and "she's everywhere and nowhere!" she was admitting she was in over her head -- but that maybe if the girls continue to be bitches to her at all times, they'll force her to turn back into A.
So then every scene like this is really Mona saying, "You guys don't wanna maybe think about going about things in a different way? Due to me being an evil genius with a pathological fear of rejection and a so-so mental stability? Really? How can I break this down for you further." And when they finally fucking accomplish it, you'll hear an audible click or snapping sound of Mona going buckwild inside her mind.
SOME CREEPY FARM
Spencer: "The reasons we are doing this right this second are twofold. Number one, I don't want her having any lead time to purge the van. And two, how is it possible we would get anything done on this show without it being pitch black and with owls hooting?"
Mona: "Funny story, the van is gone."
Liars: "WE KNEW IT!"
Mona: "Okay, you're gonna think I'm being crazy, but what if we give me a bye on this one?"
Liars: "No! Fuck you! You are out of the club!"
Mona gets in her car and is immediately garotted by A, who tosses her out of her own car, pulls a wicked 180 and then tries to run over Aria, Emily and Mona all at the same time. Emily picks up the other two in her big strong arms and whisks them out of danger, but it does several things that will define the rest of the episode: Make Mona desperate which makes Aria more sympathetic (that Anita part of her that is the best part of her), hurt Emily's shoulder which endangers her entire lesbian future, and convince Aria that she is a target and thus needs to make Mona's near-murder all about her, because like Mona she is wee.
These are the three best things about the episode; this episode is the best one yet or at least since last week's episode. (This is already my personal favorite season and we're barely even into it yet. It is about literally everything I love about this show, all happening at the same time finally.) Therefore, this scene contains the seeds of greatness.
MARIN
Aria: Dear Hanna, our friend Mona's car was found dumped at the school. She is very upset! I am worried about our friend Mona.
Hanna: "Ugh. Been there, doesn't last. Ignore."
Ashley Marin! Welcome home! I love you so much!
Ashley: "That Rosewood/NYC drive is a bear! Good thing I only had to do it six tim... I mean, once. I went there and stayed there, and then came back here, and now it is now."
Hanna: "How was New York?"
Ashley: "Why you askin' me? Oh, right. Because I was 'there.' It was fine. I didn't see too much of it. You know I like to stay in and go to bed bright and early and sober."
Hanna: "Just don't ask me how I'm doing!"
Ashley: "Well, it's been a week since I 'went to New York,' I guess I'm wondering how it was to go to yet another funeral. Drunk Jessica DiLaurentis bring up your weight at all?"
Hanna: "Mostly I just felt weird because it's like, Wilden raped my mom and my best friend, and probably killed at least a few people, and was in the NAT Club. But on the other hand, did I wish him dead? And if the answer is yes, is that okay?"
Ashley: "No, honey. That is not the question if you're going to stay sane. Do like Mommy. Detective Wilden had more enemies than friends, and one of those people decided to do us all a favor."
Hanna: "So we're doing this the scary sad way, huh? Okay fine. Here's your phone. I found it in the mailbox, by which I mean Wilden's casket. Feel free to come clean about anything at all. Your window on that is closing. And not because I judge you for killing him, but because a ghost ninja will dick us with it so I need to know what we're dealing with."
Ashley: "What we are dealing with is, this bottle of Chardonnay ain't gonna drink itself. Night, honey."
ROSEWOOD AVENUE, STREET OF ALL ROSEWOOD COMMERCE
Aria: "I can't stop worrying about Mona! And Emily, her shoulder."
Hanna: "I wish that giant Emily had landed on tiny Mona."
Aria: "I can't go with you there, because we were both very close to death. If Susan Strong hadn't lifted us high into the air, I'd be just as tiny and dead as her."
Hanna: "Meanwhile, my mom is a murderer who lies to her own daughter. See how I'm talking about actual problems that affect us, and not just woulda-couldas?"
Aria: "There was zero chance that A was not going to frame your mom for Wilden's death. I mean, clearly that was going to happen. Before she even ran him over it would have made sense, but definitely after she, again, ran him over."
Questions
- If Mona didn't put that phone in the casket then who did?
- Who sent that tape of us outside of Wilden's car?
- And who stole Mona's hate-mobile?
Correct Answers
- A.
- Also A.
- Toby.
But for some reason today's suspects are Melissa, Jenna, Shana and the whole B-Team Bitch Crew, and why? Because Shana is sitting right over there, on this one street where everybody always, always is.
Aria: "LOL, go ask her."
Hanna: "By this fucked up belt I'm wearing and the fact that I have accessorized with three different fashion-forward shades of orange-coral all at the same time, I will."
Aria: "I was just kidding, don't do that. That bitch is crazy."
Shana: "What's up? I was just making a list of girls I'm going to kill. First you, then Aria, then Spencer. I'm saving Emily for last, because she is the gay one and she is with poor Paige, my total obsession, so I hate her the most. Dating Jenna Thing is not enough for me, I demand all the girlfriends."
Hanna: "I was just making a list of creeps who were friends with Wilden, and you are on it. Top of the list. Why weren't you at his funeral?"
(Melissa also wasn't there, but Jenna Thing was there, with a wicked hot guy who might in reality be named Nigel. What these ladies get up to when we're not watching, it's crazy.)
Shana: "I don't even know who that is. I was swimming in a swimming pool for practice for when we have our big swim meet."
Oh, is there a big swim meet coming up? Must be any day of the week.
Hanna: "Hey, remember the quote 'groggy scumbag' you and Jenna scraped off the road the night some person ran him over?"
Aria: "Hanna I hate to say this, but you're embarrassing me in front of Shana. The Halloween Store employee."
PAIGE MCCULLERS
Paige: "I have created a virtual simulacrum of our dorm room we will have at Stanford, if your hurt shoulder doesn't ruin your performance in the big swim meet."
Emily: "It is not possible to move too fast! In a relationship, or a swimming pool."
Paige: "Do you like it? I was going for 'cozy' but then it was one puffy drape away from Grey Gardens."
First I was like, there's a Lauren Conrad joke in there, and then I was like too problematic, I'm gonna wait and see what Heather says, and Heather said maybe it was a gay thing, but if so, I guess, yikes. I can see Paige going shabby-chic or country-cozy or whatever, puffy curtains everywhere. Bikes on the lawn. Sometimes a puffy drape is just a puffy drape, a bad idea, nothing more.
Emily: "In this virtual world, the beds are pretty far apart."
Paige: "What a turn on that you said that! Here is a chaste hug around the shoulders."
Emily: "Not the SHOULDERS!"
Paige: "What's wrong? You can tell me anything. Unless it's that you're injured, and endangering our entire lesbian future together. Then you should probably just stuff those feelings down and then stack a handful of pills on top of that."
Emily: "To be fair, it's not just about melding ourselves into one sexy being, it's also the idea of starting a whole new life across the country where I am not constantly being murdered and drugged and punched in the boob."
Paige: "Well, as long as you swim better tomorrow than you have ever swammed before."
Emily: "I think the word is 'swimed.' Show me your puffy drapes."
Paige: "Oh, I'll show you some puffy drapes."
The sweetest part of all is that Paige thinks it's the drapes that separate them from being Grey Gardens, rather than their open and dedicated aspiration to becoming Grey Gardens that will end up making them Grey Gardens. You know what I mean? "If we decorate in a modern kitsch style, or maybe even like a Hollywood Regency, it won't feel quite so much like we are becoming a single entity that eschews all other human contact."
SPENCER
Spencer: "Toby, why didn't you come upstairs when you got here?"
Toby: "Too busy texting with A."
Spencer: "?"
Toby: "...Uh, 'A' as in, 'a' fellow teen contractor. Not 'A' as in 'A.'"
Spencer: "Really?"
Toby: "No. Refreshingly, I am going to come clean."
Spencer: "Right now? That would be something."
Toby: "No, but later. I have to do some sense memory exercises so I can squeeze out some awkward tears when I tell you. Also, I have teen contractor work to do."
Look, I'm digging Toby and this whole storyline but can I just ask one question? Just one simple question, which is Where the fuck is Caleb Rivers. I never ask about Lucas, or Dr. Wren, or Annie Sullivan. I never ask about Noel Kahn because he's already right here, in my heart. He's with us all the time through the power of love. And Paige, she's always just around the corner, you know. God knows Ezra turns up in the craziest places. But Caleb, we have a limited amount of time left together and I don't really care if you find your werewolf dad, because he is a putz and it is not going to make you happier in any way. So you get your ass back to Rosewood, please. Hanna needs you. I need you. I need to know what kind of a haircut you have today.
Oh, and Spencer just got a rejection letter from U Penn, making her the first person in her entire family to not go to U Penn. I guess Wharton discontinued their Entrepreneurship Of Breadstick Sculpture concentration or maybe it is just full for this year.
STEINBECK LITERATURE SURVEY
Ezra: "So the school board found out you guys have only ever read two books -- and a single play that you never actually performed -- and they've made some changes to the curriculum. To wit, you will be reading not just one Steinbeck book, but all of them. At the same time. Class dismissed."
Oh, and also he stares Aria right in the eyeball when he calls East Of Eden a story of "doomed romance." Which I guess is less creepy and makes more sense than doing that while talking about the end of Grapes Of Wrath but is still grotesque in a very specifically Ezra Fitz way.
Mona: "Meet you in the Quad, friends! We'll dish."
Liars: "What the fuck is with this girl."
Ezra: "Spencer? Are you not going to meet Mona in the Quad? And dish?"
Spencer: "I am not. I am also not going to U Penn. I haven't told anybody. I don't know why I'm telling you, except that as a pedophile you are good at getting people's confidence and knowing when they are feeling vulnerable."
Ezra: "It's intuitive. Do you want help with applying to other schools?"
Spencer: "'Other' Schools? What is that, is that in-state? Is it part of the U Penn system?"
"It's really important to have a second choice, even if you had your heart set on something else," Ezra says, directly to Spencer's teenage breasts, while licking his lips lasciviously. "Even if you said you and U Penn were going to be together forever and it didn't work out, what are you gonna do, abstain from learning? At the end of the day, a person's got needs. Do you need me to date Melissa before you'll fuck me? Because I've got the time for that. When's she coming back into town? Or is the Aria thing enough."
MARIN/FIELDS
Emily and Hanna chat on the phone. Because they are talking about super-secret stuff, Emily has taken the stealthy route of putting her phone on speaker and rampaging through her medicine cabinet, seeking drugs.
Hanna: "You need to get your piece on a leash. She did date Shana all summer, and Shana is my irrational target this week."
Emily: "You leave Paige the hell out of this. Both because it's dangerous to involve her, and secondly because I don't need the agita."
Hanna: "She knows Shana better than any of us... Listen, how is your shoulder?"
Emily: "It needs drugs. I am going to take some drugs. Not because I'm going down a particular path, but because in this one specific case it is necessary."
I think about this all the time actually, like, not being remotely physical or physically skilled or athletic, I wonder what would have happened if I had stuck with a sport past my first injury. How do you cope with hurting your body? I don't know, I never learned. And I was thinking about ballet and how I would probably in another life be good at that, but what if I hurt myself? I feel like the world would end. I broke a lot of bones as a kid so I know that at some point I was relatively fearless, but those days are gone. And I actually did think of Emily Fields during that conversation with myself, and how sometimes you get hurt and you still just keep doing the thing? Do people not understand that the world is fraught with danger?
I realize everybody does this all the time, but it's amazing and beautiful to me on a level I cannot explain. I mean, I get along with athletes better than I do most people because I am fairly intense and serious in real life, and I admire them a lot. Athletes, people in the military. Suze Orman is like, she's the C-3PO and I am the Ewoks. But it's still a language that sounds to me like animals, just nonsense. Like how do people save money, what is an IRA, how does your money make other money? How can people just eat broccoli? How do you not quit playing football the exact moment that someone first touches your body without your permission. How do you get hurt and not immediately run screaming from the source of the pain, never to return. That, to me, is mutant powers.
Hanna: "I didn't find any drugs at my house, which is just one of the many reasons I miss living at your house, but I did find some muddy Manolos."
Emily: "Because your mom killed Wilden and then wandered about the crime scene?"
Hanna: "I'm thinking yes... Hey, why am I on speaker phone?"
Emily: "Jackpot! I'm gonna go. I need to take all of these pills real quick."
Maybe it's pills, maybe that's the secret. I'm going to start taking pills all the time and join a gym. Become a publicist.
STEP UP REVOLUTION
Is a movie that I love. My friend Martha says in France it is called Sexy Dance 4, which led our friend Cat to note that it must be a sequel to Sexy Dance 2 The Streets, which is one of the better conversations I have had in life. And in addition to the dancing, which was great, and the concept of doing performance art in order to change America, which is ambitious at the least, one of the best things in it was Ryan Guzman. What a charmer he is.
So now he is teaching a martial art at Holden's fight studio, which is where Aria has come to learn to defend herself from lurkers. At no point does she or anybody else point out that they all should have been enrolled in krav maga literally moments into the pilot, but better late than never. Better as a teenager to get your pilot's license first.
Jake: "We're both gorgeous, can I help you?"
Aria: "Does Holden Strauss teach here?"
Jake: "He's not here on Fridays. Also he is a child, he doesn't teach here. He mostly just comes here and has heart attacks and takes entire pillowcases full of drugs for the pain. You know, like your friend Emily."
Aria: "I would like to defend myself, forthwith."
Jake: "Are you getting jumped into a gang?"
Aria: "I am already in a gang. This is about another gang, a rival gang. Of ghosts and bitches."
Jake: "Come back tomorrow. Hey, do you ever date your teachers?"
Aria: "Oh, honey. You have no idea."
MARIN
Ashley: "Pam Fields was not kidding. You've been back in the house for less than a day and you've already shitted the place up."
Hanna: "I am an expansive personality! I take ownership of my space because the real world doesn't afford me enough. Hey, did you hide muddy shoes under the sink?"
Ashley: "How dare you. Some things are personal. Read your book."
Hanna: "It is the third book I have ever read and let me tell you, it is a slog."
DILAURENTIS HOUSE
Hanna: "Spencer! I'm still in a shitty mood! Also, I'm outside your house. Where are you on a Saturday morning? Writing essays for safety schools? Call me back or else!"
Jessica DiLaurentis: "Hanna! Waddle on over here and give me a hug."
Hanna: "Mrs. D. I see you're wearing the best costume for the day."
Jessica: "Gardening is meditative! Give me advice about the aesthetics."
Hanna: "I have no opinion other than the fact that it's astonishing how much of this show is about somebody digging around in this yard."
Jessica: "It is not even the weirdest thing going on in this scene. Have you met our parrot Tippi?"
Hanna: "Oh, like the Hitchcock movie with birds. That's funny."
Jessica: "No, it's because Alison couldn't pronounce Pippi Longstocking, her literary forebear."
Hanna: "You're about to tell me she speaks with my dead friend's voice, aren't you."
Jessica: "They were roommates at Mother D's old-people-stinking house in Georgia. She probably hung out with that bird more than her grandmother."
Tippi: "It's immortality my darlings! Squawk!"
Hanna: "Yep. Nothing worse than birds."
Jessica: "She's probably going to call you fat. That's what I would do."
Tippi: "Squawk! I only kill when we need food! Bawk!"
COLLEGE ESSAYS
Fitz: "Spencer what the hell."
Spencer: "What? It was a weird question, it got an honest answer. Discuss one situation in which you were right, and wish you hadn't been. That is literally 100% of my life."
Fitz: "You've been good at playing the game this whole time, why now are you suddenly telling the weird truth? I question whether this is something you'd want to share with an admissions committee."
Spencer: "BUT WHY."
Fitz: "How can I put this. Um, I think colleges -- now more than ever -- are concerned with ... emotional stability."
Spencer: "If I were going to go on a shooting spree, Mr. Fitz, we both know it would have happened by now."
Fitz: "Trust me. We had meetings. But these people don't know your history, they only know what you're telling them. It's not really about expressing yourself, it's about gaming the system."
Spencer: "That's horrible. That's bullshit."
Fitz: "Psst, higher education in this country is bullshit. You're only going so you can get a diploma, so you can do better than the poor people we don't let go to college, so your family can continue to game the system, and then your children, and so on, forever and ever. Why not start now?"
Spencer: "But what about truth! A friend of mine was murdered! I was bullied! I did have a mental breakdown!"
"Think of it like you're on a date. All of those things may be true -- and it's inspiring that you came out the other side -- but that doesn't mean they're gonna take you home to mom right away. Your story is not more important than the story you're a part of. Having problems does not make you more attractive. Talking about your problems makes you less attractive. If you show up on a date and start talking about your dead friend, or your mom's bunions, you are not getting a second date. It doesn't mean you're not awesome -- we know you to be awesome -- it just means that you need to think about what you're trying to accomplish. Your intentions don't mean anything. Your back story doesn't mean anything. It's the difference between a firm handshake and a handshake after you've just blown a snot rocket in your hand. One of them says pleased to meet you and the other one says, I am barely hanging on."
Spencer: "So I should just lie and my life is just an ugly mess."
Ezra: "No, not at all. But nobody's asking you for this ... full disclosure. It overshadows your many incredible* qualities."
Spencer: "Pretend I'm somebody I'm not."
Ezra, beautifully: "No. But you are more than this."
I love this scene, oh my God. That was soooo neat. Also realistic. Even Spencer Hastings would be like, "So far being institutionalized is the most interesting thing that has happened to me, and college applications are all about making yourself look based on the novel Push by Sapphire" and never thinking that in this particular case your victimhood is not actually a plus. Even Spencer might/does need it explained to her that we are not the sum of our injuries.
The only thing that makes this not a complete meltdown is something I didn't get at the time, that Spence explains later: For all we know, A planted that essay question. For sure A is going to be dicking with her applications no matter where she applies. So really, it might be better to try and at least spin the ugliest truth, instead of Hastingsing over the whole thing. I did not pick up on that, so I was just exasperated by her "I gotta be real!" nonsense.
"When has being dishonest ever helped me? Or you? Or anyone?"
* (Point Hastings, I guess, although I did want to point out w/r/t PedoWatch 2013 that the word he used above was "attractive," not "incredible." Could mean nothing, could mean everything.)
TANG SOO DO
Aria and Jake do some martial artistry, mostly things like "How to escape a garotting wire in a car" and "Using somebody's body mass to throw them off of bell towers" and "Escaping a glass-shard-wielding substitute teacher under the influence of poison" but it's very cute. There's a lot of "you have to trust me, there has to be a level of trust," which for Aria is of course a total aphrodisiac -- firstly because it's kind of a pedophile thing to say, but more because there is no one on Earth for her to trust so it's relaxing to even hear him say it -- and it's just very good.
Aria: "I'm not some scary ball of paranoia, okay? I've just got a lot of stuff going on. I recently broke up with my boyfriend..."
Jake: "Is that who you're afraid of?"
Aria: "Ha! He's got me by like eleven pounds. No, I just wanted to put that out there and it seemed relatively subtle. The deal is this. I feel angry. Feeling powerless makes me feel angry."
Jake: "Good, because you essentially are, and that's what we're doing here. But we can't really take on the world until we feel safe in our own skin."
Aria: "That is a foregone conclusion."
DILAURENTIS
Tippi: "This isn't Yahtzee, sweetie! Bawk!"
Hanna: "Would it be weird to ask you about the day they pulled your daughter's rotting corpse out of that part of the yard over there?"
Jessica: "Maybe if I were sober. Listen, here's a completely unrelated story that has nothing to do with what we're talking about whatsoever and in fact has nothing to do with the question you just asked me."
FLASHBACK
Ali: "Have another drink, mom! That's what brunch is for!"
Jessica: "Fine, I'll abstain. No, fuck that. Bring me a drink, garcon."
Ali: "So can I stay down the shore til Tuesday?"
Jessica: "By yourself?"
Ali: "No, Aria and Spencer are coming. And I guess Hanna."
Jessica: "If they let her fat ass on the train, huh? No. This sounds like a situation where you will get pregnant."
Ali: "This is about girls. Girls together outrageously. Reconnecting before my impending death."
Jessica tried to change the subject, and Alison went to a place. I recognized the place she was going immediately, because Sasha Pieterse is a gifted actress, but I still can't come up with a good way of saying it. She's holding her breath -- maybe that's a clue to how she survived being buried alive, actually -- but it's more like the whole world, the heavy air, is going wubwubwub and the plates are about to shake off the bistro tables and the street is going to roll up on itself like Inception.
Teen girl thing. The rage. Have you seen this thing? Scariest shit on the entire planet, because it's the strongest thing on the planet. Black Swan stuff. When you're a boy and you feel this caged up it's easy: You just become a terrorist. But when you're a girl, it turns inward. The opposite of Columbine; a controlled nuclear fusion. A bomb that gets more and more powerful and will never, ever go off: Of course you're cutting. Of course you're starving.
I think it's probably a myth but I always heard that daddy long-legs are the most poisonous spiders of all: We just think they're harmless because their little mouths are too small to bite.
They say that murder is suicide flipped backwards, and I do believe that: The anger goes in or goes out, but either way it's about stopping a world you can't live in anymore. I just also believe that eating disorders are school shootings flipped the same way. And neither one has a solution until we start looking at it that way, which we don't, because women don't matter and because violence, turned inward, hurts nobody that does.
Jessica gets annoyed, then scared, but it's not fearful for her daughter. It's this: The plates are going to shake off the bistro tables. The heavy air will go wubwubwub. The window of the restaurant will bow in, hang there for a moment, and then shatter out.
PORCH
Jessica: "So I was like, bitch I hope you do pass out right here. I hope you face plant. But she won the battle of wills, she always does, she always did."
Hanna: "You know, we weren't with her that weekend."
Jessica: "Shocker. Want a bird? I got enough voices in my head."
Tippi: "Honey, you better stop touching yourself below the equator! Bawk!"
TANG SOO DO
When the bell goes off, Jake's into it enough that he wants to keep going.
Jake: "That's perfect. How do you feel? In control?"
Not yet. She kisses him, and runs away. It's funny, it's weird how funny she is. It's even funnier how in this moment she's Ella's daughter through and through: "Bye! I'll see you Tuesday, okay?"
Outside, hilariously, Aria beats on the steering wheel, mortified. She's always so funny when she gets to be funny. Just rrragh!
Driving in a fit of embarrassment, Aria spots her new BFF Mona outside the police station, and screeches right on up there.
Aria: "Mona! We're gonna be late, come on!"
Mona, in car: "WTF was that exactly? You know that I was having a conversation with that one cop so I could spy on the other cops' conversation, right? Or is that not something non-geniuses can do?"
Aria: "That's cool, but I'm more concerned about the optics. A is going to burn us if you get caught talking to the cops. For any reason."
Mona: "Oh! I get it. This show actually makes a ton more sense now that you say that."
"So those dudes behind him were special investigators. They've taped off the south shore of Torch Lake as a crime scene. They found Wilden's footprints. They think he was there the night he was whacked. And he wasn't alone, the other prints they found were heels."
Neither of them, because Hanna is in a goddamn mood this week, are able to think of anybody in the world that wears heels besides Alison. A dead person who wore heels. So clearly Alison killed Detective Wilden, they're thinking.
HASTINGS
Toby: "Okay, this has been too weird. I stole the RV."
Spencer: "What the fuck? Are you A again?"
Toby: "No, I did it for A just as a favor."
Spencer: "Did you think making more deals with the Devil was gonna protect us?"
Toby: "Not about protecting you, this time. It was this."
He flings it down, hilarious in a Toby-flailing way: His mother's last psych eval before her suicide. Spencer, to her credit, almost immediately pulls it together for him.
THE BIG SWIM
Emily's still chompin' on pills when Shana glides out of the darkness to fuck with her.
Shana: "Can I borrow your girlfriend forever? Also, a swim cap? I promise I won't tell you helped a rival team member."
Emily: "Sorry, I'm using all of these many swim caps right now."
Shana: "Why does your friend Hanna think I knew that dead cop?"
Emily: "That sounds like it's between you and Hanna. Let me be in the zone, please."
Shana: "PS, I am taking your Stanford scholarship and your girlfriend. It's gonna be puffy drapes out the ass. I mean sex by that."
Emily: "Then I guess I better take all the pills that I have left, to beat you."
MARION CAVANAUGH'S LAST TESTAMENT
"She's put her focus on the future... Much of our session was devoted to feelings of hope. Wanting to spend the holidays with her family, making up for lost time with her son. Thanking him for being so patient... When asked what prompted the turnaround, Ms. Cavanaugh was quite clear: She'd already missed out on too much, and was no longer concerned with being judged. It was time to return some of the love that had sustained her, especially from her son."
Damn, show. Well done. And then the inevitable bargaining, in a show entirely about bargaining, in a show that creates conspiracies and horrors and twins and masks to fight off the pain of grief:
Toby: "Now, does that sound like a person that would commit suicide?"
Spencer: "Kind of? I mean, people get real peaceful at the end. I stared at an acorn and a little button. Or maybe she was trying to throw him off. Or maybe he just caught her at an up moment..."
Toby: "No, I think this is a conspiracy. Did I mention she jumped out a window? You know how the Radley window thing was a huge deal? Doesn't that raise some flags?"
Spencer: "I'll go down this hole with you no problem, that's not the issue. The issue is, how do you know this is even a real document? A is an expert forger."
Aria: "Oh hey guys, crazy day! It all started when I went to the..."
Toby: "Please don't tell her about this. I'm embarrassed because of my sick family and because everybody in my family has a different mental illness and because this suicide led to me getting raped all the time and also I'm especially embarrassed about betraying all of you mere seconds after coming back to life and leaving the A-Team."
Spencer: "All good reasons. Your weird secret is safe with me, for now. Honestly I'm not sure Aria even knows your name."
BIG SWIM MEET
I guess Aria and Spencer are hanging out because they are tired of going to Emily's constant swim meets. I wonder if this was discussed. "I know this is a special one on which your entire future rides, but Christ, Emily."
Paige is very sweet, at the end of the lane; Shana is menacing. Emily makes a lap before bonking her head druggily on the wall, and then just drifts like a goldfish for a while as her blood spreads out, summoning sharks to the pool.
Paige McCullers is very worried to see her girlfriend, Emily Fields, floating lifeless in a swimming pool. It is a very scary image to her, because she loves her girlfriend very much and for no other reason. It is certainly not humorous in any way.
As the EMTs are taking her out, Emily -- only Emily would -- has the wherewithal to 1) Lie to Paige and everybody about how she hurt her shoulder falling off a bike and not saving tiny friends from ghostly adversaries, and 2) Addresses her well-wishers at large, pleading to finish the race even as she is bleeding everywhere and her eyes are crossing from a concussion plus drugs. What a woman you are, Emily Fields. God I love that.
HASTINGS
Aria: "God knows what Mona told those cops. I can see myself getting instantly tricked by anything she'd tell me anyway. She's king liar... Oh right, other people exist. Why was Toby crying so crazy when he left?"
Spencer: "The one time you actually show an interest. Irony."
Aria: "Right so back to me."
She tells the story of kissing Jake, but backwards, so none of it makes sense ("but he smells like cinnamon!") and Spencer keeps asking valid questions -- who is Jake, when did she start taking martial arts -- and the whole exchange is funny on the page, but in practice just makes Aria look like a snappy bitch, and Hanna is already being a snappy bitch this week. Oh look, here she comes now.
Hanna: "Fuck all of you. Look, a parrot."
Liars: "Whoa why do you have a parrot?"
Hanna: "Short story is, Jessica DiLaurentis is an alcoholic. Long version, it's one of those parrots that has memorized everything about Alison and her death. And this song it keeps singing that is clearly a phone number."
Spencer: "You get up to the craziest shit when we don't hang out."
Hanna: "I mean, is there anything worse than a bird?"
Hanna: "So in an unrelated flashback, turns out Ali was hooking up in Cape May and said she was with us."
Aria: "Yeah, Wilden. He knocked her up?"
Spencer: "I don't like the variables here."
Aria: "Wait, isn't the place where he died also where we pushed the car in the lake?"
Spencer: "Were you wearing heels? Then don't worry about it. Let momma think."
Hanna: "I don't want to talk about the heels. Oh shit, we need to stop talking about the heels right now."
Tippi: "Hey, Boardshorts. Miss me?"
Hanna: "I'm worried about my mom."
Spencer: "Why? She was nowhere near Rosewood when this all went down."
OR WAS SHE
Ashley: "Oh nothing, just drinking in the dark in a business suit like you do."
Hanna: "Mom, by any chance did you come back to Rosewood for a minute and kill Wilden or anything like that?"
Ashley: "I didn't kill him. But that hardly matters, right? Because I'm going to get framed for it either way. I'd better put those shoes in a garbage bag and throw them away, but first I'm gonna turn off all the outdoor lights and turn on all the kitchen lights so that A can see me doing this as clearly as possible and hopefully document it from every angle."
HASTINGS
Spencer: "Hanna's voicemail, I've had this bird in my bedroom for five seconds and I already wanna murder it. Come get this shit."
She dials and dials and dials and eventually realizes that the song Tippi keeps singing is a phone being dialed -- presumably, dozens of obsessive times by Alison when they were housemates -- and calls the girls over so they can call the number.
Meanwhile Jake visits Aria and they negotiate dating and it's very cute, because they are both very cute, and it is a conversation they need to have as openly and honestly as possible -- while at Emily's house, Paige is sick with worry about the race and the head trauma and the swimming on painkillers.
Emily: "It's not just about protecting you from A, which I know causes you to act out, but also about just kind of living in denial. You are a safe place, and I want to live in that world with you that we are talking about, and I am trying to keep that life clean."
Paige: "Get those puffy drapes over here, Fields. You need a housecall from Dr. Love."
TIPPI
The ladies call the number, and there is no answer because it is the middle of the night. But it's the only clue we're getting from the bird, whom A kidnaps exactly thirty seconds after that.
A-TAG
A sets a lovely table! Including a juicy-looking rotissereeeeagh! Tippi, no!
Oh, Tippi's fine. She's in her caaaaaaaaaagh! A, stop feeding that bird your chicken! That shit is disgusting! Double fakeout freakout! A chicken is also a bird, you monster!
WEEK
Hanna mixes it up with Sean Faris as Ashley continues to live in denial about her situation; we meet a quote "creepy mask-maker who takes a shine to Emily" (WHAT AMAZING WORDS); Melissa returns just in time for Toby's whole momfest; Ella gets involved once A goes after Pam. I don't know what any of those things mean really, but don't they all sound great? I have spent all week wondering what A will do to Pam, and how on earth Ella can help. I mean, of course Ella can help, always bring in Ella, she fixes everything, but I just can't imagine how those three characters will coincide.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Killing, Pretty Little Liars, Mistresses, True Blood, and Defiance for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love. A new short story, "This Is Why We Jump," appeared in this month's Clarkesworld Magazine.