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After the whole "car coming into their living room" thing, Emily and Pam are staying in motel with just some beans. While Emily is busy thinking about things like Habitat for Humanity and going to Nicaragua with Rumer Willis, basically anything that is not swimming or those sad beans. Pam is more concerned about how she will never be able to get another job in the state of Pennsylvania because that darn key went missing. (Why hasn't Emily returned the key yet? She's there at the police station like, more than she is at school.) By episode's end, she is ugly-crying the most intense Pam ways you can imagine, and even Emily's legendary calm is pretty freaked out by it.
Ezra keeps givin' people advice. Like who is ... How do you have the right... Whatever, I can't even form a sentence about it. Yeah, okay Mr. Teacher Man, thanks for being really cool and understanding about my teen problems, but clean up your own yard first.
Mikey is having lacrosse problems (French for "not actually problems") because apparently no amount of HIPAA violations or vandalism will turn his sister back into not a whore. Outside school he takes up Tang Soo Do at Jake's dojo and on the team he does his best to fit in. This causes huge fucking problems for Aria's mental state, because she was planning on filming a ten-minute commercial for a movie that's coming out weekend, so Jake stays with her and they product place together. I forgot they even broke up, or whatever they did.
Veronica has a new intern named Whatever and he gives Spencer the big eye, and she steals some file about Toby's dumb dead mom, and then puts it back. Mostly I just don't care for him so I didn't pay attention too much to this story this week. He was too off-putting for me to follow the story, so I will now review it: If Wilden falsified data on Marion's suicide, then maybe she was murdered and/or it's proof that Wilden was a dirty cop which might help Ashley. But in the end, Eddie Lamb tells Spencer once again to stop coming around Radley -- which probably means we'll be spending more time in those haunted halls soon enough.
But okay the MAIN DEAL of this episode is, Hanna has decided that she is going to confess to the murder of Detective Wilden, on the theory that "kid jail" has gotta be less awful than regular jail-jail. (I don't see how that could be true, but whatever; smaller minimums.) How she makes sure it'll work is, she enlists Mona Vanderwaal to brainwash her into thinking she killed Wilden.
I mean, practically. I wish for real, but only for mostly.
So Caleb is not HAVING this, because of how he and Mona are both in love with Hanna and every time she hangs out with Mona they end up in giant trouble or murdered, but Hanna doesn't care: Having nearly run out of ways to go absolutely fucking insane, she will now be a Manchurian Candidate, and nobody can stop her...
Which is what makes it so surprising when they all turn up at the police station in time to see MONA turn herself in for the murder, freeing both Marins and presumably setting the wheels spinning on some grandiose larger Mona scheme, but mostly looking flawless and grinning at them all like she didn't just confess to anything but being fantastic.
Week: Jenna! Shana! Emily's birthday! Emily talks about swimming some more, because it's what she is all about! Maggie and Malcolm finally realize how sucky Ezra is! Jake and Aria try to figure out if they are dating or what is even the point of their relationship! And Mona promptly goes fucking crazy, one would imagine.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
A went kill-crazy! She tried to strangle Mona, then tried to run over Aria and Mona -- resulting in a life-changing injury Emily's still dealing with -- and ended up last week aiming a car directly into Emily's house after Emily helped the Liars break into Wilden's apartment (which also got Pam suspended from work). Meanwhile, Hanna's nightmares came true and put Ashley in jail for the murder, no matter how insane and desperate she becomes. Aria got involved with a Tang Soo Do instructor named Jake and has taken over as her brother Michael's only real parent, while Spencer is trapped between the Liars' chaotic investigations and Toby's obsessive search for information about his mother's (possibly) A-related demise.
HEARTBREAK MOTEL
Pam: "Being broke and homeless in this motel is a real dang bummer!"
Emily: "More coffee?"
Pam: "I mean, it's kind of nice that we don't have to feel guilty about any of this. Like millions of Americans, I was just trying to be a good person."
Work: "That part is true. But there's nothing saying you can't feel horrible about your life."
Pam: "I can't believe nobody saw that person drive into our house and run away!"
Emily: "Yeah, well. Ghost ninja."
Pam: "The important thing is that you spend as much time as possible outside of this suicidally depressing, but absolutely gorgeous motel room. Go to your college counselor. I believe it is Ezra Fitz? The only teacher at your school suddenly?"
Emily: "Yeah, the first luxury to go was Spencer's hot Golden Boy one. Ezra will do."
LIARS' BKFAST
Emily Text: "I am only kinda okay, but whatever. What about your jailbird mom?"
Hanna: "She says they're fine. I didn't tell her about your horrible outfit, Aria."
Aria: "That's the last thing she needs."
Imagine the pointy schoolmarm shoulders of an orphanage owner-slash-slave trader from the 1920s, like the lady that tried to give Fairuza Balk electroconvulsive therapy in Return To Oz, or one of the meaner bitches of Avalon in the first couple of Green Gables books, telling Marilla how redhead orphans will always poison the well or set you on fire. Now instead of a simple Dust Bowl gray like Spencer would wear, make the outfit entirely out of four-color newspaper comics panels. Are you angry yet?
Spencer: "A really likes throwing cars at people."
Liars: "Or maybe it was an accident! Just kidding. Let's pretend there is a reason for the horrible things that happen, to bring ourselves comfort. First guess, it's to do with Redcoat and/or CeCe Drake after the D-Team almost discovered something one time."
Hanna: "I don't care about any of this, I want to results of my mom's arraignment. Spencer, where the fuck is your mother?"
Spencer: "Easy, she said she'd call."
Veronica: "...Girls? Have you eaten? Breakfast is the most important meal of the day."
(Any time anybody says anything in this entire episode, assume they have also asked if the person they are addressing has eaten. Seriously, in every scene somebody does this. It's super weird. I think it's because the episode takes place over a single day so it helps us position ourselves timeline wise, but it could also be the role of the older women on the show to remind the young girls to eat.)
Hanna: "I'll eat your face for breakfast. Where in the hell is my mom?"
Veronica: "Spencer, why don't you get Aria out of here? She doesn't need to know about the scary things that happen on this show when she's not around."
Hanna: "I'd prefer to have my friends close, actually."
The hearing went like this: Veronica entered a plea of Not Guilty, due to Ashley not being guilty, and then the judge pointed out that first-degree murder of a cop, plus the new DA being cagey (as you would be if you were the DA of Rosewood PA, which would literally indict a ham sandwich as long as it were found near a shovel), equals no bail. So now, an appeal.
Veronica: "But some things have been put in motion. Such as your mother's literal ass. She's being remanded to the state prison in Muncy until the trial. Tomorrow. So, basically the opposite of everything."
All the Liars are pointlessly bitches to Veronica, even though this is the nicest and more involved she's ever been, because that's how they roll. "Oh, are you blind? That sucks of you."
Hanna: "I should be the one in jail, not my mom."
Liars: "That makes literally no sense -- A's just using Wilden's murder to dick with you -- but it seems like you're gonna run with it."
Hanna: "You have no idea, I can't even talk to Caleb right now. That's how much of a crazed funk I'm in."
Spencer: "Did you know my mom is a great lawyer?"
Hanna: "How is that measured?"
Spencer: "By her success rate?"
Hanna: "Which is?"
Spencer: "Good enough that I brought it up?"
Aria, great delivery: "-- Okay so do you wanna go to school? Or not go."
That's like my favorite line in the entire episode, I'm still repeating it days later. "Whatever, do you want to go to school or not go to school. God."
Hanna: "In lieu of school, which I go to whenever I goddamn feel like it, I think I'd better work on buttering Tom up. If this goes south I'll be moving in with him and the Evil Stepsister, and I'm gonna need leverage for that scenario. Tell your mom I'm sorry I yelled at her, but to be fair -- in context -- all I do is yell at people."
SCHOOL
Mikey jumps out of a shrub!
Mike: "What the fuck are you wearing?"
Aria: "Gah!"
Mike: "So tonight, I'm going to be taking advantage of our absent parents' absences by 'celebrating' with the lacrosse team you turned against me."
Aria: "To be fair..."
Mike: "I know, I just mean it's socially very touchy right now and I don't like being the odd man out in a full-contact sport? So I need the facetime."
Aria: "Explain all of this to me in detail. I think that's what parenting is, just the mindless accumulation of details."
Mike: "These are not difficult concepts, but okay."
Aria notices that he is carrying a messenger bag from Jake's (formerly Holden's) Tang Soo Dojo, and this is the thing she chooses to flip out about. Not "My baby brother is going to get so drunk with his lacrosse team who knows what will happen," but "WHERE DID YOU GET THAT MESSENGER BAG? TELL THE TRUTH!"
Mike: "I am taking karate classes, just like everybody else on this show that ever acted weird. Don't worry about it. Wouldn't you rather I be able to protect myself? Is that not why you also are taking classes there?"
Aria: "Okay but the mere fact of me bugging out about it means I'm going to cause trouble later."
Mike: "That's so insidious two."
Aria: "What did you say?"
Mike: "It's what all the kids are saying nowadays. Insidious two. It's like when something scary and great gets a sequel, with even more heart-pounding thrills."
to this episode of this show, the funniest/dumbest thing about Insidious was the tagline, "Insidious is insidious." I would walk around my house saying that out loud all the time and just marveling at America.
"Are you going to see that new Rose Byrne movie? I've heard it's really insidious."
#EZRACARES (#NOTREALLYTHATMUCHTHOUGH)
Ezra: "Malcolm I'm going to be honest, I think maybe everybody was right about you. This drawing you gave me is bullcrap."
Emily: "I'm here to pretend I have a future, Mr. Fitz."
Ezra: "Malcolm, go take some time to consider whether art is something you're really passionate about, or whether you're fooling yourself. I've got a student here with similar delusions I need to smash real quick."
Ezra: "Emily, you and I both know you're not going to live past graduation, much less go to college. Why are you wasting everybody's time?"
Emily: "Because if I don't pretend this stuff matters, my mom will kill herself. Did you know we live in a motel now, entirely off credit cards?"
Ezra: "Yeah, it seems like something that would have happened in the olden days of when you guys were getting murderously stalked all the time and my life kept getting ruined. You know, come to think of it that shit has been happening a lot lately. Is it starting back up?"
Emily: "Be serious, you're an adult who could help us. Why would I ever tell you anything?"
Ezra: "Insidious two."
Ezra: "Well, I just know that Mona's doing great lately, so it would be super ironic if there was somebody else who took her place torturing you. It took you idiots like three seasons to even mention this stuff was going on, so..."
Emily: "Nope, just your average nonstop mayhem where everybody's mom is getting attacked by swarms of bees and getting framed for murder and cars are driving into houses."
Ezra: "As long as it's just that, I guess."
HALLWAY
Spencer: "Caleb, I really don't have time to hold your hand through this. She's freaking out, it's not about you. Isn't it enough that I let you borrow my boyfriend and you're the only person who even knows half of what's going on?"
Caleb: "I hate not feeling like I'm doing anything. Can I at least ask how you are?"
Spencer: "I am taking a half day and I'm going to check on Hanna. Other than that, I'm actually kind of thrilled that A is being so intense. It means we're getting close. Or that you and the D-Team are close to nailing the real killer. But probably the first one."
Caleb: "Probably. Get this! That number that kept showing up on Nigel's cell phone? Somehow it belongs to three people at once, in New York. So I have sent Toby to New York to bother those people and get himself murdered."
Spencer: "Tell the truth, it's because you couldn't stand him talking about his mom 24/7."
#EZRAISQUICKLYLOSINGINTEREST
Emily: "I want to go to big awesome colleges, not tiny little shitty ones like would actually accept me."
Ezra: "Nobody even knows what you want to be when you grow up. I think a cop. I think you'd make a good cop because you're physical, you have a lot of poise under pressure, and nothing can ever scare you after your life so far."
Emily: "Is there an Ivy for law enforcement?"
Ezra: "Maybe let's focus on your extracurriculars. Remember that one summer you spent building Habitats in Haiti while the others were picking up garbage? Get a letter of recommendation from Rumer Willis about that."
"Somebody's gotta remind you who you really are," he says. What does that even mean? A selfless person who doesn't mind subpar living conditions and the constant threat of one million dangers, including zombies? I think she's aware, bro.
MARIN
Ashley: "Hanna, thanks for taking my call from jail."
Hanna: "I am not doing great. I'm going to be honest. Remember after Mona went to Radley and I got so worried they were going to move her out of town that I got an ulcer? Yeah, and that was Mona, who had just spent a year or two trying to kill me. Imagine how I'm reacting to this latest thing."
Ashley: "The important this is that I don't have to go to that silent auction. Veronica's bringing you by tomorrow to say goodbye, and then I guess it's all over. I can't think of anything grimmer or more bleak to say to you right now, so I guess peace."
She gets off the phone and returns to the kitchen, where Mona is busy looking totally amazing and trying to figure out why Hanna runs so damn hot and cold with her all the time. (Quick commercials for Tresemmé and Insidious 2: Just like the first one, but even more insidious.)
Mona: "What do you even want, Hanna."
Hanna: "Okay, here's my latest gonzo insane plan. I'm going to confess to killing Wilden, and you're gonna help me. You're the most insidious person I know."
Mona: "Okay but are you stupid? What if I'm the one that set her up in the first place?"
Hanna: "That's too insidious. You're not that insidious. Slightly less insidious."
Mona: "That's true. I have always acted in Ashley's best interests. But still, why me?"
Hanna: "You took compartmentalization to an entirely new level when you were A. I know I'll never be a hyperadrenalized supergenius, but if you could just teach me the trick of being a... Um, a crazy."
Mona: "What exactly do you mean."
Hanna: "This is going to be the biggest lie I've ever told, and I... Besides Emily, I'm the worst. I mean, we all tell lies all the time. If this were a TV show it would be titled Hot Bitches Who Lie All The Time. But you have the ability to live inside the lie, as if it were the Matrix. That's what I need now."
Mona: "You are asking me to brainwash you?"
Hanna: "I am asking you to brainwash me."
Mona: "This is by far the best fucking day I have ever had."
HASTINGS
Spencer: "Uh, you're not Hanna. You're some awful guy."
Beckett: "I'm Beckett. My face does this nonstop. I am your mom's intern, here is my résumé in case you're Spencer, whom I've been told would be demanding my résumé."
Spencer: "Everything looks in order here. Why is my house full of boxes and no Hanna? There hasn't been this much crap crapping up the Hastings house since Ian."
Beckett: "The DA is overloading us with discovery in the Marin case. Common tactic."
Spencer: "They still don't get how this show works. Whatever box I open, the random document I need -- for this one episode, that will never be mentioned again -- is going to be sitting on top. Probably glowing, or covered in barbecue sauce, or some other thing that makes it unmistakable."
Beckett: "Any chance the other rumors are true? You and older guys?"
Spencer: "Ever met my sister Melissa?"
Beckett: "Not really my type."
Spencer: "Then put it away. No thanks."
THE MARINCEPTION BEGINS
Mona plays Tanner, disbelieving Hanna's confession all, "Go home, little girl!"
"You can't just keep repeating I did it. You have to tell them how you did it, why you did it. Everything that points to your mom, make it point to you."
Motive: "He was threatening me because I told people he got Alison DiLaurentis pregnant. I think he might have killed her!"
Mona: "That's good. That's really good. You're doing great. How many lights?"
Hanna: "There are four lights."
Mona: "Mmmm. Let's go again."
HASTINGS
Oh, look. The exact file we need connecting Wilden to Marion Cavanaugh's death. A thing we didn't even know we needed. Spencer's box powers! Never stronger!
Beckett: "Your mom wants to know why you're not at school?"
Spencer: "Tell her, in a nutshell, her legal incompetence. I'm checking on Hanna."
Beckett: "Your daughter's being really insidious two, Mrs. Hastings. When can I get out of your house so she stops looking at me?"
KARATE JAKE
Aria: "Tell it to me straight, kid. Is my brother taking Tang Soo Do with you?"
Jake: "Why on earth would that be a problem?"
Aria: "It's my first day as a parent, so I'm doing what Byron would do. Random paranoia about the wrong things, and using the anguish of my kid to further a sexual agenda."
Jake: "Well, your brother's awesome. And he needs self-defense training. As he put it, it's hard to focus on the game when your own teammates are playing against you. What I think it means is that literally, people on his team are mistreating him. Why does the lacrosse team in this town hate your family so much?"
Aria: "Not my fault this time, but yeah. Thanks for the info."
Jake: "You know, just because I dumped you as part of the fallout from dating Fitz doesn't mean I can't help you deal with this latest example of fallout from dating Fitz."
Aria: "Actually that's exactly what it means, but we'll see how insidious I feel later tonight."
RADLEY
Spencer: "Like Mona before me, I return a healthier person with an even more insidious agenda. Cookie?"
Eddie Lamb: "Don't mind if I... Hey, these aren't cookies! They're stolen documents!"
Spencer: "Bam. Insidious."
The basics of this situation are that Eddie told Wilden Marion wasn't in her room at bed check and that the roof door was unlocked, so he went to the roof and that's when he spotted the body. (I bet Spence was happy when she was it was Eddie that was in the thing, because Eddie is awesome.) But in the official report, she jumped from that window she couldn't have possibly jumped out of.
Eddie: "I mean, either way she's dead. But if you're wondering why Wilden changed the facts later, don't you think it's probably because he was paid off or otherwise forced to do so? He did make detective pretty fast."
Spencer: "You should have told somebody when they filed the report."
Eddie: "Tell who, the police? That's Wilden. I don't watch the watchers. And frankly, neither should you. Forget you ever saw this."
Spencer: "I agree that I am sick of hearing about Toby's mom, but this is important. I need to know everything that was going on with Wilden if I'm ever going to fuck up the investigation into his murder, much less solve it."
Eddie: "I can't express how much I'm looking forward to the huge hassle this is going to mean for me personally. Every time I see you I come this much closer to getting fired by no fault of my own."
MARINCEPTION BREAK
Hanna: "Whew, this mental breakdown we're giving me on purpose is thirsty work. Can I interest you in some Insidious Two cola? It's just like the regular Insidious cola with all the taste you remember, but with even more suspense and shocking surprises."
Mona: "Remember that time you poured us both those two glasses of soda, so deliberately that it took the entire scene? That was so weird. Anyway, tell me about the shoes."
Hanna: "They have impounded all the heels in the house, leaving me with only flats."
Mona: "Insidious!"
Hanna: "Yeah, and then the muddy Manolos were gone..."
Mona: "Because you threw them out."
Hanna: "No, I think it was..."
Mona: "How many lights?"
Hanna: "Got it. Yes, I threw them out. I was wearing them when I shot Wilden."
Mona: "There are five lights. You wore those shoes that night, not your mother. You threw them out."
Hanna: "I didn't want anybody to think they were my mom's footprints, after what I did."
Mona: "Exactly. You're doing great. Now, about the gun..."
THE BREW
Rumer Willis: "Wow, you didn't tell me you came from Perfecttown, USA!"
Emily: "Quite the opposite. Unless you're coming from Brookhaven or Ravenswood."
Rumer Willis: "You sure are pretty. That's an appropriate thing to say right now."
Emily: "Anyway, sorry I blew you all off after Haiti, but I had a lot going on."
Rumer Willis: "More than when we met? Your girlfriend had just been murdered in your best friend's house?"
Emily: "Actually, I guess about the same. Infinity minus one is still basically infinity."
Rumer Willis: "When you got back here were you any less crazy? I thought you did a remarkable job, actually."
Emily: "I know you're here because I asked for a recommendation, but just on the off-chance I can get the hell out of dodge this summer, what shithole are you going to ?"
Rumer Willis: "Nicaragua, actually."
Emily: "Insidious two! I'm in."
JAIL
CO: "Only immediate family and werewolf boyfriends allowed! No touching!"
Ashley: "Dating my daughter has been good for you in some ways but not all the ways."
Caleb: "It's nice to see you are going slightly less crazy than she is."
Ashley: "Yeah, that's the main thing I wanted to talk to you about. You know how she keeps doing desperate, insane things?"
Caleb: "I'm worried about her too."
Ashley: "It's more how the insane desperate things she's doing keep fucking me. Do you think you could get her to chill out? Preferably before I end up indicted on a treason charge or something?"
Caleb: "It is true that she would do anything for you."
Ashley: "I know. Which is how I'm gonna end up on Death Row if you don't shut it down."
BREW
Emily gets a text from Aria about how nobody knows where Hanna is, because infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters could not have come up with this latest bullshit she's up to.
Rumer: "So after all that shit, it's the shoulder that's keeping you out of the pool? Lame."
Emily: "It's cumulative. I can still do Habitat stuff, just not earn a swimming scholarship. Topline excellence versus just normal shoulder activities. Don't ask me to put a fruit bowl on a high shelf, that's all. I'm still a billion times more competent than any other well-meaning tourist you've got working for you."
Pam: "...Emily? What are you doing here getting a recommendation from your Habitat advisor? I thought I told you to do pretty much exactly this kind of thing!"
Emily: "You look about as stressed out as usual. How about a tea?"
Pam: "It's nothing, I just talked to insurance and they said we're homeless for good. And then I also have this stuff I need to talk to the police station, but that's so embarrassing..."
Emily: "I'll drop it off. Nothing fucked up ever happens when I go there. Besides, I am still feeling guilty about how you are a social pariah in this town all the other ways that are also my fault."
Rumer: "You're living in a motel? Maybe we should worry about your habitat and your humanity."
Emily: "Or just take me to Nicaragua so nothing else horrible will happen to my mom. Sooner the better. Just don't tell A until we're out of the country."
MARINCEPTION
Hanna: "I found the gun in my father's desk; I took it with me just in case."
Mona: "Little girl, we found Ashley's prints on the bullet."
Hanna: "I don't know, who cares? He had that gun for years. I'm just the only Marin nutty enough to fire it."
Mona: "You followed Darren Wilden to Torch Lake, took out your gun, shot him."
Hanna: "Bing bang boom."
Mona: "What was that like?"
Hanna: "What?"
Mona: "What did it feel like to kill someone? I'm sitting to you as close as he was standing, and you shot him. You held life and death in your hands. Pulled the trig..."
Hanna: "The fuck? You're freaking me out!"
Mona: "How many lights, bitch?"
Hanna: "Right, right."
FLASHBACK? WHAT WOULD YOU CALL THIS
Wilden: "Hello, Hanna! Guess Mommy can't get you out of this one!"
Hanna: Pulls on him immediately like a sexy bad-ass.
(Mona: "Don't be stupid, remember the point is that we're going for self-defense. What did he do to make you shoot? Say something, do something?")
Wilden: "Your mother's a huge slut so maybe me forcing her to have sex is iffier, consent-wise, than we pretend. But how about you? How much of a slut are you?"
Kaboom!
REAL LIFE
Actually it's just the sound of Caleb knocking on the patio door, because of course somebody eventually came over, and they're holding what looks like a romantic séance in there by this point.
The guy that was over while I was watching this was like, "It feels kind of like that boy and that girl are both in love with Hanna and they both know it." Yeah, basically. Basically you get what is going on here. "And but then how creepy that she's secretly having brain inceptions with Mona and not telling Caleb?"
And it's like, on the one hand very creepy. And on the other hand, that's just... At this point in the day, that's how it had to go down. There's not really much to say about it.
"Oh, Hanna couldn't tell Caleb because he'd flip out on her. Not because he's jealous --which he is -- or even because Mona is a fucking lunatic -- which she is -- but more like because Caleb would know it's not just a conference about this and that, or even a romantic séance. At this point, Caleb would be like 40/60 able to just figure the whole thing out the second he walked up.
"Goddammit, Hanna, are you brainwashing yourself? Shut it down!"
Hanna: "Sorry I've been ignoring your calls, but as you can see I am right over my head."
Caleb: "What the fuck is Mona even doing here?"
Mona: "Lovely to see you too, Pocahontas."
Hanna: "We, uh... Like a radical reevaluation in the wake of my mother's arrest and I'm like, maybe it's time to move on...?"
Caleb: "First of all, nobody is that dumb that you would just be friends with Mona again, full stop. And second of all, she doesn't move on. She moves through."
Mona: "Nice! You're like a poet sometimes. In that I don't know what you're talking about."
Hanna: "Look, I'm fine. Everything is complicated, I don't deal well with that, so right now I'm thinking about how eventually I'm going to have to go live with Isabel and her quote blonde tarantula of a daughter, I mean, Mona is not that bad compared to real life."
Mona: "I have a calming influence!"
Caleb: "You are both so insidious two right now."
The amount that it already seemed like a dude busting up his girlfriend's secret romance with a lady goes nuclear when he just stands there mutely -- Mona grinning like the fucking Joker about all this -- and finally Hanna is like, "Leave me the fuck alone and get the fuck out!" It's so spooky and intimate and amazing and beautiful and it's like, on the one hand he's right and this is already just on the surface of it a terrible idea, regardless of what they're actually up to, and then underneath too it's mind-flayingly ill-advised.
But instead of reassuring him or even saying "I am availing myself of this creature's magical powers, but I already put her in the circle and lit the appropriate candles," instead Hanna is looking him right in the eye and saying, "You don't get to know what is really happening here." You know? Like it's a big old secret. Amazing.
Hanna: "Don't fucking say a word."
Mona: "Actually I was gonna say we're almost finished here. I know how hard that was."
Hanna: "Ugh, just stop. Just go."
HASTINGS
Veronica: "I'm stuck here in the kitchen with Beckett, you go meet your dad for dinner. Have you eaten? Beckett, have you eaten? Let's call Aria and Hanna and Emily and Pam and Ashley and Holden and Mikey and Noel Kahn and Toby's dumb mom and Lucas and Mona and Redcoat and Black Widow and Melissa and all five Alisons and Tippi the Bird and Old Mrs. Grunwald -- everybody except my husband's bastard Jason DiLaurentis, that little bastard -- and make sure each and every one of them has eaten."
Beckett: "Flirty Beckett!"
Spencer: "Digging it because I'm just like this, but seriously back off. But don't."
Beckett: "You want me to put that file back for you before Veronica notices?"
Spencer: "What are you talking about? Just kidding, I'll take care of it."
Beckett: "More flirty! I look like Nine Inch Nails but a lawyer! Inappropriate side-deals with high school girls!"
Veronica: "I don't hear anybody eating in there!"
MONTGOMERY
Aria hears a car vrooming around outside and instead of assuming that car is about to drive into her living room, she remembers to bother her brother. They are at a billiards hall, being lacrosse dicks, so they tell him he drank himself to death and hang up, because shut up Aria. "Ugh, pretend-parenting! Hated it with Malcolm, I hate it even more now."
She immediately calls Jake, because what better pretext for calling the guy who dumped you for being obsessive than ... the thinnest pretext imaginable.
MARINCEPTION
Hanna's conversation with Alison that freed her so much, that was about this: Tangling the real world out there with the realer world, in here. Emily retrieved her time-travel memories through Sullivan's mesmerism. Spencer filled a room up with her sisters, and then extinguished them one by one until she was all alone, practically dead -- and then again, in the dark with Alison. Bringing the moonlight visions from inside out into the real world, so you can make it all fit.
But that's the kind of spell that works both ways. What Alison could do, as an angel of disclosure, is the opposite of what Mona can do now, which is to blur the lines completely so you can be whatever you need to be. She's a shapeshifter, the very opposite thing. In a season of a show that's become more and more about turning into each other, picking up each other's gifts and playing each other's roles (X is the new Y! Who's the Spencer this week? All those jokes), it doesn't really matter how dumb her reasoning is for doing it, because right now is the best time to learn it.
She'll have this skill regardless of what happens with Ashley, and that's the real power here. It has to do with taking all that shadow stuff from the Black Swan and the masquerade -- the ways she can only ever feel one way or the other about Mona, utter love or utter hate -- and transcending that, by taking the spell into herself. Once you become a shapeshifter, you can see the world like Mona does, and everybody knows once you understand someone on that level you'll never be able to hate them again.
Hanna was the first one to really nail doing it the other way: Picking apart your projections and fantasies and terrors and desires, separating the crumbs from the dirt and putting together an image of life. Spencer -- always the one most controlled by her dark visions and fears and unreal illusions, because she's the most rational one during the daytime -- even learned it, in Radley. (I mean, she's nuts, but you know what I mean.)
But because Hanna was the first one to learn the spell, she's the first one that gets to learn this second operation of it, the shapeshifting thing that Mona's always offered: In order to see the five lights she needs everything to make sense, which actually means looking at her shit for the last five years with Wilden, and making it all line up. Like with a magnet, making the filings go in a line: The secret to being Mona is that there is no secret. Once you've done it, that's who you are then. Who you were.
"I saw him in town, Detective Wilden. I followed him out to the lake, and I saw his car there -- I don't know or care how it got back into town, but it was there -- and I found him. We were alone, Wilden was... Angry..."
Even spookier, she drifts out of the past and into the present, seeing it happen. The breakthrough Mona's been working on the whole time: It becomes real. The secret to being a liar is believing the lie, of course, but this is more than that: This is how you become anybody.
"He's gonna blame all of this on my mom, I know it. He's been after me and my mom because of what he did to Ali. No one believes us, no one will help us. He wants to hurt my mom? Now it's his turn to be scared. And I'm gonna make him stop."
Wilden: "You're in very big trouble Hanna. I can make your mother's life a living hell."
Hanna: (Click.)
Wilden: "But again, we can discuss a trade..."
"He hurt your mom. He wants to hurt you. He's got all the power."
Scared.
"Nobody's going to help you."
Sad. Tired.
"You're the only one in the world who can do anything about it. You're all alone out there."
Pissed. Ready.
"Bugs are getting in your hair and the lake smells like something died in it. What happened ?"
Righteous: How many lights?
She pulls the trigger and he goes down. Mona holds up two fingers: "Two, Hanna. You shot him twice." Hanna complies. Ashley appears to her, safe and sound, hair untouched, wearing regular clothes; Hanna tears up with relief.
"...And then I ran away. Who moved the car and put the body in the trunk? I don't know. All I know is, I killed him. I shot him with my father's gun, because he was after my mom and no one was gonna help us."
Mona: "Are you sorry that you killed him?"
Hanna: "Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry."
Mona: "Of course you are. All you have to do now is tell the truth."
This episode is the end of the second act of the Summer season, four episodes to go, so you knew it would have interesting things happening in it. And I've been obsessed with Oxenberg since Thank You & Good Night, which was twenty years ago. But I did not think I would love it this much. This is some voodoo shit.
When your show has "liar" in the title, and every wiki about the show lists everybody's secrets and lies, and every plot development comes out of one lie or another, and some are the lies we tell ourselves and some are the ones we'd tell each other, and some of them -- most of them -- are forced on them by A... It is about this time in the arc of a show that is getting more popular by the minute to go meta on one major concept or another. The second they revealed Mona, though, I always had a feeling it would eventually get to this place, the plasticity of the world, of reality.
Like, we've always responded to people -- Jenna Thing, Ian and Melissa, the DiLaurentis house -- more on their symbolic and emotional and level than really worrying about the hows and whys. But Mona pulls back the curtain on what that's like from the other side. Like when Aria couldn't find Malcolm and there was just a gap in the timeline... And then we saw Spencer had joined the A-Team, and time was bouncing around that whole episode in such a disjointed way: While you're flipping out about the chaos A is handing you, sometimes it is true that they are a cool customer like Mona, or a different cool like Spencer, but more than likely they are holding down a bucket of snakes you never even knew about.
This idea of crossing the divide from Known to the dark overpopulated country of the Unknown, which I guess is what every mystery is about, resolving that blank space and filling it with truths. But only this show has a real reason -- much less the balls -- to take you by the hand and walk you across that threshold into the nighttime of things, and say: No, it is every bit as fucking crazy over here too. Knowing doesn't help.
Mona can literally sit you down and walk you through the superadrenalized hyperreality and it's still just like, "This is what survival can require sometimes." Sometimes shapeshifting is more important than disclosure. And if you think about Alison, and Redcoat, that's the most interesting thing of all, because that's two mutually exclusive categories, that keep twisting themselves together: Disclosure and obscuration. My favorite person in the whole Odyssey, even from when I was little, was Kalypso, because she only lies to you long enough to make sure you grow up. The lie is only necessary until you can reenter reality at the proper point.
How many times did I -- did Mona -- say how thankful they should be for A? And the whole time you had this supervillain going, I have to fake it so real I am beyond fake, for anybody else to get out alive.
By the time Caleb shows back up, she's ready for the ball. Hair looking great finally, necessaries in her purse; he smiles so proudly to have stayed -- but she's still not happy to see him. He's still standing between her and her mother and doesn't even know it. He doesn't know about the way Mona looked into her eyes, when she said she was sorry she killed Wilden. How she saw a piece of herself looking back.
MONTGOMERY
Jake: "It's me, just your guy that you call apparently when you are broken up with Fitz. Where's Mike?"
Aria: "Somewhere loud and fun. It has to stop."
Jake: "Okay, so an arcade maybe? Somewhere close to the other team, since it was an away team..."
Aria, same inflection as before: "Should we just get in your car and drive there?"
I like this new Aria that just says what's on your mind. "School or no school? Arcade or no arcade? Stop fucking around and answer the question." But Mikey calls immediately.
Aria: "Your laxbros said you were unconscious!"
Mike: "Undressed?"
Aria: "No, um. Unconscious."
Mike: "Oh okay cool never mind. I'll be home tomorrow. Don't worry about me."
Aria: "Whatever. Hey Jake, do you want to watch Insidious? Turns out Byron was right all this time and you really do just eventually give up."
Jake: "Cool, I had nothing else going on. Being such a hideous beast and all."
Aria: "Are you hungry? Have you eaten? When was the last time you ate?"
Jake: "I wonder if they had food at that arcade and Mike got enough to eat."
Aria: "He said he's staying at Billy's tonight."
Jake: "Do you think they have food there? Maybe we should bring them food."
MARIN
Caleb: "You let Mona Vanderwaal brainwash you?"
Hanna: "Mona agreed to brainwash me."
Caleb: "My response is as follows. First of all you can't do it. Subpoint, it is insane. Second of all, you would never pull it off. And third, I am not gonna let you do it!"
Hanna: "You're sweet, but I'm doing this. If one of us is going to be endlessly tortured by A, I would rather it not be my mom. It's go time!"
Caleb, verbatim: "Prison for kids is still prison. Why are you so guilty that you would do this because of something somebody else did?"
Hanna: "...Wait, you think she did it?"
Caleb: "To be honest, I did. But after today, I know she didn't. That lady is completely bewildered by all of this, she is not a killer."
MOTEL
Pam: "I brought food. Have you eaten?"
Emily: "What are we going to do about eating? Not just this meal, but all the meals to follow."
Pam: "I bought only enough for the meal. After that, we'll have to think of something."
Emily: "Like we could eat at restaurants. Or go to the store to buy more food."
Pam: "And then eat it."
Emily: "Or if you want, I could do that and bring it back here, so you don't have to see the eyes of Rosewood looking at you, judging you for being suspended and homeless, and previously for beating your lesbian daughter."
Emily thinks she's helping when she offers to go to Nicaragua for the summer, because to her it's doing two things: Openly making sure Pam doesn't have to feed her and worry about her body and where it is, and then of course secretly making A leave Pam alone. But all Pam hears is inadequacy, with no way of knowing that none of this was her fault. Pam breaks down and it's horrible.
Even at her worst, most of it was coming from this idea of being a homemaker, making a home. Being the best at it. Making sure Emily and her dad were completely happy and satisfied and taken care of. And once the gay thing became part of their lives, you could see it: How beautiful it made her, to defend her castle. How of all the people on this whole show, she was the only person who knew truly who and what she was, what her soul wanted. Ella and Ashley could change, adapt, and that was beautiful too: Pam was the only one who was born to live the life she had.
And so when she breaks down it isn't just fear and it isn't just about money: It's like taking Emily's swimming away. It's like taking the Ashley half of the Ashley-Hanna team away. It's like when Spencer finally realized she was crazy and had been crazy for awhile: Just nothing, where you used to keep the majority of yourself. You reach for your gun and it's just a banana. The worst feeling in the world. Emily's proud smile drops and she realizes that somehow she has pushed it over the edge, but not how.
Emily: "Why are you... I don't have to go for the whole summer, I can come back in August. You know, see about the house, maybe Dad can come home too..."
Pam: "Stop. This is a very important summer for you, it can't be about me."
Emily: "Mom, have you eaten? Let me cook something for you."
And that's when I realized nobody was ever talking about food at all. Maybe we never are.
RWPDHQ
Some feet -- in heels, note -- walk into the station with some Eighties sounding music about bad girls and how they get it done: It's Mona, asking for a detective, to discuss a certain murder.
MONTGOMERINSIDIOUS
Aria and Jake's enjoyment of the insidious Insidious, and subsequent conversation about the sequel to Insidious, the even more insidious Insidious 2 which opens in Rosewood soon, and would that be a date or is he being insidious, is itself interrupted by insidious discussions of the insidious sequel to Insidious, the even more terrifying and insidious Insidious 2.
Aria: "I have heard that it will be even more terrifying and insidious than the original Insidious. Which was pretty insidious, not gonna lie. But in a fun way."
Jake: "How do you think you'll be styling your hair for our date to see Insidious 2 which opens in theaters week?"
Aria: "I'd imagine Tresemmé products would be involved."
Jake: "Can you quickly name them?"
Aria: "Why bother? I'll just run up and get them so I can show them to you."
HASTINSIDIOUS
Veronica: "So what did you think of Beckett?"
Spencer: "That's an odd thing hit me with as I'm walkin' in the door."
Veronica: "You'll like him, he's smart. So the deal with Ashley is, she's going to the state facility tomorrow -- which is excessive and interferes with my ability to mount a defense, not to mention her ability to see Insidious 2 when it comes out -- and I'll keep after Judge Reilly until she agrees to bail."
Veronica's being so sweet that it reminds Spencer that her mom is cool, so she guiltily produces the stolen file from her cookie tin, and Veronica's sweetness goes the way of old Melissa: To chillier climes.
Veronica: "I should have warned him about you! And your ways!"
Spencer: "But this particular file is very useful to your defense! I stole it only for a little while and then carried it all over town..."
Veronica: "To what end? Did you not understand that the whole point is deluging us with Wilden crap until we drown? What, this magically contains information about his own murder?"
Spencer: "No! A wildly different case that has nothing to do with this! There is a minor paperwork discrepancy that I just know means something about him getting paid off to rewrite history with Toby's mom, and that is important for reasons I can't tell you, and I ... just realized I sound insane."
Veronica: "Wilden was crooked? This is your big news? Honey, he kept your best friend's mother in sexual slavery for years, using disappearing lasagna and lavatory paper products. We know he's crooked. Also, quit being all about Radley. Isn't it enough that that place broke our unbroken line of UPenn legacies?"
Spencer: "But his weird fantasies that his insane mother didn't kill herself!"
Veronica: "Have nothing to do with Ashley Marin, who is alive. You wanna help Toby, go for it. By distracting him from weird mom stuff. And stop taking him to other dimensions!"
First Veronica, then Aria, then Emily (sitting with a crashed out Pam) and finally Hanna, who's still being delayed Caleb's cuteness tactics, gets the call. And so it is that all four Liars walk in together, so stylish, just as the detectives are amazingly lowering the blinds on Mona Vanderwaal's intense smile -- and her confession to being a cop killer.
WEEK
But you know nobody's going to give her any credit. Hell, Hanna probably still thinks she did it and they're going to have to get Sullivan in there to fix whatever Mona broke. The A-Tag is one of those weird ones where you don't get it until later, like the Aca Deca bicycle sabotage, so okay: week, the Liars throw Emily a birthday party and invite Jenna and Shana so they threaten and abuse them as is their wont. Somebody ends up in an ambulance, maybe Shana, and Aria sneaks around the party while Redcoat menaces from the yard, which is awesome. Aria makes her move on Jake finally, which I'm sure will trigger Maggie leaving town somehow, while Emily gets jumped by the lake where she always gets jumped.
Mona's managed to get herself apparently back into Radley? Like maybe that's the genius part of the plan, that she can just say "Remember how I'm obsessed with Hanna to the point where I was just constantly trying to kill people? Yeah, so it turns out that's still going on and I killed Wilden, lock me back up in my old mental hospital room if you feel like it." Either way I have to say, I am loving this show very much. I miss Paige but other than that I feel like they're doing a kick-ass job with Mona for sure.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Killing, Pretty Little Liars, Ray Donovan, Mistresses, and True Blood for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.