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So good! I want to say it's Hanna's episode because her story is so touching this week, but honestly we're still carrying over Emily's Ali stuff from last time, and then you've got Spencer still fixating on Radley and her dad, and Aria being freakin' awesome all over the place, so I guess there's no clear winner here, but man did I like Hanna's stuff this time around.
Hanna stands around getting yelled at by the Liars for hanging onto the Diary some more, then explains the code-name thing about how the stories in it work, and begins color-coding all the parts and players they've figured out so far. Hanna continues to be bad-ass in this way. But you slowly come to realize she's also being protective because of certain damaging info in there, which you think for a long time has to do with Aria and Ezra...
But actually ends up being about this one time Hefty Hanna hooked up with L'il Mikey Montgomery, and Ali made her feel like a total fucking failure about it, all of which connects to her still-stinging Caleb breakup situation in the neatest, saddest way. She's mean and shifty and sketch and angry and feral the entire time, and just when you're at your limit you find out why she's been so weird and it's amazing, somehow knitting the whole Liars club back together just out of relief that she has not lost her shit.
(Although I was expecting Aria to say something awesome like, "If I've learned anything, Hanna Banana, it's that when a trusted older person takes sexual advantage of you, there are usually little to no consequences.")
Also working on acting like a complete lunatic -- well, for her -- Emily takes it for the first night, where she has one of those Ali dreams that is maybe real and maybe not, but either way she gives the bitch what for, and it's pretty beautiful. day she steals away for a meeting at the Kissing Rock that never happens, and I guess we're still just in the sad wisdom place where Emily is getting the hell over her brainwashing... Possibly at the exact time Ali has sincerely come to regret it and wants to come clean. Also beautiful.
Aria is totally weird about Ezra and/or Jake, and the Aria of it all is that she thinks this is about a love triangle and not her future murder, which makes it amazing. A clue leads the girls toward a B&B in the hilariously named nearby town of KILLINGWORTH, but A hacks into their GPS and they end up stranded not far from Ezra's secret love/murdering cabin. He follows them there, terrorizes them, gets the Diary back -- thanking them for doing all the hard work of decoding the stories! -- and all of this without anybody ever figuring out where they actually are, or why. Oh, and that cowboy/towtruck Kleintank guy I love so much, Travis, gives Hanna quite the firm shoulder to cry on once he's carted the ladies back to Rosewood.
Spencer's not really ready to talk about why she doesn't want Radley closed down just yet, but gets pissed when Peter tells her he's abandoning the cause: Marion Cavanaugh supposedly fell to her death accidentally, according to a fellow patient who witnessed the death and for whose protection the cover-up was done. Who do you think that was? She died in 2007, which rules out a lot of people. It's suggested this week that CeCe -- who is still on the run, spotted here and there like a one-person Bonnie & Clyde -- was paid off to kill Wilden, and we know CeCe knew her, but who knows about all that.
The main Spence drama, though, is her ongoing obsession with Peter and Jessica DiLaurentis's relationship, which is starting to look sketchier and sketchier. I mean, the first rule of Spencer Club is that Spencer is always wrong, but the Second Rule of Spencer Club is that Spencer always ends up basically right anyway. So either they're both getting divorced and running away together, like Spencer seems to think, or they're doing something that has nothing to do with the mystery and is just Jason stuff? Anyway, Spencer goes ham on poor Mrs. D at the Vault, in public and just brutally, which enrages Peter so much that, thing you know, Spencer's moving in with her boyfriend Toby Cavanaugh, the successful Teen Contractor with his own cool pad full of sexy tank tops.
So: All in all a very textured outing, with lots of real emotion and visually lovely quiet moments, and more than a few scares. Ezra is killing it right now, working his A magic at the fringes of their stories; Hanna continues to delight and amaze with her range, depth and regret; Emily's anger-fueled, frankly beautiful transformation is ever more inspiring; Spencer's managing to jazz up the Marion storyline with her own fucked-up behavior (very much appreciated, sorry Marion); and best of all, Aria's getting darker and darker as her questionable choices get more and more deliberate, and I fucking love it.
week: Alison keeps working Emily's shit, Aria gets to have boys fight over her, Hanna remains distracted by Travis, Shana reappears with God knows what agenda, Spencer remains skeptical about every single thing, and The Originals probably pulls another unnecessary, tacky prank.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Spencer was suspicious of her father's weirdness about his bastard babymama door, Jessica DiLaurentis, and then suspicious of his motives regarding her investigation into Radley Sanitarium's sordid history, and in other news Spencer was suspicious about some things for once. Hanna was in whatever the opposite of two love triangles is, between not dating either her hard-luck tow-truck cowboy nor her spun-off werewolf boytoy, plus fighting over somebody who is not her boyfriend with somebody who is dead and therefore will not be showing up for any fight about boys. Oh, and she's been hanging on Ali's diary since Ravenswood because it has many secrets, particularly one silly secret we'll find out about tonight that Alison convinced her was the worst secret of all time (that Hanna is a fat child molester).
And on a completely different topic, Ezra invited Aria to his secret cabin so they could share a secret, actually saying "It can be our secret" in the process. So. You can already see how the ironies there will play out once we start getting into the child molester portions of Alison's diary, which -- it being this show, this town, this girl -- most likely represent the bulk of Alison's diary.
MAUSOLEUM STILL
Aria: "But like, why is she keeping a diary about other people? What on Earth could people that are not us have to offer?"
Hanna: "No girl, it's a code. Like she would actually have a friend named Suzy Clueless. Come on, idiot. No, she changes the stories around so you have to decode them using the things you know to be true. It's a simple, time-consuming, complex and baroque system of narrative and counter-narrative bricolage..."
Emily: "The exact kind of shit she was always doing. Not only because she was a fucking liar, but also because that's so Alison. She probably composed these postmodern Nabokovian tales while she was flying her plane. I am so sick of this bitch."
Liars: "So you've just been hanging out with this diary containing all of our secrets? Doesn't that kind of deprive us of agency?"
Hanna: "It's not like, light fun reading. It's like if HP Lovecraft wrote Fifty Shades about little girls. I mean, let's talk about this."
Liars: "No! I want a turn. We teen girls love thinking about horrible things, because it externalizes our paranoia and discomfort with our own bodies. It's why VC Andrews was so popular and where Twilight came from."
Emily: "Also this show that we are on. Hand it over, asshole."
THAT NIGHT
Emily: "Alison? Are you sneaking in my (sometimes robotically alarmed) bedroom window in real life? Or did I accidentally inhale fumes or drink a bottle of cough syrup?"
Alison: "Hang on, let me try pushing every button you got."
Emily: "Nope. Won't work. I figured your shit out thanks to the Cortland Liars."
Alison: "Aw, g'wan. You know you want a piece."
Emily: "Just cut the BS and tell me who you're hiding from. Not that hard a question."
Alison: "Actually it is!"
Emily: "But why?"
Alison: "Um, I gotta go. Anyway, you're totally still in love with me."
Emily: "Ugh. Just go away."
Alison: "Then how come you're still wearing my bracelet around your wrist like a ninny?"
Also she says, "That's why I need you. You always saw the best version of me, the person I want to be." Which Emily says to shove, but also is eerily similar to what Ezra said to Aria, and is just blatant red-flag bullshit. If somebody ever says you know the "real them," prepare for impact because that means two things: One, they think it's okay to be multiple people, which means their integrity is iffy at best. Two, they are selling you something. Confessing to being manipulative is the #1 strategy of being manipulative, because people feel like you're giving them something when you tell them that. If somebody needs your validation for the best version of them, that version is untenable and therefore inauthentic: You have activated Missing Piece Protocol, Missing Piece Protocol is in effect.
MARIN
Ashley: "I'm so glad you are up and dressed like a person! That hasn't happened since my house arrest!"
Hanna: "Suck it, Ashley. I am bulletproof. I am every P!nk song right now. Which explains my shitty, trashy attitude."
Ashley: "As long as you've got energy enough to leave the house, I don't care. I love you and I want to be happy and I do not want you to act like I did after the divorce..."
Hanna: "Stop giving me the third degree about Caleb!"
Ashley: "Cool so I'll just fuck right off, yeah?"
CAVANAUGH
Spencer: "Why aren't you dressed to meet my father about Radley?"
Toby: "He canceled on me. That's why I'm making this face, it's because I'm sad."
Spencer: "Well, maybe that's best..."
Toby: "But who knows how many moms of Radley didn't jump off the roof to their death, turning their kids into modern-day Cinderellas that have to live in cobweb houses and get raped by their blind sisters? It could be dozens. As much as millions."
Spencer: "I mean, you're very important? But I think this is actually not about you."
Toby: "Don't be ridiculous. Now, come take this tank top off my body."
SCHOOL
Aria does some dumb Ezra thing, leaves him a note I think, and Spencer needles her about how Aria only likes Jake, but she loves Ezra, and so on. I guess the Toby sex must have been pretty good, because the conversation is so stultifying it must just be Spencer being charitable. If all of us just donated one hour a week to listening to Aria talk about Ezra, science predicts that she would eventually shut the fuck up about Ezra as early as within the 160 years.
Emily shows everybody her cool color-coding system she has been using to distance herself from Alison's sick head-insides, and it's amazing: Emily is Green because she is a cool customer, Spencer is Blue because she is valorous, Aria is Purple obviously, and of course Hanna is Pink. Alison is Yellow because of her golden hair (and also because of a very weird story on p. 239 about Noel Kahn that ends in a surprising way). Emily has assigned White to the stories they don't know, but I'm not sure what that accomplishes.
Did I mention Ezra watches this entire situation go down from a few feet away? You bet your ass he does. Good work as ever, ladies.
Emily: "There's one story where she says I'm so desperately in love with her I'd rob a bank if she asked me to, and then another where she says I always put my friends first and she wishes she was more like me..."
Liars: "Yeah, it's almost like people are complicated and nobody is purely good or bad. Now, let's talk about how much we fucking hate Shana and Jenna for no reason."
Liars: "Where's Caleb, by the way?"
Hanna: "Alison wrote poetry. Well, doggerel. But still..."
Liars: "By the way we said Caleb, where is he by the way."
Hanna: "He went to Ravenswood, it's like whatever. I am every empowered song that is a lie Rihanna is telling us. Don't start, I already got my mom day-drinking about it."
Aria: "...This poem on this page is probably about a bed and breakfast I went to as a kid."
Liars: "Sure, that's probably it. You guys wanna go there after school for literally no more reasons than Aria free-associating?"
Liars: "Yes, but we have to make sure to lie to all of our loved ones about it first, so nobody knows where we are. Just in case/for no reason at all."
COFFEE
Emily gets a note from Alison (?) at work, and spaces out, and then runs to the Kissin' Rock so she can have a meeting with Alison and/or get murdered and/or have several sad lesbian wisdom montages.
You remember Kissin' Rock, don't ya? That ever-so-romantic spot in the woods where Alison videotaped herself getting choked out and fucked in the dirt that time? You know, Kissin' Rock!
...There ya go. I thought that might do it.
EZZZZZRIA
Aria: "Are you writing a story?"
Ezra: "Kind of. More like erotic fan fiction."
Aria: "How cool. Anyway, I'm going out of town for no reason and it is a secret why."
Ezra: "Will you tell me why?"
Aria: "No."
Ezra: "Okay, I have to grade papers anyway. Oh hey, remember when we boned last night?"
Aria: "Yeah. You would think I'd be more conflicted about that, but..."
Ezra: "I am going to get my ass soundly beat by Karate Jake week, I think."
Aria: "Ooh, that's good. You should definitely put that in your story."
Ezra: "Do you... know the difference between fan fiction and your real life?"
Aria: "Come again?"
She leaves, and this is the video he was watching of Alison when Aria came in, and it's actually very interesting: "You still can't see who's threatening me? Look, I need to figure out where to go, I need to make a plan, some sort of escape, I don't know, a way to not be... Alison DiLaurentis anymore. Can you please help me?"
The "can't see" part makes me think this is a The Grunwald Tippi-phone conversation, although I guess Ali could be talking to a person with simple audio-visual talents and not, you know, the psychic nanny of a vampire on a short sabbatical to a sorority house, talking into a secret phone in a secret room nobody knows about except for a parrot. I'm open to alternate theories. But I wanna say it's The Grunwald. Ultimately though, I guess I want everything to be The Grunwald and I'm sure that will be the series finale. The whole time it was just Mona Vanderwaal vs. The Grunwald in an unending battle for the fate of the universe itself, not unlike the Spider and the Turtle in the Ritual of Chüd.
EMILY
Still feeling it on the Kissin' Rock. You know the one, it's near where her best friend made a sex tape she was later forced to watch projected on the wall of a mausoleum where a stranger's identical body slowly rotted?
I think she does this the entire episode so maybe it isn't right now, but at some point she's going to leave her Emily bracelet on the Kissin' Rock, which is either a powerful symbol of moving forward unmarked by the abuse she suffered at the hands of her first love or the way she will be implicated in the horrible murder. Didn't I always say shovels were the new bracelets? I hear bracelets are coming back into style. Bracelets bracelets bracelets.
HASTINGS
Spencer: "Anyway, I'm on my way into my house which is empty because it's the middle of the day, and I need you to remind my dad to call Toby..."
But her house is not actually empty! In fact it's about a hundred times brighter in there than usual, thanks to it being the middle of the day, which makes it even easier to identify the people that are there, such as Peter Hastings and his DiLaurentis whore.
Jessica, verbatim: "...That's what I said!"
Peter, same: "I don't understand. Does Jason know?"
Jessica, too: "No. He doesn't need to!"
Spencer: "Hey, bitches? What's going on in here? What just the fuck is going on in here?"
Jessica: "Hi, Spencer. I'm getting a divorce and I'm feeling weird about telling Jason about it, because he has a history of drug abuse kind of. So that explains everything. Right?"
Spencer: "Nothing explains anything. There is always more to be weird about."
THE BREW
Travis: "Do you recognize me without my cowboy hat?"
Hanna: "Actually I did not, so thanks for the hint. Now go away, I am stressed."
Travis: "Did you see on the news? CeCe was seen at a train station in Maryland and then vanished. She came up with a ton of money right before Wilden died, which is interesting."
Hanna: "Is it? I kind of already knew that, based on this ledger I found in A's Ravenswood Lair. Anyway, I have to go find my friends for a nonsensical road trip..."
Travis: "Wait, can I at least ask you how you are doing? How your mom is?"
Hanna: "No deal, homeslice. I am in no mood for human contact, due to my boyfriend dumping me and also I am possibly a child molester. So bye."
HASTINGS
Peter: "Anyway, I gotta..."
Spencer: "You sit your ass down, mister. Three days ago you literally banned me from talking to that woman, and now I find you sleazin' around in my kitchen? While Mom is out of town and you're flaking on my boyfriend?"
Peter: "You are doing ... a lot of Spencer stuff at me, right now."
Spencer: "I am just getting the fuck started, sir."
Peter: "It's actually all true, just listen. Yeah, Mr. DiLaurentis is lawyering up. So she asked for advice, due to us being -- if you'll recall -- fairly close friends."
Spencer, verbatim: "Oh what, and you're the only barrister in town?"
Peter: "You are so weird. Barrister. Anyway, sorry about Toby, but I was meaning to tell you about that anyway. Marion's death was an accident. I talked to them and they said she was on the roof, she slipped, she fell. They covered it up to protect their witness to the accident, who was a fellow patient."
Spencer: "So let me get this straight. A woman goes hurtling off a mental institution roof -- landing in multiple places, depending on who you ask -- and the only person who saw it is a mental patient? Who swears it was just a weird accident? And this person's so trustworthy that they pay a cop to alter the report, so nobody asks questions?"
Peter: "I guess so, honey. I guess that medical oversight in Rosewood operates on a level comparable to law enforcement, or our education system, in that pretty much anything goes."
THE BREW
Jessica: "Hey, Spencer. Good job finding me here at one of Rosewood's three small businesses on our one street we have. Forgive me for saying so, but you have the crazy eyes."
Spencer: "You bet your ass I got the crazy eyes now you listen up Jessica and you listen up good I have done everything in my power to keep my house from drifting apart like the expanding universe and nobody I mean nobody least of all you I mean it would take a far far better woman Jessica DiLaurentis than the one I see before me smelling of whiskey as you're standing here ordering a scone you're never even going to eat nobody I say is going to fucking push on this bruise again do you hear me. I said do you motherfucking hear me."
Jessica: "Honey, you're mumbling."
Spencer: "FIND ANOTHER LAWYER. SOMEBODY YOU HAVEN'T FUCKED."
Jessica: "Oh, now I see what you're saying."
Jessica stumbles out the door, embarrassed and horrified about people knowing her sad secrets, and everybody in the Brew is giving Spencer side-eye, and she realizes she is looking crazy as hell, and feels bad, and also her dad is going to give her the business. It's sad and Jessica's been through a lot, but I was kind of excited to see or imagine the phone call to Peter, like, just the grossness of having to be all, "Well, your daughter brought up our missing bastard in public at the top of her lungs and I'm wondering, will this affect my divorce do you think?"
ROAD TRIP!
Everybody hops in the car for their trip to this random place, and even though they've been tricked before -- many times! -- they still have faith in GPS. They're going to a place called Killingworth, by the way. Just dialing that right in.
Hanna: "You'll have to pry this diary out of my hands, for reasons this episode skillfully leads you to believe are Ezra-related but are actually a fairly minor embarrassment from years and years ago."
The Liars all lie to each other about their various secret activities this afternoon: Spencer didn't jump up Jessica DiLaurentis's ass at a coffee shop; Emily didn't spend the day staring into space in the middle of the woods; Aria is certainly not making plans with their English teacher later; Hanna doesn't even know who Caleb Rivers is.
MARIN
Ezra: "Hey, is Hanna home? And if not, is that book she's been reading home?"
Ashley: "Do you often show up unannounced at students' places of residence, or is this purely a courtesy you extend to Aria and her circle of friends?"
Ezra: "Actually I am here to remind you that Hanna is losing her mind, and it's affecting her schoolwork."
Ashley: "Oh, interesting. Okay, you just sit unattended in my house while I take care of some real estate business for a really long time. Hope you had nothing better to do."
Ezra immediately runs upstairs to go through Hanna's shit, of course, and Ashley just chills in the kitchen telling this person over and over that what they are talking about is not her problem. They are both just taking it pretty easy right now, to be honest.
GPS
Liars: "Well, Spencer is obviously The Human Cheat-Sheet. Suzy Clueless is Aria but nobody wants to say it."
Hanna: "I'm just going to turn up the radio real loud so nobody can talk about it."
Liars: "This ain't Spring Break, Hanna Marin! We are not Spring Breaking right now!"
Hanna: "Man, every time I try to fly I fall."
Liars: "What does it say? Suzy Clueless's dad is fucking around? That could be any of us. Except for Emily, obviously."
Aria: "...Oh, got it. It's me. She talks about my great fashion sense."
Liars: "Uh..."
Aria: "Right? So it's me, right? Right?"
Things get weird. Luckily, then things get weirder: One of the story cycles is about a personage named The Cradlerobber, and Hanna is scared to death they'll figure out why.
Liars: "Did Alison hook up with a younger guy?"
Hanna: "Does this radio go even louder?"
Liars: "Like, what if Boardshorts were a younger guy and not one of the million older guys that is constantly coming after us?"
Hanna: "Can I have that book back please? For no reason."
After a quick stop by Ezra, who is growling that way he does when he's turning into A, which is understandable because normally the Liars really do tend to leave shit around all willy-nilly and then act surprised when it's stolen. In this case, though, they've taken it with, so he's frustrated and surprised both. Then he opens Hanna's laptop, revealing their trip to the B&B, and he bounces from Ashley's house so he can go hack into their GPS and get them stranded near his murder cabin.
Then I guess he also hacks the weather, because it's about to start raining now that the car has mysteriously stopped working.
Emily: "First one of you bitches to suggest that I know my way around a car gets it."
Spencer: "Plus we can't call Toby, or Paige, or any of our loved ones, due to us lying to them about where we're going. So I guess now we live in the woods."
Hanna: "I recently ran into a person that I remembered has nothing to do with us, and happens to have a tow-truck company. I will summon him... He says two hours."
Aria: "I happen to know a cabin close by that I have a key to."
Liars: "Since when?"
Aria: "It's my uncle's! It's our secret."
The fact that she immediately goes there without ever even thinking about what she's saying is both the scariest and increasingly the very greatest thing about Aria. The ladies set out into the wilderness, looking for shelter from the coming storm, and heading directly to the cabin that is A's new Lair and they don't even know it!
Spencer: "Hanna, did you notice a missing page in the diary and/or did you tear a page out of that diary?"
Hanna: "No, and no. And trust me, it doesn't matter anyway."
Spencer: "Then do you want to talk about Caleb? I'm just feeling very questiony."
Hanna: "Head down, Hastings. We gotta beat this stormfront."
What she says is kind of sad either way, but especially in hindsight, because it sounds like she's protecting the group by being so evasive about this, when really that's not it at all: "It's not gonna bring us any closer to Alison, everyone knowing who did what behind whose back." Which, you can see what she's saying, but on the other hand is exactly the point of this diary.
Aria: "Here we go. Let me pretend to retrieve the key from somewhere other than my bra."
Liars: "This is so romantic! You should bring your boyfriend Jake here!"
Aria: "Uh, don't touch anything. You'll figure out whose cabin it is super quick if you do that, because the only books in this whole place are all from the Ezra Fitz syllabus."
Liars: "I don't want to give up on that B&B. What if Ali is hiding there?"
Spencer: "I dunno, let's grill the shit out of Hanna until she cracks."
Liars: "What is with you being all over Hanna this week?"
Spencer: "I can smell her lies!"
Hanna: "It's true. Fine, you guys. I'm the Cradlerobber."
Liars: "Do tell."
Hanna: "Sorry about this, but I kind of hooked up with Mikey Montgomery."
Aria: "Who is that again?"
FLASHBACK
Alison: "Oh my God! You are the grossest person. Trust me, I would know."
Hefty Hanna: "Alison, stop. You interrupted us before anything good happened..."
Alison: "And thank Christ for that! Aria's baby brother? It's repulsive! I would know."
Hefty Hanna: "He's two years younger than us. You have snapped the necks of people at least five years our senior."
Alison: "Look, I get it. You're a wide load and you're desperate to have your boobs touched. He's a horny little boy-child and wanted to touch some boobs. But both people being okay with something doesn't always mean it's okay, because we don't always make these choices with all the facts in mind. It's like Lolita. They both get what they want, but neither of them is in a place to know whether they are making good choices."
Hefty Hanna: "Quit it. Just keep it a secret, please. You're great at that."
Alison: "I won't tell Aria you hooked up with her brother. But that's only because she would never forgive you, and I don't want to see that happen to you. Because I'm such a good friend."
Alison: "Now, look at me. Someday someone will love you, for exactly who you are."
Hefty Hanna: "Aw, Alison. That's an incredibly..."
Alison: "It just might take you longer than the rest of us, that's all."
Hefty Hanna: "There it is."
CABIN
Aria: "Oh, Hanna..."
Hanna: "I know! I'm disgusting and awful!"
Aria: "Nah."
Hanna: "If you want to punch me in... Wait, what?"
Aria: "No big deal."
Liars: "Wait, what?"
Aria: "Look. Sometimes we make out with people older than us, that we should be able to trust, and they take advantage of that trust. Me and Ezra. Emily and Maya St. Germain. Spencer and anyone her sister has ever met. Who are we to judge? The point is, there are rarely any consequences."
Hanna: "That explains why Alison came down on Mike so hard. He's probably still scarred about it."
Aria: "Sucks, too. He had a huge crush on you. I say go get you some, little laxbro!"
Hanna: "That's kind of you to say. Super fucking weird, but..."
Liars: "But Hanna, that happened a long time ago. Whereas you are acting ass-crazy in the Now. So since you've been unburdened of this horrible secret nobody cares about or ever cared about, do you think you could..."
Hanna: "Caleb has left me for a dead girl with his same hair."
Liars: "Who had that in the pool? Spencer, obviously."
NATURE
Hanna bounces because even Hanna can only do so much radical disclosure in a given time period, and Emily follows her. At first Hanna is brusque and mean like all episode, but then a "wild animal" rustling in the woods -- most likely A, but really anybody on this show is a possibility -- scares her into wanting company. If I were out in the woods with wild creatures of a stormy evening, I would pick Emily too. (If CeCe Drake weren't available, obviously. "Fine, you can come, but go grab your mannequin leg first.")
CABIN
Spencer wants to find blankets -- for when Hanna calms down and the girls come back out of the rain -- so Aria goes with her to the storeroom so she can act sketch and hide any Ezra-revealing details. Spencer calls her out about being weird in there with her, and the door immediately slams and locks. Didn't even have time to gossip about Hanna's one million problems, which I was kind of looking forward to because she's so sweet and I love it when they worry about her and indulge her and treat her like the Emily.
Phones are out (the cell-scrambling technology was installed by the same guy that did Noel Kahn's murder cabin, actually) and the ladies are still roaming the countryside, as Ezra comes in and starts doing a complicated dance all around the place, looking for the diary in a way that involves zooming past the keyhole a thousand times until they notice him out there and realize A was the one that locked them in. A thing they had already basically intuited.
After much suspense -- an impressive trick of the episode, considering it's like one tiny keyhole through which a tiny man can be seen whirling around like a dervish, occasionally grunting -- the Liars are reunited: Hanna and Emily broke a window to get back inside, thanks to the screaming of Spencer and Aria. They have a frank talk about the A invasion, realize the diary's been stolen... And then they all four try to attack Travis (with shovels, because that's how they roll) when he arrives to take them home. His reaction is, of course, adorable, but no less so is that of the Liars, who pile everything against the bottom half of the Snow White half-door and then open the top half, the better to bash and bash.
I remember a time with this show where we'd be like, "How interesting that Travis showed up just as A was leaving," but honestly I feel like the show is more comfortable not doing that, this season. Like, we know it was Ezra doing that stuff, so this moment is just funny instead of being another unanswered question. (He wrote, knowing it's entirely possible that suddenly Travis will turn out to be A, or impersonating his own cousin in order to kill lesbians, or avenging Ian's mysterious churchbell death, or another of Jenna's million cute-boy minions with high-level security clearance, or whatever. Mona on stilts.)
ROSEWOOD
Travis: "Are your friends mentally stable? You guys looked like you wanted to kill me!"
Hanna: "It's been a long night. There was an animal that came into the cabin."
Travis: "Like a raccoon?"
Hanna: "Yeah or like a bear. Sometimes A is huge, sometimes -- most of the time -- he's pretty wee. Coulda been Mona on stilts. Anyway, here's some money for the ride and tow."
Travis: "Uh, I don't want your money. Our entire relationship is giving you back money I don't want."
Hanna: "I mean, but thank you?"
Travis: "Sure, but not as your employee. You didn't call me as a tow-truck driver, you called me as a friend. So let me continue to be your friend. You don't have to throw money at me just so I'll stay away. I mean, you've been alienating everybody around you all day for free, right?"
HASTINGS
When Spencer makes it back home for another round, Peter's busily lying to his wife on the phone about how he was in a mediation all day, meaning that he has now lied about his whereabouts to everybody that wasn't in the house, with a variety of lies.
Peter: "Did you really attack Mrs. DiLaurentis in the..."
Spencer: "Did you really just tell my mother a completely separate lie than you told my boyfriend? What the fuck is going on with you?"
Peter: "Let's stick to the topic, which is be nice to Mrs. DiLaurentis. As long as you're under my roof, you will not harm my chances once our divorces -- I mean, her divorce -- is final. Do you hear me?"
Spencer: "Oh, I fuckin' heard you. Did you forget that my boyfriend is a small business owner with his own home? And it's above a coffee shop? Meaning my two favorite things in the universe, one story apart?"
Peter: "I did forget that part, you are correc... Spencer?"
But she is gone. A gone girl. I like the insane literality of that, like, "As long as I'm not sleeping here I will feel free to attack Jessica DiLaurentis all over town whenever I want, and you can't get mad, because that was the agreement."
HASTINGS
Ezra calls from the road, in the rain, to just gloat all over the place and pretend to care about Aria and also care about Aria. Asking about Hanna and shit. They say how much they love each other, and then Aria lies to Emily about it being him on the phone, and Emily sympathizes about how hard it to lie to people that you love, and it's so sad because Aria agrees fervently: It's just that Emily's the loved one she's lying to.
CAVANAUGH
Spencer: "Hey, you want the good news or the bad news first?"
Toby: "I guess I want the..."
Spencer: "Trick question, you have never received good news in your entire life. Thing number one is, I live here now."
Toby: "That's good news, isn't it?"
Spencer: "Accounts differ. Thing number two is, your mother's death was meaningless -- there is no point, no narrative, no explanation, no comfort -- and you're going to need to accept that existential horror as quickly as possible, just like we all did with Alison (right before she turned out not to be dead)."
HASTINGS
Aria: "Wait, came in through the window like in your dream, or...?"
Emily: "You know we never know. She wanted to apologize, but mostly I just reamed her, and then when I woke up -- maybe right then, maybe several dreams later, maybe I wasn't asleep at all -- I was like, That seems pretty real that I would flip out on her."
Aria: "And so then you spent half the episode chilling at the Kissin' Rock, waiting to talk to her."
Emily: "I don't know, I thought I was playing the game. That note was not a dream, so..."
Aria: "Honey I think we both know who her favorite was, okay? Let's not... Let's not go there."
Emily: "I don't want to be her favorite, but I do think it's probably likely that... You know what, you're right. Let's just let that one go for now."
And that's when A texts them with a gracious thank you. For what? For color-coding all of Alison's secrets, breaking the code and then handing it over to the exact person she went to all that trouble to avoid. Naturally.
WEEK
After the tag -- in which A factory-resets the car's GPS, hiding his tracks -- we get into that "favorite" stuff some more: Seems Shana will be arriving back in Rosewood soon, looking to arrange a private meeting between Emily and Alison that nobody ( least of all Spencer, it seems) thinks is legit. Jake comes home, and Hanna continues to have boy problems to go with all of the other crap going on with her right now.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, True Detective, The Blacklist, Ravenswood, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook.