After last week’s (amazing) plotplotplot rollercoaster, we return this week with some classic (and amazing) PLL character studies. We here at FYA also return with the inimitable Rosemary sitting in for Catie (whose texts from atop gorgeous Grecian atolls only 50% worry us that she’s never coming back).
THIS WEEK’S MVP
Lieutenant Tanner AKA Lady Justice! Finally, someone in Rosewood who understands what detective work entails and asks the tough questions–or just asks any questions at all–to get the TRUTH.
THIS WEEK’S LVP
Alison, for not paying attention in Kung Fu Jake’s mailorder self-defense class. JK! Kung Fu Jake is recovering from the major foot injury A gave him for absolutely no reason, so obviously isn’t giving self-defense classes of any kind. Which Ali wouldn’t know, since, despite being on the run for her life for two years, before which time she got her pilot’s license in order to better evade A, she still apparently never once even RESEARCHED a self-defense class.
BIGGEST SHOCK/BEST REVEAL
Emily popping out from behind the locker got us best. It was a literal shock. The only thing that would’ve made it better is if she’d have yelled “BOO!”
BIGGEST NO-DUH
PREVIOUSLY ON PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
Hannah got drunk and called Travis cowboy; Paige warned Emily about Mona’s Army; Ali returned to school; Spencer’s mom left Spencer’s dad because their marriage vows included specifically not making their daughters do murder and he probably broke that promise; Caleb came back from Ghostsville; Ezria burned our retinas; Ali attacked Mona and Mona filmed and edited it like a regular PLL pro; Emily and Alison did The Kissing; all the shippers’ brains exploded watching the major OTPs hold hands during the RPD press conference about the girl in Ali’s grave; Toby’s HOUSE exploded; and everyone, everyone in the world! got a new group text from A.
Did you miss me, bitches?
THIS WEEK
We don’t know if you guys caught this tiny detail last week or not, but towards the end of the 100th episode, TOBY’S HOUSE EXPLODED.
So of course that’s what we open on. Well, actually we open on it exploding a second time. For good measure. But fear not! Toby was not inside; no one was, of which fact Spencer informs the other girls after getting off the phone with Toby, who is with his dad (who did break his leg evading a faling tree on his way out of the house) and Caleb at the hospital.
Aria and Emily set the episode’s action up for us with this tidy bit of New Mystery Exposition: A was never dead at all! Shana “Hester Prym” Fring may have had everything but the letter A painted on her, but she never actually said those words, never said she was A. So…A has been here the whole time, watching them, waiting for the right moment to resurface.
And why is that moment now?
Well, that’s what they have to figure out. And with Ali gumming up the works of the efficient, supportive investigative machine they’d become together these past two years, each Liar has not only her own preferred tactic to “help Ali,” but her own personal agenda. And as our Liars go, so go we…
Spencer in Radley, Spencer at home
For now, at least one of Spencer’s problems is resolved: Toby is alive and well after running into his exploding house. But that offers only a small respite from the rest of her troubles. She and Veronica are living in a hotel; her dad might’ve killed someone; A woke up from her nap; and if they don’t figure out the connection between Bethany Young and Jessica DeLaurentis, it’s possible that Spencer or her dad could be blamed for a murder or two.
Before school the next morning, she runs into Father Hastings (in Rosewood’s official Up-To-No-Good sweatpants uniform). He doesn’t understand why they’ve left, and Veronica won’t answer his calls, so Spencer has to be the one to tell him that they know he and Melissa lied about where they were the night Jessica died. Peter explains that, while he would do just about anything to protect Spencer, he would never take a life to cover up what she did. But Spencer didn’t do anything! Peter insists the same!
Cut to the caf, where Spencer, still sculptor-smocked and ski-capped, tells Aria that her father swears he and Melissa drove to the lake to “talk” that night, but he wouldn’t say what about. Aria, Counselor of Relationships and Haver of the Finest Taste in Boyfriends, tells Spencer that Veronica did the right thing leaving him, just as Ezra calls her. (The writers are totally making a game of this, right? Having a character get interrupted by a phone call that illustrates their terrible judgment on the topic at hand?)
Unless Ezra’s apartment is full of perverted banana peels, don’t call them slip-ups.
Spencer’s judgy face is priceless. “OH MY GOD, ARIA. I thought you said you were never going to go there again. Are you forgetting what he did to you? To us? You couldn’t eat or sleep for weeks after you found out about that book. He deceived you for years!”
Spencer is our hero.
The other Liars join them then for LIARS SUMMIT #1, all freaked out to be back in the Land of A Texts and Murder Attempts, when suddenly, Alison gets a very graphic text from A: video of Jessica being buried, superimposed with “I buried your mom the same way I watched her bury you. -A” that SnapChats into the void as quickly as it appeared.
Later, the girls gather at Hanna’s, where Ali is reeling from the revelation that A killed her mother, and Spencer is reeling from the revelation that she falsely accused her father of murder. Um, girls? A plays with body parts? Spencer accuses every Rosewoodian who breathes air of something nefarious? Neither of those things is particularly surprising.
Alison is already hatching plans to skip town. She only came back to Rosewood because A was dead, and if that’s not true…welp. She didn’t get her pilot’s license for nothing, girls.
Understandable as her flight reflex is, however, her friends point out that, as far as plans go, it ain’t great: everyone knows Ali is alive. Even if she did go on the run, she couldn’t hide from her attempted murderer the same way she had when everyone thought she was dead.
Besides, Hanna adds, “if A wanted to kill you, why not just do it? Why play games and blow up a house?”
The girls worry they’re back to square one, unless, as Ezra is convinced (Aria reminds them), Bethany Young can lead them to A. Ever worried about being blamed for something, this spark of a spark of a lead sets Spencer’s wheels turning…
Next we see Spencer, she’s in the waiting room at Radley, but she’s not the only one. Detective Tanner is there, visibly upset that the docs won’t share their info with her. As Tanner leaves, Nurse Eddie appears and Spencer starts badgering him for information about Bethany and Jessica. When he won’t budge and Spencer notices the security camera in the corner (FINALLY), she asks if he wants to “get coffee” instead, but he declines. He can’t talk to Spencer, or reporters, or even the cops about Bethany. NOT ANYONE.
After a dinner spent trying to Parent Trap Veronica and Peter, Spencer is in her bedroom doing a little Googling (because with Super Sleuth Hanna pursuing other objectives no one has tried that tack yet) and finds an article about Bethany’s death, which leads her to the Radley website. We see the Official Spencer Idea Lightbulb™ flicker on as she grabs a notebook and begins to scribble info from the site.
But what, readers?! WHAT WAS SHE SCRIBBLING?!
The next morning, Veronica has news: They are moving back home (SPENCER IS HAPPY) but Peter is moving out (SPENCER IS SAD). Confused, Spencer asks why–wasn’t he finally telling the truth? “Leaving your dad isn’t about one lie, it’s about years of them,” Veronica explains in a moment of great levity.
Her family may be a bunch of Borgia-level maniacs, but they’re her maniacs, and Spencer would like for at least one thing in her life not to tear completely asunder.
(Although, we can’t help but suspect that this sort of break can only lead to better things for Spencer, in the long run. Peter be nuts, y’all)
Aria wishes she were Mata Hari, but really she’s just sleeping with the Ezremy
With her realization that Shana wasn’t A and that she killed an “innocent person” (Which, LOL, your shot-by-that-innocent kinda boyfriend is sitting right there! RUDE), Aria is full-on tweaking with guilt and paranoia that A will expose her dirty secret any moment. Or at least, this is what she’s telling Ezra at Sex Offender Headquarters #3B as they do some true crime research together before school. Ezra has emptied his Armoire of Cash and Crime Novels and he and Aria are sorting through his stalker diaries/files trying to find a connection between Jessica and Bethany from his Radley research.
“Well,” Ezra harrumphs, “when I was writing my totally normal, not at all stalkery, illegal, red-light flashing, alarm-blaring book, I think I read that name…Bethany Young. But I don’t know which file. And there are just so, so many notes and photos and files about everything you and your friends were doing for so long that I’ll never be able to go through them all!” Aria offers to help, but it’ll have to be after school. As in high school. Where she is still a student.
(True story: While writing that paragraph, Rosemary kept accidentally typing “philes” instead of “files”–like PEDOPHILES– like the best FREUDIAN SLIP OF ALL TIME.)
Later that evening, while searching for clues, Aria comes across a photo of the two of them, looking happy and couplish (um–who took this photo??). She tells Ezra that their Technically Two Slip-Ups were a mistake. As much as she misses the old #EzriaForever, she can’t seem to forget about how they met and all of his secrets and lies…she says while literally sitting in a pile of secrets and lies.
As we’re reveling in Aria’s moment of good sense and self-control, there’s a knock at the door:
Ezra opens it and finds Detective Tanner on his threshold and, for a moment, we all catch our breath and realize THIS IS THE MOMENT when Ezra will get arrested. FINALLY. Also realizing this, Aria slips into the bathroom to hide. Tanner hands over an envelope that was lying on Ezra’s doormat and gets to the point: she’s helping the NYPD investigate Shana Fring’s death and she has a few questions for him. Namely, did he know her (no!), did he tell her about his family’s theater in NYC (no!), and did he think it was just a coincidence that her body was found there (no! I mean…yes!). Ezra insists that he has no more information for her about Shana or his mugger. Obviously not buying it, Tanner turns to leave and spies Aria’s purse and jacket on the table, but doesn’t say anything.
Dammit. NOT The Moment.
Thankful it wasn’t The Moment, Aria emerges from her hiding place and commences her greatest freakout yet. Immediately, she’s trying to figure out where to hide Ezra’s files because there will definitely be search warrants and arrests and secrets revealed! All of the lies are getting flimsier by the minute, no one has an alibi or has formulated a proper lie about Philly, and Ezra’s sweat glands go into overdrive when he’s around officers of the law (she thinks! but we saw him in action, and that is one cold-blooded bastard). So basically, Aria is doomed. Since her dad will be in Syracuse all week and Ella and Mike no longer exist, she offers up the Montgomery attic until they can come up with a better solution. Because putting the incriminating files of your sexual predator boyfriend in your attic mere days after killing someone is always a good idea, and thus, right in Aria’s wheelhouse.
Remembering the envelope Tanner handed him, Ezra opens it to find a nightmare-inducing charcoal drawing of what appears to be Jessica DiLaurentis gayly watering her roses while a HIDEOUS demon with a spear hovers over her, fangs aglow. When they flip it over, it’s signed BETHANY.
Who could’ve brought it? A? Well, not to fear, Ezra never took down his hallway spy security cams! So they can just watch the footage and find out! “I can’t believe you still have a camera in your hallway,” Aria mutters. Like, she does realize he probably definitely has spy cam footage of them doing it, right?
While they wait and watch, Aria tries to convince Ezra to tell Tanner the truth about Shana, because it’s so much easier for everyone else to go the police, right, Aria? But Ezra explains that if he tells the truth now, they will know he was covering something up. And at that, Nurse Eddie appears on the security camera, dropping off the envelope, offering up a truth while simultaneously covering it up.
But why would Eddie leave the drawing for Ezra and not Spencer? Luckily, Emily sends out the Summit Signal at that moment, so Aria departs to join the other Liars, drawing in tow, to try to figure that out.
The Summit is the usual Ali was killed again, A is ruining lives, blah blah blah whatever, but eventually, Aria is able to divert attention back to her and Ezra to note that there are other things to worry about. Like the terrifying charcoal demon drawing Eddie Lamb left for Ezra as a hint to investigate Radley. And how they, meaning Spencer, now have to investigate Radley. Right??
But since Spencer’s greatest accomplishment thus far in life is leaving Radley, that’s a no-go, thanks for the vote of confidence anyway, Aria. However, if you’re so eager to help your worst mistake boyfriend investigate some more True Crime, how about YOU volunteer to poke around the place?
We’re sorry—did we say to? We meant and. Volunteer AND poke around the place.
Congratulations, Aria! You’re Radley’s newest student patient volunteer!
Hanna’s putting Ali on a midnight train to…Noel Kahn
Hanna was the first of the girls to separate her grief over losing a friend from the personal terror she had suffered at Ali’s hand and really blossom into her true self, and for four seasons we have adored her for it. However, because she so cleanly divorced herself from Ali’s influence so early on, becoming a food-loving, hard-truth-telling, hobo-dating BAMF all on her own terms, Ali’s return—and the concomitant reminders of exactly how the beat-down Hanna of yore became the lionheart Hanna of today—has been rattling Hanna’s cage of self more than it has any of the other girls.
Hanna’s lion’s heart can’t ever leave a friend unprotected, but having Ali be that friend, it’s destroying Hanna from the inside out. Add to the mix Caleb’s return, and the return of his always useful if not always welcome outsider’s insights into the terrible chaos wreaked by Alison DiLaurentis touching your life… well, it should come as no surprise that, given the combined objective of Figure Out Why A is Back NOW+Protect Ali set forth in LIARS SUMMIT #1, Hanna’s tactic is…well, it’s eerily parallel to Mona’s: get Ali out of town.
Unfortunately, with the other girls quashing that strategy in favor of Bethany Young sleuthing, Hanna is left moping around Rosewood, making sad eyes at Ghost Caleb while drinking coffee/analyzing life’s many forms of terror, forgetting plans with Perfect Travis, hating every minute Ali spends snapchatting with A…just generally killing time until something, something finally freaks Ali out enough that she will do what she does best and ignore her other best friends’ careful plans to help her, and hightail it out of Dodge.
And that freaky something? Hanna’s doorbell. “Don’t answer it, Hanna! What is it’s A?!?!?!”
Happily, Hanna isn’t too far removed from her true self not to respond to this with a massive eye roll. Because, first, it’s just Travis. And second? Ali–A is NOT going to ring the doorbell. Well, maybe to have a courier deliver a miniature coffin of your own grave dirt or a box of worms and lo mein or a mime magician’s chest of bone saws, maybe those things. But it won’t be A in the flesh. C’mon, Ali. We already gave you the LVP trophy, you don’t have to try so hard!
As for what Travis came over for, well, it’s all very sad. We don’t want to talk about it. At a point early on in the conversation he bites his lip in just the best way, though. Let’s focus on that. And ignore all the bits where Hanna is too (legit) distracted by every other dAmn thing to remember she’s sort of dating this sort of fantastic guy.
Thankfully, once Hanna returns to her kitchen she catches Ali doing exactly what she’d been hoping for all along: making mysterious Ali plans with mysterious Ali contacts to mysteriously leave town. Ali can’t live in a world where she jumps every time the doorbell rings, she explains to Hanna, who has started packing Ali’s bags in her head and truly needs no explanation.
Hanna is immune to poison barbs, however, so laser-focused is she on packing Ali’s literal bags and collecting all the pasta money she can find in the Marin pantry to line Ali’s pockets. She’ll even drive Ali to Princeton to meet up with Noel Kahn (who evidently attends even fewer classes than the Liars these days) rather than sending her alone on the train, she is that good a friend.
Except, she’s not. Which Emily the Attack Dog points out when she comes barreling into Hanna’s room mere moments after Ali leaves to see her dad “one last time.” Whatever Hanna says about helping Ali, Emily knows that the person Hanna is really hoping to help is the Hanna who has been visibly changing since Ali returned. And considering Hanna was “helping Ali” entirely behind the other Liars’ backs, Hanna knows it, too.
Yeah, she does. And the only person she can talk to about it is the person who knows Hanna entirely apart from her past with Ali—Caleb, who is just living in a cabin in Rosewood’s murder woods with no company but his new swoopy hair and a hip flask. And he does get where she’s coming from; he knows Hanna never liked who she was when around Ali. But he also knows whatever broke inside when Ali returned won’t just automatically mend if she leaves.
And on that bit of wisdom, they sit in commiserating silence, hip flask moving back and forth between them.
Oh, right: and Travis breaks up with Hanna (who has gone full on grunge) the next day at school, because he likes her too much to not be in it with her 100%.
Go ahead and pass us that flask, too, Caleb.
Beware of Emily the attack dog
Emily is not happy with either of the tactics the other Liars have decided on. “Aren’t we stretching a little here?” she asks gently when Aria declares that Ezra can get all the answers by focusing on BethAny and Spencer, dazzled by her own daddy issues, pledges her sleuth skills to help him do so. And “but you just got back!” she exclaims when Ali declares she can’t possibly stay in Rosewood one dAy longer.
“Well,” Spencer counters, “do you have a better plan??”
Yes, in fact, Emily does—coming at the A-problem from the angle of TOBY’S HOUSE JUST EXPLODED. Which, important. Good point, Em.
Em’s first sleuth step? Zeroing in on the one person she knows for sure has ever been A who also, not coincidentally, wants to blow Ali right out of existence: Mona.
That’s about where Em’s good ideas stop, because…what beef does Mona have with Toby? And why, as Hanna so sagely asks Caleb in her own arc, would A (or Mona) blow up Toby’s house when the entire Liar contingent was gathered in one place literally three doors down? But Emily is really embodying the “honey badger don’t care” aspect of her Hufflepuff identity right now and, well, just does not care about making those connections in logic. Mona was A. Mona is crazy. And Mona, according to Paige, now has an Anti-Ali Army.
So Emily goes on a Mona-hunting rampage, turning into a stealthy, scary attack dog. First she rounds on Paige in the locker room after swim practice, rounds on her like a wraith. “Who’s in Mona’s Army?” she demands before Paige has a chance even to peep. “Do you really want to shoulder the guilt of something happening to Ali just because you want to protect a crazy girl’s crazy vendetta? You want that to be on you?”
Well, no, Em, she doesn’t. And it wouldn’t be on Paige, not really. Harsh. But also effective, as we learn doubly over when a) Emily is able to list Lucas and Melissa among Mona’s allies at the second Liars Summit, and b) a dead rat falls out of Paige’s swim locker later that day.
The second person at whose jugular Emily attacks is Hanna, who is doing her best to help herself live by helping Ali leave. And while what Emily barks at Hanna about changing personalities and her never actually wanting Ali back is technically true, she is sure glossing over the fact that, despite all of that, Hanna has been the only one steadily keeping Ali company and helping Ali transition back into a real life since the night she came back. Every other Liar—Em included—has been playing hooky. So tell Hanna what’s fair, Em. Just go ahead.
The next person Emily attacks is A, who she literally attacks. Mostly because A is literally, horrifically, thoroughly attacking Ali, whose father and brother have once again left alone in a haunted house.
Ali’s attack scene is BRUTAL. Not that Ali deserves such a fate, but—girl, one does not simply wear a silk noose when existing anywhere in Rosewood/trying to escape a homicidal stalker.
After that, Em is done. She calls the second Liars’ Summit, but without Hanna, who has betrayed them all!
Spencer and Aria are sufficiently horrified at Ali’s evening—escape plan and A attack, alike—but are neither of them swayed by Em’s anti-Hanna venting. Even Ali wants her to take a chill pill on the Hanna hate.
Still whatever ambivalence/antagonism Emily felt toward Ali the day before has been catalyzed by Ali’s attack and Hanna’s “betrayal” and turned back to bulldog loyalty, which is only doubled by the arrival of A’s newest threat: “If you leave town, I WILL kill you.” Alexis could not get over Aria calling A a warrior cat, but she was about to make a joke about A being a cat playing with its meal and finally saw the connection. Maybe. But also maybe Aria is just super weird.
Once Spencer and Aria leave, Emily lets Ali sleep over. “But just sleep,” Ali promises/threatens, “I don’t want to be alone in that house tonight.” Ali, NO ONE should be alone in your house at night. Not even Mona (well, maybe not even Mona) would wish that fate on you.
And just sleep Ali does. Not Em, though. Emily Fields, Hufflepuff/guard dog extraordinaire, sits vigil on the bed alongside her tormenter/first love. And the next day, she accompanies Ali to her haunted house to get her things for the day, and stands shoulder to shoulder with her when Detective Tanner pulls up with questions for her and her dad about Shana Fring and the minute details of where exactly in Philly she and the girls were that night that Shana died. Ali lies and lies, and Emily, she is right in the lies with her.
Hooray.
WHAT A IS UP TO
A is back in black (gloves), y’all, this time deftly slipping a condolences card into an envelope bound, along with Rosewood’s most basic memorial bouquet, for Bethany Young’s family. She goes to pick up the vase, and when she turns to face the camera…
And with that, we sign off on another week in Rosewood, Liars.
Kisses,
A(lexis and Rosemary)
About the Contributor:
Alexis Gunderson is a TV critic and audiobibliophile. A Wyoming expat, she now lives in Maryland, where she runs the DC chapter of the FYA Book Club. She can be found talking about Teen TV on Twitter, and her longform criticism can be found on Authory.
