About:
First off, we apologize profusely for the egregious lateness of this week’s post. Alexis has been busy wrapping up the unexpectedly massive #YASummerShowdown, and Catie has been busy moving across the country to start her very respectable career as a medical student/stalk our favorite PLL creators in sunny LA. We love our Liars so much, we bit off more than we could chew this summer in our enthusiasm to get to write about them every week–we truly hope you forgive us.
We also hope that you appreciate the awesome Rosemary all the more, as she has not only kicked our butts into gear the last few times she tagged in, but has also offered to fill in one more time this season when Alexis goes gallavanting off on vacation in a couple weeks. THANK GOD FOR ROSEMARY.
Okay–enough honesty. Time for some LIES.
THIS WEEK’S MVPs
For overall Mystery Solving and GETTING SHIT DONE: Emily. She stole Noel’s keys, stood up to Sydney, and still managed to make time to support Aria at Ella’s ill-fated engagement party.
For finally addressing Hanna’s spiral in a productive and compassionate way: Spencer. She grew her emotional intelligence to 11 and pulled from the center of her heart to explain to Caleb so eloquently exactly what is wrong with him and Hanna.
THIS WEEK’S LVP
Ella, for knowing that Zack was a creep before literally any of us (including, we suspect, the writers)–and knowing it deeply enough that she worried subconsciously that he might make a move on her own daughter–but still planning to marry the sleaze. Also, her global lack of concern for Mike’s absence from the entire event. Just overall continuous shitty parenting.
As runner-up, Ashley, for not even caring that Hanna isn’t coming home NIGHTLY, but making sure Ali has enough nice moisturizer and eats her kale.
OOF. Not a good showing for Rosewood moms this week.
BIGGEST SURPRISE/BEST SHOCK
Byron being…a good egg.
Ugh, this is how evil wins: exhausting you to the point that you say yeah, sure, fine, Byron Montgomery is a knight.
BIGGEST NO-DUH
Noel Kahn is the type of dude to sit statue-still under a dusty sheet in someone else’s lake house for what had to be at least an hour, all to menace a Liar with his signature Noel Kahn creep-smile.
A note from your recappers:
From the very beginning, we have loved that—despite its catty title—this show was never about girls undermining each other. Instead, it’s been an awesome portrayal of an unshakeable friendship between four girls, forged in the anxiety and terror of a friend’s death and a stalker’s manipulation. The girls were drawn together because they were supposed to really miss Ali, but they were also a little relieved that she was gone. It’s clear that before she disappeared, Alison took up all of the air in a room, and when she left, it’s like our Liars could finally fill their own lungs. But now Ali’s back, and her need to drag the spotlight in her own direction while simultaneously refracting its light off the mirrored surfaces of her million and one lies is causing the others to sway a bit under the strain. Hanna’s drinking. Spencer’s breaking rules. Emily’s being mean. Aria is…still dating Ezra. And they are all starting to blame each other for their problems, rather than bonding together against the true, external, sources (Alison, A, and a society full of adults that don’t trust them, don’t listen to them, and actively prey on them).
It’s interesting to see the Liars with Alison, again. But it’s also frustrating.
Catie has some more thoughts as to the naturalness of this arc–it is so very grim, it is difficult to tell if this fits the characters, or of their reactions are being contrived for drama–but neither of us have formed firm opinions. They will be percolating in the next few weeks, though, so expect us to return to the question.
PREVIOUSLY ON PLL
Hanna and Caleb continued to be just the worst for each other. Aria continued to be the worst for herself. Ali continued to be the worst for everyone. Sydney literally Swimfanned Emily, while wearing Jenna’s face. Spencer got kicked in the eyeball socket by a horse wearing Melissa Hastings’ riding helmet. The writers thought it would be okay to make a statement about creepy adult men and society’s reaction to girls speaking up about said creepiness, while sweeping Ezra off to New York to safely wait out the shitstorm.
NOPE.
THIS WEEK
Liars Summit of Paranoia and Bad Decisions
Alison, having just dropped the bomb that she invited Noel Kahn to break into Hanna’s house to scare the living bejeezus out of Ashley, all so that an adult with power would finally believe what happened to her (which, reminder, is a thing that did not happen to her), is growing increasingly exasperated with the Liars for not being 100% perfect at maintaining all of the complicated lies she has constructed since being resurrected from the dead. Also for spying on her. “At least NOEL still has my back,” she spits at Spencer, Emily, and a flask-swigging Hanna before flouncing from the room.
Guys, doesn’t Alison seem like such a fun and great friend??? One you would want to respond to emergency texts from, and maintain complicated lies for??
Down All These Dark Paths
As one of the three best musical montages of this season will later demonstrate in boppy spades, this episode is all about the Liars, separated. And the most separated, of course, is Hanna, whose self-doubt and loss of Liars’ trust has her tumbling down a corkscrew of poor decisions. Basically, she’s become a day-drinker in less than a week, and none of her friends will touch her with a ten-foot hug.
The person most deaf to Hanna’s screams for help–and from whom Hanna most desperately needs that hug–is Ashley. Was it only four episodes ago that she won almost MVP for her Supermom handling of Hanna’s drunkenness after Lucas’ party/Caleb’s return? Oh, halcyon days.
Anyway, Ashley comes in the morning after the “break-in” saying that she was thinking “you girls” should meet her at the mall later, to get something nice for Ella and Zack’s party. And if Ashley had eyes at all, she would see that these are the last two things Hanna needs: quality time with Ali, and nice clothes in which to be made to see Zack The Creep.
As Hanna struggles to construct a reply that will demonstrate the precise degree to which she despises everything about this moment and that suggestion, Ashley finds the flask hidden in the folds of her quilt. She gasps: Hanna can’t afford to lose control, not NOW, not when Ali’s kidnapper is still out there!
Well thank god no one’s ever mistaken Hanna for Ali, otherwise that would really be something to worry about all these nights Hanna just hasn’t come home and you haven’t gone looking, hm, Ash?
But then Ali has a moisturizer problem that needs to be solved so Ashley can’t be bothered to worry any more thoroughly about her only daughter, who storms off to school, alone.
A Fitzian Slip
No, not that kind of slip. Ezra himself is still camping out in New York waiting for the heat of Shana’s murder investigation to die down. Because, while that murder took place in New York, Rosewood is always where the real danger lies. Always.
To prove the point, the generator of that heat, Lt. Tanner, is at it again this morning, questioning Aria about MR. Fitz’s habits and recent movements. At school again (weird/sketchy interview tactic, Rosewood PD), but at least with a parent present this time. Although that parent is Ella, whose judgment w/r/t age-inappropriate paramours has declined sharply over the past several seasons.
“Do you think MR. Fitz had a habit of forming intimate relationships with other students?” Lt. Tanner asks, at which Aria trips over her own tongue in her anxiety to explain that “Ezra is NOT the kind of man who would do th––oh shit.”
Because A) Aria has totally given herself away to the exact people who could, if they were of the right mind (we wish), cart the creep away, and also B) Ezra is totally the type of man who would do exactly “that kind of thing” (see: Ali; see: his calculated seduction of a known minor; see: whatever the hell was going on with Mona, romantic though it wasn’t).
“What does all of this have to do with the Marins’ break-in, though?” Ella wonders aloud, jumping in to save Aria’s creep-loving skin. Sigh. ELLA. “Oh, I don’t know,” Tanner responds casually. “Just SO MANY nutball cases going on in this town. You never know which facts will be necessary when.” And she is absolutely on point.
When Ella finally persuades Tanner that Aria has to go to class, they escape to the hall…whereupon Ella immediately asks Aria to skip class in order to have a heart to heart about blind spots we form with people we love. GOOD SUBTLETY, WRITERS. But Aria is already skipping fifth period to help her mom set up for the engagement party, so too bad, Ella. You’ll have to try to gain back your parental right to pry another time.
Ali Alone
As Aria is spilling her romantic secrets to Tanner and Hanna is spilling her liquid breakfast on the letter jackets of varsity football players, Ali is complaining to anyone who will listen (Spencer, looking none the happier) about how not one of the Liars is behaving the way she is meant to. “Aria is icing us out!” she exclaims, for absolutely no reason.
Spencer is a poor sounding board for Ali’s delusional anger, though, so Ali seeks out a different Liar to try her luck with. However, being delusional (and of the mind that Aria is icing her out), the Liar she chooses is Hanna. Rather, she corners Hanna after Inexplicable Choir Practice to make small talk about how Ali is stuck in freshman Earth Science and isn’t that so embarrassing and also, are Hanna and Ali fighting about ALI? and also, WHY IS THEIR GROUP FALLING APART?
Good small talk, Ali.
Hanna has negative patience for Ali’s bullshit, though, and snaps at her to BACK OFF.
As she shouts this, Jenna tap-taps her way up behind Ali’s back, and Hanna? Hanna just straight up abandons Ali to the lion. It’s kind of fantastic.
Still determined to win the small talk game, Ali tries her hand with Jenna. How long has Jenna been back? she asks, sounding legit terrified, which is ALSO GREAT. Jenna re-enrolled a few weeks ago, but no one seemed to notice–then again, she notes dryly, she didn’t come back from the dead. Ali is sorry about Shana, she tells Jenna, she cared about her as much as Jenna did. Jenna smiles enigmatically at this, then pulls a Hanna Marin and starts tapping her way out the door. Desperate not to be left alone again, even by an enemy, Ali stops her to demand how Jenna turned Shana against her. “I didn’t,” Jenna smirks. “YOU did.” And Ali cannot really be shocked? But she is.
And then some absolutely incredible music blasts on full, spotlighting all the Liars, alone, mirroring the jarring disconnect between boppy melody and grim action that was so expertly executed in episode 101, when Ali returned to school:
Only this time, the group that hated, but was willing, to stand behind Ali as she made her lying way through the world–that group has splintered. And have only further hurt themselves in the process.
She Knew Caleb Was Trouble When She Walked In
One Liar, at least, has finally realized that addressing Hanna’s problem head on and with love is probably the appropriate thing to do. That Liar? Adderall Addict Spencer, who treks out to Toby’s cabin on her way to the ophthalmologist to confront him about his enablerism.
What she finds is not pretty: even half-blind from a horse’s hooves, she can see that the cabin looks like a tornado swept through it, and Caleb’s surly expression is much more welcoming. Look—Spencer says—she gets Hanna not wanting to deal with Zack (“what about Zack?” Caleb demands, shouting his inadequacy as a friend and partner through his obliviousness), but whatever this is going on with you and Hanna? It has to stop. But Caleb denies that anything is going on, and scoffs at the accusation that Hanna is wasted in the middle of the day, and he’s the one supplying her loose cannon with gunpowder.
Thinking she should ease off the offensive, Spencer goes for compassion: she doesn’t know what happened to Caleb while he was away, she begins…but he cuts her off before she can say anything more, because yeah, she doesn’t know. Spencer, though, is undeterred: she always thought Caleb was the best thing to happen to Hanna, and watching them pull each other down like this?
Recalling how he and Hanna used to draw strength from one another, Spencer declares that she doesn’t get this, whatever it is. And neither do we. Spencer has returned to being our spirit animal, bouncing back from her victim-blaming fail last week. Caleb knows she is right and sends her packing.
Agent Fields
While the rest of her friends have been stewing in their own depressions/delusions/near blindness, Emily Fields has been out getting shit done. After she storms out of Ali’s false SOS summit (on her bike, alone, through the Rosewood streets at night, because she is fearless/stupid), she happens upon one Noel Kahn camped out in his car right there on Main Street, listening to a recording of Ali arguing with Shana over his car stereo, windows rolled all the way down like the Rosewood High Valedictorian he is (the bar is not high, guys). Yeah, Ali, he totally has your back.
The next day at school, Emily (literally one second after being officially offered the assistant coach job by the most laconic person we have ever seen. Did he have even ONE facial expression?) steals the binder listing the boys locker room assignments, and looks up Noel’s. Then she breaks into his locker, steals his keys, and uses them to break into his car.
In his glove compartment, right there on the top of everything, is an envelope filled with surveillance-style photos of Alison taken during the years she was “kidnapped,” as well as the tape Emily heard him blasting the night before. She tucks both envelope and tape in her bag, drops Noel’s keys off at the lost and found, and sails her way right on outta the place.
Uh, where do we sign up for a PLL spinoff that’s just Emily Fields being a gorgeous badass superspy all the time?
Seeing Double
While Emily is getting her spy on, Spencer is finally getting her eyeballs checked out. She’s in the waiting room, waiting for her eyes to dilate, her vision blurring in and out. She stares at her hand, her phone (who are Gina and Katie?), the wall, the clock, two Jennas—hold up. THERE ARE TWO JENNAS THERE. ALERT ALERT!!
Spencer fumbles with her phone to snap a shot of the doppelgängers, but despite their best efforts to give her a million hours to do so, she just misses them. Thinking she’s going crAzy, she immediately calls Emily at school to insist she ditch the spy life, and also classes and stuff, and come there immediately so Em can see JennaSquared for herself.
In the meantime, Spencer’s been taken back to an exam room, and her pleas to Emily fall silent when she turns to the letter chart. Her vision may be blurry, but she is not blind enough to miss the message left her:
Sucker Punch
Emily comes running to the ophthalmologist, of course, and, also of course, Jenna2 is actually Sydney Driscoll, dressed up, sunglassed, and pouty lipped to perfectly mirror Jenna1. We get the lips and the sunglasses and the hair; genetics and coincidence (all four girls in the scene are wearing sunglasses). But they are literally wearing the exact same outfit. Presumably Jenna really is blind again, which means she either had to TELL Sydney to dress in the same outfit, or Sydney made that decision herself. Either way: unsettling.
Emily is a tower of fury at Sydney, for daring to stand alongside Jenna: she demands and demands and demands that Sydney explain herself, but Jenna keeps jumping in before Sydney can so much as peep. And while Spencer notes drily that “when you ask the organ grinder a question, you don’t really want to hear from the monkey,” Jenna makes a good point: “How long is it going to take you to realize you’re nervous around the wrong person? I’m not Alison.”
Later, Sydney corners Emily on her way to Ella & Zack’s engagement party to try to explain her side of the story. See, Sydney used to volunteer at the Philly school for the blind Jenna attended after Alison blew up Jenna’s eyes; that’s how they met. When Alison dropped by the school to see Jenna, Jenna lost it, and Sydney was the one who put her back together again afterwards. So when Jenna learned that Alison had been dragged back to the land of the living, she freaked out and called Sydney for support once again.
Em doesn’t care about all of this, though. She just wants to know if Sydney’s been using her this whole time, to get to Alison. Maybe at first, says Syd, “but I didn’t expect to like you so much. You’re a decent person.” Well, says Emily. NOT ANYMORE. She promises to assistant coach the shit out of Sydney, to coach her so hard that she feels like she is being coached 24/7 by a kinda evil coach person. It’ll be so coachy, and NOT decent.
And then, quietly and fiercely, after basically saying flat-out that she wants Sydney to almost drown the way that that one time Paige wanted Em to almost drown, Em lets drop her scariest line yet:
Oh man oh man. Emily is maybe a bit more like Ali than we all thought/hoped.
Caleb Rivers, Action Idiot
While Emily is getting sidetracked on her way to Ella’s engagement party, Hanna is going out of her way to avoid even talking about it. Coming “home” from school to Toby’s messy cabin, she heads straight for the beer fridge, ignoring Caleb’s aggressive attempts at pleasantries along the way. “Can we just watch this random snowboard competition?” she mumble-snaps, “I’m actually in a pretty bad mood.”
Does that mood have something to do with the party they aren’t attending? he demands. Because the Hanna he recalls would literally drive twenty miles out of her way to go to a Cinco de Mayo party just for burritos and free mini sombreros. He finds it hard to believe she wants to skip an engagement party for the mom of her best friend.
Well, Hanna just doesn’t see the point in celebrating promises of eternal love when one in three marriages ends in one partner either seducing or psychotically poisoning a teenaged girl. Oh wait, that’s just one in three Rosewood marriages. Actually, that’s just one half of Aria’s parents’ marriage. This episode’s good half.
Eventually, Caleb wheedles from Hanna what happened with Zack, and after he demands that she believe him that she has nothing to feel embarrassed or ashamed about, he tells her he’s going out to get her her favorite Italian dinner, and she should just stay and relax and watch a chick flick until he gets back.
Of course, what he goes to do instead is to punch Zack right in his smug face.
“I Was Only Acting On The Signals I Was Getting” Zack deserves it, of course, but Caleb is doing no one any favors by acting like the kind of kneejerk violent guy he just isn’t. The one productive thing he does glean from his encounter is a note that “Hanna” slipped into Zack’s pocket, encouraging the car invasion and thigh assault that prompted Hanna to confront/lose Aria. When Caleb returns (without the promised Italian food, it needs be added–somebody, anybody, feed Hanna already!), he shows Hanna the note: looks like A is back to taking every opportunity to sow chAos for the Liars.
GreAt.
The Wrath of Kahn
Regardless of Emily’s insistence that at least the two of them have to go support Aria at the engagement party, so that it won’t look like they’re taking sides between Aria and Hanna (although, we’d argue that attending a celebration for the man your best friend claimed assaulted her smacks, perhaps, of side-taking, Em), Spencer counter-insists that the photos and tapes Emily stole from Noel are so damning to Ali’s lies that they can’t just be hidden any old place (A is already using your loveseat for her own storAge, anyway, Spencer), so she is going to take them up to her family’s lakehouse. Which is, obviously, the safest place in the greater Rosewood area. Nothing bad has EVER happened at the lake house! A has never terrorized them there, and no one at ALL knows where it is!
At the lake house, Spencer pokes around for the creepiest, dustiest drawer in which to secret this enormously dangerous and valuable package of potential lie-ruiner. She settles on the dustiest object in the house (seriously–it’s like no one’s been there in decades, like the Liars didn’t have a party there literally eight months ago), an antique writing desk. Once she’s locked the lie-ruiner inside, shit gets super creepy: Spencer hears a creak and sees a sheet-covered chair behind her shudder in the mirror. She turns to stare at it, and a searching blue eye stares right back. She grabs a nearby fire poker–the Liars’ favorite weapon of convenience–and pulls the sheet away.
And, surprise! It’s Noel Kahn. Being a huge creep.
So, not really a surprise.
Noel wants his keys and photos and tapes back. Spencer wants answers, and (under slight duress by way of fire poker) he explains, with a genuine tremor of fear in his tone, that Alison ordered him to steal the photos and recordings from Jenna, who got them from Shana. In fact, he was stealing them seconds before the Cavanaugh house went up like the Fourth of July, which he thinks may not have been the coincidence Ali claimed it was. But he didn’t give up the goods; instead, they’re his “insurance policy” against Alison, who has the unfortunate tendency of ditching people once they have exhausted their usefulness to her.
Instead of being like “Don’t say such things about my dear bosom friend!” Spencer snarls back that frankly, they all need that damn insurance. And she promises to keep it very very safe, here in a drawer at this lake house that he and Lucas and A have all already found and broke into multiple times. Then she stabs his hand with the poker for good measure, he hisses BITCH, and we are left wondering just how much lower any of these characters can sink.
One of the best things to be revealed in this episode is how feral everyone in Rosewood is becoming now that Ali is back. A menaced them all for years and the girls sometimes got overtired and snappy with each other, but they never went feral. Now Ali’s been back for all of two (show) weeks, and it’s like everyone in the whole town is turning into wild animals. It’s great, but also incredibly scary. Wild animals do not have a history of sound decision making.
Gone So Low I’m Heading Up
Happily, two other Liars are practicing sound decision-making: Aria, who has finally gotten enough weird signals from Zack (and her own subconscious telling her to BELIEVE HANNA ALREADY) to determine she should maybe confront her mom about it before she makes such an enormous life change, and Hanna, who realizes that maybe one half of Haleb reeling around enacting violence on the greater population of Rosewood is enough, and thus is pouring all their beers down Toby’s cabin’s sink.
First, the Montgomery fallout: Basically, when Aria asks Ella how well she really knows Zack, Ella’s IMMEDIATE REACTION is literally, “was he inappropriate with you?” This admission of unsound judgment on Ella’s part strikes Aria so dumb that it takes her long seconds before she can even get the words out to ask why that’s the first place Ella’s mind went. Annnnnnd it turns out, there’d been an “incident” in Europe, one that Ella had been anxious to write off as pre-wedding jitters. But apparently she was wrong to do so, so engagement off!
Those Montgomery ladies. Always making just the best romantic decisions.
At the cabin, Aria walks in on Hanna disposing of all the liquor, and after lamenting that she could have used that beer to wash her hair (not really; we wish), she tells Hanna what happened before the party, and what a creep it turns out Zack is. It is to Hanna’s eternal credit that she doesn’t slap Aria and shout NO SHIT, but rather accepts Aria’s explanation that it wasn’t that Aria didn’t want to believe Hanna (mmhmm, okay), it’s just that she wanted to believe in her mom’s ability to find happiness more. And that, more than almost anything else in the world, is reasoning that Hanna can understand. Crying, they hug it out, and pass the baton of bad decision making on to someone else.
Ali’s So Good At Lying, She’s Telling the Truth
Ashley, naturally, was Ali’s date to the engagement party that wasn’t, and Ali is happy to have an ear to talk gossip and lies at in the aftermath of Ella’s “sudden” food poisoning that sent everyone home. After Ashley offers her some kale, the phone rings. No, Ashley says, Alison’s father is not home from Out Of Town yet (Ali made sure of that, calling him at the top of the episode to tell him to stay longer). But if Ali needs to go, Ashley can accompany her.
Where does Ali need to go? Oh, just the police station. Because the Rosewood PD? They’ve done the (literally) impossible: they’ve caught Ali’s kidnapper.
Yes. That’s right. Ali’s imaginary kidnapper. The RPD has caught him, and they need her to come ID him.
WHAT A IS UP TO
A at the ophthalmologist’s, just chilling in the traditional black hoodie and gloves, like any normal health care professional would not require be removed for any normal exam. The nurse at least has the courtesy to look unsettled by A’s silent nods and waving of police interview recordings in place of actual responses to her questions, but still. Rosewood general public. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
Until next week, liars, when we solemnly swear to get our collective ducks in a row,
A(lexis and Catie)
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.
