You guys, what did we do to deserve this episode? The return of Mona AND Jenna? Old school Liar hijinx? NO EZRA? The writers must be rewarding us for enduring that terrible sixth season, so let’s sit back and reap those rewards, baby!
AWARDS
THIS WEEK’S MVP
Can Mona even be in an episode and not be MVP? Regardless, she EARNED it this week. She shows up seemingly out of nowhere and saves the Liars asses once again, all while sporting a stylish blazer and dazzly earrings, nary a hair out of place. She doesn’t hesitate to help Hanna or ask what is UP when she immediately realizes that all is not well in HannaLand. And she has the patience of a freaking SAINT when the other Liars show up to this homicide cover up like they’ve never watched a single episode of Law & Order: SVU. If it weren’t for Mona, this episode would’ve literally just been the Liars getting drunk and screaming at each other.
This entire episode summed up in a single GIF.
::lights another candle on altar to Mona::
THIS WEEK’S LVP
Honestly, Mona’s mere presence highlights the failings of half the other players here. Aria had ONE job, to get Ali back in Welby, and lost her as soon as they walked through the doors. Emily didn’t have much plotline this episode but was unusually mean to Spencer when Spencer was clearly at her lowest of lows. Caleb, who could’ve used his hacker skills to help Mona, was too deep in his own feels to be of use. Plus, Spencer told him wait a day – A FREAKING DAY – so they could DTR, and instead, he emptied his half of the closet, packed up his short sleeve button-downs and bolted. And don’t even get me started on Spencer. We can almost always count on Spencer to be head cat wrangler, and this episode, she was also so deep in her own feels that she completely missed the bus to Delaware and failed at her part of the plan.
BIGGEST SHOCK/BEST SURPRISE
Tie between Mona getting out of that freshly fixed up car, and Jenna tap-tap-tapping her way into the Radley. Either way, WE WIN.
BIGGEST NO-DUH
The Liars make a seemingly stable-but-totally complicated plan to cover up their tracks and at least one of them foils it by getting drunk and/or distracted by a boy. <— That could be the blurb on the back of the PLL Collectors Edition DVD box set.
MOST QUESTIONABLE LIAR OUTFIT
Dude, where’s my car?
Everyone remained mostly in the same outfits they wore last episode, but this scene was particularly hilarious to me because, like, where did Hanna and Aria find those insane goggles in the middle of the night? And how did they get them without totally blowing their own cover?
PREVIOUSLY ON PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
Blah blah blah HANNA RAN OVER ELLIOT WITH HER CAR blah blah blah blah
THIS WEEK
But where did they get the shovels???
And so, four episodes into this season, we find out that the opening scene of the season saw our Liars burying the body of one Dr. Elliot Rollins, Sneaky Brit and Liar Torturer, Esq. Tear-streaked Emily declares that she can’t live with this (like she did with the murder of Cousin Nate) while Aria yells about going to the police and Spencer’s basically like “omg are you new to town just dig already.” Meanwhile, Hanna and Ali are still at the car, silently staring into space.
Just build a gazebo over it and you’ll buy yourselves a year or two.
They’re all yelling at each other about how to handle this shiz when Ali stalks over like some sort of teen angel ghost, reaches into Elliott’s shallow grave, and produces his NuRadley ID badge. “You’re gonna need this,” she says.
Once the body is buried, the girls hop into Elliott’s car and come up with a convoluted plan to make it look like Elliott has skipped town. While Aria sneaks Ali back into NuRadley, Emily will sneak into Ali’s house and throw Elliott’s clothes around while Spencer uses his credit card to buy a train ticket to Delaware and throw The Good Doctor’s jacket and cell phone onto the train. By the time the police think to trace his cell phone, it’ll be half way across the Northeast. Hanna mostly just yells about vehicular manslaughter, but we’ll let it pass because she’s been through a lot this season, and we’re only four episodes in.
Timing is for figure skaters and comedians.
Back at Spencer’s, Hanna showers and pulls bloody glass shards out of her hair before joining Spencer in the living room, where she is obsessively scrubbing shallow grave mud off the floor. Caleb arrives, but Spencer’s locked the door. He begs her to let him in, but she literally can’t, what with half-naked Hanna and all the murder dirt everywhere.
“But there’s like three Pokemon in there.”
Caleb assumes she’s angry about their breakup. “I’m an idiot,” he says. “What happened with Hanna—“ OMG JUST LEAVE ALREADY, Spencer yells, because Hanna is right there and this shiz is about to get so awkward. But Caleb is undeterred, telling her from the other side of the door about getting a job offer in San Francisco, and how he tried to tell her one night in D.C., but they were having such a good time. “I couldn’t stop staring at that little cleft in your chin and wanting to touch it,” Caleb says to the FREAKING DETRIMENT OF OUR COLLECTIVE FEELS.
He never told her about the job, and the next day he turned it down. They’re both crying at this point, and tbh so am I. She asks him to leave for now—she’ll talk to him about it later, and slams the door.
Heartbroken, Spencer does what any respectable 22-year-old would do: she goes to the Radley and makes Emily serve her a handful of dirty martinis until she’s shitty drunk. When Emily’s shift ends, Spencer keeps drinking, until a handsome non-GWB named Marco sends her a martini. He joins her, asking what she’s been up to tonight, which Spencer deadpans with the best incredible truth: “Burying a body.” Before long, she has forgotten all about her Train to Delaware plan, and she and Marco are getting naked in the elevator. Literally. She catches a glimpse of her reflection, realizes this might be a new low for her, and calls Emily to take her drunk ass home. She might’ve failed miserably at her part of the plan, but Spencer is nothing if not the queen of establishing an alibi.
The next morning at brunch, Spencer honestly admits to Hanna that she’s mad about the Haleb kiss, and tbh, she just needs to be mad at her a little longer. Hanna can deal with this, but tells her she should go to Caleb and work things out with him. And so, Spencer hustles back to her house, but Caleb, Oh-He-Of-Jumping-The-Breakup-Gun, has packed up every single one of his short sleeved button downs and left.
YOU HAD ONE JOB
As always, Aria has one job, and as always, she screws it up. She takes Ali back to NuRadley and attempts to sneak her in with Elliott’s ID badge, but manages to lose Ali within the first 15 seconds. She ducks around and hides from nurses for awhile until she finds Ali sitting in a corner, afraid to go back inside. Aria talks her down, assures her that this is a necessary Part of The Plan, and gets her back in her room, where she straps her back to the bed. “The nurses have to see that he was a monster,” Aria assures her, strapping that awful Hannibal Lector mask back on her face.
“How stupid am I?” Alison asks, which, let’s be honest, is a GREAT question. I get that Ali hasn’t had a SINGLE healthy relationship with a man in her entire life – romantic, platonic, familial, etc. – but I’m still shocked that she of all people didn’t look into this guy’s credentials even once before tying the knot with him. If I were ANY of the Liars, I would not enter into a relationship with a man in Rosewood without aggressively Googling him first.
*ahem* ANYWAY
“How could he think that I killed Charlotte?” Ali asks. Aria’s like, “Umm so this is awkward but DID you kill Charlotte? Because that one night Ezra and I saw you at the church…” And so we get a flashback to the belfry of the Murder Church, where Ali had followed Charlotte on the night of her death. Charlotte had just found out that Alison was doin’ it with her doctor/ex-boyfriend and was, understandably, a tad pissed about the whole deal. Charlotte tells Alison to leave, so she does, but as she goes through the dark and ominous sanctuary, a door creaks behind her, like maybe they weren’t alone in the church that night.
Our Mona, who art in Rosewood, hallowed be Thy name.
With Ali all tucked in for the night, Aria and Hanna manage to find gloves, goggles and a tank of gasoline and head back to the Forest of Doom to burn Lucas’ car, which Hanna “hid” next to the Keebler Elf tree. But of course, the car is gone, and they’re THISCLOSE to losing their damn minds when it reappears, windshield in tact, and Our Mona of the Holy Souls gets out. PRAISE BE.
Mona wastes no time in pointing out all the ways that the Liars are absolutely failing at homicide cover up and life in general. Because SHE had been suspicious of Elliott for months. Long enough to put a GPS tracker on his car and track the calls he made from his burner phone. Like, this ISN’T EVEN HER DEAL, and she has inserted herself into it anyway because she loves Hanna, and I freaking love her for that. But she’s working with a bunch of first-rate boneheads here, so of course, they didn’t even know that Elliott had a burner phone and didn’t think to get it out of his car before parking it at the train station.
Mona has the good grace to not light them both on fire with lightning bolts shot out of her eyeballs.
Tap, tap, tap, bitches.
The Liars + Saint Mona meet for alibi brunch at the Radley the next morning where Aria is still yapping about going to the police, forcing Spencer to bark, “Okay stop. Drink your mimosa.” Which, tbh, should be Aria’s sole responsibility on this show. Anyway, Mona knows that Elliott was having convos on his burner phone, but she doesn’t know who he was talking to. If they can find the phone, they can find Elliott’s accomplice.
Suddenly, they’re interrupted by the tap-tap-tapping arrival of the one and only Jenna Marshall, who is in town for Toby’s engagement party apparently and who also has no trouble tapping right on over to the Liars’ table and identifying each of them right away. She’s heard about Hanna’s engagement, and Ali’s current predicament, and coos that Rosewood’s got her feeling nostalgic. Which, coming from Jenna, can NOT be good.
We pledge allegiance to VanderMarin.
Hanna and Mona head to Lucas’ where Mona attempts to bluesnarf something but fails, apologizing to Hanna for not being able to help which is the FUNNIEST JOKE THIS SHOW HAS EVER HAD. Hanna admits to Mona that as much as she wants to tell herself that hitting Elliott was an accident, she thought about that cold dark room he kept her in and *maybe* slammed on that gas pedal a bit harder at the sight of him. Mona points out Hanna’s fake diamond ring—the girl can triangulate a cell phone call with her earrings and her aura probably emanates a wi-fi signal, recognizing fake diamonds is freaking amateur hour—and Hanna admits to breaking it off with Jordan. It’s the first person she’s admitted it to, which is nice, because Hanna and Mona’s friendship is one of the most underrated parts of this show.
Suddenly, Hanna realizes her gold chain bracelet is gone, and it’s most likely in Elliott’s car, which they’ve dropped off at the train station. They hurry over, where Mona easily jimmies the car door open so Hanna can get her bracelet out of the seat. As they walk away, a phone rings from under the driver’s side floor mat. A burner phone. When Mona flips it open, a voice says, “Hi Archer, can you hear me? It’s Jenna. Jenna Marshall.”
“I hear a phone ringing, but all I see is this weird old thing you flip open?”
Summit, The Second
Emily and Aria go to see Alison but the cops have taken over NuRadley. Emily realizes it’s because she told Toby to look into Elliott’s past, so this is their own fault really. Toby appears, decked out in his policeman costume, and takes them to Lucas’ where they meet up with the other Liars. He tells them he couldn’t make a connection from Elliott to Mary Drake, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because Elliott’s dead. CUE A V. DRAMATIC, AWKWARD PAUSE. “He’s been dead for 15 years,” Toby finishes. He tells them everything he’s learned while a #TobyInvestigates hashtag flashes at the screen. He even paces back and forth like a Real Cop™ while he tells them that Elliott has skipped town and the Rosewood PD is making his disappearance a top priority. “The truth will come out,” he says as he leaves.
Back at NuRadley, Mary Drake appears in Ali’s room. “No need to call for the nurse, dear,” she says, “I’m in charge now.” ::cringe face emoji::
NEXT WEEK
We find out who the heck Archer Dunhill is. Jenna visits Alison. Marco’s back, and it looks like he is probably the newest Rosewood detective and will undoubtedly be assigned to Elliott’s murder and oops he totally already made out with his first suspect. Also, someone proposes!? Does Caleb come back and propose to Spencer? Does Hanna go back to NYC to re-propose to Jordan? DOES MONA PROPOSE TO HANNA DEAR GOD I HOPE SO.
Kisses bitches,
rosemAry
