About:
Song lyric episode title? Classic Hollywood film reference? Hanna and Mona in bed reading Poe? Must be a Dougherty episode!
(Spoiler: we loved every allusion.)
THIS WEEK’S MVP
Hanna, for finally giving voice to what we’ve been saying since season one.
RESPECT TEENAGE GIRLS. And act like a responsible adult. Why is this so hard?
Bonus MVP: Caleb, for having a really kind and helpful talk with Emily about Talia and how anyone ever possibly gets together with another human when we’re all so awkward and life is so hard.
Emily: “I don’t know what I want. I mean, I know what I want, but I just don’t know what I want.”
Caleb: “Scarily, that makes perfect sense to me.”
THIS WEEK’S LVP
Holbrook, for proving himself too weak to keep his sanity/temper after just a few months of just a fraction of the psychological torture our four teen leads have been going through the past two years.
You were once our only hope for adult males, Gabe! That’ll teach us to ever believe in the ability/goodness of an adult man again, we guess.
BIGGEST SHOCK/BEST SURPRISE
Finally—the Liars are AHEAD of A on something! Accidentally, sure, but still. Nuts to you, A!*
*…unless A is Mona who was returning home to retrieve that evidence after Mike warned her it was in danger of going missing because of probably sketchy Lesli, in which case…whoops.
BIGGEST NO-DUH
The random male stranger Veronica invited into the Hastingses’ life and made Spencer interact with almost exclusively has begun to make Spencer think non-Hastings thoughts and thus must definitely go.
At least she’s consistent?
PREVIOUSLY ON PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
A rented out a storage unit under Hanna’s name FOUR months ago (a month before Mona was murdered at LEAST, and probably also before Murder Train, by the show’s own internal reckoning). Spencer and Caleb broke in and found bloody clothes in evidence bags and a barrel that they all think contains Mona’s dissolved body. Spencer was accepted to a dozen sun&fun colleges, but won’t even open the welcome packets and maybe doesn’t even WANT to go to college anymore. Talia confessed to Emily that she has eyes (aka is into Em). Ezra broke up with Aria “for her own good” and Aria finally turned into an IRL emoji. Hanna and Spencer had a screaming fight over who was more to blame for the cops (aka Toby) finding Hanna and Caleb at the storage unit with sabotage supplies. It was rough.
THIS WEEK
The Liars Summit That Lasted All Day
Outside Ezra Fitz’s RareBrew Books and Latte Emporium, Spencer explains to Emily and Aria how Toby can’t tell her if it was human remains in the barrel…in fact, can’t help them at all anymore. The two of them are on the outs because the Rosewood PD and also Spencer’s inability to stop committing felonies in her hunt for A has (unsurprisingly!) broken the sweet, honorable Toby almost completely.
Spoby’s sob story is interrupted when the other girls’ attention suddenly shifts to something across the street. Guys! Did you know that Rosewood’s only decent coffee shop is DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET from the charm school that is the RPD? Alexis didn’t. Given Rosewood’s geography, it shouldn’t be a real surprise. And it also explains why Holbrook was hanging around there all the time back when he was decent. Anyway, sorry. The thing happening outside the RPD that so grabbed Emily and Aria’s attention is Ali’s defense lawyers…handing files over to Veronica Hastings. Welcome, Liar Parent of the Week!
“WHAT” the two girls demand in unison, turning on Spencer, “THE HELL.” But no, Spencer explains, despite appearances (and precedent), her mom is not actively working against her own daughter (although precedent also shows that the Liars’ parents’ intentions count for basically negative). She’s “consulting” on Ali’s case to find out what her lawyers know. You know, to help the girls, and find out who is getting called to testify, etc. We guess this is smart? Although it seems pre-e-etty conflict of interest-y/not technically legal—nor smart as a plan on Ali’s lawyers’ part—but…that’s Rosewood.
Also across from New Brew, heading towards the RPD, is Hanna, who Spencer sprints to cut off. She wants to apologize for her part in their last-week’s fight, but is also braced for its continuation. The continuation doesn’t come, though, because Hanna is a perfect angel who is extremely mature, willing to learn from her mistakes, and well-moisturized. Let’s all heed Hanna’s advice: next time you’re in a fight with a friend, take a hot bath.
While Spencer and Hanna worry about each other’s feelings and becoming friends again, Emily and Aria are left to make small talk. Which is, of course, about Ezra, who told Emily that he’s in Harrisburg this weekend, but told Aria nothing. Bummer. Wait—we mean HOORAAAAAAYYYY (*sound of victory horns blowing*) This episode features Zero Ezra! And that’s the last time today we will say type his name, amen.
Spencer and Hanna rejoin Em and Aria, but before Hanna can get a recap of Spencer’s latest recap, their attention is once more diverted to across the street, where Holbrook is Hol-back, with just the most assholiest haircut.
“Wait, WHAT,” all four girls exclaim. Why is he surfacing now? What happened to all the good work he was making on their psyches/slates of innocence while “on professional leave” doing A(li)’s bidding? Rather than take this as a clue to perhaps consider other possibilities to who might be helping A(li), the Liars decide Alison sent Holbrook back as a passive aggressive chess move to torture them in close range. Although the exact mechanism of her machinations is less clear, that’s probably not a bad assumption on this show: when something weird happens, assume that it’s because Ali is trying to destroy you.
Presenting: Lesli Stone
While the three Liars who don’t work for their wardrobe allowance are freaking out over how Caleb was called in again for questioning about the storage unit and how Hanna will definitely be next, a redhead in hipster frames and a mish-mash of Spencer and Aria’s best costume choices sticks her head into RareBrew Books & Co and asks Emily the whereabouts of one…Hanna Marin. “I was a friend of Mona’s,” she says, ringing one thousand alarm bells in our heads. Her name is Lesli, and she’s here to…“be there” for Mama Vanderwaal and Mona’s friends.
The Liars are skeptical, rightfully. Spencer even reminds Hanna that the last time a mysterious friend-from-the-past showed up in Rosewood, it was CeCe Drake. We admire the fact that she seems to be actually learning from Plot Points Past, but shouldn’t the go-to name here really be Cousin Nate, aka “I pretended to be Maya’s cousin to get close to you and then I tried to kill Emily’s girlfriend so she had to stab me to death”? We’re just saying: maybe do some fact-checking on this one, guys. Although, now that we think of it, CeCe also tried to kill Emily by locking her in that sawmill box that one time. Unless it wasn’t CeCe, but Ali. Unless it wasn’t Ali, but Mona. Unless it wasn’t Mona, but EzrA. Unless it was EMILY HERSELF.
At this point we wouldn’t be surprised if we were A.
So anyway, Lesli Who Is Definitely Not Here to Murder Anyone sits the Liars down for a summit of her own, explaining how she and Mona have been friends forever, since meeting one summer at Mona’s grandparents’ house. She was even with Mama V on Thanksgiving when the police made the call about Mona’s accident!
(This would probably be a great time for the Liars to remember the last time they heard this story, from a certain Shana Swim Fanatic, whose proximity to Ali’s grandma made them such amazingly amazing best friends that Shana was willing to kill for her. But the Liars don’t blink.)
Why wasn’t Lesli at Mona’s very tardy and easy to schedule around any conflicts memorial service? the Liars smartly want to know. Blah blah college, blah blah professors, blah blah exams, Lesli says. “But enough not talking about me! I just want to tell you all how incredibly grateful I am that you were such great friends to Mona lo these many years, and that you are being such great support to Mama V now that Mona is gone. Just SO GRATEFUL.”
“Hanna, you need to do some classic fake-ditz Marin investigating into this ginger CeCe’s story STAT,” Spencer declares on the phone later that afternoon. “I gotta go paw through my mom’s bag of confidential documents now, but call me when you have her entire life story, annotated, notarized, and in quadruplicate.”
Hanna+Lesli (subheading: Flashback!Hanna+Mona)
Despite having literally an entirely separate other storyline this episode, Hanna also handles the Lesli situation with aplomb. She treats Mona’s “old friend” with perfect courtesy, accompanying her to the Vanderwaal estate and entertaining Lesli’s youthful Mona memories—all without ever quite letting her own guard down.
This is wise, as Lesli doesn’t seem appropriately…what’s the word? Oh, right: terrified…of Mona. And we mean that in the stricken-in-the-face-of-awesome-power sense of the word. Lesli keeps exclaiming over how great it was the Liars were all friends with Mona, and Hanna’s all, “Mona was… complicated.” As in, “Mona… tried to kill us, a lot, with her brain. And also her car.” But Lesli seems to find Mona’s multitudes endearing.
Lesli also expresses maybe too much? interest in a giant, uncracked spine compendium of Edgar Allen Poe, which Mona apparently loved for the creep factor. Lesli cradles the book all the way to the Brew, where Mike spots it and freaks the eff out. “You can’t just scatter all the things that made a person a person and expect everyone else to go along with it!” he shouts, nearly snatching the Poe from Lesli’s arms. His freakout is so intense that literally no one notices how Lesli says “Mike! Mona talks about you all the time!”
Talks. TalkS. TALKS. #MonasNotDead #MakeItSo
Hanna inserts herself between them and promises Mike that she will make sure to return the book later that day. Mike leaves, and Lesli is visibly freaked out. She doesn’t want to get anyone in trouble, but… “Ah, secrets!” Hanna exclaims. “Here: we should move closer to the perpetual secret machine that Spencer’s backyard barn hobo artist made then.” Lesli’s secret? The night before she disappeared, Mona was on the phone with Lesli when a guy interrupted and told her to hang up and talk to him. Mona was supposed to call Lesli back but never did. Lesli thinks the voice was Mike’s. Dun dun RED HERRING.
Throughout her afternoon with Lesli, Hanna keeps getting struck with flashbacks to a sleepover she had with Mona, featuring (natch) cute pjs, a spooky Poe readaloud, and the Wish Game. As in, if you had 3 wishes, what would you wish for? Hanna doesn’t like the game, but she knows Mona is good at it. And Mona’s IS good at it. Her only wish: to invent the classic 2002 Jesse “Swimfan” Bradford vehicle Clockstoppers.
Just kidding, sort of. What she really wishes for is a stopwatch to stop real time to let her run all over the world changing people’s lives at a whim, taking what she wants, when she wants it, no one ever knowing the wiser. And when Hanna wakes her up in the middle of the night to try to wonder aloud about the uneven aging issues inherent in Mona’s wish, and also what would happen if such a device really existed and Ali had it and came back years after disappearing—like, would they all even recognize her, that many years older? Mona was willing to play along with the aging conceit, but freaks the eff out at Hanna’s Ali hypothetical.
“NO that ISN’T how it would work,” Mona spits, sitting up to stare daggers at Hanna. “It’d be US she wouldn’t recognize, and then she would go CRAZY and be sent to Radley and be stuck there FOREVER AND EVER and we’d all laugh our way to the bank.” “Yeah, sure, right, of course,” Flashback!Hanna demurs, before snuggling back under the covers.
Sidenote: we love how Hanna literally looks over her shoulder when having these flashbacks.
Anyway, Sleuth Extraordinaire Hanna quickly deduces that the Poe book has a secret compartment in the spine, hiding a tiny audio cassette. And using Caleb’s bottomless desk drawer of outdated tech equipment, the two listen and discover that it is one of the Bethany Young session tapes Mona and Spencer stole from Radley, with Bethany shouting about how “she’s an EVIL BITCH who can make ANYONE do ANYTHING and a plan needs to be made to STOP HER.”
Good job, Han!
A Brief Intermission to Discuss the Perpetual Motion Machine Powered by Secrets
I.e., Rosewood! The real city that never sleeps (or tells a single truth).
But also, an art/engineering/whimsy work done by Spencer’s whimsical resident artist, commissioned by He Who Must Not Be Named to ornament the RareBrew Books & Co Emporium Store Shop. It’s truly imaginative and the scenes are gorgeously shot, but the machine’s real purpose is to give Spencer and Emily somewhere to tack their personal storylines this week. In short, Whimsy Boy inspires Spencer to consider not actually going to college (while simultaneously being rude/insightful about complicated “Gilgamesh in heels” murderer girls and towns that are woven together with secrets and lies), and the whimsical whisper table he creates inspires Emily to have a moment of personal clarity in the vicinity of Talia (and Talia’s lips).
The machine/installation is pretty cool, even if its symbolism—and the dialogue it spurs from everyone who interacts with this ep—is extremely on the nose. Not that we didn’t love Spencer’s blunt, “I don’t want to figure it out. I just want to KNOW.” Us too, Spence. Us too.
Spencer+Veronica
Spencer’s role in wAr shenAnigans this week is to dig through confidential trial documents/ask her mother very leading questions.
“How’s Holbrook being back?” Spencer asks with zero subtlety after pocketing the phone she just used to photograph all the papers in Veronica’s bag. “I dunno,” Mama Hastings retorts, “HOW ARE ALL THESE SAFETY SCHOOL ACCEPTANCES???”
Things in the Hastings family sure have slipped, now that the bar Spencer isn’t even worried about meeting is no longer acceptance to the Hastings Hallowed UPenn, but just going to college at all. Spencer is having some reallllllll privileged white girl problems right now, A or no A.
“This is that Jonny, right?” Veronica demands. “Lazy, good-for-nothing artists. Just wasting their potential, and poisoning teen girls’ minds!” Spencer tries to get her mom to spend ten minutes trying to recall what it was like to be 17 and not know what she wants to do with her life. Veronica actually looks at her daughter and empathizes for a hot second, but then a work call comes in and the Hastings Manor is once again all about barrels and blood spots and DNA analysis. (Conclusion: the blood drops near the barrel? ALI’S.)
Aria+Mike
Armed with Montgomery-pertinent clues from Veronica’s confidential documents, and also the news about Ali’s DNA evidence, Spencer heads over to Aria’s to debrief. Just in case(/knowing absolutely that) Aria wasn’t listening the first two times she covered current events at the top of the episode, Spencer starts their meeting giving Aria one more rundown of more or less what parents are and more or less why they might on the very (very [very {very}]) rare occasion drop into town to do something for their kids. Once Aria is up to speed, Spencer lays down the real purpose of her visit: Mike’s name is in the lady prison visitor log book. Like, a lot of times.
“Maybe we should be a bit more aware of what your lovelorn little brother is up to these days,” Spencer cautions. “Maybe you should MIND YOUR BEESWAX” Aria rejoins. And then she goes and spies on just what her lovelorn little brother is up to these days.
And what he is up to is working his way through the list of Hollywood classics that Mona made for him. On tonight: THEM! (exclamation point included), a 1954 black-and-white sci-fi movie starring a catatonic little blonde girl carrying a broken doll. “Mona was, like, really into details,” Mike explains. “Like…really into them.” YOU DON’T SAY.
His clear-headed analysis of Mona’s personality makes Aria suspicious. Well, that and the fact that he loudly walks into the hall later, puts on a jacket under the bright light of the hall, and sneaks out of the house via the front door. She follows him, and totally creeps on his meditative moment on the wooden bridge from which more than one Hastings has thrown evidence to drown.
Mike pulls a ziploc from his coat and stares at it before leaving it on the railing. Of course Aria goes to check it out, holding her floor-length sheer leopard print skirt up to keep it from dragging in the mud. Mike’s big secret: he is leaving sour patch kids out for the Rosewood bridge troll! Aria turns to leave, but lo!
Their interaction is super creepy, but also not that unfamiliar to those of us sisters who had near-in-age teen brothers, we’d imagine. Teen boys are just WEIRD, and emotionally compromised brothers who feel threatened all the more so.
Anyway, Mike demands to know why Aria followed him; she demands to know why he went to see Ali in jail. Well neither answer is either of their respective business, so. STALEMATE. Not that Aria is willing to let him go without pulling the Voice of Authority card on him (she spends so much of her time with He Who Absconded to Harrisburg that she hardly ever gets to be the authority herself, after all), and so demands that Mike never return to the jail or talk to Ali ever, ever again!
“I am DONE taking other people’s orders,” Mike declares, before ordering ARIA never to follow him to the bridge again, then telling her how the woods are going to come alive and strangle her before she even makes it home.
Haleb+Holbrook
Before Lesli even appears on the scene at the start of the episode, Hanna vents to Aria and Spencer about how the police called Caleb in for a second interview about his fictional storage space and anyone suspicious he might have seen. “Like maybe I dunno YOU????” Aria shout-whispers. Thanks Aria, way to make Han more nervous.
Because Hanna is a great girlfriend and subtle sleuth, she accompanies Caleb to the RPD. She is, of course, freaked out, but Caleb assures her that he “locked” all their computers so their cameras can’t be hacked ever again. Ummmm like three seasons too late, hacker dude? But thanks.
Anyway, Hanna can’t point out his idiocy because Holbrook is throwing a tantrum in the other room about how this department is screwing up everything he worked for and now they are blaming HIM????? Then he goes to clear out his desk by throwing every paper ever written about Ali just everywhere. He has to storm past Caleb and Hanna on his way out, so Caleb stands guard between them, scowling like a bulldog.
GIFs from hannasrivers
This is a really good A-move, slow burn discrediting Holbrook, the only cop to have been making any progress at all before Mona’s murder. A, you’re the best/worst!
As Han later explains to Em, she thinks that Holbrook is blaming the Liars for his career tanking. Victim blaming at its (and with Rosewood’s) finest.
Unbeknownst to Hanna, Holbrook follows her to Caleb’s when she brings him the mini-tape, and then again after she leaves. As she is driving down the dark road, blasting music that reminded Alexis so strongly of her entire high school life she had to take a moment and breathe, siren lights flash and Hanna pulls over. She gets all her documents ready, but no one comes to the window. Hell, no one is even in the cop car at all!
So, naturally, badass Hanna gets out her tire iron and goes to investigate. And, naturally, Gabriel Holbrook, the unhinged, Rosewood-infected adult male, lunges at her from the dark throwing all this shade about how it’s HER fault he lost his career, how he can’t believe he was brought down by a TEEN GIRL. Ali. He’s talking about Ali. But he’s taking it out on Hanna. And Hanna THROWS DOWN.
Alexis wants a recording of this whole interaction, verbatim, to play as a daily affirmation. FINALLY someone on the show calling out the adult who should know better for failing himself and them.
Also Holbrook clears himself of being Ali’s henchman entirely by name-dropping the internal affairs lugs who have had him locked up in investigative red tape (and also a hotel room) for the past many months/weeks/days/whatevers. Which, btws, Tanner knows EVERYTHING about.
Here, a gift for us all:
Three Liar Summit
Because Em is getting her mack on at Lolita’s RearBrew Book Disco Lounge (exhibiting less chemistry than we thought was possible for Emily to exhibit with any other human being), only Aria and Spencer are available to convene for a nighttime summit with Hanna about everything that went down with Holbrook. “We’re barking up the wrong henchman,” she declares, mixing metaphors EXPERTLY.
Well then, Spencer declares at Peak Spencer, it must be Mike! NOPE, says Aria. And even if it HAD been him, it won’t be anymore, because he won’t be seeing Ali anymore, because Aria Montgomery TOLD HIM NOT TO.
Mike’s return to Ali’s visitor’s table is soundtracked with Bethany Young’s EVIL BITCH session tape. Who is in on the plan? WHO IS IN ON THE PLAN?
A-Tag
A returns to Mona’s creepy doll room under cover of night, looking for the Poe compendium Bethany tape. They are pissed to find it missing. Good job Hanna!
NEXT WEEK
BLOOD. SWEAT. AND FEARS. So, gym class?
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.
