About:
So Alexis flew out to LA last week to spend some quality STOLEN LIES-level friendship time with Catie/attend some Paley Fest panels and you know we made some time to tour WB Studios, where our dear PLL is filmed. The Main Street backlot was mostly stripped of any show-specific business fronts, but we did get to see the amazing fact that the ROSEWOOD CITY HALL front steps are literally part of the same building as the ROSEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL front steps.
Also, we saw some kiiiiiiiillllller crazy contraptions in the prop house reserved for PLL season 6. We cannot even explain how weird and crazy and exciting these pieces are, in the context of the show (emphasis on weird).
Anyway, why think about season 6? Season five still has a week to go, and if this week’s plot-spitting episode is any indication, next week we will be writing a novel.
(Today is a novella. Sorry/notsorry.)
THIS WEEK’S MVP
Caleb, for just a billion things. But mostly for demon-driving to the Poconos to break into Ezra’s murdercAbin to sit waiting IN THE DARK to tell Mike that Aria is wrong and that someone just finally has to come clean to the cops about everything because if no one does Hanna will literally die, and for never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever giving up on Hanna (now that he is a ghost that never ever will last SO LONG).
Runner up: Molly Borman, the silent sassmaster we all aspire to be.
THIS WEEK’S LVP
The PLL social media people who thought “Ezra v. Caleb” was a legitimate question.
Runner up: Tanner, for being so gleeful in her obstruction of actual detective work.
BIGGEST SHOCK/BEST SURPRISE
EVERYONE IS ARRESTED.
Runner up: Officer Barry’s hip new glasses.
BIGGEST NO-DUH
Oh, a parent showed up for the first time in FOUR MONTHS and has opinions about how her daughter should behave that are not only terrible but actively destructive? WE ARE SHOCKED.
THAT’S ALI, FOLKS
Alison is willing to do whatever necessary to achieve the ends she desires, whether it’s burning herself with an iron and slamming Hanna’s hand in a dryer door so the two can talk in the prison infirmary, or getting her camp bunkmate to help her fix an archery contest so she can win.
PREVIOUSLY ON PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
Hanna was arrested when her blood was found (planted) on Mona’s clothes. Spence and Toby are on the outs because LOL Toby’s a cop and LOL Spencer’s only extracurriculars are being cyber-bullied and/or illegal. Lesli Stone/STOLEN LIES sought out the Liars to tell them just how thankful she was that they were there for Mona, her very, very, very dear personal friend, when she wasn’t able to be. Not Hot Andrew was creepy, and thinks that we’re all better off never having seen Mona run for president. He is wrong. Alison didn’t take the plea deal, and has gone to trial. It has not been going well for her…or the Liars.
THIS WEEK
This is the heading of this section
Perd Hapley himself (well, his serious news alter ego from Scandal/Revenge/Body of Proof/The Mentalist/Dexter, and isn’t it just a delightful treat imagining that all of these shows take place in the same bizarre universe?) is reporting on Alison’s trial, and he gets Sara Shepard herself to give us an update! “Sara, you have been with this one since the beginning…” Wink, wink. She tells us that Alison is “the ultimate mean girl”—and that the prosecution has a surprise witness up their sleeve.
Surprise! It’s Lesli Stone!!
Stolen Lies
Maybe we have been too harsh on Lesli, guys. After all, her name also anagrams to TONSIL EELS. Maybe she just has a very serious, sea creature-related, upper throat condition and we all need to be a little more sensitive.
Alexis’ mom (who doesn’t watch the show, but was in the room) took one look at Lesli and said “that looks like a fake person.” And she does! With her disguise-y glasses and funny colored hair and the fact that she just popped up out of nowhere a few weeks ago. Does anyone really know the real Lesli Stone? We think not.
Lesli knew a lot about Mona, though, apparently. They talked and texted constantly! And Mona conveniently sent Lesli a handwritten note not two weeks before Thanksgiving, detailing the time that Ali slapped her across the face and told her that if Mona told anyone about her fake kidnapping, she’d kill her. Well, that doesn’t look great for Ali. And then Lesli turns her attack on the rest of the Liars, explaining that “Alison’s friends” kept her from really investigating Mona’s death. Not to mention Mike nearly bit her head off, just for daring to try to get at all of the secrets Mona wanted to keep hidden in her room. AND, and, and, Hanna stalked her!
Boys are dumb
Andrew, who has unfortunately now officially been downgraded from Hot to Creepy, stealthily pops up for the first of way too many times this episode to hold Aria’s hand with his bruised knuckle hand right there in the middle of the courtroom. Spencer, meanwhile, leaps on out of there to call Caleb about the new truck Lesli is running over Hanna’s reputation. You guys, I (Catie) kind of ship Caleb and Spencer. Obviously I want Caleb and Hanna to be happy together forever, but really every Liar deserves a Caleb of her own, and if Spencer & Caleb can’t be romantically linked, I will just have to continue to tirelessly campaign for Hastings & Rivers: PIs to be a real thing (Alexis seconds this PI wish).
Speaking of great boyfriends…Toby has not been one. He pops up in the courthouse hallway, interrupting Spencer’s phone call. She tells him about the hemorrhagic blood vials that were planted in her bag in London, and also that she’s been busy kissing other boys, who have been actually nice to her, which, sort of? They’re then interrupted by Emily racing down the stairs to update Spencer on how terrible Lesli’s testimony is going for them, except that she can’t because there aren’t no words to describe it except, “There are barracudas with duller teeth.”
“I’m about to get life in jail because Mona wanted to use her last Laurel and Hardy stamp”
It’s time for an amazing and ingenious Liars’ Summit. Picture this: Hanna and Ali, on separate prison pay phones, calling into two of the other Liars’ iPhones, which are perched next to each other on speakerphone, surrounded by the rest of the girls. We love it. (Although Alexis is suspicious of the likelihood that the prison would allow for these two girls arrested for basically the same crime to be in the same room as one another, let alone that their calls wouldn’t be monitored. Although she will also freely admit that she has zero knowledge of how prisons and privacy actually work.)
Alison doesn’t know who Lesli is, joining the club. Hanna thinks Lesli “really cared” about Mona and that they should trust her, but Hanna wasn’t the one who had to stab Cousin Nate after how much he “really cared” about Maya. We’re just saying. Ali explains that no one can corroborate her “I was at the playground” alibi for the time Mona was killed, unless…
Scary-go-round
Ali flashes back to the playground where she sat on swing while Mona was being bludgeoned to death*, waiting for Cyrus, presumably, as he was the one handpicked by A to get Ali out of DiLaurentis family Thanksgiving in order to both ruin her alibi/BE her alibi. But we (Alexis) had been under the impression that he had actually taken her somewhere that night, not that she had just made plans to meet up with him? So who even knows. But probably Cyrus.
Anyway, there she was, all dolled up in her PLL book cover best, waiting for Probably Cyrus, when she heard a rustle in a nearby giant concrete culvert (and who doesn’t have fond memories of their local playground’s giant concrete pipe…?) and sees an entire floral scarf fluttering in the bush just outside it. Spooked (it was probably polyester, quel horreur!), she ran away.
“I thought it was A at the time, but now I’m not so sure? Now I think maybe it was just the wind?” This is the Occam’s Razoriest conclusion, of course, but all Spencer and Emily hear is, “please go find the owner of that floral scarf.” Which, we guess, is the Occam’s Razoriest way the whole speakerphone summit would reasonably end: with Spencer on a flimsy clue hunt.
Aria knows best
But first, a flimsy internet search for Lesli Stone! Conducted, of course, by Aria. It is so flimsy that it doesn’t actually happen (which is too bad, because if it had she might have turned up a whole slew of anagram clues to Lesli Stone’s non-existence) as Aria is stopped from hitting ‘search’ when she hears Mike banging and yelling his way through the house.
“You have to get back out of town like now,” she says, pulling him into her room and locking the door behind him. “That fake best friend of your girlfriend’s took the stand today and threw you and Hanna under like, military-grade buses.” Mike misinterprets this news as, Lesli is trying to make it sound like Mike hurt Mona, which WILL NOT STAND, but no, Aria corrects herself—it is just that what Lesli said might make it more likely for Ali to get her lawyer to subpoena Mike to testify.
“BRING IT ON,” Mike says, coming full circle on the secret he was willing to protect even over his sister’s safety. He is more than ready to testify, now that he has convinced himself that Mona is truly dead. He’s already beating himself up over what might have been, had he just gone to the police station the night he caught Mona with her blood bank…
“Just, only answer yes, no, or I don’t remember, ‘kay?” Aria tries to make him promise. “Because you of all non-Liar people should know by now—saying the truth out loud? Always comes back to bite you.”
The real secret in Rosewood is everyone is already in jail
We mean, Hanna and Ali are obviously in real jail, where Ali continues to use laundry duty as a means to pass notes—this time to Hanna, about a meeting tomorrow at 8:05 (maybe from Caleb?), and also about the anagrams in Mona’s mirror that none of them know are anagrams.
But also Toby is in jail, cop jail, where all he is being asked/allowed to do is “photocopy parking tickets and fetch lattes.” “Am I being punished for something?” he asks Tanner, pointing out how every single other cop who has gone through the same exact training and time as him is being put on real police work, like for example, that real police work on the other side of that locked, full-windowed room where like every police officer ever to work in the RPD is poring over boxes and boxes of evidence. “Like, for the night of the gallery break-in?”
At the mention of Jonny F*cking Raymond’s…let’s call it, performance art?…Tanner’s tone turns toxically sweet. “You made an arrest! Why would that deserve punishment?? I just thought, that maybe all those officers pulling doubles might want some fresh coffee, is all.” It is NOT all, Tanner. It is not all. And we, and more importantly Toby, know.
Jonny F*cking Raymond, just ruining everything around town. And there was already so little left to ruin!
La Langue d’Amour
Because A is probably a ghost (of Ali’s dead twin? Of Sara Harvey? Of Caleb, who died in Raven5wood and has all the technical know-how to be A and so could potentially be A and so Catie has to spend a week believing is A so as not to be completely stricken with horror if he really does turn out to be A in next week’s finale?), all of Mike’s innermost thoughts and intentions are fair game. Like, for example, that he has no fucks left to give when it comes to Aria’s instructions for his life [link], and so is still planning on telling somebody everything he learned from Mona.
And so A, naturally, delivers a warning to both Montgomery children in the form of a giant raw beef tongue, pierced with a knife, delivered to their front porch in a box with all the yearbook forms Aria needs for the new extracurricular activity “Ella” (does she even exist tho) has forced her into to distract her from the trial.
“Who sent this to you??” Mike demands, as if he never dated a girl who had a cow brain daggered to the inside of her locker (for real, Mona would absolutely see a raw, dripping beef tongue delivered directly to her beau’s front porch as a pretty darn good token of affection. So, we’re not saying she’s FOR SURE alive, but we’re not NOT saying that). “Don’t you get it?” Aria shrieks back. “This was meant for YOU. Next time it will be YOUR TONGUE on the porch!!” And then Ella actually appears! In the flesh! And all she does is stare Aria down as if it is Aria’s fault that she continues to be terrorized, extracurricular extras on her lap or no.
Rosewood parenting. Can’t top it.
Since not even the cold, wet beef tongue is proof enough that Mike should reconsider his position on testifying, Aria seeks help from the one and only person in town who knows what it is she and Mike are going through: her ex-stalker.
Aria’s first tactic to get him to help her is to paint the horrifying hypothetical of her mom having been the one to open the beef tongue box. “Um, I wish she would have? Because then she would finally get it? And also you should for real go to the cops,” is the response that Ezra gives that from anyone else would be helpful and welcome, but from the man who has had evidence of their terror for years and never once went to the cops with it is just infuriating.
Aria is infuriated. “Hanna already made that mistake, and now she is sitting behind bars. So no, I will not be going to the cops, thank you very much.” What she wants from Ezra isn’t even illegal. Mike hasn’t be subpoenaed yet. He is just in danger of endangering himself, and so would be safer not in town. Like, for example, in Ezra’s murdercAbin in the Poconos. Even her “parents” are on board with this plan! Because of how much they believe Aria and love and trust Ezra, of course.
His silence does not encourage her, and she almost leaves, but after he patronizingly tells her not to read his silence as a No (which is actually a reasonable thing to say, since people need time to think through requests of this magnitude, but we just hate him SO MUCH) and says he needs some time to wrap his brain around it, Aria prompts him to tell her whether he means him and Mike, or him and her, and Ezra takes the first opportunity he can not to answer that. “I’ll pick him up at four.”
Flimsy Clue Hunt!
While Aria is stuck asking favors from Ezra and living a “normal” life (see below), Spencer drags Emily out to the park Ali said she was at on Thanksgiving, to investigate the giant concrete culvert Ali saw that one floral scarf waving outside of. They are hoping to find clues, in an outdoor location, like six months after Ali (and her mystery possible witness) was last there. Good luck, girls!
Unsurprisingly, there are no lost identification cards lying around inside the single length of pipe that drains nothing. Maybe surprisingly, there is also no spray-painted message from A. Their hopes are raised briefly when Matt Buckler, a volunteer with the local church youth group who adopted the park and is there all the time (and has a really neat Easter dinner supporting the homeless coming up, if you girls are at all interested!!), pops his head into the culvert to talk to them, but alas. He can’t remember all the way back to Thanksgiving, and hasn’t seen anyone else notable there since. Still, he gives Spencer his card, just in case.
On Wednesdays we wear pink
Because all Rosewood parents at some point land on the novel idea of forcing their children into extracurriculars in order to manufacture a sense of teenage normalcy rather than just listening to and helping them, Aria finds herself that afternoon at school, assisting her “mom” with some yearbook photo/quote duties.
(Does Ella really still teach at the school? Didn’t she move to Europe, and then…somewhere else? Across town? As far as we can tell the only Montgomery “parent” hanging around recently has been Byron, who has been “in Syracuse” since, like, Christmas.)
Senior quotes can only be 26 words, apparently, and it is Aria’s job to ensure that everyone sticks to that. Aria tells our new favorite character Molly Borman this, Molly scowls and scratches out two words, and wordlessly hands it back to Aria. With so much attitude. Molly is the best!
Unlike Andrew, who is the worst, and pops up creepily for the seven thousandth time to ask Aria why she didn’t ask him to take Mike away for safety. Aria’s like, “My parents are comfortable with Ezra taking Mike,” which, strike one zillion, Montgomery parents.
Andrew whines that he wants/needs to be with her 24/7, he’s the one who’s been tutoring her and hanging around and creepily popping up and kissing her and oh ugh they’re doing it again. The kissing. So we guess this is a thing, then? Is Aria permanently doomed to only be in relationships with men who are actively stalking her, because of the imprint left by Ezra “I’m writing a true crime book, and dating a high schooler will help!” Fitz? #SaveAria.
Caleb <3s Hanna
In case you didn’t know, Caleb is the best. He visits Hanna in jail to tell her how terrible Lesli is, and how convenient her appearance is for the case against Alison. Hanna doesn’t want to dwell: she only gets to see Caleb’s sweet face for 30 minutes, and doesn’t want to waste 28 of them discussing, like, the reason she is in jail.
She also wants to make sure Mike stays out of the whole deal—when Caleb brings up the idea of him testifying, she’s adamantly against it. “He’s just a kid,” she says, possibly forgetting what it was like to be 16 and terrorized by murder and stalking and more murder. It ages you a bit, is what we’re saying. Hanna thinks that Mike testifying will bring A’s wrath upon him, and at least she remembers enough from the last two years/seventeen TV seasons to want to save him from that. But Caleb is just as adamant, in the other direction: he’s not going anywhere, and he’s going to do everything in his power to get Hanna out of jail. Which means getting the kid to speak.
Spencer and Hanna (and Ella and Aria) cross some boundaries
Speaking of kids, there are some in that building the girls sort of know, the one with “Rosewood High” printed on the front. Remember that one? Emily and Spencer go there, for some unknown reason, and see the youth group patch from the playground cleanup crew on a girl’s jacket as she bends over the water fountain. And THEN, as Perd Hapley would say, here is the story of a coincidence. The girl’s backpack sports the same scarf Ali described (evidently in very good detail) seeing in the pipe. Spencer bolts to interrogate her, but Emily smartly stops her in time to suggest that Emily be the one to ask questions, as they don’t want to actually scare the girl off.
Although Em gets in a good word up front, even she is not enough to stop Spencer’s bullish investigatory tactics taking over, asking the girl about where she was on Thanksgiving. This spooks the girl (understandable), who shouts at Ella, of all people, on her way down the hall: “You told your daughter! How else would they know?”
After Spence and Em fill her in, Aria confronts her mother about this. It takes about four seconds for Ella to break teacher-student confidentiality and tell her that the girl (Kendra) was at a party the day before Thanksgiving and took some “accidental speed.” She hid in a concrete pipe to come down so she could return to her parents and “pass the cranberries,” which we initially thought was some weird euphemism for drug testing but probably is just about dinner. Anyway, Kendra needs some friends willing to let her crash in a basement, bc that pipe did not look exactly cozy. But maybe anything is cozy if you’re on enough accidental speed.
CALEB!!!!!!!
YOU GUYS CALEB IS THE BEST. He drove up to Ezra’s murdercAbin and hid in the dark, Noel Kahn style, waiting for Fitz and Mike to arrive.
When they do, he confronts them: Aria is scared, he explains correctly, and she gave bad advice (also super correct). Mike needs to go back to Rosewood and testify. Ezra resists. Whoever runs ABC Family’s social media has the nerve to add the hashtag #EzraVsCaleb. AS IF THAT IS EVEN A QUESTION. That’s like #ChocolateVsDiarrhea. #PancakesVsTheActualPlague.
Anyway, while we were busy thinking up worse and worse VS to compare #EzraVsCaleb to, Magic Mike XXX Montgomery got downgraded to “just a kid” who can’t make any decisions for himself. “He’s not made of glass!” Caleb shouts. “HE’S SIXTEEN,” Ezra counters, with the exact same tone and emphasis that he would have used in an argument about Aria’s mental capacity to determine whether or not she should be heavily involved in adult situations, except, you know, with the exact opposite meaning. Caleb wins all our love just for rising above the need to punch Ezra in the face right then and there.
While the “adults” sent “just a kid” Mike out to the car to wait while they duke it out, though, the “kid” up and DROVE AWAY. See, Caleb? That’s what happens when you try to be an adult in Rosewood: you make everything worse. And now “just a kid” Mike has abandoned the stolen car in the middle of the woods because there is an arrow shot clean through the dashboard window (KATNISS EVERDEEN IS A), and it is all your fault.
Ezra and Caleb track Mike through the woods, to an abandoned Pathfinder scout camp of some sort, where they, too, are deluged with arrows. Off on the other side of the camp, Mike runs along, stumbling through the woods. Look for the chairlift, Magic Mike! That will take you nowhere, but maybe A can’t shoot arrows straight up! All things are possible! But alas, A finds him first, macing him and knocking him out with a blow to the head.
Rosewood Police Dept: Still Terrible
At home, Aria is getting worried about Mike (or, if the people who theorize that she is A are right, she is getting worried about Mike maybe having convinced Ezra to turn around so he can testify and ruin all her carefully laid plans, after all). When Ezra won’t answer the cabin landline, she finally calls Andrew for help, who—despite promising to be around 24/7—also doesn’t pick up. HMM.
Up in the mountains, Ezra and Caleb finally find Mike. He’s tied by the neck to a tetherball pole. Where’s Veronica Mars when you need her?
While Ezra is cutting him down, Caleb pauses for literally two seconds to snap a pic as evidence (finally! we all scream at the tv). Then he and Ezra rush Mike back to Rosewood, rather than reporting the crime to the local Allegheny County PD. This proves to be a terrible decision, not just because the Rosewood PD is extremely terrible all the time, but because today they are even more terrible than usual. Tanner, bitchy and infuriatingly gleeful in her aggressive obstruction of justice, questions all aspects of Caleb and Ezra’s story—why did they stop to take a picture? Why didn’t they file a report in Allegheny county? How is it possible that they didn’t see the person who did it at all? How can they even be sure it wasn’t more than one person? Or fewer? How can they be sure it wasn’t a ghost? Hmmm???
The two explain, rather testily (Ezra’s hair getting wilder by the moment, and Caleb doubling over like Tanner’s cheerful refusal to hear them is an actual punch to the gut), that they thought this would help prove that someone is attacking them. But she just doubts them over and over again, with a gd smile on her face. WHAT IS HER GAME??
Drink your sauce
At the Hastings’, Spencer pours herself and Emily large glasses of tomato juice, or maybe sauce. Em asks if Spencer can get Toby to scare Kendra into talking. Spencer’s like “First of all, that’s a bad idea, and second of all, I’ve been a lil’ too busy lately making out with many other dudes to bother with Toby. And let me tell you, it is nice to actually kiss someone who is excited about kissing you back.”
From thoughtful self analysis to quick one-liners, all in the span of a moment (and while suffering the agony of waiting for a solution to an entirely different problem)—we love this show.
They’re interrupted by Kendra at the window—she talked to Ella. And she’s willing to talk to the police.
That is seriously Ali, folks
So Hanna pops into the prison laundry to tell Ali that Spencer and Emily found Kendra. And since the two of them can’t talk there surrounded by all those other prisoners and guards, Ali BURNS HER ARM WITH AN IRON, then helps Hanna CRUSH HER FINGERS in the dryer door, just so they can get to the infirmary to talk together. A blonde Machiavelli in a jumpsuit, everyone.
Ali’s lawyer (Julie, Ross’s girlfriend from season 2 of Friends) sees through this insane plan, and confiscates the note they’re trying to pass: the anagrams from Mona’s mirror, still unsolved (not that they tell the lawyer any of that). Somehow they convince the lawyer to talk with Kendra; although it’s hard for Kendra to get a word in edgewise around Emily and Spencer trying to tell the whole story for her, but the lawyer has heard enough. Kendra was too high on accidental speed to be a credible witness, and she barely heard anything anyway.
(The best part of this scene is imagining how VERONICA HASTINGS would let another lawyer into her kitchen to talk to ANYONE, let alone her own daughter.)
“But that was our only possible witness!” Emily exclaims. “We have literally no one else!” Spencer adds. But nope, wrong again: They’re putting Ali on the stand instead.
LOL Toby’s no longer a cop
It may be late on a school night for someone like Kendra, who has actual Algebra homework she still thinks is worth doing, but Spencer’s no Kendra. And so it is totally normal when Toby shows up at like midnight, dressed in street clothes, and throws his badge down on the Hastings’ breakfast bar.
“I worked so hard to get this,” he growls, “I got my butt kicked [that one whole day] at the academy for it. And all to do everything I could to help the person I love most! And I will not choose between you.”
Spencer misinterprets this at first, and shakingly reminds him that she never asked him to do that. No, he agrees, but Tanner did. In not so many words. And he is going to tell Tanner that if she wants him to choose between Spencer and the badge, she will just have to kick him off the [worst in the world] force.
And then they kiss. And Spencer is as present in her own life as she has ever been. Drama over. Thank god.
Well—almost. Relationship drama may be over, but Toby’s RPD drama is revving into high gear, which he learns the next morning when he arrives at the station (again in street clothes) to talk to Tanner. “You shouldn’t have come in today,” she says, as if the station is not his actual place of employment (is it anyone’s really, though?). “I’m here about Spencer Hastings,” Toby says, continuing this episode’s theme of misinterpreting everyone’s opening statements.
“Welp, too late for her,” Tanner shrugs, grinning her Cheshire grin, fondling the the evidence-bagged Boo Boo’s Creamery ice pick and sundry bloody Mona clothes as they pass from her to the conference room Toby was locked out of earlier in the episode. “Too late for her, too late for her witchy friends, too late for just every girl who has ever tried to keep herself safe in Rosewood. They chose to help the wrong person.” And in a town where possession of a shovel is a felony, being a teenage girl who helped the wrong person is a capitAl crime.
At Least One of these People is A
And so the final day of Mona’s murder trial begins, and with Hanna’s inability to decipher Mona’s anagrams, Mike’s beating, Ezra and Caleb’s failed police report, Toby’s resignation, and Kendra’s unusability, only Ali’s lawyer is left to grasp at the flimsiest of straws in a last ditch effort to prove Ali’s (and by proxy, Hanna’s) innocence and A’s very existence. And so, she puts Ali on the stand.
And has her throw a grapefruit. A grapefruit. This is meant to prove some medical truth about a childhood elbow injury that would have prevented Ali from being able to throw Mona around with the force demonstrated in the heating vent video, but still. We’d have thought that Ross’s girlfriend from Season 2 of Friends would have prepared something a bit more compelling, putting her own client on the stand after weeks of staunchly refusing to do just that.
And because of course A has found a way to help the prosecution, and of course there is some event from Ali’s past that will punch holes in this single argument for the defense, the prosecution pulls out a giant cross-section of a tree trunk emblazoned with Ali’s name and #1 ARCHER EXTRAORDINAIRE PERFECT AIM SO STRONG AND SO FAST [sic]. “Did you attend summer camp as a child?” he asks, receiving a nod in the affirmative. “And did you participate in archery?” Another nod. “And did you beat out every other camper there, in a task that required you to shoot at five targets (FIVE) from the same spot in quick succession?”
Ali is too stricken to answer this out loud, but we know it’s another affirmative. Which fact is confirmed when Emily, Aria and Spencer get simultaneous “Bullseye, bitches!” texts from A, right there in the middle of the courtroom.
And with Ali’s testimony thus derailed, the jury’s deliberation—and the Liars’ waiting—begins. Because she still doesn’t believe in A, Ali’s lawyer is mystified by the prosecution finding that archery award. “That isn’t even the best part of A’s joke, though,” Ali laughs bitterly. Turns out she didn’t even win the award, instead talking her bunkmate into sinking the arrows before Ali even picked up the bow. “Too late to tell the truth now, isn’t it?” Oh, Ali.
On the other side of the building Aria is also waiting. She gets a text from Ezra informing her that Mike is shaken, but safe at home. And when she looks up, Creepy Andrew is standing in the middle of the hall, staring at her unblinkingly. She correctly calls him out on not actually answering his phone after specifically berating her for never calling him for help, but he just laughs it off as yearbook quote-induced idiocy. “Guess my phone died,” he shrugs, then asks her look over his quote and help him edit it down.
“I know you won a bazillion school awards, but I didn’t know you were a PATHFINDER scout,” Aria says, impressed by the list of activities on his yearbook form. Andrew laughs, “Twelve years. You never know when those skills are going to come in handy. You know, like when I need to chase grown men through the woods and shoot arrows at them. Bury a body. Rig up a trap. Basic stuff.”
Remember how he told you in the first act how you somehow never hear the words he is saying to you, Aria? Think about that. Think about that hard.
Meanwhile, Hanna is waiting for the verdict alone in her private prison cell, surrounded by a billion books that haven’t gotten her any closer to solving Mona’s puzzle than she was before.
Ali’s Verdict, Liars’ Fate
And then it is time for jury to return. Ali stares. Her lawyer stares. The Free Liars stare. Ali’s new minion twins in the bench behind the Liars stare. Andrew stares. Detective Tanner and Officer Barry stare. And then the forewoman stands.
“In the case of the Commonwealth vs Alison DiLaurentis, we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree.” It isn’t a surprise at all, but still, Ali is in tears, and the Free Liars in shock and tears.
Across the room, Tanner is smug as fuck, and immediately sends Officer Barry over to intercept the Free Liars before they can even think of moving. And the next thing we know, Aria’s tiny fingers are rolling across ink pads, and all three are being booked. For being teenage girls. Who tried to help expose the truth.
A-tag
A now has all five Liar dolls dressed in orange, the newest three snug in a toy Department of Corrections bus (obviously) rolling its way to a castle, where one of the brunette Liars is removed and closed up behind the drawbridge before the bus moves to the end of line, where a boutonniere of red roses and a tuxedo are waiting.
And all the while, Diana Ross croons Mahogany theme, “Do You Know Where You’re Going To?” at us.
NEXT WEEK
Having successfully removed them from free society, A KIDNAPS ALL THE LIARS FROM JAIL. And throws them into a panopticon?
Oh, also, we find out the identity of Big A. Or something. We dunno. We’ve heard rumors.
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.
