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Hey everyone! It’s me, Caroline. Let’s get this PLL party started!
Hanna
Man, I really hope that the storyline with Hanna’s mom resolves itself soon, because it’s totally in character and accurate that Hanna would just be screaming at everyone, but it’s not really enjoyable to watch. Anyway, the Liars are trying to figure out if it was, in fact, CeCe who was sleeping in the crawl space before the topic switches to Hanna, who tells the girls that her mom has met with a bunch of other lawyers and they’re all terrible. She yells at Spencer to make her mom take the case again and Spencer has to explain that her mom doesn’t want to compromise Ashley’s defense. Lt. Tanner interrupts them to tell them that they found a muddy shoe in the wreckage at Emily’s place that matches the prints at Wilden’s crime scene and says that she knows the shoe isn’t Emily’s mom’s. Hanna leaves to go throw up lunch or breakfast or whatever meal they were just having.
We all need to take a minute to appreciate what is going on with Aria’s torso.
Spencer tells Hanna not to freak out, but freaking out is Hanna’s thing this season. Spencer says that A is acting out because Mona screwed up the plan to have Ashley framed. They need to put CeCe on Lt. Tanner’s radar, so Emily, Aria and Spencer will investigate the crawl space while Hanna goes shopping with Mrs. DiLaurentis in preparation for the hoedown that Rosewood High is having.
Hanna has herself a little cry by her locker and sees a guy watching her. After Caleb tells her that her mom ordered him to take her to the dance, she opens up her locker and sees an envelope full of money from Diva Dash with a note saying that the money might help her mom. She sees the same guy watching her and she confronts him later after she sees him again at the Brew.
His name is Travis, and he asks her to dance at the hoedown. Hanna resists until Travis explains that Wilden had called him to tow his car out of the lake on the night he was shot. He saw Ashley drive away and then heard the gunshots and saw a girl running through the woods. He panicked and ran and his truck showed up later at his dad’s garage with the envelope full of money, probably to keep him quiet. Hanna tells him he has to go to the police, but apparently his dad and Wilden had bad blood between them (Is there anyone Wilden got along with?) and he’s worried about making his dad look guilty. Hanna eventually convinces him to give a statement to Tanner, but she seems pretty skeptical.
Emily
Emily’s printing out her recommendation from Rumer Willis when Paige comes in. Paige can tell immediately from the recommendation that Rumer was into her and Emily insists that she wasn’t, continuing Emily’s theme this season of missing blindingly obvious signals about people being into her. They talk about the dance and Emily says she’ll let Paige know if she’s going. She goes to see Fitz to ask if the recommendation is TOO glowing and he snaps at her about how some people have real problems. Uh, yeah, like how Emily has no chance of getting a swimming scholarship and a car broke her house? He apologizes and tells her that Maggie left with Malcolm and asks her not to tell Aria, because he wants to tell her first. Oh, Fitz, that is not how best friends work, especially in high school.
She and Aria are hangin’ out under the DiLaurentis house, and Aria is grumbling about Spencer being late because she has the best flashlight. Emily mentions that Aria should call Ezra because he’s going through some stuff. They hear a noise that turns out to be Spencer and find a button.
She really does have the best flashlight.
The girls hear another noise and get confirmation from Hanna that Mrs. DiLaurentis is with her. Someone jabs the world’s longest knitting needle into the holes that Emily really should have told Mrs. DiLaurentis about. Em decides she can’t stay in the house, so Spencer is helping her pack when a bottle of nail polish sends Emily into what might be the first ever flashback of Ali being a good friend. Ali’s telling her to dump her boyfriend because she can do better. When Emily says she doesn’t want to hurt him Ali tells her to stop taking care of everyone but herself. Ali offers to break up with him for her and mentions she’s done it for lots of people, including a friend whose boyfriend ended up pulling a gun on her. Emily tells Spencer about the flashback and wonders if maybe the guy was Wilden and Ali was breaking up with him for CeCe.
The next scene is CeCe, in her very own lair! She’s on the phone asking someone where they are and saying she’s not waiting there forever. Her lair has a red coat, pictures of everyone, but mostly of Ali, along with a bunch of different kinds of tape and some ribbon. She’s the Martha Stewart of blackmail!
Em goes to the hoedown with Spencer and Toby and sees Paige there with some other people. A little later on, Em asks Aria if she’s spoken to Ezra. She starts in with her blah blah blah Jake moving on business and Em tells her that Ezra is losing Malcolm. Aria goes off to talk to Fitz and Em looks for Paige and sees Red Coat instead. She gets Spencer and they run outside after Red Coat. They steal the hayride truck and Spencer’s having trouble driving it when Em sees something rustling in the hay. They get out of the truck and she grabs a hoe and goes to town on the hay. They only find the red coat.
Sometime later, she’s back inside when she sees Paige and tells her she wants to dance with her. They win the award for Line Dance that High School Kids Are Most Likely to Know How to Do.
Spencer
Spencer gets the best lines of the episode, probably as restitution for being trapped in the Toby storyline. A stuck a CD of Toby’s mom singing Any Time in his truck. He wants to call Dr. Palmer and Spencer insists that Palmer isn’t a reliable source. He still says he’s going to visit Palmer and Spencer tells him she’s going snooping with Emily and Aria and not coming with him. A sends Toby a text with an address and a picture of Palmer’s old car. The Liars confront Spencer about her weird behavior and she finally tells them about Toby’s plotline. At the hoedown, she lets it slip to Toby that she told the girls about his mom. He’s furious and says that the text will be the last helpful text he ever gets. Spencer thinks that might be for the best and says that keeping his secret meant that she had to choose between him and her friends. Toby says that she chose them and storms off. Yeah, sorry, Toby. You tend to choose your lifelong besties over your high-school boyfriend who was sneaking around and blackmailing you for a few months.
I just thought you guys should know that skinny-jeans overalls are a thing that exists.
She finds Caleb and asks him to follow Toby because she’s worried that A’s setting him up. Caleb finds Toby trying to break into Palmer’s car and a police car drives up, because of course A was setting him up. The guys seem to get away. And will hopefully now listen to Spencer.
Aria
Jake sort of pops up out of nowhere in the school parking lot to ask if Aria needs a ride home and to offer her the name of a lawyer for Hanna’s mom. She says Ashley already found a lawyer, for some reason, even though she didn’t, and then invites Jake to the dance.
Aria runs into Crazy-Eyed Ezra at the Brew and he’s about to tell her about Malcolm when Jake shows up. Aria introduces them and Ezra gets gone fast. Jake has some savant’s ability to guess shoe sizes and bought Aria cowboy boots, which he helps her try on right in the middle of the place where people eat their food.
Let’s not pretend Aria wouldn’t wear this on a regular day.
Aria and Jake have the world’s longest dance break at the hoedown, which I guess you have to do when Jake was in one of the Step Up movies (Or more than one of them? I haven’t seen them). Jake sees Ezra watching them and goes up to speak to him about their teenaged girlfriend, 20-something man to 20-something man. He tells Ezra to give Aria some space so she can move on.
After Emily tells Aria Fitz’s situation she finds him and apologizes for not answering his calls. Ezra says he has no right to be invading her life with his problems. Aria LOVES being involved in other people’s problems, so she shows up at Ezra’s apartment. He again insists that he doesn’t want to drag her into his mess but she says she isn’t leaving. Ugh, so this is happening again. CeCe is peering in the keyhole and listening in.
Credits
In the tag, A is knitting a tiny sweater for a voodoo doll. There’s one for each of the Liars and Mona and A stabs an unseen doll with a knitting needle.
What’d you guys think of this episode? Was an entire high school being expert line dancers more or less realistic than the Tippi the Bird storyline? Is CeCe trying to cause trouble or maybe trying to solve Ali’s murder? Has Lt. Tanner had it up to here with the shenanigans in Rosewood?
About the Contributor:
This post was written by Caroline.
