About:
THIS WEEK’S MVP
Papa Fields, AKA the only decent human male who has ever entered Rosewood. This week, he climbed up a drainpipe, WITH A HEART CONDITION, to save his daughter from what he probably presumed was a panic attack but was really her almost getting murdered again.
THIS WEEK’S LVP
ABC Family’s promo team, for making us think the Mona+Fitz alliance was going to be the biggest one made this week. (Also, for making us think that Mona+Fitza would MAKE an alliance of any useful sort this week).
BEST REVELATION / BIGGEST SHOCK
Ezra is Board Shorts. We all but knew that. But the way they revealed it?
BIGGEST NO-DUH
PREVIOUSLY ON PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
Em’s car shut down in the middle of the woods with all four Liars inside. Hanna made a move on Travis and he (kind of) responded chivalrously saying she should give her Caleb grieving period a bit more time. A new detective came to town to further confuse those of us who still have trouble telling all the generic white men on this show apart. Spencer ruined Emily’s reunion with Ali, and Emily may never forgive her.
THE LIAR-BY-LIAR
ARIA
Aria has nothing whatsoever to do with A, so naturally she is Em’s only friend after the big falling out with Spencer over Ali/A last week. Returning home from a chick flick night, the two find Mike throwing a rager. Remember how Aria has a brother? Aria totally does. Mostly. However, in her fluster at resuming the role of Sister, she forgets how parties work and uses the actual reason of “I don’t want to spend the next two days peeling pepperoni off the walls” to shut Mike and his fun down. Then: Surprise!! MONA is there. In Aria’s room. She was invited, she says. She has some real friends, she says. Aria is incandescent.
You know that person (maybe you) who has a really hard time getting motivated and just sits around eating cake and snuggling pets and watching television until that moment when EVERYTHING MUST HAPPEN AND IT MUST HAPPEN NOW? Well, that was Aria this week. After last week’s cake and kisses and general warm feelings, Aria has realized she is ANGRY and she needs to confront EVERYONE. MIKE. MONA. EZRA. MAGGIE. JESSE.
Wait. Jesse?
Yes. Didn’t you hear (Mike asks)? There’s a new school counselor running the support group he and Mona met in, and “he’s actually pretty cool.” We know he’s cool because he looks like this, his office has a wall of color-coded M&M dispensers, and he suggests Aria use roller derby as an outlet for her sudden wells of anger (we’d totally watch that) (RIP Bunheads).
But we’re jumping ahead, because first Aria has to confront Mike re: Mona.
Morning, Montgomery household: Aria doesn’t want to be a hardass, but Mona tried to destroy the Montgomerys’ lives! She’s the root of all their troubles! In a moment of real maturity, Mike points out HE’S made some trouble in the past he’d hope people could believe he’s moved beyond, and also that it was their parents that destroyed their parents’ marriage; Mona was just the messenger.
School, Fitz’s classroom: Maggie’s in town, apparently to get out of her lease and NOT to have a knockout barrister brawl over Malcolm. Still, Aria catches the two adults having a mildly heated conversation, and she, recalling Ezra’s lawyer lies from last week, lays in on him for…talking to her? Ezra snaps at her that it isn’t worth flying off the handle. That hypocrite.
School, Courtyard of Eternal Summer: Aria catches Mona flirting with Mike. “Is it that he shares my DNA that turns you on, or the fact you can access my room whenever you want?” Mona is DONE with Aria’s self-centered noise and the Liars’ yo-yoing of her affections. She hasn’t (probably) done anything to the Liars since helping save Ashley from jail. All she wanted all along was to be INCLUDED, and in Mona’s imagination Aria’s three-season-old hurt (also: the show’s budget) is all that’s keeping that from happening.
Aria’s final confrontation is with Maggie as she’s trying to fit her last box of Rosewood geegaws through the window of her car. Aria calls her nasty and totally confuses where Seattle is in relation to Pennsylvania on a map. Then she knocks the box from Maggie’s hands, looks horrified, and runs off…
…to exposit to Em about how she’s now made everything even worse for Ezra. “Yeah but, you guys aren’t involved anymore, right, so…” But before Aria can answer, they spy Mona and Mike full on macking in the Rosewood sunshine, and in the best cutaway of the week, that moment is overdubbed by the hacking and spitting soundtrack from Hanna’s dentist appointment. YES.
EMILY
Emily is still mad at Spencer (and taking it out on smooching kids at Mike’s party), but Rosewood’s Best Dad is home from the army to take care of her. He apologizes for not being around after A crashed a car into their house and also those billion times she almost was murdered and why has she stopped eating and sleeping and looking people in the eye? JUST SENIOR YEAR, DAD. Anyway the car that was shut down remotely is fine, totally fine, and she should take it to school because rain.
Papa Fields, worried, heads to Rosewood High and interrupts Fitz’s daily Alison-stalking to see if he might be willing to help Emily focus and get “back on track.” “I could give her an extracurricular project,” Fitz offers, “something she could really throw herself into.” For example, a large pit. But also, the spring play!
Emily somehow STILL sleeps with her window open. When a noise awakens her, she grabs a pair of scissors and almost stabs her dad in the face. He shouts and she screams and then she’s crying and apologizing, but she’s not paranoid! The camera draws back and we see a dusty handprint on the sill outside her window…
Late the next night, Emily is making copies for Murder Play in a deserted Rosewood High. It is dark and creepy and shadows are looming and beams are creaking every old place. Suddenly the door to the classroom slams shut and the intercom starts playing staticky rage-metal. Em calls her dad in a panic, pleading with him to come pick her up at the school. Out in the hall, a flashing sign suddenly reads “ACT NORMAL, BITCH!” The lights flicker as Emily darts back into the copy room and barricades herself inside. Her dad pulls up and she has to break a window to get his attention. As a hooded figure tries to get in the door to the classroom, Papa Fields heroically climbs straight up a drainpipe, opens the window from the outside, and helps Emily climb down. When they’re safe on the ground again, he collapses, and we swear to Aria’s crazy pants if one more terrible thing happens to someone Emily loves we are SO DONE.
Papa Fields doesn’t die (ENORMOUS SIGH OF RELIEF), but being strapped on an ambulance stretcher does not exactly an encouraging image make. He explains to Emily that he’s actually home because he’s been having some health issues with his heart so the army put him on medical leave. Emily is beside herself, but he gently reassures her that he’s not going anywhere.
SPENCER
Spencer has thrown her guilt over the Em/Ali blowup into spending every waking moment poring over her photographs of Ali’s diary, trying to figure out what Ali meant by “squiggle squiggle maybe-w?”
Spencer’s parents are off at Barrister Camp, so she is missing their supportive guidan-hahahahaha sorry we could not even finish that sentence. Spencer’s parents don’t care what she does, so she stays up all night and looks like a zombie the next day at school. She runs into Academic Decathlon Andrew in the hall, who says he has also been up all night studying but looks far more chipper. When he reminds her of their imminent physics exam, she goes totally white.
At Spencer’s sultry request, Andrew covers for her in class and later brings his notes by her bedroom. The scientist among us (Catie) feels compelled to note that the sentence he reads aloud is NEWTON’S FIRST LAW OF MOTION. So either this show needs some new AP curriculum advisors (WE VOLUNTEER) or Spence has some serious catching up to do. Anyway, Spence then advances flirtatiously on Andrew and…asks him to share his Adderall scrip. He relents, because have you seen Troian Bellisario’s face? (/sideboob?).
Amped on uppers (don’t do drugs without a prescription, guys!), she sets to deciphering Ali’s story about being with an older guy at a college bar. We see a flashback/dramatic interpretation of the story acted out by Ali and a fuzzy black shape with Spencer’s voice. It’s delightfully weird. Fuzzy Shape mansplains Ali some things about “great literature” that would make an Aria Montgomery (ahem) swoon and then takes a bite of his boysenberry pie, washing it down with beer. Ali comments on the weird combination, then threatens to write a terrible short story about it. Fuzzy Shape is turned on by pubescent creative writers (AHEM, and also EW) so they make out.
4 AM. Spencer crashes her way into Hanna’s bedroom. “You’re lucky my mom finished her box of chardonnay,” Hanna grumbles, and that is not even a joke line we made up. This show is everything. Spencer yelps excitedly about the lead she’s found in Ali’s diary, and says they have to go to this college bar.
They make plans to do their respective sleuthing alone, so the next afternoon Spencer goes solo to the college bar where, SURPRISE (not), she runs into Fitz. He is, wouldn’t ya know, chowing down on some boysenberry pie, but leaves quickly once Spencer comes in. A moment later the waitress brings by the bottle of beer he ordered, and Spencer’s brain siren goes off.
We see the scene between Ali and Fuzzy Shape again, but this time it’s Ezra sitting across from her, and he’s drinking…BOARD SHORTS ALE.
HANNA
Hanna has really upped her Scooby game this week. Also she’s on her own because Em is pissed that Hanna ISN’T pissed at Spencer about the Ali blow-up, so she’s been frozen out. To which Hanna has responded by reading not one but THREE mystery novels. “Is Travis reading them to you??” Spence asks incredulously. Hanna’s taking a break from Travis/boys, thank you very much. And if the Liars want to figure out who the “random” is in Ali’s tomb, they should study more Patterson.
Later! Hanna is not at school because who needs school when there are so many mysteries to read?! She is browsing the used murder book rack and its multiple copies of Secret Revenge. New Detective Whose Name We Cannot Remember And Can’t Be Bothered To Look Up moseys over and apologizes for the business with Hanna’s mom, while also vaguely hitting on her. Then he hands her another book and purrs, “get this, you won’t regret it.” It’s…gross.
When Hanna finally rolls up to school to hear what Papa Fields learned about (A’s sabotage of) Em’s car, Em declares she’s done sleuthing; every rock they turn over just gets picked up by A and hurled at Alison/her. “Come to the Brew later and you can watch A program the cappuccino machine to melt off my face.” “But…mystery strategy!” Hanna pipes. “The sociopathic mind!” To which Em snaps, “Ugh Hanna please stop reading, you’re not a detective.”
Don’t you DARE stop, Hanna, don’t you dare.
Hanna DOES go to the Brew later, where the threat is not the cappuccino machine but flirty New Detective. He is aghast to learn that Hanna reads the end of mysteries first. We are delighted she pronounces fjords “fuh-jhords.” Anyway, why read the endings first, New Detective? Because Hanna has spent the past two years being stalked by a faceless cyberterrorist and goddamnit she NEEDS TO KNOW WHAT CLUES TO LOOK FOR. New Detective exhorts her to at least read the middle of this one for the twist with the dental records. Because “it always comes down to teeth in the end, doesn’t it?”
Hanna’s reading has been paying off. While Spence is busy not sleeping and sexual predatoring her way into a handful of No Doz to get through Ali’s diary, Hanna has managed to come up with a neat plan of her own, and all in time to don her silk pajamas and get a good night’s sleep. The plan? Spycraft her way through the dentist’s office to get patient sign-in records from the September Ali went missing.
It sounds thin, but considering A sneaks in to gas her, stick her gums with novocaine, and insert the world’s scariest fortune in between her molars all in order to steal those pages? She must have actually been on to something.
In the best twist of the night, Hanna breezes through Aria’s door at the same moment the other three have gathered to console Em about her father. “Thank god,” Hanna says. As in, thank god you’re all here. As in, I woke up at the Horror Dentist and thought, man, that was a nightmare. I should probably go to Aria’s. Aria is for sure the best person to go to when there’s been trouble. Aria Montgomery. Yep, her.
Oh, and the real best moment of the night: the girls finally come back together to forgive (Spencer’s voice when she asks Em, “please don’t send me away” right before they hug it out would break a giant’s heart), share info, and read A’s embedded molar threat:
Back in his lair, A shreds the dental office sign in sheets and adds them to a pile of shredded documents on a round tray. His gloved hands move the tray across the room and slip it into… the bottom of TIPPI THE BIRD’S CAGE, who whistles and says “Hey, Board Shorts” as the camera pans over a wall map of the coast with WILDEN’S YACHT and CAPE MAY marked out in red ink.
This show.
Is everything.
NEXT WEEK
Spencer follows Ezra down the rAbbit hole and risks a return trip to Radley.
Until then,
Kisses
A(lexis and Catie)
As always: tumblr for extra jokes, theories in the comments! We’ve got some DOOZIES.
About the Contributor:
Catie grew up in Denver, Colorado, where she often stayed up past her bedtime reading with a flashlight and once sent homemade Hogwarts acceptance letters to her friends. Now an adult, she still loves books and TV meant for teens, but is grateful to no longer have a bedtime.
