About:
Hi guys. It’s us! We know, the recap’s a week late. But we can explain—we got sucked into a Rosewood time vortex and have lived several lifetimes since we last spoke! Friendships have fractured and healed. People have left town, and then come back into town, and then moved into their golf club, and then been mentioned onscreen but never actually seen. Relationships have fallen apart, and then re-formed, and then fallen apart again (sometimes on chair lifts!). Seasons have (not) changed. People have died. So many people have died.
For those of you without an intricate calendar of plot lines strung up on your wall, a primer: Halloween was in the middle of season 3. This episode was Thanksgiving. That’s three weeks, two seasons, and just a whole mess of stuff.
Emotions have cooled in the week since the finale aired, but in general, this season, and this episode especially, made us more than a little irate. You know why? Because we HAVE WATCHES. And LIVE IN THE WORLD. We also really love this show and take its character arcs (maybe too) seriously. We’re going to make a lot of jokes about Rosewood molasses time in the following recap, but only because they’re so easy to make. But in reality, what started out as a mostly hilarious thing about the way time works in Rosewood has been corrupted to the point that any Major Event and resulting emotional/psychological character change/growth is completely obviated by the literal hours the characters have to have had to squeeze said growth into.
Anyway, the longform of this rant can be found on murdercAbin. In the meantime, recap on!
THIS WEEK’S MVP
How could it be anyone but Mona Vanderwaal? She showed immense self-awareness and growth in apologizing to and helping the Liars, and gave us at least two more opportunities to regard her regarding herself in a mirror. Bonus police bathroom bluesnarfing! (We…may still not totally understand what bluesnarfing is.) Rest in Peace, our queen.
THIS WEEK’S LVP
Tanner, for being such a bloodhound for like a billion episodes, then just dropping the ball into Holbrook’s court the moment the Liar whom she coerced into coming forward comes forward.
BIGGEST SURPRISE/WORST SHOCK
We saw Mona’s murder coming from basically the opening scene. What we did not see coming was her dead, dead, dead staring eye in the trunk of A’s car. That eye makes it v. v. hard for us to come up with a plausible scheme via which she faked her own death, Mona Vanderwaal-style. (But not impossible).
BIGGEST NO-DUH
Rosewood’s official police training program takes all of three hours to complete. Okay, that’s unfair. Three days.
THAT’S ALI, FOLKS
OR IS IT
PREVIOUSLY ON PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
Mona Vanderwaal proved that she was, for all intents and purposes, a minor deity, able to bend time and matter to her will and more than willing to break apart the earth to wreak Loser Mona’s vengeance. Opposite her in the Rosewoodian pantheon was Alison DiLaurentis, Goddess of Lies, Tricks and War—a New World Anansi, Loki, and Ares all rolled into one scary blonde teenaged girl. Caught between the two were their four favored humans: Spencer the Intelligent, Emily the Loyal, Hanna the Brave (née the Admiring), and Aria the Passionate. The goddesses’ enmity seethed and raged for years, played out in (and destroying) the lives and loves of the four human girls. Learning from her early failures, Mona did all she could to temper the hurricane that was Alison’s calculating menace, even slowing time to molasses in her attempt to find a way to extricate Rosewood from Ali’s grasp, but where the Goddess of Lies treads, time only eases the way…
THIS WEEK
(some Meaulnes translations are ours; forgive us any awkwardness!)
The Lost Estate
This was the setting in which the most troubled and most precious days of my life were lived: an abode from which our adventurings flowed out, to flow back again like waves breaking on a lonely headland.
Le Grand Meaulnes
It’s Thanksgiving Day in Rosewood. Despite a complete lack of fall foliage (which is a crime in and of itself) it has actually been the same November on this show for like fourteen seasons now. And because it is a holiday in Rosewood, we open on yet another shot of the girls (minus Spencer, plus Ezra [ugh]) hugging each other and crying after yet another one of their friends/enemies is murdered. And, as a giant bow atop this holiday gift, the three girls are interrupted in their weeping by texts from A reminding them that this is, as usual, all their fault.
Rosewood Interrogation, Part I
When one has committed a grave, impardonable crime, one hopes—at times with bitterness—that there might be, somewhere in the world, people who might pardon [them].
Le Grand Meaulnes
~36 Hours Earlier~
Someone finally realized that Alison Lauren DiLaurentis tells a lot of lies and hooked that girl up to a polygraph machine.
Strangely, the someone who finally thought to hook Ali D up to a lie detector is not our favorite bloodhound, Detective Tanner, but rather “It Always Comes Down To The Teeth” Holbrook. He knows he should wait for Tanner to run Ali’s detector test, but since the last time we saw him like a hundred episodes ago he was plummeting down the rabbit hole that is paperwork for Rosewood, PA area murders, we’ll forgive him for jumping the gun on getting back to real detectiving.
We learn that, in Rosewood anyway, lie detector tests work because when you tell the truth, you’re remembering; when you lie, you’re imagining. Oh, this is gonna go really great for Ali. You see, when you’re her, one just bleeds right into the other. The officer starts off calibrating the machine by asking her to state a few, incontrovertible facts. Like her legal name. And we just can’t help watching that needle skitch across the tape and wondering if perhaps that name is not so incontrovertible after all. (*cough*SECRETTWINS!*cough*) And what a strategy that would be: Lie on the calibration questions, and then you can just make up whatever ol’ shiz you want for the rest of it.
La Grande Mona
I think that she wanted to prove to herself that she’d had reason way back when to have done all the foolishness of which she now speaks, that she had nothing to regret and wasn’t unworthy of the good faith being offered her.
Le Grand Meaulnes
Queen Mona Vanderjesus is at home, surrounded by her (real) doll collection, listening to some French chansons and reading that great YA antecedent to The Great Gatsby, Le Grand Meaulnes (en français, bien sur), when the four Liars show up seeking her help. “Did somebody die?” Mona asks, foreshadowingly, as she descends the stairs. No, they just need her help to learn what “truth” Alison is telling the cops. “Why do you think I can help you?” Mona continues, apprehensive. Well, mostly because of all the hacking and the spying and the “blue scarfing” and the anonymous texting and the general control of all worldly events both natural and manmade. Basically, as Aria says (adoringly, but also foreshadowingly): “Because you’re Mona.”
This open admiration of her particular mad genius coaxes Mona into not only helping them, but also giving a full-on villain’s redemption speech. Holding court over the four seated Liars, Mona explains that Ali’s “Rosewood’s biggest loser” dubbing of her was so convincing that Mona even started to believe it. “Have you ever been so focused on something it takes over everything else, turns you into something that you’re not?”
However, being no. 1 on Ali’s hit list—well, she doesn’t want to draw any more attention by visibly siding with the girls.
Meanwhile, Mama Mona, so ecstatic that her daughter finally has some peers visiting, pops in to inform them that she’s used her own Vanderwaal hyperadrenalized reality to whip up a quadruple batch of New York Times Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies (hint: the secret is the 36 hour rest time for the dough). Spencer thinks she speaks for all the Liars when she says thanks but no thanks, they have a world class war goddess to take down, but HANNA KNOWS WHAT HANNA WANTS, so Mama Marin retreats to the kitchen to box a couple dozen up for the Marin household. The Liars trickle out, but Hanna hangs back for the cookies with Mona.
In the foyer, the other three have a brief Liar Summit in which, using Liar Logic™, they establish that they can’t use Melissa’s video-recorded confession because—best case scenario—it makes Spencer accessory to murder.
Hanna, meanwhile, is at least making sense: not only does she reassure Mama Mona that 36-hour chocolate chip IS still her fave, she confirms (after Mona returns upstairs) that Ali’s homecoming is more terrible than glorious, and that she knows that, whatever else is going on, Mona is afraid of Ali—they all are.
Code A
Mona, eavesdropping from the steps (do NOT call her an amateur) runs right up to her room to call Lucas with a Code A. However, when she arrives at the Brew, expecting a gathering of #MonasArmy, it’s completely empty. Except for Lucas. Good ol’ Loyal Lucas. He tells her that no one showed up, and then just to rub it in he says they’re all calling her “Crazy Mona” now. Man, Alison was much better at cruel nicknames.
Mona looks straight into a mirror and wonders aloud if you can be crazy without knowing it. But she’s not talking about herself, she assures Lucas when he cautions her that if she believes Ali’s lies, they’ll turn true. No—Mona is talking about Alison.
Rosewood’s Hallowed Stalls
Be my friends against the day I shall be on the brink of hell, as I was once before.
Le Grand Meaulnes
And so Mona’s back aboard the Liar train. In the Rosewood High bathroom of a million overheard secrets, Mona explains that Ali volunteered to take the polygraph, which she knows bc she is Mona. Ali would only risk herself if she believed it, the Liars know, to which Mona responds: well, if you believe a lie hard enough, you can make it a truth.
So, the Liars muse, she did something so bad she can’t let herself believe it happened? No: As far as Mona can tell, telling the truth is the only way for Ali to end her game. The combo of the Liars—smart, loyal, admiring, compassionate—were like a perfect Hogwarts school: together they were a real challenge. She can’t play with her “toys” anymore, so she is leveling up, forcing a win by convincing the cops that she is innocent and the girls are the guilty one…guilty of EVERYTHING.
The girls dwell briefly upon the older-than-the-show mystery behind Alison choosing each of them. “I never understood why I was so special,” Aria says, feeling gross. Emily feels even grosser. “She never loved me.” Which, while true, is shocking in the way that Spencer realizing she accused a family member of murder was shocking a few episodes back…as in: not at all shocking.
All of this Ali info is super useful, of course…which, of course, makes the Liars acutely suspicious. Why is Mona helping them, especially after her admission of white hot Ali-fear the night before? Well, she got early acceptance letters to every Ivy League AND Beauxbatons, but first she needs to survive senior year. And if she’s learned anything from her years of spying on the girls, it’s that when they stick together, they survive.
“Uh,” Emily says, bug-eyed, “we are NOT besties now, dude.” But Mona doesn’t want the Liars’ public support—she wants the opposite. No one can know she’s helping them, not even their “bed buddies.” (LOL, but also ew). Mona asks the girls to keep this just between them, and also anyone else who might be lurking in the toilet stalls in this high school restroom. “We just have to… ACT NORMAL.” She doesn’t say “…BITCHES,” but it is obviously heavily implied.
As they walk back into the hallway, the #MonasArmy twins pass the group, and look like they have something gleeful to report.
At this point Catie literally wrote TWINS like 80 times in her notes because she is still desperately hoping that this is foreshadowing that Alison is twins.
Mona’s walk through the halls is stopped short twice—first by running into Mama Mona leaving Principal Hackett’s office, spinning her very own lies about charity drive donations, and second by the sight of ol’ Ali D. herself, surrounded by a whole new set of DoppelLiars. Mona and Ali lock eyes, Ali’s smile poisonously sweet as her name is called over the PA and she saunters lazily toward and past Mona to the principal’s office.
Oh, Mama Mona—you poked the bear!
We Interrupt This #FatalFinale With a Shipping Update, Brought to You by The Holiday Spirit
The four Liars take a temporary break from their own murder show to go to the happy funtimes place where Aria lives year-round. It’s a lovely place, where no one at all is currently being threatened by an evil stalker and terrorized by their ex-best friend who is at this LITERAL MOMENT siccing the police on them, full of holiday treats and also kissing.
Like two passengers in a boat set adrift, they were, in the great wind of winter, two lovers enclosed in happiness.
Le Grand Meaulnes
Beautiful, beautiful Paige comes up to Emily at her locker, and after some fumbling attempts at small talk, Paige just sighs that she’s tired of talking and up and smooches Em right on the lips. Even though this is surely meant as suspicion-bait to make us worry for Paige’s safety (and even though the two girls have MUCH BIGGER ISSUES to work through before going back to happy coupledom), we are glad to see it.
What we are NOT glad to see is Aria and Ezra are making pumpkin pie and bantering about relatives and Thanksgiving and we get it, show, it is THANKSGIVING. EZRA LIKES BAKED GOODS MORE THAN HE LIKES BEING A RESPONSIBLE ADULT. YOU LIKE EZRA MORE THAN YOU LIKE RESPONSIBLE STORYTELLING.
At the Hastings home, Spencer is perhaps playing homage to her almost cop boyfriend by wearing a weird skinny belt not-gun-holster vest thing. It’s like the chestpiece-less shirt taken to THE MAX EXTREME, in that it is sort of a vest but missing all of its relevant parts. But then Toby shows up in uniform and WOOF Spencer can hardly help herself from turning the day into a porno. Eventually their mouths unlock and she tells him how proud is of him for graduating in two whole days. She also has a really lovely gift for him: a watch engraved, “you are my once upon a time.” Cute, but c’mon Spencer. We expected at least some Shakespeare.
Meanwhile, at Emily’s house of ALL CHRISTMAS ALL THE TIME DRINK THIS EGGNOG OR I’LL POUR IT DOWN YOUR THROAT READ MY BOOBS I LOVE CHRISTMAS, Paige is full on back to being Em’s and is decorating the widow’s walk (accurate, probably, eventually).
Caleb is also helping, procuring for us Em’s emotional explanation for her intensity: her dad always comes home for the holidays, so this is the Fields ladies’ thing that gives them holiday cheer. Also, did you know, they’re doing a holiday episode this year. Just read Emily’s boobs.
Aaaand that’s enough of happy funtimes land. There are murders to be had!!
Back in the Rosewood PD
Who can say what obscure forces were then at work in a heart that had never been tamed?
Le Grand Meaulnes
Mona, who is fortunately still in the real world where a lot of bad shit is going down, rolls out her plan to find out what Alison told the cops so the Liars will be prepared.
She sends Lucas ahead of her, and he rolls into the bullpen to ask Officer Barry if this is where he signs up for high school liaison/narc program. And because Barry hasn’t watched every other useless cop get killed in this town despite having been present since episode 1, he walks away from his desk to get the paperwork, leaving a known teen delinquent with ties to Ali D alone near his terminal. Which Lucas, of course, bluesnarfs to Mona in the ladies, where she uses military level tech to break into the files and get the recordings of Ali’s lie sesh. Er, lie DETECTOR sesh. Whatever.
We don’t expect anything GREAT from the RPD’s own network security, so this isn’t a huge surprise. Still…at least they had a password?
Anyway, petition for Lucas to be the new Mona; he looks awesome as a vengeful super spy.
Ali’s House of Lies
Have no confidence in me, she said, I’ve done nothing but madness.
Le Grand Meaulnes
The Liars+Mona convene at Spencer’s, where they watch the video of Ali’s lie (detector) sesh. The officer interrogating her clearly has an agenda, and that is to make her confirm that Spencer was an amphetamine-addled minion of Ali’s who would have done anything—anything!—for Ali’s admiration/to prevent Ali from telling everyone about her Study Aid addiction. Including, apparently, murder Bethany. Ali puts on a hell of a performance, tearing up as she says that she pushed Spencer to such a murdery place in her life, but reiterating that SHE, Alison Lauren DiLaurentis, did not have anything at all to do with Bethany Young’s murder.
Casa DiLaurentis
Holbrook is back this ep, acting super sinister and also dapper. While the Liars are watching Ali’s video, he rolls up to Chief Liar herself, in her own abode, where he walks around awkwardly and “casually” asks about her history with that giant piano that A used for leverage to nearly strangle her to death a few weeks(/days/who even knows, minutes probably) ago. She is vague about her skills (despite our knowledge of them from Jessica’s flashbacks), which makes Catie even more certain this Ali is a twin (C: “not jumping off the twin ship ‘til I DIE”). Holbrook nods, then says how he SHOULD be here with Tanner, but he wanted to keep her updated. On what? Who knows! The shot moves to outside the window before we can hear.
We couldn’t lie to any of your faces, really
Back with the Liars, Mona is explaining that the lie sesh questions say more than Ali’s answers, especially about the police’s current investigation strategy. Namely: was Spencer desperate? “Enough to do what?” Spencer asks.
“…to kill Bethany,” Caleb says, walking through the back door. Mona knew Hanna would spill so brought Caleb+his hax0r/OUIJA skillz in herself. No one else spilled, but Hanna is only fakely apologetic.
After drooling over Mona’s decryption program, Caleb points out that it was something in Bethany’s Radley files that “proved” to the cops why Ali would want Bethany dead. This seems like it would be ALI’S problem, but not the way the RPD works. Nope, whatever these files say, they support the theory that Spencer is the really suspect.
Also a thing that Caleb discovered: Holbrook has issued an affidavit, which Spencer, having grown up in Barrister Barrow, knows is a precursor to an arrest warrant. She wants to call her parents, but Mona asks if she doesn’t first want to figure out what the police think they know, exactly, since they only issued the affidavit AFTER reading Bethany’s Radley files. So, probably, they should go to Radley.
Spencer wants the other Liars to go home—this new terror is on her—but they are, rightfully, aghast. They stick together! That’s what they do! And then they physically circle the wagons, leaving Mona alone to the side, which Caleb notices with maybe even a hint of empathy.
Finally, Spencer says okay—they should go to Radley to gather intel first. Then she looks to Mona: “together.”
The Devil You Know (and Loved)
We said to him: here is your happiness, here is what you spent your whole youth looking for, here is the girl you saw in all your dreams!
Le Grand Meaulnes
How could anyone, pushed by the shoulders like that, avoid a reaction of indecision, then fear, then dismay–how could he resist the temptation to escape?
While everyone with a previous connection to Radley is off increasing their chances that they will be recognized breaking in, Emily is put on Alison deflection duty. La Mentira herself shows up in Emily’s room (LOCKS, Fieldses. LOCKS.) to play a sob story about how Emily has betrayed her. She blames groupthink, but Emily stands firm: she makes her own decisions, and that decision is that Alison is a bitch. Kind to the end, Emily stands up to get Alison a cup of tea, but Ali swipes her phone and reads the updates from Hanna, her heartbroken facade snapping away. “I’m A, aren’t I?” she says, referring to Hanna’s shorthand, but also kinda not. “Are you?” asks Em.
Alison flounces out right as Paige pulls up to see Emily. Paige, seeing Alison climb into a VW bug with the twins (TWINS!), seizes her chance and peels off after them down the street.
Knock-knock-knocking on Radley’s Doors
The terrifying thought came to me, that I had renounced Paradise and was now on my way to trampling the gates of Hell.
Le Grand Meaulnes
The Liars (avec Mona) made a Radley Infiltration Plan, and somehow even with all their SAT-acing, Academic Decathlon-crushing, Yale-acceptance-receiving brains, no one thought to have the actual Radley patients remain, y’know, out of sight. Instead, Mona and Spencer dress up in nurse’s uniforms and march right on in there while Hanna and Caleb pop open security doors via computer program from a nearby car.
Inside, Aria’s planted in the convenient art class, knocking over paints willy-nilly to create distractions/art. Spence and Mona sneak by the front desk, and down to the records department, where they leap right upon Bethany’s records. Mona loads tapes into a duffel bag, while Spencer leafs through a folder. They learn that Jessica DiLaurentis was having an affair with Bethany’s dad (honestly, who WASN’T she doin’ it with?). The girls then offer some explanations—”Like mother, like daughter??” “Did Alison know Bethany??”—that are presumably supposed to mean something to us, but god who really knows. TWINS.
In the car, Caleb finds a note from Hanna’s guidance counselor, and learns that Hanna did “sorta good” at the SATs. Like, the principal-thought-she-cheated good. That’s our girl!
They’re interrupted by Holbrook, who stalks inside, where he finds Aria just to tell her that she’s “made quite a mess of things.” And we don’t think he means the paint that she spilled everywhere. He also asks her a million questions about why she volunteers at Radley. Was it Spencer’s idea?
Speaking of Spencer, she and Mona sneak out the back exit to avoid Holbrook, and a call from Toby finally comes through, all staticky. Cop school apparently doesn’t teach recruits to not text-n-drive, or at least not look at their phones while driving because Toby does precisely the latter and BAM T-BONED.
NO ONE at all saw THAT one coming.
Anyway, he’s not dead, despite the staging of the scene the next morning at the Brew, where the Liars are telling her it wasn’t her fault. Toby—in a wheelchair on the other side of the room, texting like the morose teen e.g. not-cop he actually is—is fine, but in a leg cast that he will be in for a month, so basically the rest of the series.
Paige storms in to tell them her news about following Ali to her own Army in the woods, but they don’t have time to process that legit upsetting news (why would Ali, who has the likes of Cyrus Whatshisface on her side, need a teen army?) because then Holbrook shows up with two uniforms to… arrest Spencer for the murder of Bethany Young.
#RIPMonA
The majority of the time, we die of weakness; we do not die of anything daring.
Le Grand Meaulnes
Thanksgiving Day. D-day.
Chez Vanderwaal, Mama Mona calls Mona away from her Ali/Bethany research to get help packing her car for their trip to visit the family it still seems unlikely Mona really has. After spilling the surprise of a favorite cousin making it home from college after all, Mama V admonishes Mona to head out soon, and not to stay home too late researching her “school project.”
Mona promises, then watches her drive away…while being watched by a hooded black figure across the street. Mona shivers, sensing something is off, and double checks that the door locks behind her when she returns inside. She has barely returned to her research when she finds the nail in the coffin that is Ali’s reason for wanting Bethany dead/definitive proof that Ali is A.
Elated, vindicated, high on her own genius, she drops everything and calls…Aria. For some reason. Who, for some reason, is wearing not one, but TWO different circus tents. Hearing that Mona’s on to something big, Aria drags Ezra away from the several dozen homemade pies he’s just installed on the Montgomery coffee table to go learn everything. We hate everything about that sentence, but it’s what happened.
Unfortch, Mona’s shivers on the street were right on point. While she was distracted reaching Peak Mona, the same (or another, if you believe everything you read on tumblr) black-hooded figure set to work picking the sole lock Mona Vanderwaal kept on her home’s front door, then silently, thoughtfully, ascended the stairs, dropping her hood along the way to reveal long, feathered blonde hair. Mona is in her room, exulting to her own reflection over Alison Dilaurentis’ long-awaited defeat, when she hears a creak from the hall. We only get to see her reaction to the figure that enters, though—not even a sliver of black hoodie in the mirror. But her reaction is enough: sheer terror.
Cut to Aria, Ezra, Hanna and Emily entering through Mona’s cracked front door. Everywhere downstairs, destruction and smeared blood. No answer from upstairs. Distancing us even further from whatever took place chez Vanderwaal those final few hours, the camera draws back again, cutting to a shot of the house from across the street, where we can see nothing, but can hear Hanna’s soul-rending scream like a bell.
Cut again to the front of the Vanderwaal home, now cordoned off with yellow tape and swarming with RPD, news crews, and jaded Rosewood residents. Holbrook ducks under the yellow tape and approaches the journo mob. Despite the lack of a body, he announces, there is enough lost blood at the scene that he can confirm that Mona Vanderwaal’s disappearance is going to be ruled…a homicide.
All the bed buddies are on hand now, holding their freshly weeping Liars—minus Spencer (jail) and Toby (leg jail). No one is on hand to hold the shell-shocked Lucas, though, or the wailing Mama Mona. No one on hand, either, to hold Alison, but that’s okay—she’s sitting pretty, nestled as she is between two official vehicles, smiling coolly at the scene before her.
Eulogy
Our adventure is finished. The winter of this year is as dead as the tomb. Perhaps when we die, perhaps death alone will give us the key to the continuation and end of this failed adventure.
Le Grand Meaulnes
MONAAAAAAAAA, Mona, Mona. You were too good even for this perfectly bananas show, and we loved you fiercely. And you know we’ll spend the hiatus just as you’d want us, meticulously detailing all the ways you could have possibly faked your death. You did it to Ali. We trust you could do it again. And we’ll wait here, biding our time, for some November night seasons and seasons hence, when you rise from the dead.
After all, Jesus did it.
Santa bAby…
Meanwhile, in A-land, black gloved hands prep a snowglobe of the Liars’ faces. Muahahaha…wait. It’s literally just a snowglobe. La la la, sparkly snow. The holidays!
Also demonstrating A’s holiday spirit? The replacing of the baby Jesus figurine in Emily’s front yard with (the above) baby Mona. And the placing of the stolen baby Jesus in A’s trunk…on top of a very stiff, very blank-eyed, very (we are praying NOT) dead Mona Vanderwaal, herself.
Well. See all you Liars in December, for a Very Unmerry Christmas.
NEXT WEEK
Hiatus, bitches! But also, look for our 5A Best in Show post on Friday afternoon. THERE WILL BE POLLS.
And of course, we are, as ever, yours at murdercAbin.
KISSES,
A (lexis & Catie, reunited and it feels so good)
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.
