About:
Welcome back, Liars! We have missed you SO MUCH. Almost as much as we have missed…
THIS WEEK’S MVP
It wasn’t exactly a tight race, but even if every other character wasn’t at peak boneheadedness Hanna would still be our MVP. She’s sweet to her friends; she’s thoughtful to Mona’s mom; and she still makes the supernaturally (rimshot) good decision to rope Grunwald in for the Mona hunt, despite her own very clearly stated need to “take a step back from the Mona of it all.”
THIS WEEK’S LVP
On the one hand, Aria, for losing Mona’s hard drive so quickly and neatly. But on the other hand, CALEB, for (patronizingly/idiotically) giving it to Aria Other Show in the first place.
Also everyone else on the dang streets of Rosewood, like for example:
- Emily, for picking Aria over Paige.
- Spencer, for deciding that planting false evidence to frame Alison for a crime is the best way to get herself exonerated for a completely separate crime.
- Jason, for (initially) protecting the lying sister he’s historically been afraid of over the crying half-sister he can’t seem to make up his mind about hating.
- Ezra, for existing.
BEST SURPRISE/BIGGEST SHOCK
Aria pulls a r(A)pe whistle on Alison. This is our favorite thing that Aria has ever done on this show.
(As tumblr has reminded us, this is the very same whistle that Mona gave her early in season 5:
…which in itself was a callback to Spencer’s “you know how to whistle” line in the Halloween Train episode, when she was vamping as Lauren Bacall. Heart eyes, show—heart eyes.)
BIGGEST NO-DUH
Mike does not want to talk about the loss of his Great First Love with her former teacher/stalker/blackmailer. CORRECT, MIKE. Aria: take notes.
THAT’S ALI, FOLKS
Remember that really amazing ski trip where pre-teen Ali manipulated her enitre family into just hating each other so immensely they could hardly even manage pained smiles for a single family photo? Ah, good times. Good times.
PREVIOUSLY ON PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
Alexis’ exact notes:
previously mona was murdred. today detective curly hair
We do a lot of clean-up for you guys, is what we’re saying.
Anyway, previously Mona Our Queen was presumably bludgeoned to death in her own home before A(lison) stashed her lifeless corpse in a mystery car trunk and replaced the church’s plastic baby Jesus with a plastic baby Mona. Is she really dead? Who knows! (NO.) Was it really Ali who killed her? Who knows! (Also almost certainly No.) What we do know is that that sure was a lot of blood left behind for someone to walk away alive from. Also a thing we know: Spencer has been framed by A/Wilden Beyond the Grave to take the fall for Bethany Young’s murder. You know: the escaped Radley patient who may or may not have been Jessica DiLaurentis’ secret half daughter who may or may not have fallen prey to Ali’s/Cece’s insane jealousy. It all comes back to Radley.
Also: LOL, Toby’s a Cop
THIS WEEK
It is Three Months Later, which means our Liars are now aged approximately 25 given how time progresses in Rosewood (one of our friends has a four hours daylight/four hours dark theory that we find pretty compelling, given the events of seasons 3B-5A). What did our Liars spend those three months doing? Well, probably scrambling their brains trying to make up enough credit hours to get into college for one. But also saving up enough energy to return to their regular life programming of all terror, all the time. Welcome back, show!
Mona, We Hardly Knew Ye
Of course the biggest story of the episode (and who are we kidding—our lives) is Mona Vanderwaal’s death and body-less funeral. The Liars are of course at the memorial service and cenotaph burial, because where goes Hanna, so go they. And besides, they had those fancy new funeral weeds they had to show off SOMEWHERE.
Speaking of weeds, Alison crashes the funeral, apparently trying to out-funeral fashion the other Liars by coming dressed as one of the mourning leis everyone INVITED is wearing around their necks. She’s just trying to be “respectful.” You know, by rolling up to Mona’s mom at the back of the open, empty hearse to declare once more that she definitely did not kill the poor woman’s daughter. Mona’s mom, in true Vanderwaal fashion, respects Alison right back. Respects her so hard.
Because she is perfect, Hanna sticks around after the funeral reception to not only help with the dishes, but to comfort Mama V, who is breaking down in Mona’s bedroom over the utter silliness of holding a funeral for a daughter whose body is still missing and murder hasn’t been solved. Rightly, Hanna responds that the funeral wasn’t silly at all—that they are all just trying to find some closure, and the funeral probably did that for a lot of people. For being such a kind smarty, Hanna is gifted the least creepy of Mona’s many lifelike toys—a tiny stuffed dog (and also our undying admiration).
…but Mike Did (Know Mona)
The most important lesson that we and the Liars have needed four and a half seasons to absorb is that, by their own designs, no one really ever knew Ali OR Mona. The first three seasons were taken up with the Liars trying to tease out who Ali really was, and still coming up so frighteningly short that not even the simple “she’s dead” proved to be true. And now they find themselves in the same position with Mona, who was never really a churchmouse, or ditzy bff, or psychotic killer, or true enemy. Her cipher keys are so unique and unknowable that Caleb can’t even fathom where to start to untangle them on her hard drive.
But one person DID know Mona, it turns out (just like one person—Cece—always knew Ali): Mike. And it takes most of the episode for Aria to allow for this to be the reason for his lack of evident grieving for his lost girlfriend.
(Sidebar: We’re not quite sure why Ezra, whose help Aria originally enlists, is so invested in Mike’s emotional development. Rosewood High already has a hip young guidance counselor, Fitzie! Why do you caaaaaare??? Are you an emotional terrorist who murdered Mona just so you could ruin many other peoples’ lives too? We can only hope. But please leave the conspiracy theorist-ing to us. We’re also not quite sure why Ezra is suddenly a construction worker, re-doing the Brew, or why he’s hired Mike as his assistant. Basically everything in this storyline makes no sense, but what else is new in Rosewood!)
Aria eventually draws Mike out of his shell by—shocker—realizing that not everything is about her. She was so wrapped up in trying to break up Mona and Mike, she explains to him after breaking the news about Ali’s [spoiler], that she forgot to ever ask Mike what he saw in Mona. And what he saw is what we all saw: she was the mother-effing queen.
So she didn’t have him fooled after all. She found someone who saw her terrorism of his sister as more or less reasonable, and super attractive. This revelation is so completely in-character for Mike “Him?” Montgomery; we approve.
(We also pray that his breakdown after Aria leaves the room is him grieving not for a DEAD girlfriend, but for one on the lam who he spent months slowly saving blood from to help her fake her own death and escape. Now THAT would be character affirming!)
Oberlin?? More Like Oberl-OUT
Speaking of Aria, our girl was rejected by Lena Dunham’s own alma mater Oberlin College, and frankly, that’s probably good news. Can you even imagine what Aria plus Oberlin would be like?? Apparently she could, because she nailed that interview! And when your life is a constant horror movie run by an omnipotent technoterrorist sometimes you get a bit paranoid. So she enlists white hat hacker Caleb’s help in breaking into Oberlin’s website to find out if she was rejected because she sewed her application essay into a kicky blouse halfway through, or because of A.
Caleb is very patronizing at first. “Aria, tiny lady baby,” he says, sitting in his new apartment that looks eerily like the set for Ftiz’s place, “your itty bitty hands cannot possibly reach all of these keys, and besides, doing a sudoku once does not a l33t coder make.” And then he becomes very stupid, and decides to just teach her lots of hacking by…giving her Mona’s army-grade super-duper-encrypted laptop. The laptop he’s been working day and night to crack, throwing decryption algorithms at it like rice at a wedding.
Aria, of course, loses the laptop almost immediately.
Finding Mona
Caleb should perhaps be allowed some slack for his severe oversight in logic handing over Mona’s hard drive to Aria, as he is a ghost. Remember Raven5wood?? No one else does, except Hanna, who decides to call neighborhood psychic Mrs. Grunwald to help track down Mona’s remains.
She meets Grunwald at Mona’s tomb, which sports the inscription “THE LAST OF YOUR KISSES WAS EVER THE SWEETEST.” Very appropriate for our dear departed bookworm. Grunwald takes the stuffed dog from Hanna, and begins having a vision. The dog’s name is Benji. Great! Oh, and Mona is trapped in the darkness, away from Rosewood. She’s having a difficult time passing on.
Also a thing Grunwald does before leaving Rosewood is corner Ali on the street, grasp her wrists, and stare into her very soul. The psychic’s conclusion? Ali has a soul in need of prayer. Anything else, the Grunwald is keeping zipped up tight.
Emily Saves Spencer (Sort Of)
As far-fetched as calling a psychic from a neighboring ghost town is, Hanna’s plan was still better than Emily and Spencer’s. Which is? Plant Ali’s hair at Mona’s house, so that Alison is convicted for killing Mona, thus saving Spencer. Because, according to LiarLogic(TM), if they “prove” that Alison killed Mona, it will also “prove” that… Spencer didn’t kill Bethany? Through Science? Sure.
The pressure is on, because Bethany’s parents are petitioning the court to have Spencer’s bail revoked, meaning back to the clink. And this time they might be successful, despite heated protestations by the Lawyers Hastings, because certain key evidence against her is finally being made public. Said evidence? Jessica DiLaurentis’ eyewitness testimony that Spencer and a blonde girl in Ali’s clothes were arguing in the yard that fateful Labor Day so many years back. BUT SHE’S DEAD you may exclaim. True enough: this evidence was hidden carefully in Wily Wilden’s files and has only just been unearthed by Detective Taylor, who is the one expositing all this new information to beat cop Toby at Rosewood PD HQ. Toby responds to these revelations with something complicated about Radley and a cover-up and how Wilden was corrupt so someone paid him to keep Jessica’s testimony secret and the Radley board and Jessica’s infidelity and Bethany’s dad and and and our poor tired brains just can’t follow it all.
Just remember: Toby’s a cop!
Anyway. Back to Emily and Spencer’s Super Good Idea. To be fair, it started out a tad less illegal, although it still made zero sense: convince Jason to renege on his half of Alison’s Thanksgiving (Mona-murder-time) alibi, which will discredit her plan to discredit Spencer…somehow.
They know Ali left her family’s celebration for a few hours that day (HOW), but her dad and Jason swear to the cops that she was there the whole time. When Spencer and Emily stop by the DiLaurentis house to get Jason to come around to the idea that his sister dearest is a major psycho murderess, they’re not so successful at first. It should be obvious to them that he has been hypnotized, since he thinks he needs to tell Emily, who lived in the house for several months, and was his sister’s BFF/secret girlfriend before even that, where the kitchen is, but Spencer is fixated on the mystery of why her own half-brother won’t even look at her, and Emily has her eyes on a different prize: Alison’s hairbrush.
Hairbrush? Spencer asks incredulously, staring at Emily’s prize in her living room five minutes later. YEP.
Spencer: “Creating false evidence is an Actual Crime!”
Emily: “You’re being charged with an Actual Murder!”
(That is the Actual Dialogue. THANK YOU PLL.) And with that, Operation: Have A Girl Who Is Out On Bail Illegally Plant DNA At An Active Crime Scene begins!!
Despite the sheer idiocy of this plan, luck is on the two girls’ side, because when they sneak into Mona’s house to plant the hair (white archival gloves, tight ballerina buns and everything!), they find instead a giant spy camera hidden in a vent. Score! Em and Spence cajole Hanna into subtly suggesting to Mona’s mom that there may be cameras in the house, and lo and behold, we have actual video footage of Mona’s murder.
And, oof, guys. It’s violent. There’s a lot of dramatic shenanigans on this show, and people are practically killed or actually killed approximately once every fifteen minutes, but this felt more… real, somehow. To see Mona being shoved around like a doll, to see her clawing at the floor and shrieking… it’s a lot. RIP, and please don’t hurt other people.
In the meantime, Jason—who was dragged into an interrogation room by Tanner to watch Mona’s horrific beating by a blonde stranger on loop—has been doing some serious thinking, and he has decided that he’s not so cool with his sister being a horrible person after all. He recants his testimony providing her alibi for Mona’s murder, and says that the blonde girl on the video seen smashing Mona’s head into the floor could very well be his sister. And so, Alison? Meet handcuffs. And Liars? Meet Ali’s dire prediction.
Later that night, well after Ali should have been fully processed into Rosewood’s stellar penal system, Detective Tanner and Toby and Papa Hastings are waiting for Spencer to return from the latest of her many Liar Summits, and they look grim. They break the news to her that Alison’s arrest for Mona’s murder led to a review of key pieces of evidence, which led them to think that…Alison killed Bethany, too! So Spencer’s off the hook! And even though none of it made sense OR went according to plan, their plan… worked! We’re just as surprised as you (and Spencer) are.
Leaving On A Jet Paige
Paige’s parents hold true to their promise to bust their daughter out of the Rosewood Hellmouth at the end of “spring quarter” (now, apparently). She and Emily enjoy several moony, bittersweet goodbyes, and stubborn Em believes to the end that maybe they can convince the McCullerses to change their mind. But, in the airport, at the gate, it’s Paige who finally admits that she wants to leave too. She doesn’t want to leave Emily, of course, and she knows it’s going to be hard. But she’s tired of fighting, and spending all her energy being afraid. In California, she’ll be able to just live. And even Emily can’t disagree that that is the right decision, when confronted by Aria’s dumb consolation (“she should have stayed here where it is safe!”) later.
We’ll miss you, McCullers. You were the very best of bedbuddies.
Escape Velocity
The Core Four sit outside in the spring darkness, contemplating Paige’s departure. “Maybe,” says Spencer, “we should all get out of here.” And it’s as if they’re all just realized that there is a world beyond the timeless chaotic vortex that is Rosewood. Good timing, indeed, with college acceptance letters rolling in! But now that Alison—and thus A—is in jail (like, super in jail. like, a new addition to OITNB in jail)… wait, what’s that? A giant fireworks display culminating in an enormous flaming A stretching over the whole town?
Whoops. Better luck next time, girls.
NEXT TIME
Everyone is just literally the dumbest. We can’t wait!
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.
