About:
Catie’s back from Greece! Although she resents Real Life for not just being nap breaks punctuated by trips to the beach, she is glad that it has much more wifi. Alexis is also glad, because she TOTALLY SLACKED OFF this week and left most of the work to her missing (writing) half. Neither of us are glad to lose Rosemary’s wry touch, though, so look for her hilarious insights in the comments! WE will be. For sure the MVP of our real lives these past few weeks!
THIS WEEK’S MVP
Pam Fields, for being a stand-up mother—and not just by Rosewood standards. From insightfully recognizing that Emily’s relationship with Alison (pre-disappearance) might have been a something more than “just friends,” to gently pointing out that Ali is probably still a liar and Emily should take caution, to just showing up at school for an ordinary conference with one of Emily’s teachers, Pam spends the entire episode demonstrating her quiet, but iron-solid, support for her daughter.
THIS WEEK’S LVP
Caleb Rivers, resident (OR IS HE)(HE IS)(HE IS JUST NOT SO MUCH INTO “COMMITTING” [TO RESIDENCY]) Drunk Ghost and General Dingus.
BIGGEST SHOCK/BEST REVEAL
*EXPLOSIONS!!!* Oh wait, that was just in the “previously on” from last week. Nothing terribly shocking happened this week, but the excitement from 100 and 101 lingers on. We guess it is kind of shocking that after two major explosions—blasts that FLIPPED CARS—the Cavanaugh house is still mostly standing.
BIGGEST NO-DUH
Spencer borrows one of Ezra’s stalking cams, sets it up to spy on Melissa, and then uses it to reveal that after Melissa left the house headed for the barn, she ACTUALLY WENT TO…the barn. Which Spencer can see from the window. Good job, spy equipment! You managed to make Spencer as clever as an Ezra Fitz. GREAT ACCOMPLISHMENT.
PREVIOUSLY ON PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
*EXPLOSIONS!!!!!* A’s back! *MOOOOOREEEE EXPLOSIONS!!!!!!*
Also: Just so much stuff. Paige ratted out Mona’s army. Eddie Lamb, the Radley orderly Spencer befriended, left Ezra a not-so-subtle sketch of Mrs. DiLaurentis being stabbed by a demon, drawn by Actual Dead Girl (and ex-Radley patient) Bethany Young. [Blank space to indicate that we feel obliged to tell you that Ezra and Aria hooked up again although we would prefer not to dwell on it.] Caleb’s back! (Wait—is Caleb A?) Mona and Ali mutually terrorized each other. Sydney “Lips” Driscoll is a be-sunglassed Friend of Jenna (FOJ), and the pair plus MonA met to plot dastardly deeds and make us all feel bad about our hair. Alison was almost strangled.
Guys. That was only the previouslies.
THIS WEEK
The Meeting of the Liars, Part I
Pam “Saint Mother” Fields has actually shown up at Rosewood High (which, frankly, is more than we can say for all of the students except Noel Kahn, apparently ) to meet with the one teacher who wouldn’t schedule a skype meeting with her when she was in Texas. He’s new, Em confirms, and very old school. Won’t even use an electric pencil sharpener. (Old school, Em, or a veteran of one of A’s old games? None of you girls should be using electric pencil sharpeners anymore, either, knowing A’s technological prowess.) Pam tells Em that she wants to plan a dinner party for Ali and the other girls, for tonight! To…let Alison know that if she needs an ear attached to an adult, one is available. Yes, that sounds believable.
The Liars gather in the school bathroom for an expository summit, mostly to discuss how Ali is suspicious of everyone, literally everyone–including, apparently, Pam “Just Trying Her Best” Fields. Also all of her friends: she knows she doesn’t have Hanna at all, never really had Spencer, only has Aria because Aria can’t see past her own Aria problems, and—frankly—doesn’t even have herself. All Ali kinda has is Emily, and the way she MILKS that kinda?
Then Sydney Driscoll comes busting out of the middle stall like a regular one-woman Liars Ambush, all lippy smiles and what a lovely strangle-bruise-hiding scarf you have, Alison, and what lovely friends you have, Alison, and what a lovely lying skinsuit you have, Alison.
Ah, it’s hard to be Ali.
We Kinda Want Pam Fields To Be Our Mom, Too
Trained to follow the Meanest Fairest of them All, Emily follows Sydney out of Ambush Bathroom to talk swim-shop. Sydney is telling her all the gory details surrounding the rat Paige found in her swim locker when Mona ambles down the hall. Never one to let a good Rage Against the Mona go un-raged, Em stalks over to demand just what in the hell Mona might know about that. “The rat?” Mona asks, wide-eyed and innocent. Makes her urk just to think about it! “And a dead rat has BOY written all over it, don’t you think?” For example, NOEL KAHN, whose folder is so prominently displayed under your arm? Emily tries. Oh no, not the saintly Noel Kahn. Mona just borrowed some of his notes, seeing as what a good student he is, going to school all the time from his fancy NYC apartment. Thing is, we’d totally buy that that being the case, he’d STILL have a more solid record of attendance than any of our Liars. You should have called Noel for your homework last week, Spence!
At home, Emily asks her mom why having a last-minute dinner party with Ali was so essential. Well, Pam “I Care About You” Fields just wanted to see the two of them together, having realized that—with the blessing of hindsight—maybe Em had thought of Ali as more than just a friend before she left. “Left.” As in, voluntarily. Verrrrrry nice choice of words, there, oh Weekly MVP.
Emily runs out to buy some impromptu dinner party groceries, and runs into Mona on her way home, who is poised outside the Cavanaugh destruction, surveying her kingdom.
Emily wonders what Mona is doing there, so far from her neighborhood. PLEASE. NOTHING is far from ANY neighborhood in Rosewood. Also, nothing is far for Mona and her adrenalized hyperreality. Mona’s speech about the transience of reality is amazing, but Emily barely hears it: she just wants to make sure that Mona knows that if Em finds out it was Mona or any of her Army behind the rat in Paige’s locker, so help her…
“No no no no no, Emily of the honeybadger loyalty,” Mona interrupts. “No. You can call me a lot of names, but don’t call me an amateur. A dead rat? Really?? Anyway. Give my love to Alison!”
Dinner party time. And we need to take a time out for a minute to demand why in the WORLD would Pam “Half-A-Joint Police” Fields have a mini-bar on her porch for a dinner party that is specifically and uniquely for a group of teenagers? We are hard-pressed to believe Pam Fields would even keep her bar stash unlocked save for when she and Papa Fields are alone after Emily has gone to bed. This showing? This is a slap in the face of character consistency. But we will forgive it, because of every other gold nugget of wisdom she rains down the rest of the episode. Also, because it gives us Hanna not giving TWO TWITS about Ali’s dinnertime lies, which was very entertaining.
(Picking one more bone before we go on: we are also almost positive Papa Fields was supposed to be on an extended leave at home for medical reasons, see: the ACT NORMAL, BITCH! fire escape rescue… Give us a silly excuse for him not being on the payroll this ep, writers, any silly excuse! Just don’t make him an Ella Montgomery, gone within days of Rosewood time for absolutely no reason.)
After dinner, Pam “Just Looking Out For You” Fields asks Em how she’s feeling now. Em’s…working on it. Well, Pam still talks to people on the police force, and that kidnapping “story” (again, nice choice of words!)? It’s got holes. And just because Emily saved Ali once, doesn’t mean she has to keep saving her.
TRUER WORDS, Pam. Well:
But also yours, Pam. Also yours.
At last, Emily calls Paige to apologize for the rat and Mona and Ali and basically everything, and to say she should call no matter what, and that she loves…erm, would love to hear from her.
Washing Our Hair With All Of The Beer
At this point, everyone in the whole of Rosewood knows that Hanna does not have time for Ali. Included in this everyone is Caleb, who is back on campus for his high school exit exam, for which he is studying by…reading monster comics. Even Hanna knows that’s a dumbass move, and she is the queen of school-related dumbass moves. Needing to vent about Ali (“I get eat when I’m nervous!” Hanna+Food=OTP), she grabs his fries, then realizes that as a person who is not in any way his girlfriend, she should have asked first. “You never did before…” he says, the first of many, many terribly cliched rom-dram lines between them this ep. None of that is important, though. What is important is that Caleb knows Hanna is just upset about Ali, and Ali ranking high enough to make Hanna upset makes him upset. How much immoral support does Ali need, Han?? CUT HER OFF ALREADY.
But divorces aren’t just about cutting off the other person; there are custody battles, and Hanna doesn’t want to go through that with the Liars.
Here, Hanna–you can have our fries. You’re going to need a lot more before you’re through Ali’s gauntlet.
Speaking of Ali’s gauntlet, Caleb is finally entering it for real. Because it makes perfect sense, both the HS proficiency exit exam and the HS proficiency entrance exam are being given on the same day, in the same room, by the same invisible proctor. Ali comes up behind Caleb as he signs in, musing how the two of them are basically the exact same person in the exact same situation. Which, considering they are both angsty ghosts with attitude problems, is actually pretty fair. But also, all these tests to pass to be allowed to return to regular society.
“Entrance, exit, it’s all the same…pass/fail, win/lose,” Ali muses. “That what you learn in those two years someone had you in a box?” Caleb asks leadingly. “Everybody needs someone to depend on.”
It’s a very satisfying ghost-brat insult-off. They end agreeing that Caleb doesn’t know her at all; he just knows her from the tornado she leaves behind.
Takes a tornado to know a tornado, we guess, as this new twist in Caleb’s Ravenswood-Cursed-Don’t-Care pity spiral drops more storm fallout on Hanna than she can take. First Ali calls and leaves a pissed off voicemail, which, Hanna has had her share of phone ghosts for the past two years, thankyouverymuch. So Hanna interrupts Caleb’s beer run with an SOS that is really a WTF. As in, WTF was he after, facing Ali down like that at school? Was he trying to catch her in a lie? Caleb scoffs, tipping his craft pilsner town his throat. He doesn’t need ot catch her; he’s way ahead of her. And who cares if Ali is pissed? Hanna wants to cut her off anyway, right? Well, Hanna doesn’t need him to do that for her, thank YOU very much. Also, she demands, looking at the sun in the sky and the clock on the wall and the age on his ghost license, why is he drinking beer? What in all of Rosewood is there to celebrate these days?
Well, Han, if you too knew the real horrors the world outside Rosewood held, you too would recognize the futility of something as petty as a high school education. So he is celebrating walking out of his exit exams–algebra and civics aren’t needed in the real world, anyway! he says, naming literally the two most important subjects for living successfully in the real world. Hanna hates his decisions. He says she just hates that they ARE decisions, which she can’t seem to make any of these days. Dude! She decided to change her hair. She decided to not let Ali be her monarch once more. She decided to trust you in your stupid ghost town with your stupid ghost decisions.
Oh. Well. Now she hates her own decisions, too.
Caleb’s pity tornado next spits Emily at Hanna, who bursts through the Marin’s back door like the crazed attack dog she’s become to drag Hanna to the dinner party Hanna from moment one RSVPed No Way to. She glares lasers at Hanna’s uterus and declares that Hanna’s cramps excuse is a lie. As is the headache excuse now forming on her lips. THEY ARE TRYING TO HELP ALI THEY NEED TO BE SUPPORTIVE OF ALI SHE’S SO NEEDY RIGHT NOW GOD HANNA WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LOVE ALI ALREADY ALSO WHEN DID ASHLEY START DRINKING BEER??
“She washes her hair with it!” Hanna tosses back without even a millisecond’s pause. And the thing is, that is 100% believable. If we have learned one thing about the Marins these past four+ seasons, and one thing only, it is that they have literally no idea how anything belonging inside a kitchen works.
Anyway, Hanna has precisely zero interest in being there for Ali, at the dinner or anytime, because it is exhausting and awful and it makes EM exhastED and awful. Em’s exact argument to this is that Ali is very needy right now, which, as an argument in general does not seem like it falls on the pro end of the spectrum.
Emily does manage to drag Hanna along to Pam’s ill-fated dinner. Ali’s dress, at least, is finally great. She knows she’s on her game, too, and has enough of her old spark back from that feeling to feel confident telling Hanna how Caleb is “trouble” and boys like that can make mistakes too easy to make and that now would be a bad time for that and only trust who I trust, Hanna, nevermind that I lied to you those two years during which time you spent half of building a bond of trust with that very troublemaker.
Takes one to know one.
So between Caleb and Emily and Ali and having a new goth persona and Pam just leaving an entire bar free for the taking on her front porch, Hanna gives in to the stupidity of it all, taking a whole tumbler full of straight vodka to the table to accompany her dinner.
Things are super awkward throughout the meal, as Pam tries to make nice with Ali by telling hilarious anecdotes about all the very many times their front windows have been exploded this single calendar year, and Hanna keeps chiming in with tipsy claw swipes at anything Ali says. “The window people gave us a bad luck discount,” Pam laughs, discussing the most recent window-replacement done in the living room. “We all need one of those,” Ali murmurs slimily from the other end of the table. “Well I think people make their own luck,” Hanna declares, unasked. Pam nods at the wisdom at this while Ali glares daggers and Em tries to backtrack.
Realizing she needs to regain control of the room, Ali starts spinning charming, depressing lie upon charming, depressing lie, distracting Pam from Hanna to greater and greater pity towards Ali. Ali’s conclusion to her weepfest performance is the BEST kind of lie, too: one that’s also a truth. “What did I ever do to anyone that was so bad to make me deserve this?” she says, almost weeping. She was ashamed, she says, yes! Ashamed! she declares, when Pam tries to stop her. Ashamed of what happened to her, which is why she told the girls to lie on her behalf. Pam looks moved, but responds not that Ali herself is good or deserves good, but instead that she has very special friends.
“You’re the special one, Ali,” Hanna counters sweetly, turning to stare Ali straight in the eye.
Alexis is reading this mostly as Hanna showing her new adamantium backbone; Catie thinks it might be foreshadowing to TWIN THEORY. Either way: win!
Ali knows she’s lost the Hanna battle, so moves her attention back to the Fields front and offers to help Pam clear, leaving Emily the opportunity she needed to call Hanna out on her behavior. She snatches Hanna’s glass and sniffs, then glares blackly when she realizes what the clear liquid is. “WHAT,” Hanna demands, “I need SOMETHING to cover up all that bologna Ali was serving up.” We love that Hanna’s drunken, self-righteous excuse includes the word bologna. Perfectly Hanna. But not for Em. Nope, Em sends Hanna packing. Emily wanted help with Ali, but Hanna is NOT helping. To which slap Hanna drops the bomb that Pam is Wise to the lies of Alison DiLaurentis, then storms out.
Hanna heads to the Brew to sober up a bit before heading home–her mom already had to suffer being vomited on once this week–and who should she run into but Sydney Driscoll! The dearheart offers to split a panini with Hanna to wait the vodka breath out, so y’all know Hanna’s about to spill her guts. Hanna+Food=OTP.
While picking at the last of the panini crumbs, Sydney TOTES CAZH bringing up the house explosion. “Did you…did you know the poor people who lived there?” Hanna is still rolling around the vodka fields and nods madly. Yeah, yeah, they’re all really close with Toby, who grew up there. With his stepsister, Jenna. At whose name Sydney is like WHO IN THE WORLD IS THAT PERSON OF WHOM I KNOW NOTHING SHE SOUNDS LIKE A MAGICAL UNICORN PERHAPS PEOPLE ARE TOO HARSH ON HER THIS STRANGER I HAVE NEVER MET. “Yeah,” Hanna says, “we totally had a beef with her.” The DAYS when Hanna wished Jena would explode! “I could rake that girl over the coals!” Hanna exclaims…
And she then proceeds to recount to Sydney every moment of their murderous trip to Noel Kahn’s New York City apartment and the Fitzgerald Theater of Shana’s Ultimate Doom. “So, we basically burned that bridge of reconciliation,” Hanna shrugs. “Do you get all the fire metaphors I am laying down here, because if not: my friends and I totally blinded Jenna with a garagebomb one night long long ago and we have been paying for it ever since. MMMmm let’s get another panini!”
Sydney is ready to dig even deeper into Hanna’s vodka-soaked truths, but then Caleb comes in and Hanna’s attention is fully diverted, so she slips off to inform the Army CommAnder of her discovery.
Joining Hanna on the sofa, Caleb also recognizes her slightly altered state and puts on his judgy face. He knows he shouldn’t give advice about friends, but Ali, man, ALI… But she doesn’t want to talk about Ali, she wants to talk about THEM. She maybe hasn’t been making good decisions, but neither has he. And now that he’s here, there is no her and Travis, so: what does Caleb want? He doesn’t know. Raven5wood changed him (into a ghost). When he looks around the Brew, he doesn’t see the same stuff as he used to (a world with no ghosts). Does he see Hanna? Of COURSE. She’s not a ghost (and even then, he would still be able to see her). “Then why don’t you start there?” Hanna asks, and the lens shifts to super-tacky daytime soap mode they kiss in the most awkward way ever and all of us groan for days.
Vincent Van Gogh Away, Please
Aria is volunteering at Radley to get the inside scoop on Bethany’s art piece, The Devil & Mrs D. Which makes us wonder: All those times the girls snuck into Radley to visit Mona and Spencer, and they could have just… signed up to be there? Stop making things harder for yourselves!
At Radley, Aria meets two staff members: Eddie Lamb, who feels like he’s maybe seen Aria before somewhere, and the art teacher, who encourages her therapy patients to paint out all their feelings. Aria has casually planted Bethany’s sketch in among a pile of other art prints, and when one young patient sees it, she cries “thief”. Turns out she’s Bethany’s former roommate, and that sketch belonged to her. When the art teacher comes to investigate the ruckus, Aria hides the picture again and just lets the girl, Rhonda, get chastised for being rude and crazy. Even though it is totally Aria being the rude and crazy one here.
Later, Aria sneaks into Rhonda’s room (does this facility even HAVE security?) and hides under the bed, where she finds Bethany’s sketchbook conveniently tucked under the mattress, directly overhead. If only all sleuthing involved clues literally hitting you in the face. The sketchbook itself, which Spencer and Aria peruse once Aria’s wandered back out past all of the useless locks and guards, is a study in subtlety. As in, it doesn’t have any.
After a few pages of standard art student fare (vases, flowers, figures), the book is basically just full of Jessica DiLaurentis’s face with literal devil horns and the word LIAR literally scrawled over top. There’s also a picture of a woman falling out a window, and Spencer asks, “Do you think Bethany thought Mrs. D had something to do with Toby’s mom’s death?” It’s just SO HARD TO SAY.
We forgot to say that as Aria left Radley, she was briefly stopped by Lamb, who seemed to know she had something sketchy going on. She made her excuses and gets into her car, but after she left he pulled out his phone and called his best buddy Ezra Fitz. Who accosts Aria herself later, to tell her that Eddie was calling to set up a meeting with him, which he (Eddie) totally flaked out on.
Ooo…kay?
Let’s Open A Bar And Call It ‘Puzzles’
Melissa’s back! And staying in the barn, while Peter Hastings stays at her apartment in Philly, in the endless game of parental separation musical chairs. Apparently dearly departed Sober Buddy left some food out in the barn, and Melissa is clearing out the detritus, which includes a(nother) DEAD RAT. Spencer is icked out.
We hate to break it to you, but Ezra is also in this episode. We know. Sorry. But at least he is mostly just stuck in a storyline with Spencer, so we get to watch her open derision for everything he says and does. For example: she goes over to help him pack up all of his notes and spy equipment, and is struck horrified by the sheer magnitude. “I forgot how enthusiastic you were for… stalking watching things.”
Later, as they’re loading everything into his friend’s shed, he mourns that all this work wasn’t even for the book he wanted to write. That book, OF COURSE? “My family. My brother and me, what happened when our parents divorced… My mother and father changed from who we thought they were to who they really are. And I was gonna figure it out all on paper.” We are visibly cringing, Fitzgerald. No one wants to hear about your sad rich white boy un-problems. (Actually, unfortunately, probably they do.)
Of course, we realize this week that Spencer and Ezra might also have a little in common. Like families that are rich and, well, complicated. And an obsessive, and often wrongheaded, commitment to solving the crazy puzzles that are their lives.
Before they part, Spencer borrows a spy camera from Fitz to spy on Melissa. Who later comes into the Hastings kitchen to snipe at Spence about which daughter is on which parent’s side, until they decide that some people in this family should get along, and stop arguing. Melissa says, sadly, that parents are supposed to keep loving each other forever, but Spencer, the pragmatist, says that this isn’t about love. It’s about lies. Also, Alison.
Troian is really selling this. Melissa looks pained, like she needs to fiiiinally tell Spencer her Alison/Bethany secret. But she can’t. She tells Spencer she’s right—it is about lies. But also, always, about love.
Then she exits the house, headed to the barn, and for some reason Spencer pulls up her spy camera to confirm that this is actually happening. She is standing outside a WINDOW that would give her this EXACT VIEW but instead she watches it on her laptop screen. We guess we get it. We look at our phones every morning to check the weather rather than looking at the actual weather that is happening outside. But still. Jimmy Stewart managed just fine with a good old fashioned pair of binoculars. (WAIT now we are imagining a 21st century “Rear Window” where all of the action takes place on spy cameras and a voyeuristic iPad app. That sounds cool.)
Anyway, lucky she has had this practice, because later that evening she’s hanging out, just staring at the screen showing—once again—the exact same view that is also outside her window. The spy camera beeps again to let her know that the motion sensors have been, again, tripped. And this time, on screen? It’s Alison! And her turn in the Liar-hood’s Traveling Beanie.
SOS!
The Meeting of the Liars, Part II
The Liars, minus Hanna, convene in the Hastings kitchen. Because Melissa is totally a million miles away all the way in the barn so there is no chance at all she could walk in on their summit. Em is worried Hanna won’t come, considering the disastrous dumplings a la vodka they just experienced. But she has to! Spencer exclaims. Even Aria was here, and she had to get past an Ezra-shaped slip-up lurking on her front step to make that happen!
Just then! An text alert! We’re 58 minutes into this hour, so it’s got to be A. And it is, which they realize just as Hanna is walking through the door, text-free. And why didn’t she get that text?
Ali’s keeping secrets, maybe that’s because of Hanna’s big mouth. DUN DUN DUN
Love and mArriAge…
Oh gosh you guys, we are so glad these A-tags are back. A black glove is steaming open Pam’s mail! It’s an announcement for Ella and Zack’s engagement! Yay for them, for real. Donuts for everyone! None for you, A.
But also, Aria is a pretty shitty daughter for not only not helping her mom with plans for that, especially considering their last tete-a-tete was a BRIDAL fashion show, run by a grieving mother who has now been MURDERED. You’d think that might prompt one to reach out to your own recently-affianced mother for love and support. But #EzriaForever, we guess!
NEXT WEEK
… there’s discord among the group, and—could it be? #LiarsAreTrapped! …As usual.
Until then!
KISSES,
A (lexis and Catie)
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.
