Resolved: A time jump will save PLL from ourobourosing itself.
Resolved, Part 2: A three-month time jump in the nightmare town that is A’s Rosewood is worse than no time jump at all.
Discussion question: Do you understand what even is going on? (Our answer: nope.)
THIS WEEK’S MVP
Locks, laptops, Hanna’s heart, air ducts—what can’t Caleb crack?
THIS WEEK’S LVP
Spencer, who is so burnt out by A’s constant (and future) torture she can’t figure out how to both read a text and hand an egg across five feet of space.
(No one was particularly harmful to their own case this week, really. Or everyone was equally? Either way.)
BEST SURPRISE/BIGGEST SHOCK
Toby had a full day of work as a Rosewood cop (and remember, that’s like seventeen months in Rosewood time) and nothing exciting happened! Shocking, indeed.
BIGGEST NO-DUH
Labradoodle owners in Rosewood don’t believe their dogs have to abide by something so mundane as leash laws.
THAT’S ALI, FOLKS
No Ali in this episode! And yet she still dominated everyone’s every waking thought. That’s definitely Ali, folks.
PREVIOUSLY ON PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
Toby forgot literally everything that has ever been done to/by Spencer, the other Liars, and even himself over the course of four and a half seasons and thus managed to be both shocked and upset when Spencer and Caleb went behind his back to retrieve and destroy the Cavanaugh family hunting knife covered with blood that A planted in Mona’s backyard. Aria didn’t get into any colleges, went into a panic spiral, and wrote Talmadge college admissions officer Jacki Molina a wet dream lie of an essay about how Ezra was the worst thing to ever happen to her, which A of course is now planning to hang her with by planting printed excerpts of it all over Ezra’s (baffling) New Brew. Emily can’t get over Paige, and also has a terrible new boss, who is Ezra, but also who is the professional chef Ezra hired behind Em’s back to run the New Brew’s kitchen. Hanna got into all colleges everywhere and managed to not only to make it through 90% of a campus tour, but to also follow up on newly-sketchy Detective Holbrook’s “sick dad” personal leave excuse. Verdict: the only sickness his dad has is living in a creeper mobile park where kids (or A’s minions) stuff teddy bears with real deer guts.
Also, #Jashley is a thing that happened, that Hanna witnessed the aftermath of, that TOO MANY OF YOU MONSTERS supported.
THIS WEEK
The episode opens with a usual-suspect cozy Liars Summit at Ezra’s New Brew. Spencer explains the mess/cleanup she and Caleb spent the previous night engaged in; Aria explains her Talmadge debAcle; Emily explains how New Brew is The Worst; Hanna explains how maybe Holbrook isn’t such a stand up guy, after all. She does NOT explain how she, despite the Liars’ pact to embargo Ali’s whole existence, confronted Ali in a cold fury after the deer gut incident. Hope that doesn’t come back to haunt her (it doesn’t really. Sorry, Aria—you guys are just wrong about Ali’s guilt.)
Aria and the pointless scavenger hunt
After the group dissipates, Aria complains to Emily that she doesn’t want to go to Talmadge College, because she had to pretend to regret dating Ezra to be admitted and can’t imagine maintaining a four-year lie to Ezra about how she got in. Oh, woe. Aria also doesn’t want Em’s advice, or free coffee! Aria is just tiny trouble these days. Emily makes her pay 50 cents for a cup—New Brew, new prices, new register, new A tricks. It’s Aria’s confessional letter to Jackie printing out in its entirety on the receipt! NICE ONE, A. We hope the next time we get one of those CVS six-footer receipts, it’s exactly this! (For real. Make that paper worth it, corner stores!)
Later, Aria gets a mysterious text from an “H” telling her to meet at the Grill at noon. She assumes it’s from Holbrook, because it makes perfect sense that she of all the Liars would be the one who he would reach out to, and dutifully goes to wait, but is totally stood up. Or is she?? Jason conveniently wanders by, wearing a preposterously douchey shirt, purportedly there to meet Ashley—whoops, Hanna’s mom—for a “working lunch.” Mmmhmm, okay. But since apparently she has stood him up, he and Aria end up lunching together, chit-chatting about how sending Alison to jail has ruined Jason’s whole life but also how Alison is a true monster who it is safer for everyone to have behind bars. They totally bond over their mutual assumption that Ali bludgeoned Mona to death and hauled her body off in the trunk of her car.
After lunch, Aria is handed a bouquet of flowers. Man, that A sure is putting her through the wringer!
Hanna and the proposal
Returning home after the morning New Brew conclave, Hanna hears her mom laughing with a man in the kitchen. She’s worried (we’d ask who wouldn’t be, after last week? but considering the general conclusion from your comments on the last recap…apparently just us and Hanna would be), but it’s just her friendly neighborhood Pastor Ted, home from Peru, where he built churches and dreamed of Ashley’s waffles. Hanna lies that a migraine brought her home early from the college weekend, and Ashley lies right back that everything is normal and she is totally upstanding and last night, that Hanna isn’t lying about seeing, definitely wasn’t whatever it looked like. “I know what I saw,” spits back Hanna, her Ali-kindled cold fury still burning strong.
Pastor Ted and Ashley seem happy, eating their waffles and smiling their smiles, and he certainly thinks things are going well. In fact, he pulls Hanna aside later that day to ask for her mother’s hand in marriage.
Hanna assumes he’s going to ask why her mother is sleeping with young ruffians on the side, so is caught a bit off guard, but still manages somehow to simultaneously convey both to Ted how much she likes him for her mom and for their family’s future, and to us how much she just can’t even with her Mom’s terrible Jason-flavored decision making, and what pall that might cast on Ted’s plan to surprise Ashley with a proposal later that very night.
Side note: why would you ever plan a marriage proposal like this?
A: if i was going to propose to a divorcee with a rocky history of self-approval i would want to have several frank conversations with her about it first to make sure we are both on the same page
A: or really anyone
A: why anyone would propose in this day and age as a SURPRISE is beyond me
C: SERIOUSLY
A: “do you still believe marriage can be a thing that is good”
A: “do you want to ever be in a marriage again”
A: “should we maybe imagine our future”
Good luck, Ted, is what we’re saying.
Unsurprisingly, Ashley’s reaction to this surprise is tears (not the happy kind) and a request for some time before giving her answer. Also unsurprisingly, A is a total dick and the flowers Aria was sent on a pointless scavenger hunt to be given were a hand delivery “from Jason” to Ashley “for dessert.” “I didn’t even know your mom knew how to bake, Hanna!” Aria exclaims as Hanna makes her best zip those lips gesture in her bedroom just before Ted proposes. “Those are Ali’s revenge for me going to confront her last night, Montgomery. Ignore the thinly veiled euphemism!”
Aria, understandably from a pact-breaking perspective but not understandably from a logic perspective, is pissed as hell that Hanna went behind all their backs to have a face-to-face with Ali. Girls: Ali is not the tormenter you are looking for.
After Ted leaves, Hanna does finally get her Mom to admit her mistakes, and admit how necessary it is that she comes clean to Ted. Hanna, being a queen and all, is nothing but supportive.
Toby and the Labradoodle
Toby has a boring day at work, assailed only by an unlocked bike and an off-leash labradoodle. Here, have some pictures of Catie’s (parents’) off-leash labradoodle:
After that boring day, Toby and Spencer play at very sweet game of Scrabble as they chat about Spencer’s future. The college acceptance packets waiting to be opened on the Hastings’ coffee table will send her to Hawaii, or New Mexico, or Montana—picked to be as far from A as possible. But Spencer’s having second thoughts; she’s not much of a sunscreen girl, after all, and she loves ivy and pea coats. Also A WILL FOLLOW HER EVERYWHERE (Alexis literally cannot think of a worse plan any of these girls could make than stranding themselves on an islAnd in the middle of an oceAn). But also: ugh, Spencer, you have to actually apply to the colleges you want to go to. And we don’t just mean letting a random girl at a party throw your UPenn application into the woods.
Anyway, Spence and Toby are at the same impasse facing dozens of hundreds of young high school lovebirds every year. She might leave. He might not. Should he follow her, or should she stay?
Spencer’s new boarder (the one we barely care about) has other plans for her though. He’s an artist, and skipped the college thing altogether, in favor of Italy and bartering sketches for places to sleep. “You don’t need to go to college,” he tells Spence. He’s right, sort of! Many people do not need to go to college, and there are a lot of valuable, productive things to do without a college degree. Spencer Hastings, though? That girl is MADE for college. She’s got more money than she knows what to do with, and there’s nothing she likes more in the world than learning things and arguing with people. Spencer: Go. To. Coll. Ege.
Spaleb and the Sleuthing (or, #BroTP)
When she’s not fretting about all the ways A will invent to ruin her life at college, Spencer teams up with Caleb again, this week (with Hanna’s approval) to investigate the mystery of why Mona’s laptop texted Spencer its location, and we’d like to take this space to formally petition for a PLL spinoff that is just Caleb and Spencer investigating things. She’s the brainy detective whose penchant for jumping to conclusions often lands her in hot water! He’s the slacker techno-wizard whose knack for cracking codes keeps them one step ahead! Together, they’re… Hastings & Rivers: Private Investigators.
Would you NOT watch the shiz out of that?
Anyway, this week on Hastings & Rivers, our fearless leads track Mona’s laptop to a storage unit. The unit itself is under lock and key so fancy, even Spencer’s bolt cutters won’t make it through.
Luckily, the entire storage unit facility is connected by a series of ducts, so Caleb fashions a crude pick from an aluminum can to crack into a neighbor’s unit, from where they’ll hop into the ceiling and right on over to their final destination.
While he’s working, Spencer chats with one of their teachers, who has a unit nearby and offers the important info that the owner of the unit they’re investigating is probably blonde (but geez, in Rosewood, who isn’t, at least sometimes) and definitely left something smelly in there.
And then, ducts. Ducts. Goose. (Catie is all puns all the time.)
Once they tumble down into the world’s largest storage unit (it’s warehouse-sized!), our heroes come across a barrel just large enough to fit the body of a petite terror. Spencer uses her biology class skills to notice that the barrel is surrounded by all the supplies you’d need to preserve a… specimen, frog-in-a-jar style.
They’re just about to actually open it up and check (ew ew ew), when the lights go out, and they… flee, apparently. Wimps! Caleb at least gets to work trying to figure out the name on the storage unit’s lease. Little good that will do anyone (dun dun dun).
Until we crack this barrel open and get some DNA evidence (and maybe even then!), we’re not believing for one second that it’s Mona’s body in there. For one, Mona definitely isn’t dead, nuh-uh, shh, go away. And honestly: is anyone REALLY ever dead on this show? At this point it wouldn’t surprise us if Bethany Young herself waltzed on out of the Hastings-DiLaurentis Royal Forest with a severe case of amnesia.
Toby, predictably, is pretty damn pissed that the indomitable Hastings & Rivers persist in running around Rosewood doing all sorts of dangerous and illegal nonsense that could both get them hurt and hurt their Real Dependable Police Case. Spencer spits an apology about how she’s sorry they can’t be honest anymore, and Toby spits back an exclamation of irritation that it isn’t about honesty.
As Spencer explains to the surprised frenetic art dude who’s newly renting the Hastings’ barn that we can barely make ourselves care about, “[my boyfriend] didn’t used to be a cop.” Truer words, we guess?
Emily and the Annoying New Girl
The chef Ezra hired to be Emily’s annoying boss at the New Brew is still around, being Emily’s annoying boss at the New Brew. She notices that Emily’s wearing a holey old t-shirt and tries to subtly suggest that Ezra institute a uniform for the servers (polo shirts in dark colors, gross). Emily’s like, whatever, but also, no. Later, Chef Girl realizes that Emily was sort of sensitive about the whole shirt issue, and (correctly) deduces that the holey tee belonged to Emily’s ex. Emily’s like, whatever. Even later, Chef Girl is like, you should probably get over your ex by mailing the t-shirt back. Emily’s like whatever, but also, okay. So she does. Then she goes back to the Brew in her regular (awesome) clothes to pick up her paycheck, and Chef Girl is like, wow, that’s what you look like normally? And also, is Ezra’s butt kind of cute? Emily’s like, whatever. And also, ew.
That’s the whole storyline.
The Exciting Climax
Caleb shows up to Hanna’s to dramatically reveal to her that… the storage unit is registered in her name. And, sure, it might have Mona’s body in it, blah blah blah, but really: the exciting final climax of this episode was literally that Hanna’s name is on a rental agreement. Paperwork! Ahhh!!!
A-tail
A has a login to the RPD. Maybe s/he went through the three whole days of officer training!
NEXT WEEK
Hanna and Caleb tamper with another crime scene, and Toby pries open the chemical barrel.
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.
