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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (4.04): Muffin Man

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Ashley Marin put on her murderin’ heels and tromped on down to Torch Lake where she shot Detective Wilden in the face with a gun she stole from her ex-husband. Pam Fields got caught mothering in front of about 100 witnesses, so Child Protective Services came a-knockin’ at her door. Aria, sensing that her mom was next on A’s hit list, sent her away to donut college in a castle in Austria. And a mask-maker confessed to making a bunch of masks of Ali’s face while making a mask of Emily’s face while hiding a mask of Melissa’s face while wearing a mask of his own face over a mask of Ali’s face over his actual face.

Papa Fields is home from Army. He gives Emsy a hug and a pat on her head and sends her off to school so he and Pam can go inside and cry about hoq Emily is literally the greatest human being on this planet and why couldn’t CPS go after the Hastings’ or the DiLaurentis’ or the Cavenaughs. Between the three of them, that’s like two counts of sibling incest, at least three murders, two home explosions, and one fake demon pregnancy. Hells bells, Spencer’s parents couldn’t even be arsed to fly back from Out of Town when she was shuffling around an insane asylum in some tartan slippers, hair as big as the sun.

Hanna is still snipping at Caleb every chance she gets. He’s interested in facts: Someone stole a .38 from her dad and if it turns out Wilden was shot with a .38 while Ashley was in town and also wearing some high heels, well, I hope she likes do-rags, ’cause it’s off to the slammer with her. Hanna’s like, “Here’s a fact: You can suck my dick.” And she storms off leaving him there to wonder why she keeps attacking him and where in the world she got that Candy Land blouse.

At school, Hanna marches over to the Liars and picks right up fighting with them where she left off with Caleb: “What’s the deal with the Melissa mask, Spencer? Did you use it to convince your bitch trog sister to confess to killing Wilden or what?” The Liars advise Hanna to dial it back a notch; everybody’s stuff is at eleven right now. Emily’s about to have to start living in the library walls with Caleb because she’s for sure going into foster care, OK? And in case you haven’t noticed, Lieutenant Roma Maffia is spying on us in that cop car over there.

Ah, Lieutenant Roma Maffia. Remember on Nip/Tuck when you were just fully bonanners? Remember how you were a power-grabbing lesbian with psychotic tendencies and so much swagger? (Remember how you boned Veronica Hastings?) I cannot wait for you to meet Mona Vanderwaal. Lieutenant Roma Maffia really is spying on the Liars, and she does not like what she sees. She’s already offended by their clothes and she hasn’t even seen Aria doing patterns yet. She goes, “They sure are pretty to be such corpse magnets and shovel hoarders. Except those short skirts. Those skirts just make them look like sluts.”

In the courtyard, the Liars continue their debrief on this new level of hell that involves their parents. Hanna’s like, “So, Spencer, your mom still doesn’t exist, so that’s OK. And Aria, you sent your mom off to Pastry Castle with the Muffin Man, so she’s good for now. My mom’s been hiding out in the bathroom pretending to take a bath for like three days, so while she’s definitely guilty of something horrific, at least she’s safe in there. And Ems, what’s going on with-“

But Hanna is interrupted by the sound of Papa Fields texting Emily to tell her to come home directly after school, no questions. Emily is so pissed. You OD one time on prescription drugs and swim into a wall, you get poisoned by your own pain cream one time and test positive for HGH, you collapse in the hallway one time due to a teenage stress ulcer, you get GLASS IN YOUR HAIR one time after meeting your space-jumping stalker in a greenhouse in the middle of the night, you get blackmailed and nearly murdered by a doll one time, you get massaged by Lucas in Ali mask one time, you stab a guy in the stomach with a knife one time to keep him from killing your girlfriend that he kidnapped, and it’s like, “Come home after school today before you get murdered.” Parents. God.

Rear Window Brew. Veronica Hastings appears as a hologram to have a chat with her two daughters about the various weather conditions one can expect at internships around the world, and which blazers are appropriate for which places. Veronica tells Spencer not to be jealous of Melissa’s blazer collection and Spencer goes, “Jealous? Is that what you think this face is? No, but I do have a question: Melissa, do you have any blazers I could borrow for my future life as a gas station attendant? ‘Cause guess what, bitches, I didn’t get into UPenn.” Veronica is definitely more upset by this announcement than she ever has been about any of the literal life-threatening situations Spencer finds herself on the regular. Melissa says there are ways an admissions board can be convinced to reevaluate their decisions and Spencer’s like, “Nope. Sorry. I submitted my application at a woodland teenager rager to that girl who used to be the manager of the mannequin hand boutique on the square and then I wrote my admissions essay on the psychotic break that pushed me into the arms of a lesbian ghost. There’s nothing else I can do.”

(By the way, if that’s how you applied for a job at AfterEllen, I would hire you immediately.)

Roma Maffia and Det. Holbrook stop by Ashley’s bank to have a peek at Wilden’s safe deposit box. Ashley wants Hanna to leave, but Roma Maffia wants her to stay. She wants to see her face when they find whatever they’re gonna find in his secret stash. (Love you like a love song, Roma, but Hanna once watched her best friend open up a locker and find a cow brain. Her face is ready for whatever you’re about to deal her.) What they find is a whole bunch of cash, a Canadian passport and a US passport, and a gun. Roma Maffia asks Ashley if she is the one who supervises people walking to and fro in the safe deposit box wing of the bank, and Ashley is like, “Yeah, but if I’d known what was in here, we’d have been making spaghetti out of those dollar bills at my house for weeks.”

Hanna and Emily are hitting it hard with some mystery solving realness right now. Aria’s only just gotten into the game, and she’s not naturally sleuthy by nature. Spencer wants to know what’s going on, but she just loves the ride, man. Loves to watch the world burn. But Hanna and Emily’s families are on the line and so is Emily’s shot at making a puffy drape life with Paige in that bedroom on her computer. So Emily’s got questions: Who is left on A’s side? Anybody? Are Melissa and Shana and JennaBot working for her, or they on a team by themselves? And if they are on a team by themselves, what are they up to and how do they figure into: Midnight Express, Thornhill Lodge Fire, NAT Club, and Ali’s murder? But Spencer’s less interested in answering those questions and more interested in springing a trap on Melissa so she can see her face when she comes face-to-face with a working model of her face. (You can see how neither of them are wrong for wanting what they want.)

Emily has to cut their phone conversation short to stand in her doorway and look like the saddest, tiniest lamb while her parents fight about her constant drug overdoses and fake cousin stabbings.

But Emily is Emily Fields, so she marches right back to Dr. Varagas’ office the next day to try to crack the code on this whole “competent adult” situation that is threatening to blow the lid off the Liars’ world. Instead of agreeing to keep his gob shut or inquiring after Spencer’s general sanity level like a good Dr. Wren would do, Vargas tells Emily that he did call CPS on her and her family, and also – surprise! – if she starts swimming again with that bruise on her shoulder, it will kill her. Bruise poisoning spreads in chlorine faster than the syphilis on a Cape May catamaran.

When Hanna met Roma Maffia in her mother’s office, she sensed in her a formidable adversary, so she started off this day dressing in her pink drinkin’ finest, and now she has tracked her down to the town square where she has spread out all the town’s murder files on a park bench and is solving crime while enjoying a bit of sunlight. This scene is really excellent. The writing, the acting, the directing. It’s all amazing. It’s like they both set out to play each other but realize early on that that’s what they’re both doing, so everything they say is kind of flirty and teasing while also being super dead serious. So, basically, Hanna is like, “Roma Maffia, those shoes are wonderful. If anyone ever buried those things in the muddy ground, I’d risk a possession of shovel charge to dig them out for you. And speaking of shovels, I was actually wondering if you knew Melissa Hastings owns probably a dozen of them, and maybe even took one or two aboard Detective Wilden’s boat the summer the two of them were killing Alison DiLaurentis.”

Roma Maffia thinks it’s interesting, indeed, that Hanna has gone straight to the part where Wilden molests teenage girls. She wonders if Hanna ever “boarded his boat” or if her mother ever “boarded his boat,” and how many times, approximately, did he show up in her classroom or in her shower to menace her.

Caleb sees the two of them talking and flips out. He rushes over and pulls Hanna away and #SavesTheDay, I guess. (No, he doesn’t. One of the best parts about this show is that these women save their own damn days. Don’t patronize me, ABC Family.) Hanna’s like, “I fully had that under control as I have all things under control. I don’t know if you remember, but I’m the only one of us who faced down Invisible Alison in therapy and dealt with my shit.”

Toby stops by Spencer’s to get some intel on his mom’s Radley doctor. Spencer has tracked her old physician down to some mental institution in Saratoga, but she’s headlong into this Melissa mask con right now so she can’t go with him. Instead she kisses him, which apparently also doubles as hopping into a warp zone, because when she touches his lips they’re upstairs in his loft and when she lets go of his lips they’re downstairs at The Brew! Boo Radley van Magic Mouth! That was awesome! I want to learn that trick!

At The Brew, Emily has decided that since she can’t compete at swimming right now, she’s going to compete at Loving Paige McCullers. First step, she’s going to take down Shana. Spencer and Aria try to talk about Melissa’s mask and Emily is fidgeting around and her pupils are dilated and she’s like, “Yeah, yeah. But when you think mask, you think costume shop, right? And what you think costume shop, you think Shana Costumeshop, right? And when you think Shana Costumeshop, you think, ‘Let’s stab that bitch,’ right? I know where to stab a bitch to kill a bitch. I hear it’s even easier the second time.” It’s a little intense, even for Spencer, so she’s a relieved when Paige shows up and Emily bolts to talk to her. Spencer goes, “Man, she’s like weirdly obsessed with taking that girl down. Anyway, when can you come over so we can bust my sister’s ass with this mask?”

When Emily tells Paige she can’t swim for a while, Paige handles it in the most Emily-friendly way. She smirks and says, “Ah, Fields, you’re giving me the edge.” Which is exactly what you say to a hyper-competitive person when you want to motivate them to get back in the pool and kick your ass. Emily stutters and stumbles and frowns and is so close to telling Paige that the main worry in her life right now is that not getting in the pool means not having a future with her, but instead she asks for a kiss. Paige hugs Emily like she’s the safest place on earth and Emily grasps onto Paige like the world is slipping away.

Aria is trying to make herself have any feelings at all about Kung Fu Jake besides general boredom, but just when it seems like they might be able to have a conversation that doesn’t end with him insulting her, tiny Malcolm of the Fitzgerald clan comes running out into the road hollering, “Bird Feather Mama! Bird Feather Mama! I thought I’d never see you again!” (Where you at now, Child Protective Services?!) He explains that he’s just running willy-nilly up the street while his parents shop for books. He wishes Aria still came around. He hasn’t been abducted or ridden in an ambulance once since she went away. After he runs off, Aria goes, “Eh, just my teacher’s kid. My teacher that I never slept with and/or posed for pictures with while wearing paper bag masks …”

“… except for yes, I totally did sleep with him and do the paper bag mask thing. Mostly it was just cake and cuddling and talking about our feelings and watching noir films. And kissing in the rain and in the sunsets. We did a lot of kissing in the rain and in the sunsets.” The second part of this conversation happens on Aria’s front porch. After unleashing her giant lesbian truth on Jake, she tries to kiss him, and he’s like, “If I kissed you now, you’d respect me less.” And she’s like, “Asshole, I’m just trying to cleanse my palate. Or feel literally anything. Are you in or not?” He is not.

Actually, I hate Kung Fu Jake, but he does drop a little bit of wisdom on Aria: If you’re fighting and you’re injured, you go home. If you’re fighting and you’re hurt, you dust yourself off and start punching again. It’s a good little proverb, but it’s coming from a guy who let Holden enter a street-fighting competition with only half a working heart, so I’m not really sure he’s the best judge of what constitutes dangerous levels of pain.

At the Marin’s, Ashley explains to Hanna that the bank took away her safe deposit box escorting privileges because she didn’t keep tabs on what Wilden had in his box. Or something. It doesn’t make sense, except that it’s another blow in a series of blows that have really injured Ashley. Like injured-injured. She needs to tag out. Hanna confesses that she knows Ashley was in town the night Wilden was murdered, even though she really wants Ashley to deny it again, and then the saddest, saddest thing: Ashley promises that whatever happens, it won’t get on Hanna. And Hanna’s like, “Same-same, mom. I’m working at cross-purposes with you right now to keep it from getting on you. Have you ever heard of donut school?”

Saratoga Radley. Dr. Palmer is sitting on a bench on the grounds feeding some birds and singing about tuppence. He’s British, which is noteworthy only because there’s one other British “doctor” on this show, and he has always seemed intimately acquainted with Rosewood Radley. Toby introduces himself and asks if either his mom was not suicidal or if maybe she was suicidal but also skilled in some kind of circus arts that would have allowed her to fly horizontally out of her window for about ten feet before plummeting to her death. Palmer says with the constant fluctuations in gravity and air density, it’s highly probable that Toby’s mom could have flapped her arms like a chicken and flown at least a little ways before the oxygen got too heavy and smashed her into the ground. He’s writing a book about it right now, actually. About the color of the air. Toby’s little face when he realizes Palmer isn’t working at Saratoga Radley, but is a patient at Saratoga Radley. Poor little Charlie Brown.

As he’s shuffling away under his own personal raincloud, Palmer calls after him: “Tell your mom to stay away from that blonde-haired lesbian ghost in the red coat! You think she just wants to dance, but sometimes she’ll shove you off the roof!”

Hastings Manor. You know how we’re always seeing A peeking in on everyone through the window blinds that they never, ever close? OK, well, that’s what we’re seeing as Melissa sorts through all the blazers she’s packed for all her internships around the globe. But then! It’s not A at all (or is it?)! It’s Spencer and Aria, recording Melissa because they totally planted the Melissa mask in one of her suitcases and they want to watch her brain out about it when she finds it!

I kind of think after spending four seasons with Troian Bellisario’s voice, it has sort of diluted the effect it has on me. It’s still the sexiest voice on the seven continents, but I think it’s like how if you’re around a Veela a lot, you’re better able to stop yourself from smashing your head into rocks because of lust. But something about the way she narrates Melissa finding the mask, like it’s maybe raspier than usual or she’s out of breath because of being manic with excitement, it just really, really got to me. I froze up for about two minutes. Couldn’t type or blink or anything.

Anyway, she’s goading Melissa from behind the window, all, “Open up the suitcase, sister. There you go, open it up. Look under that technicolor blazer. Thaaaaat’s the one. What do you see? Oh, it’s a face! It’s your face! It’s your face embalmed in devil red like your fake embryo! Where did it come from, Melissa? Who made it? You’re smart, put it together. Ahhhhh, there it is. The horrific look of comprehension. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Melissa rushes out of the house and Spencer rolls around on the grass on her back like a puppy in the afternoon sunshine, giggling and clapping her hands and flipping over and over.

Emily returns home to find her parents still droning on and on about her constant lies and deaths. Pam is like, “Listen, Emily. The way you’re always in the hospital or at a funeral, is somebody … messing with you? And don’t lie. We know you lie.” Emily is so torn up. She doesn’t want to lie to them, but for that to happen, they’ve got to stop asking questions. Papa Fields casually mentions that if she ends up dead like all the girls she dates, she won’t be able to get a swimming scholarship, and that just sends Emily over the edge. She says she’ll work more jobs, three jobs, a thousand jobs if she has to work them, because Paige has a bedroom ready for them on her laptop and the beds are pushed together and they can finally have sex without worrying that a ghost is filming them! She runs out into the yard in a fit, and Papa Fields runs after her hollering as loud as he can. Up in the sky, A dials CPS from her helicopter to report a domestic disturbance.

Hanna finally tells Caleb that if her mom’s going down, she’s going down with her, because that’s how the Marin girls roll. So when Roma Maffia and Det. Holbrook show up to question Ashley and Hanna decides to run interference, Caleb jumps in there too. They concoct a story on the fly about how Caleb is Ashley’s chauffeur and she’s not home right now even though her car is home. Ashley listens from the top of the steps and feels awful, which is such a bummer, because killing Wilden was such a good guy thing to do. We should be having a parade for her. (We should always be having a parade for her.)

Mask-Maker Chalet. Aria and Spencer sneak around in the bushes until they see Melissa galloping out of the building dragging a rucksack. Spencer’s pretty sure Hector is inside, but Aria’s like, “No, way. I’m the tiniest thing and it took two grown humans to try to throw me from a train.” They split up because that always works out so well for them. Spencer follows Melissa down to Torch Lake where she is smashing up all of the masks of her own face and tossing them into fishbowl-deep water. And Aria goes inside to dig around in Hector’s inventory. What Aria finds is shelves and shelves of Ali masks. A library of Ali’s face. When she confronts Hector about it, he has his first Ali flashback:

It was the only time she ever visited him with a companion and she needed cash fast. He said she’d get her money when the creeper who wanted 100 Joan of Arc masks paid up, and she shoved his face down into his work bench and wrestled his wallet from his pocket and took all his money and broke his kneecaps with a baseball bat and threw a firecracker at his head and bounced up out of there with her unnamed driving companion. This was on the day she died, of course, somewhere between flying home from Hilton Head, driving to Philly to mess with Jenna at blind camp, delivering a doll head full of evidence to Emily, renting a storage locker to house a lunch box, making a porno with Ian, borrowing Toby’s sweater, rubbing her DNA all over Spencer’s friendship bracelet, and holding court in her backyard where Jason was stoned, Byron was desperate, Garrett and Jenna were canoodling, and Melissa was screaming into her phone. In between one of those times, is when she boogied on over to Torch Lake to rob Hector Lime.

OK, keep your vaginas on. Shit’s about to get real. Spencer watches Melissa destroy those masks for like an hour before she creeps out of the darkness and growls, “Hello, Melissa.” And then so many answers it’s going to make you dizzy:

Melissa: Jesus, Spence. Seriously? Fine, look: This guy has a mask of my face because he collects faces. I gave him mine because I wanted to know where he got Ali’s. I saw Mona wearing Ali’s face under the Phantom of the Opera’s face on the Nightmare Express. Spencer: Where you tried to kill me! Melissa: I didn’t try to kill you. That was Wilden. He was going to fuck all y’all up real bad and I was going to stop him, like I’ve been doing since before you even got blackmailed by your first talking doll. The game changed when Garrett showed up. Spencer: Wait, what? I thought you were NAT Club with Garrett. Melissa: Ugh! Spencer! Fuck that amateur hour bullshit! I’ve assembled my own team of lesbians to fight against the dark forces in this town!

Spencer: If you’re talking about Jenna and Shana, they tried to burn me and my friends alive in that lodge. Melissa: That wasn’t them! It was Wilden! Are you even listening to me? I sent them there to watch you guys because I thought you were meeting up with Ali, who I thought was controlling Wilden. Spencer: Let’s put a pin in the thing where you sent a blind girl out on surveillance detail and talk about how you think Allison is still alive. Melissa: Of course she’s alive! Are you watching this show at all? We were scared of Wilden and Wilden was scared of somebody else. Who’s the world’s scariest motherfucker? It’s Ali. She’s everywhere and nowhere. Spencer: So Mona was real A-Team, but now she’s on P-Team. You were NAT Club, but they’re all dead besides Jason and also have nothing to do with this, so you’re on Team ShennaBot Thing now. The third team is Red Coat team, which is run by Red Coat, who is probably Ali, who is definitely alive. And Wilden is dead because … you killed him? Melissa: Yes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to swim to England. [Splash.]

Holy crap. If she’d stayed another minute, she would have confessed to pushing Ian off the bell tower.

Paige is swimming laps alone in the pool at night by herself when someone’s shadow appears on the ceiling and a cat howls and a chainsaw revs up and thunder claps in the distance. She takes a deep breath and steals her nerves. She knew this day would come. But being with Emily was worth the curse. She’ll face her death with her eyes open. Just kidding! It’s only Emily! Paige pulls herself up out of the pool, all soaking wet triceps, and Emily wraps her up in a towel. Paige is like, “You scared me, man. I thought it was time to the pay the price for loving you.” Emily smiles, but only a little. It’s been a rough day.

Emily tells Paige that their dreams of living inside her dorm room matrix are over. She can’t get a scholarship if she can’t swim and she can’t swim with bruise poisoning and she wouldn’t have bruise poisoning if she’d just let Aria and Mona die. Paige grins and says, “Yeah, you should have let that car hit them.” She’s joking but she’s not joking. The Batman part of her gets it. The puffy drapes part of her does not. Paige is so wonderful right now, even the tenor of her voice is a comfort. Emily thinks she’s going to flip out about the loss of this enormous dream, but Paige says they’ll find a new dream. She once wore a braid and wrote a note and hoped Emily might like her back, even just a little. It was the best dream she’d ever had in all of her life and she held it out with trembling hands and Ali snatched it away. And look at them now. Back then, she couldn’t have even fathomed a world where this dream existed. There’s a new dream for them; they just don’t have the capacity to comprehend its awesomeness yet.

Emily doesn’t want to be a sideline girlfriend, and Paige tells her that’s good, because she’s going to swim again. She’s like, “This is how it’s always going to be with you and me: I’ll get the edge, and then you’ll reclaim it and pull ahead, and I’ll work harder to catch up and swim past you, and then you’ll do the same and I’ll do the same and you’ll do the same and sometimes we’ll swim side-by-side like that night in my pool and sometimes we’ll race and one of us will win. But we’ll make each other better because we’ll both keep getting better. I want to undress you, Ems, but I want to wrap you up in towels after you win gold medals too.”

Sexiest thing you could ever say to me. That right there. That’s the winning thing.

Emily goes, “My life really blows right now but it’s hard to remember that when you’re being you.”

(This scene is written and filmed so beautifully. Let’s never take for granted how visually stunning PLL is, OK? Let’s never take for granted these writers who care so much.)

Paige and Emily walk home, arm-in-arm, and are confronted by Rosewood PD. Someone placed a domestic disturbance call and like 20 cops have shown up to handle it. Paige watches helplessly as Emily rushes over to try to explain to the cops that parenting is not against the law.

At Spencer’s, Aria puts the kettle on a Bunsen burner to make a cup of tea. Spencer checks the house for Melissa, but, true to her word, she’s paddling her way out of Torch Lake and up the river and into the sea and across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. Aria’s like, “All that stuff she said, you think it’s true?” And Spencer goes, “Yeah, it was weird, though. When she was saying it, something in my chest felt warm and it’s like my brain stopped panicking for a second. Do you think that’s what it feels like to have someone in your family love you?” Right then Hanna walks in and tells them she’s pretty sure her mom killed Wilden.

They are interrupted by a text from A: “Melissa’s guilty of plenty, but she’s not A material. Kisses!” And also they are interrupted by the sound of the tea kettle bursting and sending shrapnel flying everywhichway. LOL. Aria.

The Risen Mitten reconstructs all the masks Melissa smashed and dropped in three inches of freshwater. Bitch pulled a police car out of a swamp with her hands. It’s also like Melissa wanted to make it easy for her.

My screencapping partner Maggie (@margaretrosey) spent hours of her vacation screencapping this episode for us, because she’s the best. Follow her on Twitter and show her some love. She’s awesome at #BooRadleyVanCullen and everything else too.

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