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“Pretty Little Liars” recap 4.10: You can ring my bell jar

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Paige threw Emily a surprise party and tried to give her the gift of dead Jenna and future Olympics gold medals, but Emily’s been acting like a real grouch ever since she had to start rescuing everyone she loves from cars driving into them, so she did not reward Paige’s efforts with puffy drapes. Pastor Ted hocked the church bell for one million dollars, which he used to bail Ashley out of jail after Mona confessed to killing Wilden. Spencer went back to Radley to chat with Eddie Lamb about Marion Cavenaugh and discovered that Wilden, who falsified information in Marion’s death investigation, was a crooked jerky jockey long before he blackmailed Ashley Marin into sexual slavery. And Aria convinced Kung Fu Jake to break his ninja-client privilege and explain why Mike signed up for self-defense classes down at It’s Tang Soo Do Time. And then he took of his shirt and she lost her mind.

The Liars have skived off class to tiptoe around the hallway and discuss the possibility that it really was Cece Drake who tried to drown Jenna in Face Lake at Emily’s birthday party. It would be a lot easier to know for sure if it was Cece Drake if they could actually find Cece Drake and talk to Cece Drake, but Toby’s been following Tippi the Bird’s feather trail up and down the eastern seaboard for weeks now with no luck, and that phone number Caleb stole from Nigel just rings and rings and rings with no answer at all. Emily comes to a screeching halt in the middle of the hallway, gasps aloud, gawks at her phone. The Liars think it’s just another A text, but oh, no. This is much better. Much, much, much better. Mrs. DiLaurentis has texted to offer Emily respite from her homelessness. She is welcome to move into the bedroom where her first two murdered girlfriends once lived.

Emily doesn’t want to do it because that house is a lesbian death trap of epic proportions. And plus there’s metaphorical ghosts in that place and literal ghosts in that place and Mrs. D shuffles around there all day and all night, rattling chains and whistling phone numbers and wearing Ali’s old clothes. But the Liars say she has to do it because there’s no telling how many clues Ali hid in the stuff she knew her mom would use to set up her post-death shrine. They’re so excited about it, in fact, that they get kind of loud. Aria asks them to please keep it down because she doesn’t want to get in trouble for skipping class because she still wants to graduate. Since she’s the only one who will actually survive the next three months, it’s a valid concern for her.

After the Liars split-up, Spencer spots Ezra trying to break into his own classroom. She asks if he wants some help, or to come to one of her lock-picking seminars some time, and he looks at her like she has three heads or something, bursts into tears, grabs his messenger bag and runs away sobbing.

Hanna accosts Caleb and asks him why he’s at school instead of in Philly staking out that P.O. Box that is attached to that phone number that was in that phone that Caleb and Toby pick-pocketed from Nigel. Caleb goes, “HOT SPOT FIREWALL BANDWIDTH CAPTCHA ETHERNET HYPERTEXT GIGABYTE, HANNA!” Translation: He’s got a physical address in Philly for the apartment where Cece Drake probably lives and watches cable television.

Aria meets Kung Fu Jake at the Brew to show him some Kung Fu action shots she took of him doing Kung Fu. He’s so pleased with them that he wishes he’d had them sooner so he could have submitted them to the photo program of tonight’s Kung Fu game. Sadly, the game he is talking about is not that underground fight club where Holden almost got his heart exploded, but a legitimate, professional battle of martial arts. They do that thing you do when you’re first dating someone that’s like: “Oh, that sounds cool.” “Do you want to come?” “Do you want me to come?” “Do you want me to want you to come?” Aria decides that yes, she will attend. Probably those guys take their shirts off, right? One more chance to see Jake naked and it’s not like her best friends need any moral support tonight or anything, what with Hanna wanting to break into Radley to do who knows what with Mona and Emily sleeping in the bedroom of all her dead girlfriends. They’re good. They’re fine. Tang Soo Do it is!

Dr. Wren Kingston is back at Radley to do Mona’s mental evaluation. Where was your sexy/creepy British ass when Emily needed a doctor who wouldn’t report her parents to the authorities, dude? He’s giving Mona a test to see if she’s a sociopath, showing her drawings of humans having emotions and seeing if she can register what they’re feeling. For example, this one family of farmers is grinning and tossing their child around in the air. Mona’s like, “They’re happy. They’re a happy family. All happy families are the same, right? Isn’t that what Tolstoy said? Anyway, just out of the frame is the ghost of a girl wearing a mask of her own face and tossing a lighter onto a bale of hay while her twin-prop airplane whirs in the background and a wing-camera records the impending fire storm.” Wren says he knows Mona is keeping secrets. Mona says she’s locked ’em in her pocket, gonna take ’em them to the grave. He’s like, “You’re off your meds.” And she’s all, “And you’re off your game.”

He doesn’t think she killed Wilden, but she doesn’t give a red-coated fuck what he thinks. Radley is her candy store and he’s just the guy who shelves the peanut butter. “Wotcher!”

Toby returns home from Philly to find an envelope on his stairs containing the sheet music the Risen Mitten packaged up for him last week. He calls Spencer to come help him find out more pointless information about his dead mom who will continue to be dead no matter when he finds out how she died, and Spencer totally trots right over to help him, even though what she should be doing is standing side-by-side with Emily, who:

Has just shown up at the DiLaurentis place where Jessica D. is having herself a little seance in the middle of the living room, trying to commune with Ali about what kind of snack she should feed their visitors. She offers to turn on Scooby-Doo for Emily and Spencer and bring them a plate of those Nilla Wafers that they love so much; probably she’s even got some Hershey’s syrup in the fridge and can whip them up a glass of chocolate milk. Spencer turns her face to Ems and it goes: “Oh, girl, jackpot.” And that’s before Mrs. D reaches into Ali’s closet with trembling hands to move Ali’s winter clothes that she just hanged up in there like two weeks ago. Emily is like, “It’s cool, Mrs. D. Don’t worry about it. I only wear jean vests. They don’t stay on hangers anyway.”

Also making an afternoon snack of comfort food is Hanna Marin. Caleb laughs about how she’s back on carbs again, but she says no, this is for her mother, who cannot summon the energy to get out of bed when she knows there’s no wine waiting for her in the kitchen. Toby wants to go to Philly to stake out that address from the cable bill, but Hanna says Aria’s going to do it when she’s in town for the Tang Soo Dotacular tonight. But there is one thing he could do for her: He could help her sneak into Radley. Caleb has had it up to here with Hanna’s Mona mania. He says her life is already dangerous enough – cars driving into Emily’s house, Jenna floating in the lake like soggy bread(!) – and now she wants to “ring the Bell Jar”(!!). He says sorry Charlie, he will not help Hanna get into Radley. She tells him to scram then.

Parenthetically, here’s a little quote from The Bell Jar I think you should just pocket and meditate upon after Jessica DiLaurentis flashes us back in just a little while:

My mother smiled. “I know my baby wasn’t like that.” I looked at her. “Like what?” “Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital.” She paused. “I knew you’d decide to be all right again.”

Hanna decides to go to Wren for help. After all, he came to her aid last time Mona was in Radley, and when Spencer was there, he’s the one who chaperoned her little sapphic spook shimmy with Ali’s ghost, after which he told her he was the one who’d let Cece in to see Mona when she first arrived. Hanna actually mentions the Cece visitation thing to him and he says a blonde girl showed up last night, but he assumed it had been Hanna. She’s like, “Nope, I was at home eating pie with my mom and the pastor who bought her hand in marriage with one hundred thousand dollars of bail money.” Wren says he’ll do what he can to help her, but as soon as she’s gone, he rings up someone on their mobile and says he’s going to fix half of the problem and they’ve got to fix the other half.

Toby shows Spencer the sheet music the Risen Mitten sent to him and this note that says he should leave the (Eddie) lamb alone and go after the lion. Toby is pretty sure the lion is his mom’s old shrink, Dr. Palmer, the one who’s writing the book about the color of water and the taste of sunshine. He wants Spencer to come visit him because she’s got absolutely zero sense of decorum and will have no trouble waterboarding an elderly man with dementia. She sighs and says she’ll come, but her patience with this storyline is waning fast. She’s like, “If we don’t have an answer about your mom’s death locked down by the 4A finale, I’m out, dude.” He thinks that’s fair. I think it’s more than fair.

Things are going just about as well as you’d expect over at the old DiLaurentis crypt. Jessica just found out her husband is divorcing her because she’s batshit crazycakes insane and 100 percent unhinged. Only Emily – seriously of all people on earth, only Emily – could summon the empathy to feel Mrs. D’s pain on this one. Sure, she’s full-on bananatrousers, but that doesn’t make her feelings any less real!

Speaking of Feelings, Ezra has invited Maggie over for cake and also to tell her that when he was trying to build a case to seize full custody of Malcolm from her, he discovered that Malcolm isn’t even his kid. I mean, obviously this is exactly where this story was going. As soon as Veronica told him to prove paternity last week, you knew he was going to find out he’s only an imaginary father. But that doesn’t make his meltdown any less awesome. He cries and cries and lists all the ways he and Malcolm have bonded over these many … weeks, right? It’s only been like three weeks of Rosewood time since the Midnight Express, yeah? Anyway, the bonding:

“Malcolm and I went to the emergency room that time when Aria neglected him and he broke his face. I had that panic attack that time he ran out into the street from the bookstore to chase down Aria and that meathead she’s been getting coffee with. Don’t you remember? I saw his hand on the small of her back and burst into tears and hyperventilated? Right there on the sidewalk? Malcolm was a part of that story. And then there’s that little game he made up about his Thomas trains, the one where Percy the cheeky saddletank makes a pact with the devil, exchanging his soul for every worldly pleasure. Faustian talking trains! He’s a boy genius! I thought he was mine!”

Maggie weaves a yarn about getting blitzed at a party when she and Ezra were on a break in college, but he won’t hear it. The only thing better than this would be watching Diane Fitzgerald respond to this.

Hanna takes some paperwork over to Veronica’s office for her mom and finds Caleb lurking real shadily on the street corner. She’s like, “You were about to roll up in there and tell Veronica about A, weren’t you? Despite my strict orders to never tell any grown-ups about our omnipresent ghost stalker, that is exactly what you were going to do, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Caleb?” That is, in fact, exactly what he was going to do, but she is willing to forgive him. For one thing, she seems to finally, intuitively understand that he will be moving to Ravenswood in about three minutes, and also he says the phrase. You know the one. “Your enemy is everywhere and nowhere.” The last person who said that was Mona, and if Hanna can move past the way Mona keeps almost murdering her, she can definitely move past the way Caleb wants to stop Mona from murdering her.

Wren watches them make out on the street, which makes me think Caleb is the person Wren was talking to earlier, like, “I’ll keep Hanna away from Mona if you’ll tell Veronica that Mona is off her meds and doing adrenalized hyperreality again.” Maybe they both want to keep Hanna safe, and Wren has the added motivation of wanting to fucking with Mona and/or Veronica? After he creeps on Hanna and Caleb, he zooms on over to Hastings Manor to tell Veronica that he doesn’t think Mona really killed and also her reality is more adrenalized than ever, so hey, how about a quick visit? He can arrange the whole thing!

Homeless Emily is making tea for the deranged mother of the ghost who has been ruining her life by degrees for the last four years, because of course she is. (“May I please wake up from this brainwashing hypnosis where you’re trying to convince me I bashed in my best friend’s skull, please, if it wouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience for you, please.”) Mrs. D invites her to sit down and share a cuppa and a story or two about how Ali isn’t really dead. Mrs. D is like, “To be honest with you, after she died, I once saw her in the park wearing a mask of her own face, just out for a jog in front of God and everybody.” Emily’s like, “No, I understand. I mean, she’s rescued me from two near-death experiences, she visited Hanna in the hospital, she stole some stuff from Aria’s closet, and she watches Spencer sleep at least one night a week. I even made out with her one of those times that she – oh, that’s right. You don’t know. I’m gay.” Mrs. D smiles, pats Emily’s hand, says, “Ali always said you liked Beyonce a little too much. You’re such a sweet little thing, Emily Fields. I wish my daughter had been in lesbians with you too.”

Perfect. This episode is so perfect. “My dead daughter is alive.” “I know. I’m gay.” “I know. With Pigskin. Ali would have gotten such a laugh out of that, bless her.”

On her way to Kung Fu Jake’s kung fu game, Aria stops by the address where Caleb said Cece ordered cable TV. A kind of hot, very angry college student is packing her shit into her car in such a huff. She recognizes Aria as one of the girls who was girls with Ali at the party where Ian tried to date rape some sorority sister or another and Ali pushed her roofied ass right down the stairs and broke her neck. As Aria’s walking up, this bitch just goes, “Oh, hell, it’s Ali’s girl. You remember when Ali was girls with Cece before Ali got her expelled from college for murder? Well, if you see your girl tell her to tell my girl she owes me like six months rent, girl.”

I wanted so badly for her to be loading Tippi the Bird into her passenger’s seat.

Lesbians get murdered in the DiLaurentis house like toys get built at the North Pole: All day, every day, by magic. So Ms. D goes ahead and leaves that front door unlocked to keep the homicide quota on track. Hanna takes advantage of the opporunity to waltz right in and start rifling through Ali’s jewelry box. You think she’s going to find a key that fits into the back of decapitated teddy bear’s head that holds a flash drive that plays a video of a clown pantomiming a series of clues that leads to an artisan shop staffed by children whose tongues have been cut out by a robot wearing a mask of Ms. Grunwald’s face. But no! It’s even better!

Red coat walks into the room behind Hanna, wearing an Ali mask, and stares at her face in the jewelry box mirror for like ten full minutes, before dancing right out of the room! And Hanna doesn’t even notice it! It’s terrifying! IT’S AMAZING!

Spencer and Toby stop by Dr. Palmer’s retirement home to talk about Toby’s mom, which he is happy to do, but oh, wait, did he want them to play this sheet music on the piano, well that’s too bad because he’s not really proficient in it, but did he tell you about the research he’s doing on the 99 flavors of the stars in the galaxy. Spencer’s wasted about enough time on Toby’s ghost hunt, so she just starts playing that music on the piano like she did on the piano when she was at Radley because all asylums have a piano.

Dr. Palmer: Ah, Marion what a lovely song! You should play it for little Boo when he comes by today to see you! Spencer: …whuuuuut? Dr. Palmer: Your son, Toby Cavenaugh! He’d be so happy to know you’re doing your music again instead of trying to kill yourself! Spencer: No, seriously. What? Dr. Palmer: Such a darling little boy. Little tiny child. Toby the teeny tiny teensy tot and you his grown-up adult mother. Spencer: Awesome. Toby and I will definitely be able to stomach seeing each other naked again after this shit. Well, while I have your attention: You know that blonde haired girl you told me to stay away from…? Dr. Palmer: Alas, our time is up! Scoot along now, it’s time for my appointment with Ms. DiLaurentis!
At a whole other insane asylum, Veronica stops by for a little chat with Mona, which surprises Vanderjesus but doesn’t throw her off her game.

She’s like, “How’d you get in here? Oh, right. You probs made friends with the guards when your daughter was scooting around in this very bedroom with that hair.” Veronica laughs in her face because they both know she never visited Spencer in here. Veronica goes, “People say you’re terrifying. Well, bitch, I also am terrifying.” Mona doesn’t blink, just monotones: “Terrifying doesn’t tell; terrifying shows.” So Veronica threatens her with jail, which causes the corners of Mona’s mouth to twitch at least: “I have no intention of going to Azkaban, Ms. Hastings. I could break out, of course – but what a waste of time, and frankly, I can think of a whole host of things I would rather be doing.” Veronica scowls. Mona offers her a Nilla Wafer. Nice try, SVU.

Just as Aria is getting ready to attend Jake’s kung fu game, her phone rings and it is Ezra. He is staring at himself in a glass window and looking like he’s about five seconds from just snapping. (I wish he would. I wish he would snap. I wish he would get one of those Melissa masks from Face Lake and start robbing banks and vandalizing more cars and terrorizing Vice-Principal Hackett. I wish he’d attend Spencer’s lockpicking classes and the go nuts.) Aria tells Jake she’ll be right in. Her finger hovers over her phone. And she denies Ezra’s call! Aria Montgomery! I did not know you had that in you! How healthy and responsible and grown-up! Anyhoodle, she enjoys Jake’s kung fu game and then they eat vegetarian burritos and make out. The show Aria is on is so dreamy. What a really wonderful place for a teenage girl to live and play and love, this Rosewood, Pennsylvania.

Spencer rushes to the DiLaurentis’ place to tell Hanna and Emily that Dr. Palmer was either treating Ali or Ali’s mom at Radley at some point. She stumbles over how she knows that information, but Hanna and Emily don’t call her on it because the shrapnel from the clue bomb flies everywhichway. Hanna and Spencer want to confront Jessica about it right away, but Emily is all, “Today? On the day when she’s knitting a scarf for the husband who is divorcing her because she lives inside a shrine to their dead daughter? You guys are so mean! I’m going to WORK!”

They do not heed her call for compassion. Instead, they buttonhole Ms. D in her own living room about her relationship with Dr. Palmer, which yields the greatest Ali flashback of all time.

So, Alison was in this living room playing the piano when Jessica crashed through the front door and tried to decapitate her fingers by smashing the piano cover down on her hands! Ali started to hold her breath. You know, that old trick. And Jessica tore into her like a lion into a zebra, just: “YOU TWO ARE FUCKING CRAZY, YOU KNOW THAT? I GET A CALL AT WORK THAT YOU’RE BEING HELD AT RADLEY BECAUSE YOU’RE SUICIDAL SO I RUSH MY ASS RIGHT UP THERE, RUN OVER TWO OR THREE SCHOOL CHILDREN ON THE WAY, AND WHEN I GET THERE, YOU KNOW WHO’S HAVING A LAUGH DRESSED IN YOUR CLOTHES?” Courtney, right? It’s Courtney? They’re finally giving us Courtney? No, assholes. Even better. IT WAS CECE DRAKE.

Back in the present day, Hanna’s like, “So, Cece and Ali liked to borrow each other’s outfits?” And Jessica goes, “More like they liked to borrow each other’s souls.” Jessica told them Ali that she and Cece weren’t allowed to see each other any more because they were getting very close to reaching some kind of transformational wonder twins body morph, like they were trying to create a Super Ali, and enough was enough.

Hell yes. HELL YES. Mrs. DiLaurentis totally killed Ali thinking it was CeCe!

Hanna and Spencer and Caleb debrief Ms. D’s amazing flashback and decide that the reason Ali had one thousand masks of her face made up is so Cece could stash on in every nook of Rosewood and pretend to be her any old time. They don’t really cook up any awesome theories about why because Veronica comes home and confesses she’s going to have to abandon Ashley’s case because somebody reported her for obstruction of justice because somebody dimed her out for visiting Mona in Radley. Hanna acts like her mom being lawyer-less is the worst thing she’s ever heard of, even though we have already established that being wine-less is Ashley Marin’s true hell.

Hey, guess who called in Veronica’s visit? Mmm hmm. “Dr.” Wren Kingston. He brags about it on the phone while coloring in that picture of the happy farm family he showed Mona earlier. The jacket on the girl in the picture, he makes it blood red.

Ms. D and Emily are enjoying some more tea and talk of Ali’s ghost when the electrician pops upstairs to let them know the furnace is fixed and also that a large blonde-haired raccoon wearing a red coat has been burrowing under the porch, eating Kit-Kats and making nuclear bombs. Emily and Ms. D rush down to the basement to see it, both of them thinking it’s probably just Mike Montgomery’s little hideaway, but instead it is a real hobo hole. Ms. D surveys and and then goes, “Eh, whatever.” She walks upstairs to make dinner. Emily turns out the lights, and that’s when she sees like ten quarter-sized holes drilled into the floor of the kitchen, a place for that raccoon to just peep the night away, right up everybody’s skirts.

The Risen Mitten sifts through the rubble of Emily’s living room. She plants Ashley’s swamp shoes in the debris and then calls in an order of delicious vegetarian pizza for Aria. And sure, throw in some cheese sticks too, while you’re at it.

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