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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (4.05): “It ain’t Tippi the Bird”

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Ashley Marin committed the crime of not going to New York City in the sketchiest way possible and instead of just coming clean that she was probably getting some tail with Pastor Ted, she made Hanna think she went on a cop-killing orgy. Pam and Eric Fields got tricked by A into acting like parents in plain sight of the whole neighborhood, so of course their asses are even closer to prison than Ashley’s. Aria convinced Ella to follow her boyfriend over Ice Cream Mountain and through the Lollipop Forest to Donut Castle (in Austria, duh) for a pastry-baking apprenticeship. And Melissa modeled her blazer collection all around town, smashed up some masks of Ali’s face, confessed to killing at least two police officers, and hailed Lucas Gottesman’s row boat service to ferry her across the pond to London.

Hanna wakes up to the sounds of sirens and screaming so she goes running downstairs to find her mom wrapped up in a like a cashmere Snuggie, one of the ones with the hoods, and when Ashley whips it off, she’s wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and her hair’s all whacked off in scary chunks. Hanna screams and wakes herself up from the dream where she’s screaming. Ashley, hair still mercifully long and flowy, pops her head into the room to make sure Hanna’s OK, and Hanna’s face is like, “No, and in fact, that dream I just had was the final push I needed to take my manic paranoia to the most destructive place possible.” But her mouth says, “Yep, all good in here!”

Spencer’s got a whole different nightmare scenario happening at her house: Her mom is still insisting that she should make some plays to get into some colleges, when the only thing Spencer wants to do is stand in the yard and try out the bird calls she ordered from the Audubon Society, dressed in a parrot costume, flapping her wings trying to coax Tippi to come home. Veronica has hired a professional college pimp to follow Spencer around to different Ivy League schools and clap his hand over her mouth when she starts talking about the homosexual robot ninja ghost she waltzed with down at the town asylum. Veronica is like, “Sweetheart, I just want to help you be your most attractive self.” And Spencer goes, “Um, in case you missed it, I am wearing crocheted cardigan bedazzled with pearls over a sheer parrot-patterned button-up blouse, and somehow I am still the sexiest thing. I’ve got “attractive” on lockdown, Mother.”

Emily is doing all the worrying about colleges in her house. It’s actually very sad. She’s clicking around on Stanford’s Tumblr, daydreaming about purple upholstery and endless hours in the pool with Paige when her dad comes in and apologizes for not being able to make that dream of hers come true. She shrugs it off and says it’s a moot point that they can’t afford it because without swimming she’s just a regular human being. He caresses her cheek and says, “Kiddo, everything about you, from this GLASS IN YOUR HAIR to the bruise poisoning on your shoulder to the HGH-infused ulcer in your stomach, is exquisite. Just because you’re a Poor doesn’t mean you’re not perfect.” And then he bounces to go burn them some breakfast, that beautiful army commander.

At school, Ella (Ella! I thought you’d left us already!) is holding a meeting to explain to the seniors how to do campus visits to colleges: “Don’t play beer pong, or you will get drunk and kidnapped. Don’t have sex, or you will get pregnant and die. Don’t push any girls down any stairs. Don’t get on any boats with anyone wearing boardshorts. Don’t carry any firearms with you. Hanna, put your phone away. Did you hear what I just said?” Hanna rolls her eyes because she doesn’t need to visit any campuses because she’s already made plans to attend the quote Fashion Institute. (You should check out their website page; it’s baller.) After Ella dismisses them, Hanna makes the first of many appeals for the Liars to please, please, please wrap their arms around her and pull her back from the cross she’s about to nail herself to. But Spencer brushes her off (again: the first of many times) and you can see the frenzied desperation in Hanna’s eyes. She knows she’s going to do something so stupid if someone doesn’t intervene.

Spencer bitches some more about how her mother loves her enough to hire a professional to help her get into college and Emily’s like, “Oh, wow. How much does one of those guys cost? Do you know any that would barter their services for Americanos, or set up some kind of denim jacket/vest payment plan?” But Spencer has just remembered that the phone number Tippi the Bird – this part is amazing: they’ve officially given that thing the last name “the Bird” – was singing is in York County and there’s a college in York County. It’s Cicero College. Probably the writers named Cicero College after the Roman philosopher, but I’m going to pretend they named him after the deranged character in Skyrim that wears a jester’s costume and drives around from town to town with the Night Mother’s coffin in his wagon. Because that’s just about as PLL as it gets. Aria cracks like her third clue in three weeks. The phone number Tippi the Bird was singing is the same area code and exchange as Cicero College’s official digits. Girl is on a sleuthing roll.

Outside, Aria tries to chat with Ella about the big move to Donut Castle, but Ella tells her she’s decided not to go. So Aria, of course, hops into her mom’s car and begs her to please get the eff out of town. Ella’s like, “Your brother-” And Aria goes, “Brother? Did you have a baby?” Ella rolls her eyes. “Just because you haven’t seen your brother in two years doesn’t mean he stopped existing. Look at Spencer’s parents. Shit, girl. Look at Ali. Anyway, your brother doesn’t want me to go.” Aria’s bamboozlement is interrupted by a bee crawling its way out of the car’s air conditioner vents.

You’re looking at that thing thinking maybe it’s like Ali as an Animagus, or there’s a tiny camera or audio recorder taped to it’s little bee back or something – but no! When Aria gets out of the car, Ella gets swarmed by an entire hive of goddamn bees! BEES! Flying out of the vents and stinging and stinging her and she’s just swatting and swatting at them and they’re even poisoning her brain with their horrible bee venom because she can’t even register the fact that she needs to open the door and get out of the car. Aria doesn’t help; she’s too busy reading her text messages: “Bee team! love, A team.”

Aria is wearing her best outfit today. It’s so good they don’t take her out of it and also the camera gives it to you from every angle in like six different scenes. Like, did you get a load of this thing? No, seriously, did you? It is the top half of an admiral’s uniform jacket over a silk cheetah-print blouse paired with a skirt made entirely of neckties, knee-high black socks and boots with heels as tall as the moon. It’s like the answer to the question: What if you fell overboard an aircraft carrier while changing from your Father’s Day brunch costume to your wildlife safari photographer costume and the sailors had to fish you out of the sea and fashion a tiny jacket out of their own uniforms to keep you safe from hypothermia? Aria’s outfit, that is what would happen in that scenario.

Emily Fields is the crowning achievement of human creation, but she is pretty terrible at her job. Today, for example, she spends half the time chatting to Aria on the phone about Ella’s bee attack and half the time accidentally flirting with Spencer’s college pimp who is just hanging out in the Brew looking like he’s made up of at least one-half Wilden genes. Where does this show keep finding these dudes that look like the half-brothers of the dudes they’ve killed? Garrett and Kung Fu Jake, Wilden and this guy. Anyway, Emily spies him and his gigantic scary binder of admissions secrets and auto-charms her way into some free advice about rebranding herself into the kind of young woman who never even once entered into a time-traveling roofie loop with her girlfriend.

Ashley Marin seeks out Veronica Hastings for some legal counsel even though having two mothers in the same room at the same time in Rosewood is liable to tear the fabric of the universe in half and pitch the earth out past Andromeda. Ashley goes, “Hypothetical scenario: Rosewood PD has a murder board with all arrows pointing toward me as the killer of a copper. Can you help me?” And Veronica is like, “Can I ever. I was working on a case to keep Ian Thomas out of jail for murdering Ali, but that fucker snuffed it off the bell tower down at the Presbyterian church. Then I was working the case of Garrett Reynolds, also accused of murdering Ali, and that asshole got tossed off a damn train. So, yep, my work load is wide open. Everyone I represent gets axe-murdered right away.”

Good choice, Ashley. You and Hanna: Just full of good choices this week.

Spencer shows up late for her meeting with her admissions pimp, but he’s so far under Emily’s spell he has no idea how to even tell time anymore. One of the reasons Emily’s game is so potent is because she doesn’t have any idea how much game she’s actually got. What, these shoulders? This face? This soul woven together with kitten fur and phoenix feathers and hedgehog smiles? Aw, shucks.

Troian’s face is an even bigger marvel than usual this week. It’s always doing face gymnastics for us, but this week is the real gold medal event. She suggests to Brenden that she’d rather visit Cicero College than Brown over the weekend and when he agrees, Spencer’s eyebrows shoot to the sky and she smirks and invites Emily along for the ride.

Aria returns home to find Mike playing Candy Crush on his iPad. She doesn’t welcome him home or exchange any pleasantries. She just storms over and snatches away his video games and goes, “What the fuck, dude? You come home after two years of rootin’ around under the DiLaurentis’ porch and now you suddenly need mom? Well, tough luck, brother. I talked to my friend Caleb and he said according to the Hobo Code, you forfeit your right to parental involvement after no less than 18 months of living like a vagabond.” Mike is mad. And it’s kind of scary, too, ’cause he really hulked up while he was doing his wayfaring. He says Aria only wants Ella to go Donut Castle so she can get back to “boffing(!!!)” Mr. Fitz. Aria shoves him so hard because that’s so last season. She’s a part of this show now which means everyone she loves is in danger of vehicular manslaughter (either the giving or receiving of), or being framed for some terrible crime that was really committed by a doll wearing a mask of its own face, or BEES. OK, Mike Montgomery? Motherfucking bees are in play now. She shoves him to prove her point. It’s not very effective. She was smart to sign up for karate.

Ashley and Hanna have their daily dose of acting squirrelly with each other. Ashley half-asks if Hanna’s going to tour some colleges and Hanna half-answers that guides walking backwards make her nauseous and Hanna half-asks if Ashley’s ready to ‘fess up to shooting Wilden in the face with a stolen gun and Ashley half-answers that Hanna should hush and eat her dinner. They’re really working up to some top-notch weirdness when the phone rings. The landline phone. Luckily, the Marins have two landlines in their kitchen – because, remember, they also have a fax machine – so Hanna is able to listen in to Veronica telling Ashley to come to her law office first thing in the morning.

Hanna does not go to sleep. Instead she works herself up to berserk, zooming around the house jiggling door handles and looking under beds and pulling books from shelves in case any of them trigger secret passages and crawling around in the air vents and combing the backyard for holes. The one thing she misses is a locked closet in her mom’s room. It’s got a keyhole as big as something out of Alice in Wonderland. She can’t call Caleb because he’s out in the woods eating beans with his dad again, so she wakes up Aria and babbles like a nutbasket for ten minutes until Aria shuts her down. Hanna’s like, “Cool, cool. I’m just going to go sit down and have a think about the dumbest possible thing I can do with regards to this locked door and the contents contained therein.” Aria’s like, “Awesome. Just check in with me later so I can ignore more of your cries for help.”

What Hanna finds in Ashley’s closet is a handgun elegantly wrapped in a Hermes scarf (of course times two). What she does with it is press her fingerprints to every possible surface, stash it in her bag, and head on over to the campus of Cicero College, which, like every other college on earth, has a zero tolerance policy for weapons (of course times infinity). She calls Spencer and gives her chance to talk her out of it, but every other breath Spencer takes right now is just her whistling Tippy the Bird’s phone song.

Emily is packing for Cicero when her dad comes in to give her a pep talk and a wad of Benjamins.

Papa Fields: Take this money for gas and maybe take your lady out for a nice meal or something. Emily: My lady? Papa Fields: Your bird? Your girl? What are you kids calling it these days? Spencer. Buy her a fancy dinner. Emily: My girlfriend is Paige, Dad. Papa Fields: Not Spencer? Emily: No. Papa Fields: Huh. I’m sorry. I just – I really thought with the plaid and the overachieving and the field hockey and the way she stares at you sometimes. I thought there was … something. A spark. Emily: Spencer stares at everything like that. She once burned a hole through a banana by looking at it really hard. Papa Fields: OK, well, get a handbag or a new jean jacket or some steroids or something like that. Love you, baby girl. Have a good trip.
Aria asks Byron to release Ella to the sea, but Byron says he cannot do such a thing because without her constant supervision, there’s really no telling when one of his former grad students/mistresses will kidnap Aria from school, drag her by her hair all the way across town, club her over the head with a frying pan, and lock her in the basement. But in a total surprise move, Byron catches the good parenting epidemic that’s spreading all over town and actually does Ella to go to Donut Castle. He promises he’ll keep Aria from getting killed by any of his bonkerdoodle girlfriends and he’ll put food and water under the DiLaurentis’ porch every morning and every night for Mike.

I’m not sure I can capture in writing the alchemical convergence of wonderfulness in these next few scenes, but what I’m going to say is: I was reminded more than once this week how harsh and heartbreaking it can be to invest yourself in a story playing out in the hands of a storyteller who cannot be trusted. You know me by now and you know I think stories are the world’s greatest gift and the people who make stories are real-life magicians. I think the cruelest thing a writer can do is create a world that moves you and then chastise you for being moved by it. I one time saw Russell T. Davies say that “nine hysterical women” were behind fandom’s outpouring of sorrow and anger when he killed off beloved bisexual Ianto Jones on Torchwood. We’ve been seeing Ryan Murphy do that same thing for years on Twitter. Plus when Glee gets self-referential and name-check-y it’s always about chastising fans. And I am beside myself with the Skins creative team’s brutal, callous response to the absolute face-punch it gave the gays this week.

I was in a really morose headspace when I started watching this episode, but what Maya Goldsmith – giver of PinkDrinks – did here was remind me why this show stands alone, and rises above all the others I love. I felt her nudging us in the ribs, and then winking at us. Not brazenly. Not in a way that disrupted the narrative. But I heard her whisper, “I’m going to love the ones who love us.” And it felt like a hug for my little story-loving soul.

Spencer needs the guy running the information booth at Cicero’s newbie fair to help her track down the place that has the phone number that Ali kept calling and calling and calling all summer long from Cape May. Boardshorts’ place. The information booth guy is wearing a shirt that says “Shut your Pi hole” with the Pi sign on it so you know he’s really awesome and really a dick right away. Spence tries to play it to herself like she’s so much cooler than Pi Hole, but once she starts dropping nerd references, it’s like the Holy Spirit has gifted her with GeekSpeak tongues. She calls the guy “Jar Jar Binks” to Hanna, and then spits out the word “Hufflepuff” exactly like Slytherins always do. You’d think she’d have checked some of that Slytherin arrogance by now on account of how Emily Fields, the essence of Hufflepuffery, is the one who kept this whole operation from exploding when Spencer was shuffling around Radley last year with her hair crackling like her brain was on fire.

Pi Hole isn’t really interested in helping Spencer because she’s got crazy eyes (“They’re not that crazy,” Spencer says, in the best line of the season so far.) She kind of mocks him but also inspires him by doing her best Gandalf impression, all, “You shall not pass!” But in the end it’s the Game of Thrones reference that really gets him. He helps her decipher the proximity of the phone number: It’s on Greek row. And she confesses to being both a Lanister and a Slytherin, even though she can do the whole Targaryen speech from the end of GoT‘s first season. But she won’t. Because he doesn’t deserve to be ministered to by her. And because if lesbian fandom’s collective head exploded – and honey, it would – there’d be quite a mess to clean up.

Spencer and Emily hit up Greek row, but there’s a slight misunderstanding about their purpose here on this campus. See, Emily actually needs a non-swimming scholarship to go to school. That’s why she tagged along. Things get real ugly real fast.

Spencer: Hang on. You’re telling me you didn’t drive all the way out to York County with me to shove a photo of our dead best friend in a bunch of college kids’ faces and sing Tippi the Bird’s song into the ears of anyone who will listen and just keep screaming “BOARDSHORTS!” over and over up and down the streets to see if anyone answers? Emily: Sometimes I think your voice operates on a special frequency that your ears can’t hear. Spencer: Oh, that’s rich coming from the girl who’s been using her voice and face and “camel lashes” to keep Brenden semi-erect all weekend. Emily: That was gross. What you just said there, the actual words and the implication, was gross. All I am doing is being awesome, like normal. Spencer: No! You’re shooting extra-awesome rays right at Brenden, when, last time I checked, your girlfriend was saving all her extra-awesome rays just for you! Emily: Look, if you want to talk about sexual exploitation, do you remember playing strip trivia with that guy Andrew? Pretty sure you showed him your boobs to get back on the academic decathlon team! Not everybody has a zillion dollar safety net they can brat their way into whenever they feel like it! Spencer: I JUST WANT TO SOLVE ONE GODDAMN MYSTERY! Emily: I JUST WANT TO BE A PART OF PAIGE’S PUFFY DRAPES FUTURE!

It is at that exact moment that the sisters of Alpha Gamma Something burst forth onto the porch and break into song about how Emily and Spencer are god’s chosen apples. As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after Spemily. I think that’s how the hymn goes.

Inside the sorority party, Emily chats with a sister who gives her the download on the ol’ sorority matron that used to run this place. Her name was Ms. Grunwald. She knew if you were going to try to sneak out before you ever even thought about sneaking out. She was everywhere and nowhere. And she had a hazing paddle that she beat the shit out of you with if you stepped out of line. But never mind all that, or the shrine they’ve built to her, these ladies gots themselves a new flatscreen in the den! Emily wanders off alone with Brenden, who is off-duty and looking only for her and carrying an engagement ring in his pocket.

Spencer’s plan of glowering at people and asking them if they know Ali isn’t working, and she’s just about ready to change tactics when Hanna shows up with that bag and that gun. Spencer’s face. She rolls her eyes at herself. She and Emily can’t both leave town at the same time. Of course Hanna would get herself a gun and walk up into a sorority party waving it around. And of course Aria wouldn’t be around to stop her because of course she’d be playing Monopoly and eating popcorn in front of the fire in her living room. Spencer tells Hanna to stay put, so she curls herself up into a chair an armchair and looks as unimpressed as possible.

Spencer goes searching for Emily, and the way it’s filmed, you think Emily’s going to be getting bad-touched by Brenden or something, but it’s nothing evil like that. Instead, Spencer stumbles into a panic room behind a hidden panel in the wall. Inside the room is a pink phone that Spencer knows immediately is attached to the phone number they’ve been tracking, but she can’t really count it as a win unless she does the weirdest thing possible to seal the reveal, so she calls up Aria who answers like, “Who is this?” And in this totally dead voice Spencer goes, “Well, it ain’t Tippi the Bird.”

Amazing. So amazing. Jesus Christ. This show is everything.

“Who is this unknown person calling my phone?” “Well, it ain’t the parrot into which your dead best sewed her own voice box and programmed to sing the phone number of the person she was stalking the whole summer before she got her brains bashed in by a shovel.”

“Who is this?” “Well, it ain’t the bird your friend stole from the lady who’s building a shrine to her dead daughter’s omnipresent terrorist ghost.”

“Who’s calling me?” “Well, it ain’t Tippi the Bird.

Who lived inside this panic room and why was Ali calling him/her a thousand million times that summer? Spencer doesn’t know, but there are definite werewolf claw marks all over the walls, Shrieking Shack-style, so that’s going to spice things up.

Outside of the party, Brenden makes a move on Emily and she smiles at him like he is the stupidest human on the planet. She says she’s taken, not available, got her future all planned out. She’s going to live inside the computer with the love of her life. Brenden goes, “Well, but maybe he’s not making you really happy.” Emily quirks her eyebrow, says, “He’s a she and she shines so bright in my heart and in my mind that I can barely even register your face.”

Spencer interrupts them to drop the bomb about how Hanna is carrying a literal bomb around in her purse. She and Emily run like rabbits through the forest surrounding the sorority houses because Hanan didn’t have time to wait for them. No, she just scooped an empty beer mug off the coffee table and took five or six steps out into the woods and started digging up the ground with that beer vessel so she could bury the gun. A dozen police apparate onto the scene, shooting stunning spells in every direction. They handcuff her and haul her away in the back of a police car.

As Emily and Spencer watch her go, A gives them a little ping: “Hope Veronica has two-for-one murder trial specials on Wednesdays!”

The Risen Mitten enjoys a hot cup of tea with some honey from the bee farm where she trains her Tracker Jackers. She dusts off a photo of Mrs. Grunwald, whose eyes make Spencer’s look 100 percent normal.

My deepest and most heartfelt thanks as always to my screencapping partner Maggie (@margaretrosey), who sent over this week’s caps with a note that said: “You’ll see a lot of pictures of Spencer’s face – because I knew you wouldn’t mind and it’s amazeballs.”

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