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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (5.9): A little bit loud, a little bit crazy

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Ella’s fiance got grossly pervy on Hanna, a thing that made Hanna’s best friends in all of life call her a slut in eleven different ways and made me lose my goddamn mind. Spencer and Emily bebopped up the countryside, trying to find a horse to help them deconstruct Bethany Young’s relationship with Mrs. DiLaurentis, but unlike sweet Tippi with her gentle clue crooning, the horse kicked Spencer right in the eyeball. Aria, meanwhile – you know, I actually don’t even remember. I was so upset by what she said to Hanna. Let’s just assume she wore something printed with skulls and earrings made of werewolf finger bones and mentioned to anyone who would listen that she didn’t murder that Costumeshop girl the NYPD found in that theater in New York. Didn’t even know her. Had never even been to New York. Had never even heard of New York. And Ali hired Noel Kahn to break into Hanna’s house and wave a butcher knife around in the shadows.

Alison cannot believe how stupid her stupid friends are behaving right now. For starters, Hanna is acting like Ali is some kind of monster for paying someone to break into Hanna’s house and terrorize her mother. For a second thing, Spencer had the audacity to look at the security camera footage in her own back/graveyard and deduce that Ali’s presence there means she’s lying to them and also can Apparate. For a third thing, Aria didn’t even show up to her SOS text. Ali’s intonation leads me to believe this is the most egregious of all the Liars’ offenses tonight. Like WTF, Aria? It was an SOS! Emily tries to coax Ali back inside the realm of Acting Normal, Bitch – but Ali will not hear it! She clomps out to go call her dad.

Spencer: Probably she paid someone to attack her in her living room that day you “saved her life,” Em. Emily: That better have been for real, dude. My other swimming shoulder got clobbered in that scuff up. I can barely hold a pencil now. Hanna: Emily, take me home with you. Emily: We’ve talked about this. You cannot be gay for one person. Hanna: Then take me home with you in a not-gay way. Please. I think Ali peed on my doorknob. Spencer: Everything is the worst, including: I’m going blind, I think. Emily: I gotta go; wrestle that flask away from Hanna if you’re feeling froggy.
Emily is riding her bike home on the sidewalk-which is illegal in every city I’ve ever lived in, but frankly I’m starting to wonder if Rosewood even has laws-when she spots Noel Kahn sitting in his car in the middle of the town square listening to recordings of Ali and Shana just as loud as the volume will go, windows down and everything. Emily knocks over like a trash can or something and Noel realizes he’s been peeped. He speeds away leaving Emily stranded on the street with a broken bike. Her face is mystified. This guy couldn’t have listened to this stuff in his bedroom with the door closed? He doesn’t own some headphones?

The next morning Ashley flits into Hanna’s bedroom to ask if she and Ali want to go shopping this afternoon to get their minds off the fact that they were almost hacked into pieces last night by an intruder, and also to buy something fancy for Ella and Zack’s engagement party. There’s a hot second where Hanna is thinking about it but once Ashley clarifies that “you girls” means “you and Ali” and not “you and literally any other Liar except Ali,” Hanna shrugs it off. Also, she’s not going to that party anyway because Zack is a full-on skeezehole, but she doesn’t even try to explain that to her mom because the three people who should have believed her and hugged her so close as soon as the words were out of her mouth called her a whore when she told them what happened.

From the bathroom, Ali yells, “Han, where’s your moisturizer?” And Ashley is like, “Use mine; it’s next to those bath salts Hanna is not allowed to touch!”

And then Ashley finds Hanna’s flask. Because she’s the absolute greatest, she goes, “I get that this is about self-medicating your nuclear-level anxiety. I’m dialed in now. But: a) do you know how many carbs is in this much whiskey? With wine, you’ve got low-cal options at least. And b) Do you think being out of control right now is a very good idea? Walk it back, honey. Lock it up. There are prowlers on the loose.”

Hanna’s face is like, “No shit, and Ella is lined up to marry one of them.”

Rosewood High School Interrogation Suite B. Detective Tanner is doing it right, questioning minors with actual parents present. Also she is doing it right because she skips the penny questions and lands a couple of five-dollar blows. As Ella smiles sweetly beside a quaking Aria, Tanner is like, “The crime in this town is like a plate of spaghetti. You pull on one noodle and you end up with a whole mouth full of pasta. Now, in your experience, was Mr. Fitz dining at a full buffet of undercooked meatballs, or was it mostly just you and Shanna Fring?” Ella goes, “Wait, what?” And Aria goes, “I WAS HIS ONLY MEATBALL HOW DARE YOU.” That’s all Tanner needs to know today. Thank you, ladies.

Ali is wearing the blazer Ashley Marin used when she sold Mary Kay back in the ’80s, before she got into robbing banks, and she marches right up to Spencer in the hallway and demands to know why Aria and Hanna are fighting. She goes, “How is this about me, because I know it’s about me.” And Spencer is all, “OK, Aria. Calm down.” There’s a lot of talk about closing ranks and how if they don’t stand together they’re going to end up in jail and/or blown up apart, but Ali’s meltdown is stopped short when they see Hanna staggering down the hallway, morning-drunk. Ali goes, “You want to follow somebody, try Drunky McVodkabreath over there.”

Emily has an early morning meeting with the swim team coach about taking the job as the assistant, and while he fawns over her many accomplishments, she spots a stack of binders that she needs to get her hands on. The boys’ locker assignments and their locker codes are in one of those things, so as soon as the coach walks out the door, Emily walks right back in and snags it. She breaks into Noel Kahn’s locker. And then she breaks into Noel Kahn’s car. What she finds is pictures and videos of Ali doing Ali stuff out in the wide world when she was supposed to be chained up in a basement.

Here’s one of her saving a baby from toddling into traffic. Here’s one of her punching a baby in the head. Here’s one of her volunteering at a retirement home. Here’s one of her running over an elderly man with a truck. Here she is at Sesame Place, Pennsylvania’s Muppet-themed amusement park, chaperoning an orphan’s day out. Here she is feeding an orphan to Cookie Monster. She’s piloting her own plane. She’s sneaking onto a grimy bus. She dines on foie gras. She digs around in the trash for a day-old burger. She’s terrified. She ain’t afraid of no ghost. Two years’ worth of Alison doing Alison. Definitely not dead. Definitely not kidnapped.

Emily pockets the pics and panics.

Out in the courtyard, Hanna is no joke wearing a jean jacket with the word ROSEWOOD stitched into the back of it, and she walks right up on Aria who is texting Ezra to stay away because Tanner isn’t your average Rosewood detective. She’s not taking advantage of any underage girls. She’s not asking worthless questions. And she knows about Ezra’s taste for rare meat. When Hanna spots Aria her eyes are so sad. Aria’s eyes are sad too. But they don’t talk about what happened last night because if Aria starts picking at the loose thread of victimization her whole world is going to collapse around her ears.

Caleb’s Alcohol Shack, Number 4 BeerMe Avenue. On the way to the eye doctor to deal with that horse bashing her in the face, Spencer stops by to lay down some hard truths on Caleb.

Spencer: OK, first of all, Toby is going to have to burn this place to the ground, is how unsalvageable it is at this point. Caleb: Good thing he’s a world-renowned teenage handyman, then. Spencer: Look, dude, since you’ve been home, Hanna has been spiraling harder core than I’ve ever seen anyone spiral, and I’m saying that as someone who has done a lesbian ghost waltz at an insane asylum. Caleb: Since Alison came home, you mean? Spencer: It’s not like I expect her to show up and toast Zack tonight. Caleb: I’m drunk but I know Hanna better than I know anything, and what you just said pings my off-meter in a pretty big way. Spencer: I don’t understand what happened in Ravenswood… Caleb: No one does, Spencer, OK!?? That’s why it got cancelled! Spencer: …but whatever it was, you need to take a minute and really think about if that’s worth destroying this. You and Hanna actually made each other better. Caleb: Shit. Spencer: You’ve got three days to figure out if you’re good enough and strong enough to be her anchor again, or I’m jumping in and pulling her to shore, and I’m going to leave your ass to the sharks. Caleb: Shit. Spencer: Now, take a shower. Wash that pan. Hobos. Jesus.
In the choir room, Ali tries to get Hanna to stop freezing her out. One thing I love about Alison, and I really mean this, is how completely bewildered she is when the Liars give her blowback for the stunts she pulls. There’s an end point where she needs to arrive, not just for herself but for them too, especially Aria the Axe-Murderer, and these are the things that must be done to get to where they’re going. They need an adult on their side, so she hires someone to menace Ashley. They need to not be tagged in New York the night their classmate was killed, so she invents a kidnapping. Alison creates fake threats because there are real threats out there. She’s not a sociopath; she’s a pragmatist.

I met the sweetest Emison shippers the other night at Dana Piccoli’s birthday and it was such a lovely thing. This stupid ship war is making people act awful online (awful like this!) and it was so nice to talk in person to people who have different ideas. Like there were all kinds of shippers at this one table having the most fun conversation. And it made me hate even more how the few people who make the most angry noise on the internet drown out the greatness of gentle multitudes. Anyway, these Emison gals were so great and smart and fun and they really made me think a lot of thoughts about Ali from different angles. I actually came home and made some notes about all the things they told me about her. The thing that stuck with me most was one of them said Ali has a code. Like she’s not just shooting in the dark. She has her own code.

The more I thought about that the more I realized Ali kind of reminds me of a Lisbeth Salander. Like if Lisbeth Salander and Holly Golightly had a baby that was raised in Sunnydale. Abused and trapped by the system, disgusted to her very core with the way men control and exploit women’s bodies and female sexuality, hyper-aware of the actual Way Things Work in the world, and so why should she play by the rules when the rules have done nothing but make her more vulnerable and put her in more danger for all of her entire life?

No, she wasn’t attacked in Hanna’s house. And maybe she wasn’t even attacked in her own house, the night Emily rescued her. And no, she wasn’t kidnapped. Fine. Whatever. But she was stalked, emotionally tortured, physically threatened, preyed upon (by a video camera, at the very least) by her brother and her brother’s best friend when she was barely 15, popped in the head with a rock, and buried alive by her own mother. That real shit happened. If she was playing by the rules, she’d be dead. And so if she’s got to lie to the police (who never did anything to help her or her friends anyway) and scare some people who are good to her and kill some people who are bad to her to get to a safe place again, so what?

Obviously the so what? is that she doesn’t watch this show. This show is at least half about how her constant lies and shenanigans actually make things much, much worse for her friends. Much worse. But she doesn’t get that. It never even occurs to her.

So she’s reaching for what it could be that’s putting off Hanna so hard right now, and the place she lands is, “I’ll pay for the window Noel broke?” Hanna can’t believe Ali thinks that’s the problem, and Ali can’t believe there could be another problem.

As Hanna bounces out, Jenna click-clacks in. Ali could make a break for it, but she’s Alison Motherfucking DiLaurentis, so she stays behind to ask a couple of questions, like, “How did you make Shana defect to your side? Is your vagina magical or what?” Jenna, who is, amazingly, carrying her flute case says she didn’t make Shana switch teams; Ali made Shana switch teams. (The jury is still out on who made Emily switch teams. Gaga or Gaga?) Jenna says Ali’s return to school was more exciting than her return to school because Ali rose from the dead. Which: The last time we saw Jenna before she rolled into town on that bus a couple of weeks ago, she was face-down in The Lake of Many Masks for like a full hour right? She kinda came back from the dead also.

And now for a moment that will go down in history as a Rosewood Top Ten for absolute sure. Spencer goes to the eye doctor for like the first time in her life, I guess, because when they dilate her eyes-in the waiting room(?!)-she is so baffled. Her hands are blurry! The pictures on the wall are blurry! Her phone is blurry! She looks over to the receptionist’s desk and the two Jennas are blurry! Wait, what? Yes, two Jennas! Blury! Spencer tries to snap a photo, but the Jennas walk away too fast, so she goes to an exam room and calls Emily freaking out, begging her to please come to the eye doctor because (and I quote), “Jenna is here, with another Jenna!”

I didn’t know Troian was so funny until this episode, but I watched these #TwoJennas scenes like six times and laughed out loud every single time. Her delivery is flawless. I don’t know who wrote this episode. Maya Goldsmith probably. This dialogue has her fingerprints all over it.

Anyway, once Spencer convinces Emily to come rescue her, she sees an eye chart message from A talking about: CAN U C ME NOW?

Emily comes running into the eye doctor wearing sunglasses and Spencer is also wearing sunglasses (the eye doctor kind) and Emily is like, “Wait’ll you get a load of what I found in Noel’s car.” And Spencer is like, “Keep your voice down. In the next room is Jenna! And Jenna!”

Jenna and Jenna walk out, arm in arm, and that’s when Emily has to take off her sunglasses.

Emily: Uh. Sydney. Are you a taxi driver now, or…? Sydney: Oh. Hey, guys. Spencer: Don’t you “hey, guys” us! Emily asked you a question! Are you a taxi driver?! Jenna: No, idiots. She’s my ride. Spencer: I’m speaking to the organ-grinder, not the monkey. Emily: Are you seriously friends with The Jenna Thing? Jenna: None of your business, to be honest. Spencer: SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTH, MONKEY. Jenna: Chumps. Spencer: CHIMP! Jenna: Yeah, we’re gonna bounce. Come on, Syd.
Delightful. Just absolutely delightful. Show, I love you. I’m sorry we had to fight last week.

Zack and Ella canoodle in the Montgomery’s living room. When Ella runs out for some errands, Aria is like, “So Hanna’s not coming tonight. Don’t know if that interests you in any way or anything, but I just wanted to let you know my underage friend who loves tuna melts will not be at your party.” Zack tries to play it cool, but Aria knows he’s a piece of shit. She knows.

Hanna goes to Caleb’s cabin right after school and cracks open a bottle of beer, but he’s got questions, and unlike everyone else in her life, he’s going to believe her when she answers. He’s like, “So, it’s weird that you love food and dressing up to the point of driving an hour for a mini-sombrero and a burrito, but you aren’t really into Zack and Ella’s thing tonight.” She says she doesn’t want to go, then says she can’t go, then says the truth: that Zack is garbage. Caleb asks why she didn’t tell him and she says “It’s embarrassing” and he says the exact correct thing. He says, “The person it is embarrassing for is him because he is a child predator.” Hanna goes, “How come I’m the one who feels so awful, then?” And Caleb says, “Because that’s what rape culture does to you.”

And then he goes to the Brew and beats the shit out of Zack. There are very few times in life when I am into dudes swooping in to save the day, but Caleb has earned this moment. He knows Hanna can take care of herself and he hardly ever interferes with that (and when he does, he gets shot in the guts), but this doesn’t play like pretty little lady needs a big strong man to save her. This plays like nobody believed Hanna when she told the truth about you, so my fist is going to believe enough for all of us.

Caleb goes back to the cabin (Hanna: “Uhhhh, where’s the food?”) and explains that Zack had a note from A disguised as her but that it doesn’t matter because she is seventeen damn years old and Zack is a grown-ass man who is engaged to her best friend’s mother.

Aria and Ella are getting ready for the big engagement party and Ella’s already drunk, apparently, because she calls Aria her fashion guru. But things get real sober real fast when Aria is like, “Are you sure you’re not marrying a pedophile?” And Ella is like, “Christ. Did he mess with you?” Aria says no, that it was Hanna, and Ella probably goes to the Brew and murders him her withering stare and also her bare hands. Goodbye forever, Zack. I hate you always. I hope you choke on your donuts, you horrible awfulness.

Emily is on her way to the engagement party in an electric blue jumpsuit that she shockingly looks amazing in, when she spots Sydney waiting on her. Shay Mitchell is knocking it out of the park this season in every way. This is her best-acted scene possibly ever.

Emily: Why the fuck are you parked on my street? Sydney: I didn’t expect to love you. Emily: Excuse me. What do you mean you didn’t expect to love me? You’re telling me no one explained my aura and face/shoulders/swag to you before you moved here? Sydney: I mean, yes, but photos and verbal descriptions couldn’t prepare me-or anyone!-for your actual bewitching powers. Emily: Horseshit. I’ve seen myself in a mirror. Sydney: I was a volunteer at blind camp and Jenna kind of latched onto me and she needed a friend when Alison came back from the grave. Emily: I let you sit between me and Paige at karaoke. Do you have any idea what karaoke does to that girl? Sydney: I’m sorry. Emily: Not as sorry as you’re going to be when I take this assistant swim coach job and drown you. Sydney: Do you want to maybe just kiss even a little bit or something? Emily: No. Go home. And practice holding your breath.

 

Hastings Murder Cabin. Spencer shows up to stash the photos and stuff Emily stole from Noel, but he is there, of course, hiding under a sheet, lucky as hell that Ashley and Spencer aren’t as trigger-happy as Aria. He’d have been dead yesterday. Spencer sees his eyeball peeking out from his hidey-hole and she whips the sheet off and starts just a-hollerin’. She can’t get him to say why he’s working for Ali, but he does say that he needs some #PLLinsurance because when she’s done with you, she tosses you away. What happened was, Shana had pictures and recordings of Ali, which she sent to Jenna, which Ali found out about, which she asked Noel to “borrow,” which he did, five seconds before Jenna’s house exploded.

When he lunges for his #PLLinsurance, Spencer slices his hand open with a fire poker and promises to do the same thing to his face if he doesn’t get the hell out of there right this second. She says, “I’ll keep this #PLLinsurance safe for all of us.” And then she yells “GO!” again and fake swings her iron stick at him. He goes.

Hobo Hills Booze Emporium.

Hanna: Shouldn’t you be at your mom’s party? Aria: You were right, about everything. Hanna: I needed you to believe me. Why didn’t you believe me? Aria: The lie everywhere is men can’t help themselves and women are to blame. I was scared to look at it too hard. For my mom’s sake. For mine. Hanna: I understand. Aria: Will you forgive me? Hanna: Always.
Oh, Liars. You are always the ship.

Ali and Ashley return home from the botched engagement party to a call from the Rosewood Police Department, because check out this shiz right here: Someone has confessed to smacking Ali in the head with a rock and kidnapping her and holding her hostage for two years. Her exact story, the one she recorded and had all the Liars memorize, that is the thing this guy tells the police. Ali and Ashley watch him confess and Alison has never been more thrown off her game in her entire life.

The Risen Mitten goes to the eye doctor wearing standard Risen Mitten gear. The eye doctor tech is like, “You a little cold?” The Risen Mitten shakes her head. Not a little cold, just a little crazy.

All my thanks and loves to Nicole (@PLLBigA) for the spectacular screencaps! Follow her on Twitter for theories, spoilers, and pictures of Spencer and Mona dressed like nurses. (You heard me!)

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