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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (3.09) — Space Ghost, Coast to Coast

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Caleb hacked into Maya’s website page, and the Liars, sans Emily, sat around eating popcorn and Red Vines and watching Maya’s personal videos like a couple of Garrett Reynoldses. Ezbian’s magnificent mother wafted onto the scene, insulted Aria in every possible way, and offered her literal cash money to set their little chipmunk free. Toby made every face he could think of, and then skipped town to practice making more faces. Hanna petitioned the Wizengamot of Radley Institute not to send Mona to the Gotham Penitentiary. So shocked was she by her success that she smashed her face into Dr. Wren’s face for some celebratory snogging. And Emily finally gave herself over to the dazzling cataclysm that is Paige McCullers.

Rear Window Brew. Spencer Hastings is consumed by hysteria. Not the normal kind of hysteria where she dresses up like Garrett Reynolds and films herself murdering people, so she’ll have some evidence to give the police to prove how guilty, guilty, guilty he is, but the kind of hysteria where she forgot to submit her college application to UPenn due to the fact that she lost herself inside that DiLaurentis Sims hellscape she’s creating on her computer every second of every day. “I found my application smashed up in the bottom of my bag,” she wails at Aria, “underneath a sub-par research paper, a trophy smeared with rat’s blood, an anklet smeared with Hanna’s blood, three broken field hockey sticks, a shovel, two fire pokers, a golf club, a handgun, four empty Red Bull cans, and a couple of those photos Jason took of the inside of your nose.”

She says she’s done playing the Daphne to Aria’s Velma, and from now on they’ll only be hanging out in the Mystery Machine after she’s done with her homework. Aria’s like, “It’s cute that you can even conceive of a world where I’m Velma and you’re Daphne, but you watched C-Span on Saturday mornings instead of cartoons, so I’ll give you a pass.” Oh, if only Ali were still alive! She’d know what to do! Why, she’d probably have the inside track on some backdoor kegger where teenagers gather to imbibe and fornicate and submit their college applications to Ivy League admissions officers!

And of course in walks CeCe Drake, looking like an Ali and walking like an Ali and talking like an Ali and knowing of just such a woodland rager. “I wasn’t planning on going, though,” says CeCe, “but I guess I don’t have much of a choice when you’re staring at me like a pygmy tarsier.”

Over at Marin Manor, Ashley has returned from Out of Town to find the police camping out on her front porch. She’s like, “What now?” And the cop goes, “Hanna has five days to give us some of her blood, Ms. Marin, or Detective Wilden is going to come over here with a santoku knife and take it by force. Judge’s orders!”

At school, Hanna and Caleb lay eyes upon one another for the first time since he broke up with her and his mom started dressing him and he had that sizzling chemistry with Spencer that made us all wipe the dew from our lilies in absolute fright like Hanna’s Nana taught us. You know it’s going to be Hanna and Caleb before we even see Hanna and Caleb because it’s sad panda electric guitar and forlorn drums. Like, is it the full London Symphony Orchestra playing over the golden hour? That’s Ezra and Aria. Solo piano and some soulful crooning about Montague/Capulet things? That’s Toby and Spencer. The sound of someone falling down on a pair of rollerskates and knocking over some metal trash cans, a car crashing through the side of a building, glass shattering, ally cats squalling? Here comes Paige!

Anyway, Hanna and Caleb caress each other with their eyeballs, both of them relieved and surprised that “A” hasn’t killed the other one yet. Caleb hands off the new login info for Maya’s website page. “I’m glad you haven’t been bludgeoned to death with any evidence or anything,” he says. Hanna drops her eyes. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, you too.”

(The person singing this song in the background is Caleb in real life. Tyler Blackburn. Same hair, but probably doesn’t live inside air conditioning vents.)

As soon as Caleb walks away, Hanna gets a text from “A,” telling her to meet-up at the Rosewood Grill, or the next person to get run under with a car will be Caleb, and this time she won’t be so gentle.

In the courtyard, Hanna relays this most recent threat of mayhem to Spencer, who is still rocking back and forth clutching her UPenn application and crying silent tears of failure. Spencer makes Hanna promise not to go alone to meet “A.” She’s already lost Toby to “A”‘s machinations (because let’s be honest, “A” eats Toby Cavenaughs for a pre-breakfast wake-up snack), and she couldn’t bear to lose Hanna too. They talk about how they’ve made out with each other by proxy now (Wren, Caleb) but their gay reverie is interrupted by a couple of actual homos laughing and plaid-ing it up.

And, well, this is rewarding. Seeing Emily smile, for one. But also, look how at ease Paige is in her own lezzy skin right now. I mean:

I like to pretend – and maybe it’s true, I don’t know – that there’s always going to be this enmity between Spencer and Paige. Spencer dimed her out to Coachprah, remember? Back when she tried to drown Emily? And Spencer would have beaten her and her bangs to a pulp if she’d kept acting out her internalized homophobia on Emily like that. So I like to think that Spencer doesn’t trust Paige, which Paige knows so she’s slightly terrified of her, as she ought to be, but also her competitive drive makes her act like she’s not even afraid at all, and obviously Spencer doesn’t know how to relate to people who don’t cower in her presence at least a little bit, and so it’s this cycle of them glowering at each other and silently circling each other like wolves. Wolves who love Emily as big as the earth and who also know the value of a well placed bite to the jugular. It adds another level of hilarity/awkwardness to this scene where everybody declares how great they are over and over, like they don’t live in Rosewood, PA, where it’s a little bit premature to declare yourself “great” in the morning because probably you’re going to be dead by lunchtime.

Aria skips school to go Ezra’s to talk about his batshit crazy mother, and is rewarded with an introduction to his batshit crazy brother: “Aria, Wesbian. Wesbian, Aria. Now get out of here, little brother, I need some quiet time to journal.” Aria walks in the door at full-Spencer, just accusations and questions and facts facts facts. She explains about his mother trying to buy her off with money and raccoon pelts so she’d break up with him, and he explains that the Jag he sold was actually Wes’ inheritance and now he’s got to buy it back for twice the price. It’s a good thing they’ve been training for the Processing Olympics for their whole entire relationship, because this is some gold medal feelings stuff right here. He leaves in a huff to go do something about the car and Aria shouts after him, “Well, my shirt is an x-ray of a rib cage, so thanks for noticing!”

After school, Emily, wearing the uniform of lesbianism, chases down Hanna and demands to know what they’re hiding from her. It’s been nothing but smiles and “life is great!”s for a full week now, and she knows that’s the prettiest little lie she’s ever heard. Hanna takes a deep breath, goes, “OK, look, don’t get mad, but you know how we’re sort of desensitized to watching our friends act out their most intimate moments on video, because of that porno of Ali we kept finding, frame-by-frame, in season one? Well, I guess that’s how we justified what we’ve been doing lately, which is watching videos of Maya basically doing you via poetry. We found them on her website page. Don’t get mad, I said! One of us deserves to be happy!” Emily is mad, though, because Aria is the one who gets to be happy, and anytime they start fucking around with that emotional ecosystem, somebody gets GLASS IN HER HAIR. Hanna hands over the password with an earnest apology.

On her way out of Dolce, Gabbana & Lebowitz, Ashley spots Pastor Ted. She tries to keep her head down and push past him, but he intercepts her and asks her to coffee sometime. “I promise I won’t drink it like Byron Montgomery,” he says. She shyly accepts his offer.

I did not mention this in the opening scene, but: Troian and Lucy own this episode. Have we ever seen them in as many one-on-one situations as this week? They play so well off of each other. It’s like everything on this show makes total sense watching them together like we’re about to see. Of course they’d go racing off into the night with no shoes and no phone and no car keys to try to save each other from whatever zombie apocalypse du jour, of course they’d cover up each other’s lies and step in for each other’s absent parents and nurse each other back to health and tell the hard truths and bite back the bitter retorts, and each would pretend like the other one knew how to dress herself. Right? Because that’s what it’s like to have a real, real, real best friend.

In this case, the outfit in question is for Spencer’s UPenn admissions party. Her basic idea is to mimic the academic dress of Oxford University, and for a hot second it looks like Aria is too wiped out about Wesbian to intervene. It’s not until Spencer pulls out Veronica’s best funeral dress – of which every lady in this town has at least one dozen – that Aria hops up and chooses a regular ol’ skirt and top. They flop back down on the bed and Aria sighs about how she didn’t realize Ezra’s family was East Egg-ian. “Look, I get it,” Spencer says. “Up until just last year, I was doing WASP black ops for my Grandma Bootsy in this very house. Shaving my dad’s sideburns, throwing out my mom’s yoga pants. One time Melissa tried to go out with this guy who’s dad owned a Dairy Queen. That one was a bloodbath.” They giggle and are adorable and the way Spencer uses air quotes when she’s explaining about the sideburns is just so great.

When CeCe pulls up at the UPenn party Aria and Spencer realize they’re in big time trouble, because the cabin where this thing is going down belongs to Noel Kahn and his brother. Can you even imagine those two side-by-side, making that face? You know the one I’m talking about. That one face Noel makes. Well, and so Spencer is like, “Just by virtue of this place being owned by more than one Kahn, it is eleven times more dangerous than Lost Woods Resort.” And that’s before they come to understand that they have to get stamped to get inside. Stamped on the wrist with a stamp that has been photographed on Maya St. Germain and Holden Strauss, the latter of which was with Emily on The Night of a Thousand Nights. Spencer clutches her application to her chest. It’s going to be a hot one in the old town tonight.

At home, Emily is watching videos of Maya in the dark, just caressing the screen and crying. The poem is important because it offers further confirmation that Maya is a Time Lord, and also the poem is sad because it’s more of that theme we’re seeing of flashback Maya where she realizes she’s running out of time to be with Emily. The more she talks about clocks ticking and minutes whizzing by, the more I understand about the crazy-eyed clinginess she displayed right before she went missing. Either she knew she was about to Hyperspace Jump or she knew Emily was about to get murdered or when you never age like Bianca Lawson it’s just fun to brag about time in general. Anyway, the poem is really heartbreaking up until the part where she starts talking about “thickening plot” and love being “all they’ve got.” Like, at that point, even Robert Frost thinks you’ve taken the rhyming thing too far.

The “party room” in Noel Kahn’s basement is just what you’d expect. Shirtless douchebags playing pool, Eric Kahn perving on virgins, people sitting across from one another on leather couches in front of a fire taking turns telling the truth about how awful they are. Cece, as you would expect, is right in her element. She even tries to get the party started by getting her ducklings wasted. Aria and Spencer are both like, “No, thanks. Our friend still hasn’t unraveled the mysteries of what happened to her the last time she drank vodka.” The game where you tell what a horrible human being you are is just called “Truth,” and the rules are: Tell the truth or it’s sayonara!

No, for real. If you get caught in a lie, they take you outside and shoot you.

You will be unsurprised, then, to hear that Rosewood’s most recent handgun owner, JennaBot Marshall is in attendance. She’s there as Noel Kahn’s date acting like Mona can’t break out of Radley at her leisure and fuck her up something good. The four of them agree to play Truth, but you can only play Truth if you’re sitting on the Truth Sofas, so they glare and wait their turn.

Marin Manor. Hanna watches the clock tick closer to Rosewood Grill’s closing time and decides she’d better face the music because she doesn’t want it to be her sitting in her bedroom watching videos of Caleb reading poems about love’s thickening plot this time next summer. Ashley tries half-heartedly to cook them a family dinner, but as soon as Hanna’s out the door, she’s on the phone with Pastor Ted, all, “You bring the rubbers, I’ll bring the wine.”

Hanna is hanging around outside Rosewood Grill, eyes closed and arms wide open for the murderer who’s supposed to be descending on her at any moment. Luckily, the murderer is Caleb. Or, well, luckily Caleb is pretending to be the murderer. What I mean is, it’s lucky that Caleb knew Hanna was trying to keep him from getting murdered so he could threaten to murder himself so she could offer herself up to him to be murdered on his behalf. You know, I think this show has really skewed my perception of the word “luck.” Anyway, Hanna gets in the car and they drive to an abandoned alley so she can literally say the words, “‘A’ flew to Montecito to run your mom off the road and give me the creeps, and that’s why I broke up with you.” Caleb explains his worth as an ally: 1) There is no end to the hot spots he can access to hack into website pages. 2) He loves Hanna almost as much as the Liars do, and that means he’s willing to stay tight-lipped about her shenanigans. 3) Well, they never get to number three. He just presses her up against the wall and they kiss something fierce.

The Kahn Game is underway and Aria and Noel are going at it:

Noel: Is it true that lesbians cry after sex? I know you know because you’re boning Ez-

Aria: You don’t know shit about scissoring, or when I even started doing it, but it wasn’t until after my lover took a job at Hollis College, I’ll tell you that right now. And speaking of lesbians, what’s your deal with Maya St. Germain?

Noel: Lesbian moves into the house where everyone goes to die? Come on. Everyone knew Maya. Have you ever engaged in anything more horrible than the time I played the guitar and you sang into my enormous face?

Aria: I actually have a lovely singing voice, it was you who made that so awkward. Where were you the night Ali’s body was stolen?

Noel: Jesus, obsessed with dead lesbians, much? I don’t even know where I was. Here, probably. Playing darts without my shirt off. Skinny-dipping with Jenna. Smiling so ferociously into the mirror it cracked. Have you ever made a purse out of a kitten?

Aria: You motherfucker! You know I only use full-grown animals for-

Eric: Time!

Aria runs outside and Spencer chases after her, trying to calm her down, but CeCe is right on their heels trying to do the exact opposite. She goes, “That was hot! But, look, you’re so much prettier than Jenna.” And isn’t that great? This show has never once in its whole life been about bitches stealing boys from bitches and girl hate and “oh, my pores are too big for my face” or whatever, so when CeCe says the kind of thing that would be just another line of dialogue on any other teen show, it hangs in the air like the bullshit it really is. Spencer and Aria both roll their eyes, and then Spencer heads back inside to Truth the hell out of Jenna.

Their game is actually even better.

Jenna: Why’s your mom defending Garrett?

Spencer: She thinks he’s innocent, and even though I have done everything in my actual power to prove the opposite thing, I have now decided Maya’s murderer was probably you. Where’d you find Emily on the Night of a Thousand Nights?

Noel: In the ’50s.

Spencer: The ’50s! I thought you said you found her in the street!

Jenna: Well, I didn’t lie about the part where she was blitzed off her ass. You do that to her?

Spencer: No, did you?

Jenna: No, where’s the video?

Spencer: Which video? There are literally hundreds of thousands of videos. I could spend the rest of my life cataloguing all those videos.

Jenna: Fuck you, you know which video.

Spencer: The one of you screwing your brother?

Jenna: You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? You and Jason and flowers in the attic.

Spencer: You can have all the goddamn videos you want when you hand over Ali’s corpse.

They keep leaning closer and closer and closer to each other, and it is exhilarating! 

Spencer’s ready to go home and cool her jets. No one’s ever stared into Jenna’s eyeballs that long. No one. But CeCe, of course, is going at it in the closet with Eric Kahn, so it takes a couple of minutes to track her down. Spencer is furious because there was no Ivy League admissions fair here like CeCe promised, but CeCe tells her to calm down. The admissions officers came ’round to collect applications during the two minutes when Aria and Spencer were outside hugging and hyperventilating. Spencer believes her for reasons she and I and you will never understand.

Ashley Marin and Pastor Ted have sex at her house. That’s really all I can say about it because Pastor Ted is a good looking fellow, but he makes me think what it would be like to get involved with Rufus Humphry if Rufus was an ordained minister, which is the most insufferable sex I can possibly imagine, and anyway, you can’t dangle Ella/Ashley in front of me and then tell me you’re out of my favorite dessert. You know?

Wes came to pick up Aria from the party, did I mention that? He did and she’s ripping him a new one about how gross it is to be a one-percenter. He’s like, “Funny you should mention one percent. I’m one percent plus 99 percent sure Ezra knocked up some girl named Maggie and my mom paid her off in dollars and abortions.” Aria cannot believe Ezra and Paige have suddenly become the most interesting people on this show. She goes, “Drive faster!” And presses his leg into the gas pedal so he won’t have a choice.

Emily is still watching those videos of Maya. She’s talking about clocks again and about kissing Emily and then she goes, “If reincarnation is a thing, Emily was Cleopatra. She, too, suffered the burden of love’s thickening plot.” Paige chooses that moment to open the door and her jaw drops like a cartoon coyote. Emily tries to cover up her ghost porn, but it’s too late. Paige has seen it with her own eyes.

What Paige did not see was herself in the mirror. Or maybe she did. Maybe she stopped by Spencer’s earlier to try to make ammends and Spencer gave her some fashion advice: “What you want to do when you’re getting dressed is pretend you’re going to a place, any place, but especially a place that only exists in books, and then you choose an outfit for that place. Like, OK, what would you choose for the costume of Virgin Space Cowgirl?” And this is what she chose. 

They sit on Emily’s bed and Emily’s like, “I just found out about this website page today. I’ve been binging on it ever since. I know this complicates things with what with us training for a medal in synchronized swimming.” You can practically hear the gears clicking into place in Paige’s brain, her silent prayer that for once in her life she can get something right, this something, specifically, because one wrong word could drive Emily away forever. What she comes up with is foolproof: Naked old people. Naked old people is never not funny. (Trust me. One time I saw my grandpa-aged neighbor strolling down the street carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts box, just as naked as the day he was born. If I had to cheer up somebody whose girlfriends were always getting brutally murdered, that’s totally the story I would go with.)

Paige says she knows what it’s like to feel the ache of loss, and also that momentary respite when your mourning is flooded with new ways to remember. Because she recently saw a video of her grandpa before he died, and so she gets it. She cuddles Emily right up and kisses her head. She doesn’t promise it’ll get easier, that the pain will go away, but sometimes a hug is really the only promise you need.

Aria accosts Ezra in the hallway of his apartment. He tries to start off their conversation with normal salutations, like, “Hi, honey, how was your day?” But she leads with: “… the fuck is Maggie?” He’s sighs so big, says, “Remember when we fed Jackie Molina’s dead body into a wood chipper? It was like that, only Maggie was Jackie and my mom was me and you.” Aria is appeased for the moment, but only because she didn’t see the last couple of seasons of Gilmore Girls, so she doesn’t know there’s an Ezra-shaped toddler waiting in the wings, born with a head full of To Kill a Mockingbird quotes and a heart full of shipper malice.

Spencer calls Toby to tell him how much she misses him and how he’s the most important thing in her – wait, no. What’s that? Oh, just an email telling her UPenn has accepted her application at 1:00 a.m. on a Saturday. She forgets immediately about Toby and logic and smiles for real for the first time all season.

The Risen Mitten purchases a storage locker, into which she will no doubt deposit a lunch box inside of which is a doll head inside of which is a skeleton key inside of which is a cipher which, when decoded, leads to a specialty shoppe owned by an elderly hoarder with a tulip tattooed on his ass.

As always, an enormous thank you to my screencapping partner, Maggie, who may or may not be Ezbian’s long-lost lesbian daughter. Follow her on Twitter and find out for yourself.

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