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“Pretty Little Liars” recap 3.15: A Walk in the Woods

Previously on Pretty Little Liars: After her official release from Radley Institute for Criminal Masterminds, Mona Vanderwaal put to use that sack of good-girl cardigans she’d been storing in her lair for a rainy day and set about reforming her image. Step 1: Spring cleaning (“Rid locker of all spare body parts not used in last six months.”) Step 2: It Gets Better video (“Sad beagle eyes, tears, middle school, etc.”) Step 3: Blow up a teacher (“Blow up a teacher.”) The Liars discovered that Lost Woods Harold was working at Rosewood High as a janitor/hoarder of A stuff, so they concocted an elaborate office-raiding plan that included running half of a half-marathon and hacking into Fort Fields’ forcefield via iPhone. For their efforts, they received confirmation that Byron Montgomery is, indeed, a monster, and also they received another near death-blow to their Pretty Little Heads.

Aria is enjoying a quiet evening at home, watching Night Must Fall, a film adaptation of an Emlyn Williams play about these four women who get duped by this fully insane guy who is, like, super hot and uncommonly charming, but also he is murdering women and chopping them up and burying their body parts around town. The master sleuth of the women, the real Ravenclaw of the bunch, she starts out accusing the guy of being a murderer, but then she falls in love with him, and next thing you know, the police are like, “Hey, why’s there a severed head in this hat box, insane hot guy?” And the smart girl, the Ravenclaw one, she’s like, “It’s my hat box! It’s my severed head!”

So, expect good things for Spencer in the coming days, is what I am saying.

Byron walks in, picks up the remote, mutes the TV – without even asking, he does that shit – and tries to have a chat with Aria. He’s like, “Hey, remember last week when I accused you of trying to blow up my girlfriend? Well, it turns out the police caught the person who actually tried to do that, and it wasn’t you.” Aria glowers at him, because first of all, that is a terrible apology, and also: “It’s been three years since I blew up anybody, Dad, and she’s got her vision back now anyway, so it barely even counts.” Well, so Byron just goes ahead and spoils the ending of the movie for Aria, because at this point he’s just inventing ways to suck.

Spencer, Hanna, and Emily, who is apparently free again to roam about the town at the witching hour at her leisure, break into the school to rifle through Harold’s stuff some more. They sneak into the basement, pick the lock with ease this time, but two steps into the office Spencer smells fear, so she’s like, “Who’s in here? Reveal yourself!” It’s an A, and as it makes a getaway, Hanna peeps its shoes. They are the shoes of a nerd. They are the shoes of a Lucas.

After the A scare, they return to snooping, but the only thing left in Harold’s office is a fake Ali-journal into which A has penned the message: “So this is what it’s like when sloths attack? Better luck next time, slowest animals known to man! – A.” Spencer smirks, all: “Actually, snails are the slowest animals known to man. Sloths are the slowest mammals known to man. God, I wish I could go brain-to-brain with A in a game of winner-takes-all trivia. I would destroy her.”

Rear Window Brew. The Liars aren’t sleeping. Aria has been dreaming about Ezra, duh. Hanna has been dreaming about losing her hair to a wad of rogue gum. Spencer has been dreaming about God only knows what. She’s on a pilgrimage to the Fount of Knowledge when an eagle swoops down and scoops her up in its talons, and then the eagle is Noel Kahn, and Noel Kahn is grinning, and then the grin is Jenna’s, and now she’s not wearing any clothes, and the eagle’s nest is a cozy cabin in the woods, and Jenna is saying, “You’re smarter than me, you’re smarter than everyone,” and they’re in a hot tub now and a twig snaps and it’s Toby creeping around in the woods and he’s like, “Your hot tub is too good for me, but it’s not too good for my sister?!” Jenna’s boobs are a trophy, a trophy is covered in rat’s blood, blood is all over Emily’s time-traveling jacket, a black jacket with a black hood, a hooded figure who walks like Toby and talks like Toby and builds rocking chairs. “You’re A,” dream-Spencer says. “You’re A!” Dream-Toby takes off the black hoodie and underneath are his acres of abs. “What did you call me?” he asks. But dream-Spencer cannot remember.

Mona eavesdrops until she’s satisfied she’s got the flow of the conversation, and then: “Night terrors? Tell me about it, you guys. I haven’t slept well since I: ran over Hanna with my car, tried to throw Spencer off a cliff, afflicted Emily with an ulcer, and – I forget, Aria, did I do anything to you at all ever? Anyway, how weird was it that the guy who owned the motel where I built a shrine to your dead best friend and laid the plans for your destruction got a job at our school? I think he was stalking me.” The Liars cannot believe her gall. She shrugs. They’ll come around or she’ll start murdering them all over again. What will be will be.

At school, Hanna corners Lucas in the courtyard and starts demanding some answers. It’s the least he can do, really, since she knows he was the A in Harold’s office last night and by keeping his secret she’s keeping him out of Spencer’s torture chamber. Lucas tries to do that Lucas thing where he says something cryptic and makes a sad face and runs off howling into the night, but Hanna presses him. He’s like, “We’re not safe.” And Hanna sighs and rolls her eyes and goes, “No One To Save Ali From Evil, I get it. But what the hell with you specifically?” Lucas confesses that yes, it was him in the office, and yes, he was looking for a thing, but more importantly, he is the one who blew up Meredith because he was trying to blow up Mona.

Which: Lucas left that note, then? About getting some things from the supply shed? He left the note for Mona, but Mona knew the shed was rigged with dynamite, so she passed the note to Meredith, thereby nearly killing her to prove herself to the Liars while also framing the Liars? Honestly, Mona is probably the one that planted the idea in Lucas’ head that he should try to blow her up. Machaevlli: watching this show, taking notes from Mona, just, “Daaaamn, girl.”

After class, Emily asks Paige for an escort to work and also invites her to attend a “party in the woods.” (Last week, Emily wasn’t even allowed to go to the bathroom by herself in her own house, and now she’s totally allowed to gallivant all over the haunted depths of Roswood’s Forbidden Forest – just so long as she makes it home by midnight.) Paige plays it like her parents have her on lockdown, due to the fact that this town’s body count seems to be in direct correlation to the number of dates goes on with Emily. Emily smirks, says, “I know. Parents, right?” And Paige is all, “Ha ha ha. Yeah. Parents. No, but seriously, Emily, you get why you should be wearing body armor at all times and staying away from windows and doors and literally never leaving your house again until you go away to college, don’t you?” In fact, Emily does not get that, and so she smiles her best smile at Paige and asks Paige to come to come with her to the party, and because Paige would hold that girl’s hand and walk straight into the pits of hell, she says yes.

And, I mean, there’s a part of you that’s thinking it’s the most ridiculous thing, but there’s another part of you that knows if Emily Fields looked at you the way she looks at Paige, you, too, would jump off the Empire State Building talking the whole way down about, “Psh, yeah, of course I can fly.”

Ella Montgomery, ladies! Ella Montgomery is back! Aria dips into her mom’s classroom to have a casual chat about the precise details of her parents’ whereabouts the night Ali was murdered, something left heretofore undiscussed, but right now, in this classroom, in the middle of the school day, two years after the murder of Ali, apropos of nothing, seems like just the right time to talk it over. Ella is like, “Honey, you know, I never did apologize for not answering your calls the morning after Ali disappeared. It’s just that the night before, the night Ali was murdered, your father insisted I get so drunk I couldn’t stand up or stay awake and I had a hell of a hangover that next morning. Like, not even the kind of hangover you get from just wine, but more like the kind you would get if you mixed alcohol with ambien and roofies then got hit over the head with a frying pan.”

Meredith watches from the doorway and twirls her handlebar mustache.

It’s academic decathlon time and this year Spencer will be running unopposed for the presidency of Rosewood’s team thanks to A sabotaging Spencer’s opponent’s bike last week. (Good to know, but also, I kind of liked the idea that A was dicking around with regular people just for giggles.) We have never met the decathletes before and one of them is named Andrew and I can tell you right now that he will be making monkey with one of these Liars before the end of the season. OK, so Spencer is like, “I am honored to be chosen to lead you in the pursuit of oratorical excellence this year,” but not so fast, because the empty chair at the table is suddenly filled with the glowing presence of Miss Mona Vanderwaal, who nominates Mona Vanderwaal for the position of Mona Vanderwaal: Master Debater. Half the decathletes vote for Spencer and half for Mona and so a it is decided that a trivia cage match will be held on this very eve. Spencer’s face is so good. She looks at Mona and goes, “GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!”

But even Spencer’s white-hot wonderfulness cannot compete with this perfect line of dialogue uttered by Andrew: “Put on your Hastings face and spank her.” It’s truly the greatest pep talk that has ever been given. I am going to embroider it onto my pillow and tattoo it onto my heart.

“Quit while you’re ahead, bitch,” is the text Spencer gets when she’s leaving the meeting. She thinks it’s Mona, but Mona is busy at the snack machine, and Mona has never been more than one place at one time, pulling more than one stunt at one time, so obviously it is not her.

Out in the courtyard, Spencer corrals the Liars and tells them the tale of Mona’s most ultimate insubordination. Hanna is all, “Honestly, Spence, it’s like being president of the International Confederation of Master Alphabetizers. Who cares?” And Spencer goes, “Uh, I am president of theInternational Confederation of Master Alphabetizers.” Mona meekly mouses her way over to the Liars’ table to thank Spencer for not killing her dead on the spot at the meeting, but Spencer is like, “Don’t count your chickens …” The Liars, even precious Emily, glare at her until she’s crying, and, honestly, at this point, even I don’t remember who I’m supposed to be rooting for.

Montgomery’s Home for Aspiring Fashionistas and Pre-Teen Cleptomaniacs. Aria tells Emily and Hanna that Byron probably murdered Alison. And worse, he probably drugged Ella. What will prove it (this time, apparently) are the pages of Ali’s diary that they stole, so Aria rummages around in her closet and emerges with the boot where she hid the evidence. Only, there’s no evidence. Not in that boot. Not in those boots. Not in these boots. Not in any boots. Byron smarms in the doorway and teases Aria about how she’s been hiding shit in her boots since she was a kid and it’s just the cutest little adorable thing. Aria pushes him out, shuts the door, and literally goes, “He knows.”

Toby tries to help Spencer relax by sizing up the way his hands fit around her throat giving her a massage, but he should know by now that touching Spencer when she is ten cups of coffee into a twenty-cup night is like poking a rattlesnake in the belly. After he jerks his hand back to safety, she lists off the 15 countries that were created after the USSR dissolved, alphabetically obviously. Toby offers to blow off dinner with his boss, who really only needs him was to bury some shit in the dirt and slash some tires anyway, but Spencer says they should go do their own stuff and meet back here later for one of her patented Hastings’ “I only give handjobs to trustworthy people” handjobs.

OK, so Lucas has a bedroom that looks remarkably similar to every room in my house, as pointed out by an alarming number of you guys on Twitter last night. Just, like, vintage action figures and superhero posters and really expensive collecter’s items that I would have to write ten billion TV recaps to be able to afford and trading cards and graphic novels. It’s truly a testament to Hanna’s complete lack of nerd-cred that she doesn’t even gasp for air when she enters Lucas’ heroic domain. Or, I don’t know, maybe she’s just not impressed because it was Caleb’s money that financed all of this? Anyway, she asks him to tell her more things about Mona, and he lets more stuff slip than ever before: He got tangled up with her at the masquerade ball, did some deliveries between her and Jason DiLaurentis (my own personal prime suspect for Garrett’s murder at the very least at this point) when she was at Radley, distracted some blind girls, just run-of-the-mill minion stuff you do for sociopaths when you don’t want them to rat you out for stealing/selling test scores.

Lucas says he’s gonna do home school now so he’ll be safe, proving he didn’t learn a damn thing about Mona’s capacity for adrenalized hyperrealistic homicide when he was serving her.

Aria hears the scraping sound of a dead body being dragged across the floor of her house, but assumes it’s just Mike schlepping home with his haul for the night. Then she hears shouting and remembers that Mike is both mute and invisible now, so probably she should check it out. In the hallway, Byron is manhandling Meredith’s arm that was charred in the school explosion and finally it clicks for Aria that her own father is going to murder her. She backs slowly into her room and chats Ezra:

FashionJunkie666: Hey, babe. Listen, I was thinking. What if my dad is Dan and I’m Olivia. You know, from Night Must Fall.

BabySquirrelNuts: Can’t talk now, babe. Blogging.

FashionJunkie666: Cool, well. Check the hat box when you can’t find me.

Out in the deep, dark forest, Emily is giving Paige directions from a GPS like she didn’t one time follow the orders of one of those things right into a deserted barn where she was summarily trapped, poisoned by carbon monoxide, and forced to make out with the ghost of her dead ex-girlfriend. The first ghost of her first dead ex-girlfriend. Emily realizes that the further into the woods they drive, the less Paige is able to carry on a conversation/breathe. Finally, Paige stops the car and hurls herself out the door and succumbs to a full-blown panic attack. When she finally manages to wheeze her way to semi-consciousness, she just starts blurting out all the truths: For one thing, she’s not on lockdown from her parents. She only told Emily that because she hoped it meant they could stay in and watch movies and makeout and not get savagely attacked and beaten to death all the time. And for another thing, she can barely even manage to stay inside her own car right now because it reminds her of being tied up in Cousin Nate’s trunk and stuffed in Cousin Nate’s closet.

Emily is like, “Why didn’t you just tell me?” And Paige just breaks: “Because you said you like ballsy women! On our first date at that karaoke place, that is what you said so me! Strong, confident women! Your first girlfriend bent the will of God and the principles of linear time with her mind! Your second girlfriend survived in the hellscape of Noel Kahn’s murder cabin! And the last time I wasn’t brave, when I wasn’t ready to come out of the closet, I lost you!”

When I think about Paige before we met her, what I imagine is this girl standing in front of a full-length mirror in her bedroom, hair braided, hand extended in front of her, her thumb and forefinger making the shape of a finger-gun, pointing at her own reflection and going, “You’re not. You’re just not.” Unable even to say out loud the thing she was afraid of being, which, of course, was gay. But that was just a start of the things she would not allow her brain to admit to her heart. Gay, yes. In love with Emily Fields, too. Terrified of losing anything, everything: swim meets, hockey games, herself. Deeply, profoundly alone. Just pointing at herself in that mirror and willing her spirit to obey the way she could will her body to obey. Don’t crack. Don’t crack. Don’t crack.

And being with Emily, it just split her wide open in ways she didn’t even know existed. ‘Cause that’s how love does you. And there’s this part of Paige still staring herself down in that mirror, saying over and over, “You’re not. You’re not.” You’re not afraid of the dark. You’re not afraid of closed spaces. You’re not afraid of you dying or her dying. You’re not vulnerable. You’re not breakable. You’re not alone. You’re not.

For the Liars, it has been hell by degrees, and now here they are, only one small step away from where they were yesterday, but Paige has been plunged into the thick of the nightmare from the regular world.

And so she does the most courageous thing of all: She says out loud that she’s terrified.

Emily thinks the solution is some fresh air, and since there’s none of that here in this part of the wide open forest, they walk arm-in-arm to another part of the forest, where the fresh air is.

Aria stalks Meredith to the Rosewood Grille where the two of them have a grown-up talk about Byron’s murdering tendencies. Meredith’s story is that she keeps catching Byron rifling through Aria’s stuff, and also her own stuff when he thinks it’s Aria’s stuff, and so to pay him back, she rifled through his stuff and found Ali’s diary pages that Aria snagged. Also, just by the way, Byron did sneak away from Ella the night Ali disappered. He thought Meredith and Ali were blackmailing him together, and when Mer told him it wasn’t true, he huffed off into the night to confront Ali. Next morning, dead Ali.

I can’t believe I am about to say this, because, as you know, I am the least likely candidate in the world to show Byron Montgomery even a shred of mercy, but I think Mer is playing Aria right now. I think she stole the pages and confronted Byron with them and that’s how come they were hollering in the hallway. It’s just way too early in the season for Byron be to this year’s Big Bad, and, frankly, I’m just not that lucky. So, Byron: Still sucks. But Meredith: Is doing dirt.

Back out in the woods, Paige and Emily were able to track down some of that fresh air, and now they’re making their way back to Paige’s car, which, in Emily’s expert opinion “looks funny.” That’s because the back tire has been slashed. Paige wills herself to keep breathing, even though this air isn’t really that fresh over here, and get the tire changed so they can get out of there. And, y’all know I love this girl more than most of the actual real people in my life, but how in the world is she gonna start ripping off those lug nuts without jacking up the car? Minus ten lesbian points, McCullers. So, Paige is trying to take deep breaths and fix the car, but what she needs to be able to see what she’s doing, so she asks Ems to do her a solid and grab a flashlight. Emily is on high alert, though. The remnants of GLASS IN HER HAIR still tingle when danger is afoot, and so she knows something is up. A twig snaps and Paige practically throws Emily over her shoulder so she can grab her bike from her trunk and pedal them the hell back to town, but before she can secure her grip, Emily darts into the woods after A. Paige’s mouth goes, “Emily?!” And Paige’s posture goes, “Motherfucker.” And Paige’s legs go darting into the undergrowth after her girlfriend.

They stop just short of the tree where Toby is hiding and Paige legit drags Emily back to safety.

OK, so over at Rosewood High’s Academic Decathlon Cage Match, Spencer is dreased for an Easter Equestrian. She and Mona both look fierce. I didn’t know who directed this episode until this scene, but as soon as it started happening, I was like, “Oh, duh. Norman Buckley.” Like these magical transitions right here:

But also, the writing is so tight and so funny and tense. I think Bryan Holdman wrote this episode. Hang on, let me look. Yeah, OK. Bryan Holdman, who also wrote “That Girl is Poison,” I think, which had some of my favorite dialogue ever, including Paige telling Jenna her cupcakes tasted like old pennies. And: “Every time you baby-squirrel Ezra, you’re taking away his nuts.” And I also think he wrote that scene where the Liars get worms in their Chinese food. Oh, and Satan’s fashion show. Anyway, so yes, the academic decathlon is everything you ever needed and some stuff you never even dreamed you wanted, including seeing Troian Bellisario have impossible sexual chemistry with yet another person on this show.

Spencer starts out crushing it before choking in the final round on the final question, the one about the countries that were created after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and when it’s Mona’s turn to counter, she goes, “By population or gross domestic product?”

At Aria’s, Byron is all frowns and apologies about abusing Meredith and maybe or maybe not stealing Aria’s shit, but definitely not about spoiling that movie, which is, of course, his most heinous offense to date. Aria retires to her room, where she is eventually joined by her teacher who was once her father’s grad student who slept with him and broke up her parents’ marriage. Together they begin plotting Byron’s demise, which … I don’t know, I kind of feel like I should be enjoying it more, but Meredith has a Cousin Nate vibe to her that I just can’t shake.

Oh, also, Aria mentioned twice that she’s lethargic and nauseous, so cross your fingers for another lesbian baby to be born and/or for Diane Fitzgerald to return to this show and go one of her legendary murder sprees.

Mona is throwing a congratulatory party for herself with fancy cupcakes. Hanna drops by to pick up Spencer, who can’t drive because she is drunk on her own misery. She takes in Spencer’s anguish and thinks about Lucas’ despondency, and she marches over to Mona and does the noblest, yet worst possible thing she could ever do: She calls out Lucas and Spencer by name as reasons why she doesn’t want to be friends with Mona anymore, and she retroactively takes back her friendship from the time when she was visiting Mona in Radley. The last time this happened, the last time Mona thought the Liars were taking Hanna away from her, she opened the Hellmouth. So, high five for loyalty, Hanna, but also: way to make Lucas won’t wake up tomorrow.

Paige and Emily are having a sleepover because Emily wants to make up for almost getting them bludgeoned to death in the dark again. I always wondered how gay teenagers do it when they want to sleepover at each other’s houses. I was too busy actively Not Being Gay in high school to know, but I guess this is how you get your parents on board with it. You tell them one of you will sleep on the bed/floor. Well, so Paige gets the air mattress. As Emily tucks her sweetly into bed, Paige is like, “Just so you know, my panic about dying didn’t make me feel any less impressed with your courage. I’ve always been amazed at how you never get afraid.” Emily grins, says, “I get afraid a lot. But there’s power in doing the things that scare us.” They kiss and are adorable and equality looks just like this:

The Risen Mitten buries some Halloween masks under some leaves, and Mona stalks Byron out of his office, hopefully to deal with him the way Aria dealt with Jackie Molina.

My biggest, brightest thanks to my screencapping partner Maggie (@MargaretRosey), without whom these recaps would take ten days to finish.

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