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“Pretty Little Liars” recap 3.17: Code For Something Gay

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, you thought this was the craziest thing you were ever going to see on Toby’s head:

(Spoiler alert: You were wrong.)

Spencer is groping shirtless Toby in the dark and he’s kissing her neck and caressing her neck and wrapping his hands around her neck and choking the literal life out of her neck and wearing a hoodie and being A. She wakes up from her nightmare gasping for breath and staring at the A-key on her desk and wondering how everything went tits up so fast. Wasn’t it just yesterday that Toby was crying alone in that abandoned alley because those adorable kids wouldn’t share their ice creams with him? And now he’s – what? Ordering chinese food with worms in it and sneaky-massaging Emily’s naked back with his Risen Mittens? Carving Bratz dolls in the likeness of the Liars from the same tree he felled to build Spencer’s rocking chair? Burying Tory Burch boots in the mud? Cavorting with the only person on earth who could beat Spencer in an academic decathlon?

Who can fathom the depths of his betrayal? On the other hand, we’ve been waiting three and a half seasons to see Dark Spencer emerge from the ashes of her own anguish. Arise, Shadow Phoenix! Have your batshit crazy way with us all!

Emily is doing whatever Emily does on a quiet night at home. Soliciting donations to save homeless kittens, writing letters to her Congressional representatives to ask for clean air and nicer parks and equality, researching coconut cupcake recipes, packing up a care package to send to the Sudanese children she’s been sponsoring since she first started getting an allowance, smiling at herself in the mirror and looking away bashfully because sometimes it’s embarrassing to remember how God gave you the best one of every facial feature. Pam(!) comes in with a giant box of stuff from the Lyndon James family, talking about, “I guess they were feeling shitty about how their son murdered your one girlfriend and kidnapped your other girlfriend and forced you to stab him in the gut, so they thought they’d send along a bottle of wine or a cheese sampler or … every bit of correspondence you ever shared with Alison DiLaurentis.”

There’s a lot of closeted teenage lesbianism in the box. Cards and letters and bookmarks and and jewelry and porcelain figurines and whatever else all of us have given to our best friends and some point in our lives, because nothing says, “I want to touch your boobs with my boobs” like some Precious Moments statues. Also, there is a biology notebook full of chemistry notes and lots of Ali’s handwriting. Pam offers to take the stuff to the police station, where she works now, but Emily learned her lesson about the Rosewood PD the last time she picked up a shovel.

Ashley(!!) would like to know if Hanna needs some help with her homework or if she’d like to talk about why she’s being even cagier than usual or if Mona has tried to kill her anymore times since she’s been back at school. Hanna explains that she’s already playing the Penny to Paige and Caleb’s Inspector Gadget and she doesn’t have time to rescue anyone else who’s trying to rescue her. Ashley shakes her head and sips her wine and wonders aloud what the deal is with lesbians and capes.

Over at the Montgomery’s, Byron tells Aria that she’s safe from Meredith now. Apparently Mer has a long history of psychotic breaks and so her parents have locked her in her bedroom for a while (after encouraging her to pursue a career in early childhood education, apparently). He tries to think back to the last time he actually gave a single shit about being a good parent and lands on a story about how he used to wrap up Aria in yarn because it was cold and he wouldn’t let Ella turn on the heater. And he would, like, roll her around the house inside her yarn ball and smash her head into door frames and stuff and then blame her for the brain damage, like, “Oh, way to go, Aria. Way to get a concussion because I crashed your tiny head into the wall.” Geez, this asshole. Even when he was trying to be a good guy, he was still the worst guy.

The next morning, the Liars meet for coffee and also to discuss whatever fresh hells befell them in the night. No one notices that Spencer looks like a zombie who also has the flu. They’re all blah blah Ezra’s kid is practically starting high school now and Aria still hasn’t told him, and blah blah Caleb and Paige are all #TeamCaige all the time on Twitter now, and blah blah here’s this notebook full of clues. They ask about Spencer’s anniversary dinner and she’s like, “I hate everything!” and runs off into the bushes like a regular old Lucas. The Liars barely even notice; they just keep on talking about Ali’s biology notebook and how she was obsessed with a “beach hottie” and isn’t it lucky that Emily’s second dead girlfriend took all of Emily’s first dead girlfriend’s stuff to drug prison with her. Aria asks to see the cards and trinkets Emily sent to Ali, unless it’s too private. Which is a real hoot since the Liars spent 100 hours watching every video available at massugar.com.

The only real thing they can discern about the biology notebook is that the mystery author who was writing notes back-and-forth with Ali makes her “g” like Mamaw Marin. Hanana laughs. “I mean, it’s obviously not my grandma. There are some people we can trust.” From the bushes where they last saw Spencer, they hear the howl of a wounded animal.

At school, Hanna overhears Aria leaving a cryptic voicemail for Ezra, but she only has time for a drive-by “Just go to his apartment, you ninny” because she also overhears Paige SHOUTING LIKE A ROSEWOOD PHARMACIST about wet brains and secret meetings. Hanna shakes her head and rolls her eyes and makes plans to follow Paige to wherever she’s going tonight and put a stop her and Caleb getting dead.

Emily finds Spencer in the bathroom staring at herself in the mirror trying to find the balance between hating Toby and hating herself. Emily bebops in with that biology notebook and asks Spence to give it a look-see, but Spencer scowls and growls, “I am not doing any more sleuthing!” Emily laughs so loud, all, “Hahaha! Oh, man! I thought I just heard you say you aren’t going to do anymore sleuthing! What an hilarious joke!” Spencer says that’s exactly what she said and Emily’s looks like someone told her birds are going to stop flying and fish are going to stop swimming and the Pope is going to quit the church. Emily meeps out a couple of phrases like “beach hottie” and “Ian” and “lifeguard” but Spencer shuts her down: “Here’s an idea, Emsy. What if we’re the assholes? What if this is just karma’s way of showing us who’s boss? What if Alison was whore-ing it up here and there and everywhere and she got what was coming to her?” Emily looks down at the ground and swallows a horrible taste in her mouth and reminds Spencer that she was kind of in love with Ali, in case she’d forgotten, and all the ‘slut’ talk kind of hurts her feelings. Spencer just smirks, laughs, says, “Girl, wait’ll you get a load of what’s coming.”

But before she can leave in a huff of rage and glory, Emily thrusts a Toby-centric flashback into Spencer’s hands:

The main thing you need to know is that Toby is wearing a do-rag. OK? He’s in prison and he’s wearing a do-rag and he’s not wearing a shirt and whoever is in charge of the spritzer bottle on set today has gone to town on him, just slicked down his pecs and abs and also he is wearing a do-rag. Any time you’re watching a TV show, you’re going to wonder who the writers are aiming at with certain things. Like Toby marching around shirtless all the time is for the young straight girls in the audience. And this lesbian bar scene coming up, that’s clearly for us. But who, pray tell, is meant to be the beneficiary of Toby Cavanaugh in a do-rag? I think the answer is: humanity. This one is for the people. Folks are folks and each and everyone of us deserves this.

OK, so, Toby is in jail because the he was convicted of throwing that dynamite at Jenna’s face, right? I think that’s right. Ali stops by with a sack of threats from A, and Toby says that: a) It’s not him who’s sending the messages, because b) if it was him, he’d be doing something a helluva lot more sinister than trolling her with Post-It notes, and c) he’d be doing it to her posse also. Ali’s like, “Don’t you wish you had made out with me when you had the chance?” And he’s like, “Sod off, me and this do-rag are my OTP now.”

Spencer cries even harder and Emily says she gets it; it’s never easy reading about all the people Ali was throwing her vagina at, and Spencer collapses into her arms and tells the half-truth that she and Toby broke up.

In literature class, Ella(!!!) – actually, timeout. I just want to say I am very glad to see three Pretty Little Moms back in action this week. After weeks of the dads getting their robot house alarm phones stolen and getting their daughters killed by their psychotic mistresses, it’s about time we got back to business with these women who (kind of) know what’s up. Anyway, in literature class, everyone is talking about how it must have sucked to be Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, constantly under surveillance and ultimately betrayed to Big Brother by the one person he thought he could trust.

Spencer is already calculating how many matches it would take to burn every copy of that book in the whole world when a text comes through from Aria asking Spence to meet her in the park because Ezra just broke up with her. She figures lighting Ezra on fire would actually be even better than the book thing, so she tells Ella to S her D and bounces right up out of there.

Spencer rides a bike now. Even though she’s reached an amicable resolution to her feud with Paige, she rides a bike now. It’s because no matter how much she likes Paige, no matter how many times Paige has saved her life, she can’t let Paige be better at a thing than she is, and so she rides a bike now.

She rides it to the park and when she she spots Ezra just sitting at a picnic table typing away and eating a piece of cake (naturally), she hops off of her bike while it’s still moving and clomps over to his little woodland paradise. Ezra, adorably, is chomping away on that dessert and grinning, all, “Hey, Spencer, I didn’t see where you-” but she cuts him off with a swift slap to the mouth. He tries three times to get her to explain what the heck she’s so mad about and also why she keeps cold-clocking his beautiful head. Finally she starts berating him for writing his big lesbian feelings down on paper and then she just comes out of her frame: “DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO KEEP A SECRET FROM SOMEONE YOU LOVE, YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD? IT IS NOT A SOLO BLOGGER CAKE PARTY IN THE PARK, I’LL TELL YOU THAT RIGHT NOW! IF YOU WANT TO RIP SOMEONE’S BEATING HEART OUT OF HER CHEST AND RUN IT THROUGH THE WOOD CHIPPER, YOU DO IT TO THE MOTHER OF YOUR CHILD, MAGGIE FROM DELEWARE!”

Ezra goes, “Who the what now?” And Spencer goes, “Oh, shit. Uh … goodbye forever!” And she runs off into the bushes again, howling to beat the band.

Troian is incandescent this week, y’all. Just playing my heart like a fiddle that was made to do her bidding. (Have you seen her in Lauren? You really should see her in Lauren.)

At Pam’s new job at the police department, she asks that one regular beat cop who is not Garrett what she should do about the box of clues Cousin Nate’s family sent to Emily. Detective Snape overhears her and slithers up, all, “Bring those clues on in here, lady. I’ve never traumatized your daughter and her friends before and I’ve never outed her as a lesbian and I’ll be sure never to not do any of those things again in the future.” Pam is like, “My goodness, what lovely co-workers you all are!”

Rosewood High. The Liars are settling down to lunch when a wild Ezbian appears in the courtyard. You know how puppies chew? That is how Emily is chewing. She’s chewing like that and when Ezra runs in asking about his seven-year-old love child, Emily stops chewing, and then Aria takes him outside, and she starts chewing again. It’s so funny. So while she thumbs through that biology notebook and finds a photo of CeCe Drake, Aria takes Ezra back out into the courtyard. He goes, “Spencer just accidentally told me in one single breath that I have a son!” And Aria is like, “You’d be surprised how often that happens. When Wesley accidentally told-” And oh, that just gets Ezra’s goat. He’s like, “You knew about my kid at our last cake party? Are you a monster or something?” He storms off to the stationary store because boy, is he ever going to have some journaling to do tonight.

Emily: still over there puppy-chewing.

Aria gets a text from A: “How do you like my new Spencer-shaped bomb? It’s positively A-tomic!”

Rosweood PD HQ. Snivellus is still trying to either get into Pam’s pants or get that box of clues, but he’s going about it in the stupidest way possible, weaving this yarn about how he and Emily are kindred spirits, what with both of them having stabbed a dude in the stomach with a pocket knife before. Pam is a little bit afraid. She’s like, “My husband is in the Army, by the way. Just in case you didn’t realize it when he stopped by here earlier wearing that t-shirt that said ‘Army.'”

So, last night Spencer was making homemade lasagna with Nana’s secret recipe and tonight she is stabbing at Lean Cuisine lasagna with a pair of scissors. Aria wanders in, not to yell at her, but to check on her. She’s like, “So, it occurs to me that you’ve looked you have the zombie flu all day and then my mom told me you left class without outsmarting everybody and now you’re in here beating the shit out of a frozen dinner. Is A all up in your nut today, or…?” Spencer goes, “It’s not fucking A, OK? Every shitty thing that happens to us is not A! We do this to ourselves, you know? You chose not to tell Ezra about his little lesbian kid, you chose to drink that poison tea Meredith was giving you, you chose to … I’m still not clear how you ended up in that box with Garrett’s dead body on the nightmare train, but I’m pretty sure it was your fault too.” Aria’s eyes get wider than they’ve ever gotten, which, you’ll agree, is saying something. She backs slowly out of the kitchen, never turning her eyes away from Spencer’s scissors.

Emily meets up with CeCe Drake to talk about the photo she found of her and Ali in that Biology notebook and CeCe is like, “I don’t know what to tell you, Americano. There were lot of beach hotties in Cape May that summer, even though I mostly spent the whole time trying to bone Jason DiLaurentis.” She does, however, have a flashback to share with Emily. It is Ali and Ali is pregnant and Ali is scared and Ali knows that if the guy who got her pregnant finds out, there will be no one to save Ali from evil.

Emily’s face is like, “This seems like relevant information you probably should have relayed to literally anyone, years ago.” And CeCe is like, “That’s not how I roll, girl. You kill a snake with a mannequin leg, you move on.”

Man, this show is so good right now. I actually can’t believe how good it is right now. There’s no way this concept should have been able to hold tension this long, but it’s actually better now than even it was back in season one. We’re getting answers – for example, page five of that autopsy report totally had information about Ali’s pregnancy, I’ll bet you a thousand dollars (or one blogger cake party) – and we’re getting more questions and everyone is lying to everyone and Liars are betraying Liars and Emily’s clothes don’t even have shoulders anymore.

Hanna is chatting with Aria about how she’s tailing Paige while she’s tailing Paige and then she realizes she’s tailed her right into a lesbian bar. It is amazing. It is the most amazing. They could have filmed this scene anywhere: Brew, school, the park. But no. They converted and set-dressed a lesbian bar and filled it with extras and you will never, ever convince me that this isn’t a personal love letter to this very website. Lesbians are everywhere, flirting and dancing and drinking and making out and being so gay. The way it’s shot is so good. Hanna wanders in and it’s like, you know, Girls. And then Girls, Girls, Girls. And then Girls with Girls. And Girls with Girls fully checking her out and nodding appreciatively.

Paige is there also, chatting up Shana from Pretty Dirty Secrets and she looks Uh-mazing. What I like is that she’s running the floor here, clearly, which means that she’s got serious swerve, which means that she gets so weird with Emily all the time because Emily throws her completely off her game. I mean, obviously. You’ve seen Emily with your eyeballs. You’re not brushing your hair with an electric toothbrush.

Spencer is sitting on her staircase in the dark looking worse than when Mona hit Hanna with a car. She texts Toby and asks to meet up, but says no one can know. He’s like, “No one will. Bring your own body bag. JK! LOL!”

Back at the lesbian bar, which Dana Piccoli has named “The Rosebud,” Paige is touching her hands to Shana’s, I think, and then she does the famed McCullers head-dip, which: I know she’s just using this girl for information, but I do not like that one bit. I don’t even know how to describe what happens next because it is too good for me and too good for my words. A lesbian bartender puts a pink drink in Hanna’s hand, tells her it’s a Raspberry Flirtini, and that this gorgeous black hipster lesbian with amazing hair sent it over. Hanna flips around and sees the lesbian in question, seriously considers it for a moment, then turns back around and tries to give back the flirtini. Too late, though; the bartender is gone – and so on this hallowed eve, on this Ladies Night, Hanna Marin will be Queen of the Queers.

Aria texts Ezra to say: “Whoops, babe! Sorry!” But he doesn’t text back. Byron offers to make Aria a grilled cheese sandwich to make up for almost getting her murdered, and she would have graciously accepted, but Emily shows up to talk about Page Five and how Ali was pregnant. She’s like, “Listen, we’re the ones who are always saying we should take stuff to the cops, but Hanna and Spencer are always vetoing us. Well, Hanna is out cruising chicks and Spencer is blowing up God knows what. So, what do you say?” They agree to meet at the police station, rather than drive to the police station together, thereby proving that they should never be left to their own devices.

The Rosebud. Shana is drunk on pretzels, I guess, because she tells Paige that she misses her, for starters, and that if they play the uncut version of this song that keeps going “I’m better than her! I’m better than her! I’m better than her!” she’s going to have to kiss Paige. OK, so – hold up! Paige had a girlfriend before she got back together with Emily and it was costume shop Shana! God, that’s so amazing. This town has more gorgeous teenage lesbians than Sesame Street has muppets. When Shana says she’s going to kiss Paige, Hanna turns around like, “THE HELL YOU SAY!” but then she has to dive onto the floor to avoid being seen by them. She walks around down there like a duck for a good ten seconds. When she pops up, she is face-to-face with the girl who sent her the flirtini. It’s all fun and homo-dancing until flirtini girl’s girl comes back from the bathroom and throws a drink in Hanna’s face.

For starting a lesbian bar brawl, Hanna gets: carded.

Oh, Pretty Little Liars, marry me.

Spencer sits in her car listening to Sad FM and crying and putting on mascara and crying and putting on mascara. It’s horrible. It’s so horrible. She finally manages to get her Hastings Face in place and goes inside to meet Toby. Only, it’s not Toby at all. It’s an assassin! Or a private detective. She gives him half a photo of Toby and a key to A’s lair and wishes him luck. I love this conversation Maya Goldsmith, the writer, has been having with us all night.

Us: Spencer has stopped sleuthing! She’s gone mad!

Her: Wait for it.

Us: Spencer is being mean to Emily and Aria! She has hit rock bottom!

Her: Wait for it.

Us:: Oh my god, she’s given up studying too?! She’s climbed under rock bottom!!

Her: Wait for it.

Us: SHE HIRED SOMEONE ELSE TO SOLVE A MYSTERY FOR HER? OH, SPENCER! YOU’RE BROKEN FOREVER!

Her: There it is.

At Rosewood PD HQ, where Emily and Hanna have just handed over Ali’s notebook to Wilden, right before discovering that “beach hottie” was Wilden – Spencer, come back! Look what is happening without you! – some cops drag Hanna in because she’s been busted for underage drinking. Emily is like, “Why are you covered in flirtini? Hanna, where have you been?” And Hanna is all, “Nowhere. No one was there. There was no plaid, no one was talking about Tegan and Sara.”

Ashley takes Hanna home and they have such a conversation.

Ashley: Honey, were you underage drinking? Or getting murdered? Or is this about some new feelings you are developing? It’s OK if it’s that last thing; you know I’ve always preferred Emily to you anyway.

Hanna: Mom, come on. You think I wouldn’t try it on with Emily if that was what I was into? That girl is heaven. What happened was I was spying on Paige and someone threw a pink drink on me.

Ashley: PinkDrink? Is that code for something gay?

Hanna: What, no? It’s code for … yeah, actually, I guess it is. Have you ever heard of the butch/femme dynamic? Whatever, I need a shower.

Ashley: OK, well, use some hot oil! And I really am cool with whatever lesbian stuff!

Downtown in her child-free loft, Ella Montgomery’s ears perk-up.

Aria finds Ezra wheeling a suitcase full of cupcakes and diaries out of his apartment. He’s not mad. He talked to Maggie. She explained it to him. Aria wants to know where he’s going, when he’ll be back, what time she should expect him to come over tomorrow to read poetry and kiss her in the rain. Ezra stops his Hello Kitty suitcase in its tracks and just bursts into tears. It’s like those Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials! It’s awful! It burns! Make it stop! He’s got a kid now. A kid in Delaware. A kid in Delaware and a job he can do anywhere and nothing will ever be the same. He kisses Aria on the forehead, gets in his Prius hybrid, and drives his lesbianism north.

Vivian Darkbloom messes around with her Pretty Little Bratz dolls, all, “Oh, look at me, I’m Aria. My boyfriend’s smile is like a rainbow and my purse is made of dragonskin. Oh, look at me, I’m Hanna. Everybody of every gender wants to scissor me, apparently, and The Rosebud probably even named a drink after me. The Muff Dive. Oh, look at me, I’m – aw, fuck it.” She fires up a blowtorch and lights them all on fire.

Next week: Emily kills Alison!

Thank you forever to Maggie (@MargaretRosey), my screencapping partner and emotional crutch for times when I cannot stop wailing about a wasted McCullers head-dip.

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