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“Pretty Little Liars” recap 3.18: Bienvenue, Dark Lord!

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Alison DiLaurentis had a funeral. And another funeral. And another and another and another, and every funeral drew a smaller crowd than the one before it because the longer she was dead, the more apparent it became that the girl was an emotional terrorist. During one of the funerals, the Liars were each invited to add a keepsake to Ali’s casket, just little trinkets to honor the most memorable moments of trauma she inflicted upon them. Earrings from the time Ali coerced Aria into destroying her philandering father’s office. Ouija Board planchette from when Ali’s ghost made herself known to Hanna for the first time. One-by-one the casket gifts appeared above ground, and also a necklace made of Ali’s actual human teeth. Ali’s casket was like Mary Poppins’ carpet bag, is what I am saying. Bottomless and full of wonderful horrors. But then A gave back the dead body and all the fun was over … OR WAS IT?

Rear Window Brew. The Liars convene for an early morning intervention to confront Spencer about the fact that she is very quickly descending into Radley Sanitorium-caliber madness. She’s stopped meddling in other people’s business, stopped being an insufferable know-it-all at school, stopped giving Scooby Seminars, stopped brushing her hair. Or, well, that’s what they were scheduled to talk about, but Aria hijacks the thing from the start to talk about stupid Delaware and the stupid lesbian kindergarteners therein. Jason ambles in and tells the Liars that his family is going to bury Alison again, this time in her favorite mausoleum, the one where the Liars saw her homemade porno projected that one time.

The Liars are all, “We always buy new funeral outfits at the start of every spring, winter, summer, and fall, because: Rosewood. Of course we’ll be there.” Except for Spencer. She’s like, “You know who had the right idea about things? Jenna Marshall. She had a gun. She never pretended Ali was anything other than a dickbiscuit. And she punished Toby Cavenaugh at her leisure. She punished that son of a bitch. She made him pay.” She says she will not be attending another memorial service for Alison and then she knees her Jason in the crotch and leaves to go meet with her PI.

Jason’s face is like, “So, literally every sibling I have is a mental basket.” And also, “Ouch! My balls!”

Aria and Hanna revisit the Ouija board planchette and the basilisk fang earrings. Hanna is of the mind to destroy them. Aria is of the mind that she will not let go of such a rare piece of jewelry a second time. Then, of course: “But back to Ezra, I’ve been stopping by his house every morning and afternoon and night and during my lunchbreak to lounge around in his flannel button-ups and cry my tears Into his feelings journals. It’s the purest form of expression. Pages soaked with the saline solution of my soul.”

Mona is wearing her Good Girl clothes and makeup today, and smiling like a run-of-the mill, non-adrenalized queen bee. She hands over a folder full of academic decathlon things – hotel reservations, practice questions, anthrax – and touches Spencer’s shoulder ever so gently to encourage her to get back on her A-game. After all, it would be such a disappointment for poor Toby to end up rooting for Team Mona when he was so convinced he should root for Team Spencer. The touching doesn’t incite Dark Spencer fully, but the invocation of Toby’s name does the trick. She shrugs off Mona’s hand, drops her voice to an octave I did not even know exists, and says, “Before this is over, I am going to cut your heart out of your chest and force feed it to you while Jenna Marshall plays her flute.” Mona is like, “OK, well, toodles, loony bird! Don’t forget to practice alphabetizing stuff before the big meet!”

Hanna spies Caleb brooding in an empty classroom. At first, she thinks it’s A stuff, but no: Caleb has normal people problems. For example, his girlfriend’s lesbian stalker flew 3,000 miles across the country to run his mom off the road, and so she gave him her Mercedes and now that she’s not wasting time driving all around Montecito, she’s started Facebooking with all the other people who orphaned Caleb, and it turns out his aunt – his dad’s sister who left him on the orphanage steps all those years ago – is moving to Australia, and when you move to Australia they tear down your house, and so if Caleb wants any of left his old childhood things he needs to go visit his pre-orphan home before the bulldozers get there. Hanna is like, “Yeah, that definitely sounds like regular life stuff. No matter what you decide, I have already mentally chosen an outfit for each possible outcome.”

Aria is at Ezra’s, lying on the bed remembering the good old days when the only problem they had was the way her friends were always interrupting black-and-white movie night by getting tortured and murdered in the woods. The door lock jiggles and Aria goes rushing over, thinking Ezra has come to his senses and abandoned his child, but the -esbian at the door isn’t Ezra-shaped; it’s Wezra-shaped. He’s like, “The squirrelly way I am talking and shuffling around and not making eye contact with you indicates that I am on the lam, but let us discuss instead the question of whose lips would win in a wrestling match: Mine or Chord Overstreet’s?” He’s actually very sweet about sharing his hideout with Aria. He sees that she’s been mooning away on Ezra’s bed, so he invites her to come over regularly and rescue Ezra’s plants from his black thumb. She’s like, “You’re not old enough to get to second base with me, not old enough by half. But OK about the plants.”

Here’s how fucked up Spencer is right now: Not only has she stopped doing all the things that make life worth living, including busting an innocent person’s balls about being A every second of every day, but also she has prescribed herself a steady stream of nothing but Bon Iver playlists and now she is meeting her PI in the very same alley where she peeped Toby crying about the ice cream kids back in season one. It makes sense on account of Spencer exists to take things to eleven. You think she’s going to pour salt in her own wounds? Incorrect. She is going to pour battery acid into her own wounds. The PI tells her that Toby’s been buying regular stuff like gas and M&Ms and whatever, but also he bought 60 bucks’ worth of hydrangeas on his credit card, before he made the switch to cash a couple of days ago. Also, he knows kind of where A’s lair is, but she needs to sweeten the pot if he’s going to know precisely where A’s lair is. He’s like, “Look, lady, my advice is to follow this thing through to the end. Real low-lifes don’t buy flowers.”

Emily pops by the police station to get another look at that photo of Detective Wilden impregnating Ali in Cape May, but – surprise! – it is gone. Pam is there, though, just working away doing police business and lamenting how the vending machine duped her into thinking that corn nuts are a healthy lunch. She thought she was going to open up that little package and find a delicious coconut corn salad inside. Pam decides to skip out of work early because the only thing that’ll get you fired from the Rosewood PD is consorting with a shovel, but before they can bounce, Pam spots a postcard of the Eiffel Tower on her desk and Emily snatches it out of her hand, claiming to have left it on the kitchen counter that morning. It’s a letter from A, of course, written in French because she likes to keep her trolling classy. (Remember when A learned French by listening to an instructional record while arranging all the items from Clue on her work bench? Je suis une amie, bitches.)

“WHO DISTURBS MY SLUMBER” is what Spencer growls at Emily when she shows up with the postcard. Emily tentatively waves the clue in front of her nose like when you’re trying to get your puppy to eat after it’s been sick, and Spencer is torn between biting on the mystery or biting Emily’s hand off. Emily waves it again and explains that it’s not just any clue; it’s a casket clue, one of 25(!) that Emily buried with Ali. Still nothing. Emily sighs and tries something else to help Spencer remember who she is: She translates the French on the postcard all wrong so Spencer can have a chance to show off how she’s the smartest person in the room. The plan backfires. Instead of reminding Spencer that she is a badass, Emily is reminded that Spencer’s voice operates on a special lesbian frequency, not unlike like the way a dog whistle works. Spence speaks perfect French in her perfect voice and Emily’s eyes glaze over for a second.

Finally, she bolts out of the chair and says, “Uhhh. Paige. Yes, Paige. My lesbian girlfriend, Paige McCullers. Hanna saw her fraternizing with costume shop Shana last week. She thought there was some cheating going on, but really Paige is just trying to get herself killed by tackling A-team shit with Caleb. So, whatever the deal is with Toby, maybe you’re just reading the signs wrong.”

Oh, the postcard says: “Stop digging. The police already know it’s you who’s capable of murder.”

Because she was so helpful the last time, and definitely didn’t get Emily trapped in a barn and carbon monoxide poisoned and molested by the ghost of her dead girlfriend, Emily returns to Dr. Ann for some therapy. “You may have heard I killed a guy” are the actual words that come out of Emily’s mouth, but Dr. Ann says what she really heard was that Emily and her new girlfriend were kidnapped and very nearly murdered by the murderer of one of her dead girlfriends and that Emily did what anyone would do if Batman was tied up in the other room. Shay Mitchell is really great in this episode. She’s essentially playing four different Emilys – past life baby dyke Emily, present life Hufflepuff Emily, secret PTSD Emily, and hypnotized murdering lunatic Emily – and she brings it hard on every one of them. Secret PTSD Emily says there’s nothing heroic about ending the life of a living, breathing, human being, and that she can still feel the crunch of his guts and see the evil glow extinguishing in his eyes. Therapy Ann is like, “One idea I have is I can hypnotize you and make you feel less shitty about what you did.” Emily thinks that’s a swell idea.

Speaking of battery acid: Spencer is sitting in the dark surrounded by physical manifestations of Toby’s betrayal and listening to Madi Diaz’s “We Threw Our Hearts Into the Fire” album, specifically that song “Burn,” which is hands-down the Spencer-est song of all time. First of all, it’s about this really elaborate game of hide-and-seek, which we already know is Spencer’s favorite game to win. And second of all, it’s like, “Come out, come out wherever you – oh, holy shit, are you about to run over me with your car?!” Anyway, she looks through Toby’s stuff and plops down in Toby’s rocking chair and calls up her PI and tells him to find the A door, dollars be damned.

Hanna has talked Caleb into sorting through the stuff leftover at his childhood home and it makes me love him more than I thought possible. Care Bears and Pound Puppies and Glo-Worms and picture books: Little Caleb had toys and a home and no idea that all that stuff could be taken from him, without even a warning or an explanation. Lying awake at night in a foster home wondering what he did wrong, without even the comfort of his own stuffed animals. No wonder he didn’t want to come back here. On the plus side, Hanna is working some overalls and a plaid button-up because of course she bought just such an ensemble in the off-chance that she ever ended up rummaging around in a barn looking through her boyfriend’s old Golden Books. Hanna mistakes Uncle Jamie for Caleb’s actual uncle, even though the actor is way too handsome and has way too much dialogue to be anything other than Caleb’s dad. Hanna tells Caleb to stop being so frowny and really get into the spirit of reliving his most traumatic memories, a trick she apparently learned from Dr. Ann.

To wit: Dr. Ann has hypnotized Emily into thinking she is in a safe place, no small feat considering the fact that Emily is lying on a couch, unconscious and and unarmed and unarmored, in the teen girl murder capital of the world. I guess the plan here is that she’s going to get Emily to relive the night she murdered Lyndon James, but the whole time she’ll be cooing at her that it feels so good to stick a guy in the gut with a shiv, and when she wakes up she’ll still remember it in vivid detail, but she’ll feel better about it? This actually is almost a thing some psychiatrists are trying on PTSD patients these days, only they’re asking them to recall their most traumatic memories while feeding them pot brownies and MDMA and stuff. Because neurologists have only just learned that memories aren’t really like movies. They’re like plays: They change subtly with every performance. You never remember the actual thing that happened to you. You really only remember remembering that last time you remembered. Which puts a nice little spin on all these Ali flashbacks, huh? Even the ones that don’t involve crossed wires about gravedigging.

OK, so Emily tells Dr. Ann that she’s there in the night that she did the murdering. The murder weapon is there also. But oh hell, it’s not a pocket knife. It’s a shovel. And double hell, it’s not Lyndon James. It’s Ali. Hypnosis Flashback Emily raises up the shovel and clubs Ali over the head, while Present Day PTSD Emily asks, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, if she could please wake up now. I love that even in her most harrowing moments, Emily possesses the politeness of a Canadian. She breaks out of the hypnosis when she sees a flash of red light, and Dr. Ann is like, “That is not how they said this was going to go on the psychology website page message boards.” Emily finally remembers that Dr. Ann is the worst therapist in America and jets out of there.

Meanwhile, in the least-anguished apartment in all of PA, Wesley and Aria chat about cactuses and trust funds and how they’re both sorry for not telling Ezra sooner that he has a kid. The phone rings and Aria resists lunging for it, deferring instead to Wesley, whose eyes are all wild and darty at the prospect of someone finding him here. He answers, finally, but no one is on the other end of the line, so off they frolic for some pizza and pinball downtown.

Also downtown is Spencer, who runs into Jason, who demands an explanation about why she is not coming to Ali’s one hundredth funeral. Also, he would like to know why she withdrew several thousand dollars in cash from the ATM, but he’s willing to let that one go because he knows a thing or two about paying off shady people for the good of the A-game. Spencer glowers at him and goes, “I would destroy you in a verbal argument any day of the year, but especially on this day, when I have been listening to hide-and-seek music all afternoon. So, I am going to go before I make you cry.” That’s when Jason knows something real is going on. When Spencer can’t find pleasure in making another person break down in tears, it’s a real good indication that her soul is dying.

Out at the Rivers Ranch of Regrets and Recriminations, Hanna thanks Uncle Jamie for letting them dig around. He says it’s no problem, that Caleb’s dad was a deadbeat, that Caleb’s dad was scared, that Caleb’s dad thought time would stand still while he got his shit together, that Caleb’s dad is so very sorry, that Caleb’s dad loved Caleb’s mom, that know one knows Caleb’s dad better than him, better than Good old Uncle Jamie. He hands over a baby photo of Caleb. Hanna checks out the ring in the photo and the ring on Uncle Jamie’s hand, and her brain is like: Cousins aren’t always really cousins, which means … uncles aren’t always really uncles?

Emily is pacing around her room like a caged lion. She picks up the Eiffel Tower postcard and stares into a flashback. Oh! It’s one of the ones when Emily is a burgeoning little lesbian! Khaki shorts and pastel polos and the inability to look directly at Ali’s face because her heart is beating “I love you!” so loud she’s sure Ali can hear it. And Ali is like she always was with Emily. Different. Gentle. Warm. That was Ali’s most awful trick of all, I think. She didn’t torture Emily with the secret things she’d done; she tortured Emily with the secret thing she was. The worst thing you can do to a girl who’s learning she’s gay is to make her believe the only time you can be you is when you’re with her. Because that little gay girl is trying desperately to figure out if her real self is safe with you too. Ali lays out a bunch of postcards, Memory-style, and weaves into Emily’s imagination the idea of a place they can go where they can be together, together, far away, forever.

Where’s the shovel? I’ll take care of Alison my own damn self.

Pam interrupts Emily’s flashback, and Emily is full of so much shame and so much regret that she can’t even allow herself to be comforted. She says she’s lost her innocence, her goodness, her very Emily-ness. Pam wraps her up like only a mom can and says, “Honey, I let you internalize guilt for far too long for something you never should have been ashamed of. I know you. I know your heart like only a mom can know a girl’s heart. What’s inside you is a magic that makes this world warmer and brighter and better because you’re a part of it.” And you know what? Emily believes her. And you know what else? So do I.

This is my favorite scene of the night. Dougherty and Barasz knocked this one out of the park, writing-wise, and this scene right here is inspired. Spencer has met a kind of soul mate in her PI. He finds her in Toby’s alley and asks what she’s looking for in that A room. She says she’s playing “He loves me/He loves me not,” but unlike when she was a kid, she can’t rig the game from the start by picking an odd-petaled flower. Buttercups, he says. Marigolds. Spencer half-desperately/half-jokingly asks how many petals hydrangeas have, and PI is like, “You are clearly batshit crazy, girl, and even though your hair is growing bigger and scarier right in front of my very eyes, I can say, without hesitation, that this guy doesn’t deserve you.”

Aw, PI. You only know half of half of half of the story. Hell, Spencer herself only knows about ten percent of it. Anyway, this weird math game Spencer is playing is: If A’s lair is full of stuff, Toby still loves her. If A’s lair is deserted, Toby loves her not. It’s like the bargaining stage of grief, only instead of asking God for a favor, Spencer Hastings asks Spencer Hastings for a favor. Find the lair. Give him a chance.

Aria and Wesley are heading home from dinner when a mean old guy rushes little Wesbian, shouting all the way about, “Your mom can buy off the board, but she can’t buy off my tweed-coated wrath!” Wesley punches him in the face with a pizza – a pizza! – before grabbing Aria’s hand and leading them to safety. Aria is like, “Ah, you tried to sleep with your teacher and now you’re dealing with the fallout. I should have seen the signs earlier. Did I ever tell you about the time I knocked out my principal with a tuna sandwich?” They bond over how much they love Ezra and how much they hate Diane Fitzgerald. Which is only 50 percent correct, actually. Diane Fitzgerald is the Original Mona. The John the Baptist to the Vanderjesus.

Hanna knows that the best place to break bad news is in her kitchen, where the lighting makes everyone look like an angel and also there are pasta boxes stuffed with cash in case you need to pay someone to calm down. So as soon as she and Caleb get back to her house, she pulls out the baby picture and explains how she solved her very first mystery. Caleb is like, “Uh, no. If Uncle Jamie is my father then my own dad sent me to an orphanage. Screw your ‘clues,’ Hanna. I cannot deal with that reality.” Hanna gets it. She had a hard time accepting that her mom was a bankrobber and widower murderer, but facts are facts, man.

Mona drops by Dr. Ann’s office with an odd-petaled orchid to welcome her back to the practice of psychiatry. Is it bugged? Is it radioactive? Does it release a vaporized poison that paralyzes your body while leaving your mind acutely alert? Does it secrete HGH? Is it covered in Ali’s DNA? Will it come to life when the sun sets and strangle you in your chair? Is it infested with bed bugs? Is there a secret compartment inside where Mona has stashed a key that leads to a shipyard that leads to a crate that leads to a trap door that leads to the bowels of hell? No, don’t be silly. It’s an office-warming present. Mona tries to peek inside Dr. Ann’s office in a way that’s so conspicuous she’s obviously not trying to peek inside Dr. Ann’s office. (She would have just scaled the wall and picked the window lock with her mind of that’s what she wanted to do.) Dr. Ann says thanks for the flower, and Mona says, “I could never truly repay you for what you did to me. Er, for me. What you did for me. But I’ll be gosh darned if I’m not going to spend the rest of my life trying!”

Spencer makes her way to the A lair to the dulcet tones of angry electric guitars and rabid drums. Spencer opens the door, flips on the light, and holds in her hand a flower stem that landed on he loves me not.

Ali’s latest funeral is down to four participants. Not even Ali’s parents or all the Liars could be fussed to show up. Hanna goes, “So, like, are we going to wait all night, or…?” The door creaks open and everyone’s all, “Oh, whew. Spencer came to her senses.” Oh, but no. Her hair and her eyeballs are wilder than ever when she rounds the corner and despite the most ardent protestations of her lifelong best friends, Spencer breaks the two most important rules of being a Liar: 1) Do not put your own emotional turmoil before the good of the group. 2) Do not disclose evidence to an adult before debating about it for seven episodes. She tells Jason that Ali was pregnant, that the Liars all know that Ali was pregnant, and that Detective Wilden was the impregnator. Jason storms out of there like the last time we saw Garrett alive, and the Liars are so mad at Spencer they leave her standing there, crackling with the psychotic energy of a fire tornado. (My god, she is perfect.)

Outside, Aria is like, “I mean, I totally understand having a broken heart.” And Emily is like, “Bundt Cake, please.” But before she can elaborate on the numerous girlfriends she has lost to homicide, she hears some sprinklers, which triggers her hypnosis, and lo! She got her shovel scenarios mixed up! She didn’t kill Ali with a shovel, but she was present at the digging up of Ali’s grave on the Night of a Thousand Nights. An minion did the digging in a black hoodie while Master A watched in a Vivian Darkbloom coat, under which she had tucked her blonde locks. Red Flash! Hanna goes, “OK, now that we have all officially had contact with Alison’s very live self, I’m pretty sure we should start asking ourselves if Ali is alive.”

Inside the mausoleum, Spencer spots Toby’s mom’s gravestone and just when you think it might shock some humanity back into her, she marches over and carves Toby’s name into it. She steps back to admire her handiwork, smirks, says, “Ready or not, here I come, motherfucker.”

The Risen Mitten buys some whiskey, because I guess the Risen Mitten has to recap Glee on Thursday nights too.

Next week: Mona offers to try hypnotherapy to help Spencer remember why Toby left her, which causes Spencer to literally fly across a room snap Mona’s neck with her teeth, while the Liars glare at her from the distance and mutter about how they always promised to talk to the group before slaughtering someone in broad daylight.

Big, big thanks to my screencapping partner Maggie, who has instated a Google Hangout/PLL Bingo game on Tuesday nights. Hit her up on Twitter (@MargaretRosey) to find out more!

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