Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Spencer took away Mona’s girlfriend and so Mona took away Spencer’s boyfriend. Mona bested Spencer at her best thing (Academic Decathlon) and so Spencer bested Mona at her best thing (Adrenalized Hyperreality Olympics). Mona tried to kill Spencer, and so Spencer tried to kill Mona. Emily uncovered various clues, all of which pointed to Detective Wilden fathering a child with Ali, and the last of which very nearly ended in Jason getting crushed by a falling elevator. Hanna ordered a name badge that says, “Hello, My Name is Gaydar.” And Aria kissed her boyfriend’s brother due to poor self-control and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
The Liars figured there was no reason to stick around the hospital after Jason shrugged off his casts and neck brace and IVs and jumped out of the window, so they have retired to Rear Window Brew to debrief what they know so far about the back half of this season. For starters, both Wilden and CeCe were photographed on a boat with Ali, which means that one or both of them impregnated her and then killed her. Also, Big Red is the leader of the A-Team and she has blonde hair and is probably Alison. Spencer’s phone dings with a text message, which Hanna sneaky-reads, of course, because somebody has got to figure out how to pull Spencer away from the ledge of her life. Spencer’s like, “Oh, it’s just Wren. He drove me into the woods to prey on my insanity, but I outmaneuvered his impossibly sexy British arse and seized on his lust as a vehicle by which to kill Mona.” The Liars thank her for almost getting Emily chopped in half with her reckless attack on the Vanderbeast, and Spencer is thiiiiiis close to telling them that Mona’s not the only black hoodie in town, when someone starts hammering on the door of the coffee shop.
It’s Detective Wilden. First, he accuses them of breaking into the coffee shop. Then, he accuses them of helping Jason spread falsehoods about his upstanding morality. And then, he tells them to hop into his cop car and he’ll keep them all safe. And then, he tells Hanna he’ll be menacing her, solely and specifically, real soon. Season one, the Liars would have been quaking in their brown Tory Burches, but times have changed. Not only do they refuse to quiver under his glare and alpha male posturing, they all take turns mouthing off to him. (Well, except for Spencer, but she’s still in a heightened state of turmoil/arousal from her earlier altercation with Mona.) They close their ranks and narrow their eyes and tell him to go fuck himself. They know about the boat. They know about him and CeCe. They know it’s not actually a felony to pick up a shovel.
There’s a lot to love about PLL 3B, but I think this is my favorite scene of the season so far because it’s actually a metaphor for the whole entire show. Like, if there was such a thing as a television show grocery store, you’d find Pretty Little Liars on the junk food aisle, and the packaging would tell you it’s the story of four teenage girls who grab Fashion by the balls and kiss boys and tell lies and get the shit scared out of them on the regular. And that’s this scene right here on the surface. They all look hot as hell, two of them have guy troubles, someone creepy is knocking at the door.
But the truth of this show, the truth of this scene, is that it’s about four young women who have been told from the very beginning that they don’t have any power. It’s what A tells them, it’s what the police tell them, it’s what their fathers tell them, over and over. No power over what happens to their bodies, their minds, their actual lives. On the best days, it’s, “You girls hush and behave while the big, strong men figure out what to do.” (Wilden.) And on the worst days, it’s, “I made you, and so even your most personal business, your very sexuality belongs to me.” (Byron.) Right? And but these four girls, they said no to being victims, no to being powerless, no being tricked into hating their bodies and their desires and the sound of their own angry voices. Whatever else is going on inside their love for one another – whether it’s Spencer shutting down and pulling away or Aria catching Avian Flu from her own earrings – they stand together and refuse to apologize for the space they take up in the world.
It’s such a fun show, and so ridiculous sometimes, that it’s easy not to see how subversive it is. But when you think about it, when you think about this scene, when you make the text-to-world connections you learned about when you started reading in kindergarten, the thing you see is Wildens, Wildens everywhere – and four Little Liars who aren’t afraid anymore. Sometimes being queer sounds like the gender binary getting punched in the face. Sometimes being queer sounds like, “We don’t need your fucking permission to have a cup of coffee.”
Andy Reaser, who wrote this episode, is one of those mythological TV writers that actually loves the art of story and the power of women and the passion of the fans who watch his shows. He’s like a unicorn. (Watch out, Andy! Aria wants to make a coat out of you!)
Aria returns home to find a note from Wesbian explaining that he’d rather be homeless than compromise her relationship with Ezra, which is exactly the wish of every Ezria shipper. That and also that wild dogs break into his car and eat him to death.
Hanna and Ashley are enjoying a Loreali/Rory-esque coffee-drinking walk-and-talk before school when they spot Wilden shoving CeCe into his car. Ashley, immediately, is like, “Based on your face, you’re going to jail again soon, huh?” Hanna says that CeCe says that Ali said that Wilden said that he’d murder her dead if she told anyone she was pregnant with his statutory rape baby. Ashley is just flabbergasted. You charge a man with having a relationship with a girl under the age of 18 in this town and you will never work again! Unless you are: Ezra, Wren, Ian, Garrett, Byron, Jason, etc. She tells Hanna to stop associating with CeCe, and Hanna is like, “Fine, but if I get attacked by a black racer snake and no one is around to beat it to death with a mannequin leg, it’s on you.”
Melissa Hastings, lookin’ like exceptional quality with her new haircut, finds Spencer in bed, skipping school, again. She pretends that they have parents, that their parents called to check on Spencer, that she’s covering for her with these parents, and that the next time those imaginary-guys imaginary-call she’s going to tell them Spencer is catatonic. Spencer can’t even muster up the energy to roll her eyes; she just flops over onto her side and stares some more.
At school Emily is wearing: a denim vest on top of a leather jacket on top of a plaid button up on top of a henley, every layer trying to out-gay all the others in some kind of ultimate homo fashion fisticuffs. She and Hanna talk about how they probably got CeCe murdered like they’re probably going to get Caleb and Paige murdered, but speaking of which, did Paige ever get any information about that Queen of Hearts costume? Emily’s like, “It’s just, the guilt I will feel if another person I’m dating gets brutally slaughtered-” Hanna goes, “Say no more, girl. The last thing I did for Caleb, before what will be his certain destruction, was reunite him with his five-dollar-thieving father. But if we chaperone Paige on her misadventures, what could possibly go wrong?” Uh, have you met any of you three guys, just individually? The collective power of your disaster-magnetism could summon a hell demon from the deepest pits of Satan’s chambers. And that’s without even trying. Just sleeping in the same zip code, on a good luck day, you guys could make that happen.
Aria stops by Ezra’s to water his plants and poke his little brother, but guess who is there, just folding some flannel shirts and somehow looking even more handsome than regular? It’s Ezbian Fitzgerald! Aria thinks for a single nanosecond about coming clean on the brother-kissing, but does the exact opposite thing: she comes out of her corner with her tiny fists flying. She says he shut her out and her imagination went to a bad place, he says he shut her out because he didn’t want her to have to deal with harsh reality, she says she missed him, he says he missed her. It’s very emotional and they’re both relieved and tears and feelings and lesbianism, but really, they could have circumvented this whole tangle by starting at the end of the conversation. “I am craving vegan takeout,” is what Ezbian says. “We are the only two people on earth who could actually crave such a thing,” is how Aria responds. See? Soul mates. Settled. Have a cake.
Spencer is using her free period to hang out in Ella’s classroom, where she apparently scribbled a whole bunch of stuff about Keats on the blackboard and then collapsed onto her desk like – well, like Keats would have done, actually. It’s no surprise Spencer feels such a kinship with the guy. A doctor with a poet’s heart and a duplicitous fiance. So smart, in fact, that he was the only one who realized/accepted the fact that he was going to die a horrible, early death. So he burned up his genius hard and bright and wrote his own engraving on his own tombstone: Here lies one whose name was writ in water. Poor ol’ Keats. Poor ol’ Spencer.
Ella finds her there, contemplating the nature of desire and the way nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love, and gently tries to coax her back into herself. Spencer tells Ella what she told Emily last week, that she is changed, broken, and she tries to make her voice sound as hard as she thinks her heart is, but all she really does is reveal the rawness of both of those things. Ella is like, “The door to my classroom and to my heart are always open to you, Hastings. I’ve loved you since your fifth birthday party, when you sucker-punched your own dad in the nuts to keep from losing a game of pool volleyball.” The bell rings, Spencer rushes out. The one thing she absolutely cannot handle right now is the compassion and knowing wisdom of Ella Piper Montgomery.
Out in the parking lot in her very own BEAUTIFUL TOYOTA, Paige Bings her radio to Fandom FM, where Tumblr is singing about how they want to kiss, kiss, kiss her all over. She brings up Rosewood Costume Shop on her GPS just as Hanna and Emily stick their heads in the window to spy out whether or not she’s spying. When Paige says she was just headed home, Hanna goes: “Liar!” which is totally code for: “Welcome to the family!” Emily and Paige squabble for a second about who should be protecting whom, while Hanna climbs into the backseat and buckles her seatbelt and waits patiently for a ride. Paige is like, “Are you this hard on Caleb?” And Hanna is like, “The last time you guys were in cahoots, he shot himself in the stomach and you got kidnapped. Just drive.”
Aria spots Spencer at school and rushes her like when you come home and your puppy hasn’t seen you in four hours, but Spencer darts into the bathroom and locks herself into a stall because even Aria licking her face isn’t going to make her feel better right now. Aria knows Emily tried tough love and cupcakes and dangling clues in front of Spencer’s face, none of which worked. So she goes straight for the good stuff, invoking “Team Sparia” out loud and saying that maybe Spencer doesn’t want to need right now, but that doesn’t mean Aria stopped needing her. She means that she needs to talk about Ezra, but Spencer really knows the Liars need her so they can stay alive. She chews on her fingers and listens to Aria leave and tries to keep her brain from thinking and her heart from feeling and her feet from chasing after her best friend.
It’s easy to take for granted how beautifully filmed this show is. Look at that direction right there. You could watch six hundred thousand episodes of Secret Life and never, ever, ever see a single shot composed with such grace.
Rosewood Webisode Costume Shop. Here’s what’s amazing about this place: It’s open in March, with full-time employees and music blaring and customers shopping and no one thinks it’s even a little bit weird. Like, that’s how fucking crazy Rosewood, PA is as a place of residence. So much creepy ass shit is perpetrated by masked villains at all times that no one even questions the normalcy of a year-round Halloween parlor. It’s like living in Gotham City. What’s even more amazing, though, is that Shana from The Rosebud is there and she’s got a whole lot of proprietary feelings about Paige McCullers.
Shana: I checked with my boss and I can’t give you any information about who bought that Queen of Hearts costume that was worn by the girl that attacked you on the terror train where you were probably getting a leg over with this bitch right here.
Paige: Maybe you could have told me that on the phone?
Shana: And lose the chance to meet Little Miss Amazing Swim Team Anchor Perfect Hair First Kiss Karaoke Loved Her Since I Met Her Emily Heavenly Fields?
Hanna: Hey, I’m Hanna.
Emily’s face is so great. So many things are happening to her right now that have never happened to her in her life. There is a lesbian standing right in front of her that does not want to date her, or even be nice to her, for starters. And then this other thing that she has heard about and read about but never experienced starts clawing at her stomach and then her chest like some kind of dragon trapped inside her. She looks confused and then kind of nauseous and then a little mad and then her face is like, “Wait, am I … is this … jealousy?” She looks at Paige and Shana and Shana and Paige, and then she excuses herself to the restroom to vomit. Hanna takes the opportunity to drag Shana and Paige over to the Queen of Hearts costume to get a good look at it. After all, she’s really into fashion. Also, how rad is this Little Boy Blue pirate blouse shirt? What’s this stuff made of anyway? Silk? Chiffon? Cotton Voile Sateen? Shana goes, “Uh, burlap, moron.” And she looks at Paige like, “Yeah, you really traded up with this crew.”
Meanwhile, Emily is transitioning fully into Spencer, hacking into the store’s computer and emailing herself the list of people who bought Queen of Hearts costumes because the FBI has, quite rightly, started making Rosewood keep a database of that shit. The phone rings and the Liars bounce and on the way out the door, the most realistic lesbian thing I have ever seen on TV: The very, very, very ex-girlfriend-y way Shana and Paige look at each other. Paige flips around and shrugs kind of aggressively, like, “Yeah, I’ve seen you naked and I’m sorry Hanna Marin is so weird but thanks a lot for getting me into trouble with Emily.” And Shana’s eyes kind of scowl into an eye-roll and she drops her jaw, like, “You called me for help and then brought those crazies in here and now you’re leaving without even an apology and TELL THAT BITCH EMILY FIELDS I TOUCHED YOUR BOOBS FIRST.”
Dear Chad Lowe, you are a very good director and actor. I’m sorry Byron is the worst person on the planet and that he deserves all the hate in my heart. Lindsey Shaw, you are everything.
Aria is doing a little feelings journaling at the Brew when she hears the sound of a fiery steed being dismounted just beyond the front doors. She shivers as a whisper of remembered words drifts across her skin: “And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to her that sat thereon to take peace from the earth!” The click-click-click of Wasp-high pumps. The crackle of the End Times. The reappearance of Diane Fitzgerald. She sits herself right down across from Aria and picks apart her psyche as calmly as a lion with a day-old zebra carcass. She hints that she knows Aria housed and snogged Wesley and then praises her for the courage she has displayed in choosing to commit, at 17 years of age, to spend her entire life being the third most important person in her boyfriend’s life. It’s a devastating blow, gloriously played. Diane Fitzgerald: The Original DiLaurentis.
Emily mopes around Hanna’s room trying to figure out this whole “envy” situation that’s playing itself out in her chest and stomach, and Hanna decides to get at the heart of the issue by questioning Shana’s sexuality. Actual words that come out of her perfect mouth: “Are you even sure Shana’s gay? She barely even looked at me.” Emily goes, “That’s the criteria for being a lesbian now?” And Hanna, again, verbatim: “I’m just saying, you should have seen those girls fighting over me at that bar.” Emily nods her head with so much disbelief, even though Hanna’s gayness evaluation tactic is entirely accurate. No time to talk about that, though, because the most urgent thing is Aria’s feelings about Ezra. She clomps in and flops down on the bed and explains that he’s back, along with his awful amazing mother. She can’t decide if she’s more upset because she’s a stepmom now or because Ezra didn’t call her when he was learning the ropes of fatherhood or because there’s a miniature, fuller-lipped, son-less Fitzgerald just waiting to be molded into a Vegan-eater, just outside of town at a place called Dillhole (…or Dillard?). Hanna’s ready to stir up the drama, but Emily goes, “How about talking to the Fitz that fits, for a change?”
Detective Wilden stalks Ashley to Rosewood Grille and offers her a glass of wine, which Ashley refuses, which means shit’s about to get real. Wilden tries to menace her the way he menaced the Liars last night, but Ashley’s even less interested in his bullshit than her four daughters. He tells her to get Hanna on lockdown or he’s going to take matters into his own hands, and she tells him to keep it up and she’s going to take his dick into her own hands and chop it right off.
At least Spencer is still reading, right? I mean, that’s something. She’s enjoying a book at the Brew when Wren pops by to chat about their little excursion to the literal place of Crazytown. She’s like, “Yeah, sorry I used you to attack Mona in her face.” And Wren legitimately goes, “My motives weren’t entirely altruistic either. By which I mean that I hoped to use your emotional vulnerability and mental instability to get into your pants.” Add that to the fact that he’s her sister’s ex-boyfriend/arch-nemesis’ ex-psychiatrist, and it’s all systems go for making out. Off they go on a date and she has such a good time that she actually confesses to this lifelong habit she has of committing crimes and burying the evidence in her backyard. Like lilac paperweights she stole from her Nana. (And hockey sticks she used to murder her best friend?!?) They kiss in public and someone creeps on them. You think it’s Toby, but after Wren is gone, Spencer spies a Red Coat.
Aria lets herself into Ezra’s apartment where he is shouting at his mom to get on her armageddon horse and trot right back to hell. I guess Diane’s game is: now that Ezra is in the know about his kid, the proper thing is an Ezbian-Mack wedding and a traditional family. But he’s perfectly happy hopping between here and Delaware and also take back that stuffed T-Rex and also get out. Aria is so turned on watching him butch up that she slips him a five-second frencher as soon as Diane is out the door. Their vegan takeout/black-and-white movie night is cut short, though, when Maggie calls to say that Diane is kicking her and Malcom out of their house. Lord, Ezra’s loft is about to get crowded, what with him and Aria and Wes and Maggie and Malcom and Diane and whoever else has a key. Jackie Molina, probably. That lady next door with the bundt cakes.
Paige and Emily are hanging out in Emily’s bedroom trying to be even gayer than the outfit Emily wore today. They squabble some more about which one is the Batman and which one is the Robin and who gets to drive and who has to ride in the sidecar and one time you got yourself bound and gagged in a murderer’s closet and one time you drove your car into a barn and almost died because a doll told you to do it and you’re not telling me the whole story about Mona and you’re not telling me the whole story about Shana, and finally we have arrived at the crux of the problem. Paige explains that she and Shana dated when Emily was grieving Maya and building houses in Haiti, but the day Emily set foot back in Rosewood, the actual minute that Paige heard her laugh two classrooms away, Paige dropped Shana as fast as her fingers could text. Paige is like, “She’s the regional high school meet, you’re the Olympics. A girl’s gotta practice to win the gold medal, right?” She tells Emily she loves her with her words and then she tells Emily she loves her with her lips and then she tells her one more time with a little bit of tongue for good measure.
Emily smiles and kisses her back. Not because they’ve solved the who’s protecting whom conundrum, not because she’s over the whole Shana thing. She smiles because she’s the other side of Keats, the “negative capability” side. The part that knows the death train’s a-comin’, but sometimes the solution is to relax into the uncertainty, to stop that “irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
Negative capability is always the best place to kiss from. “Infinite depth,” Keats said. “Tender-taken breath … swoon to death.”
Also, just for nostalgia’s sake:
Paige: If I say it out loud, if I say, “I’m gay,” the whole world is gonna change.
Emily: Yeah. It will.
Don’t give up, you guys. I feel like I need to say that today. Just keep swimming, OK? Just keep swimming.
After making out for a while, Emily excuses herself to go interrogate CeCe Drake about the Great Cape May Boat Photo of 2010, but CeCe’s not feeling up to talking. Mostly because she’s packing her shit up to run away. (Nooo! First Jenna and now CeCe? What did we do to deserve this! Go away, stupid Maggie and Malcom! We don’t want your family drama! We want crazy bitches with nefarious machinations!) Before she skips town, she tells Emily that Melissa Hastings was also on that boat that day in Cape May. She is the one who took the photo.
OK, so. I don’t even know which thing to talk about next because they’re both so good I want to punch a hole in the space-time continuum so I can watch them again for the first time last night right now. OK. OK. Let’s do Spencer first. Melissa accosts her when she gets home because I guess Wren is the only person on earth who wears the one unique bottle of cologne she bought for him five years ago when they were dating. And I also guess he rubbed all over Spencer like some kind of cat or something because as soon as she walks in the door Melissa hollers at her about smelling like him.
Spencer decides to relieve some tension by dialing up a nice steam bath in her very own space-age sauna. Just as she’s settling in, all nice and naked like, A creeps by in the shadows. Ten minutes later, Spencer realizes that the sauna has gone sentient and locked her inside and also stopped responding to her requests to turn down the heat. She screams for help, bangs on the glass, notices a note from A – “Stop slutting it up with Wren and I’ll stop boiling your insides like noodle soup!” – and is just about to give up the fight when Aria rushes in and frees her. She holds Spencer and pets Spencer and whispers, “It’s a good thing my Sparia senses started tingling.”
Aria dresses Spencer in some pajamas and gets her a popsicle and finally asks who tried to kill her. Was it Mona? Was it Red Coat? Was it Melissa, just because she sometimes does that? Spencer’s face finally does the thing it hasn’t done in so many weeks: it softens. She tells Aria to call Emily and Hanna. She’s got a lie to reveal, and it’s not pretty or little.
Ashley Marin leaves her solo dinner to find that Wilden has been following her down a lonely country lane. He says she’s been drinking and driving, tells her to get out of the car, threatens to take care of Hanna, and finally reaches for his gun before Ashley fully steps on the gas and runs his ass down. What a gift. WHAT A GIFT. Ashley Marin, you are Santa Claus and Jesus all rolled into one. May you live forever, may your cellar never be without wine, may your pasta boxes overflow with the cash of a thousand elderly widows.
She goes home and sits in the dark and switches to whiskey and when Hanna finds her alone in the kitchen, she really truly says, “I’m pretty sure I killed Detective Wilden.”
She and Hanna drive out to the scene of the glorious moment, where Wilden’s police car camera is still recording every single thing, and his dead body has pulled an Ian Thomas, just jumped right up and walked right away.
The Risen Mitten plays a little “Steam Heat” on the record player and crafts a condolence wreath with some roses and things. The radiator’s hissin’, still I need your kissin’, pour some more oil on the burner.
Forever thank you to my screencapping partner Maggie (@MargaretRosey). She’s seen inside your heart. She knows your Sparia senses tingle too.
