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“Pretty Little Liars” recap 3.21: Dead, Deader, Deadest

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Mona turned into Ali and Spencer turned into Mona and Emily turned into Spencer and – well, no one on earth could turn into Emily because she is sweetness and light and everything right. There only can be one. Because that’s what it says in the Prophecies of Old. Also in the Prophecies it was foretold that stalkers of little children would meet a horrific end, and so Ashley Marin went ahead and ran over Detective Wilden with her car.

Spencer is still naked from her shower and Emily is still dressed like your all-time gayest fantasy and now is the day for the Liars to know the truth about Boo Radley van Cullen. Spencer says they should wait for Hanna, probably because she doesn’t want to say the thing out loud twice, but also maybe she just needs ten more minutes alone in her head with the biggest Lie of all. Like maybe she can climax on crazy twice if Emily and Aria will just give her a couple more minutes. But no, they want answers now, especially after Spencer lets it slip that she’s known about A-minus for a couple of weeks. Spencer takes a deep, ragged breath and says, “It’s Toby.” And Aria’s face, once she realizes it’s a boyfriend debacle, her face floods with so much sympathy. Emily’s face does something completely different. It goes: “I cannot believe – wait, no. This is impossible. That steam bath scrambled your brain like some eggs.”

Emily’s gift is seeing light in the dark places, weaving hope from misery, discovering new reasons to believe in the people she loves. And that girl loves Toby Cavenaugh. She says Spencer must have misinterpreted the clues, misread the signs. Spencer’s like, “Well, he was standing in my kitchen in a black hoodie in the middle of the night rifling around in a drawer looking for the key to A’s lair, so.” So? He could be working undercover counter-terrorism on Mona. So? He could be getting blackmailed like Lucas. So? He and Mona could be tag-teaming Red Coat, black-ops-style, to try to save the loves of their lives, Spencer and Hanna, respectively. Spencer laughs the rawest, scariest laugh right in Emily’s face. No one has more motivation than Spencer to believe Toby’s actions were covert altruism, and no one has more skills than Spencer to uncover the clues to prove that truth. But she hasn’t and so he isn’t and so grow up, Fields.

Man, Pretty Little Liars just operates on a whole other level. Remember last week when I said the opening Brew scene was a metaphor for the message and morality of the Liars’ lives? It was also ironically symbolic of how elite cultural critics treat the show from the outside. Like, “Oh, aren’t you so adorable with your little ‘social medias’ and shirtless boys. Now, run along and play while the grown-ups watch The Good Wife.” When Troian is throwing down performances every week that rival Golden Globes and Emmy contenders, and these writers are turning in mature thrills that would make Hitchcock gasp. Hells bells, even GLAAD overlooked PLL this year in its annual media awards, and I’m pretty sure the only show to ever have more lesbians than this one is The L Word. Oh, it’s infuriating. Hush now, little girls, and let the menfolk tell you what’s up.

Over at the Marin’s, Hanna and Ashley’s search for Wilden’s body wasn’t fruitful, so Ashley figures it’s best to call the cops and her lawyer and explain that she smashed him with her car because he was doing that high noon cowboy duel hand-twitchy thing with his gun while shouting threats about shutting up her daughter. Hanna goes, “Listen, mom, I was thinking – do you ever wonder if you have some kind of criminal guardian angel? Like, you turned tricks with an officer of the law to get me off of shoplifting charges, robbed a bank, murdered an elderly lady with your mind, and I don’t even know what you did with that fake architect grandson of hers but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s buried in Spencer’s backyard. So, I mean, what if you don’t do anything? What if you don’t tell anyone? What if you just wait it out?” They both freeze up when a cop car races by, sirens blaring and lights flashing, and when it doesn’t stop to arrest Ashley, Hanna quirks her eyebrow and shrugs. See?

Emily decides to completely ignore Spencer’s advice about not engaging in a Toby hunt so she calls him and texts him and finally decides to break into his loft. (Note how close she comes to getting sawed in half at some kind of all-night lumber mill later on, which is always what happens when the Liars ignore Spencer’s advice, even when she is … how she is right now.) Anyway, this whole thing is such an Emily move. The girl who said “please” and “ma’am” when she was begging to come out of a murder coma simply will not believe that Toby is evil until she has politely offered him a cup of tea and a chance to strangle her.

Aria be-bops over to Ezra’s for their morning coffee/feelings exchange, but when she opens up the door, there’s a monster on the loose. Aria doesn’t recognize him as Ezra’s son Malcolm because, like Jason DiLaurentis before him, he has had a head transplant. Also, he may have changed ethnicities. He’s got floppy hair and adorable eyes and an impish little smile and I’m pretty sure he’s Big A. I have a very weird relationship with TV children. I only trust television kids that are assholes a little bit. Because that’s what real life kids are like, even the best ones, even my perfect nephew. Sometimes they’re real wankers. So, like, Rudy Huxtable, Sally Draper, Luke Dunphy, James Fitch: I love those guys. But Henry from Once Upon a Time or when Raven was on The Cosby Show or Michelle from Full House, those kinds of kids whose main thing is being sickeningly sweet: I’m pretty sure all of them are evil. Malcolm strikes me as that kind of beast. And, like, is it a coincidence that he shows up on one of the most traumatizing weeks ever? There are no coincidence, OK? Ask Emily after she gets home from the sawmill.

Aria tries to slowly back out of Ezra’s loft, but Ezra and Malcolm convince her to stay and play trains. Malcom wheels his locamotive around the tracks and makes chugga-chugga noises and goes, “All aboard the Ghost Train! Next stop, Deadman’s Bend! If you’ve got any live girls trapped inside plywood boxes, throw them off here!” And oh, Aria and Ezra giggle. Isn’t he just adorable?

Emily zooms around Toby’s loft in a way that illustrates how she’s taken over Spencer’s coffee-drinking habits too. Hanna is frantic in her own way, searching every news channel to see if anyone’s reporting the discovery of a very dead, very pancake-shaped Rosewood PD detective. Emily assumes it’s an excuse Hanna is using to get out of helping her look for clues, because: a) When has Hanna ever watched the news? And b) What person under the age of 25 gets their news from TV? Emily shouts, like legitimately sexily shouts and snatches the remote from Hanna’s hands and flops into a chair and flips into an existential crisis about how she is who she is because Toby gave her the courage to be it. That’s some serious shit right there. He rescued her growth chart from her bedroom when her family was moving to Texas and he visited her in the hospital and she told him about liking girls and he told her the truth about his relationship with Jenna and they had coffee and sat in her window seat and she kissed him on the cheek and said, “See how easy it was for us to get back to this place.” He got her and she got him and they loved each other in a way that mattered.

Hanna tells Emily to check with Toby’s parents: “They’re like Spencer’s parents, but even more imaginary.” But first, they find a motorcycle book Emily gave Toby for his last birthday and inside is his Radley pass with the name “E. Lamb.”

Ezbian Fitzgerald’s Cake Emporium. Maggie has been out hunting jobs and donuts all day. She’s got a lead at 4:00, but Ezra’s teaching a Website Page-building seminar then, so Aria offers to watch Malcolm die for a couple of hours this afternoon. Ezra thinks that’s exactly the kind of introduction his son needs to the horror of living in Rosewood – “and wear one of your weirdest things, just so he really gets a feel for the terror” – so he he offers to pay her five dollars an hour and she can eat whatever she wants from the fridge.

Spencer is at home staring at things, like she does, when a knock on the door indicates the delivery of some wormy chinese food, or a crate full of bossy murder-dolls, or an invitation to play hide-and-seek at a masked ball, or – oh, it’s just your average funeral wreath talking about “With Deepest Sympathies” and a card that says, “Loose lips sink ships. Sayonara, Spemily.” Spencer calls an urgent meeting of the Liars at the Brew to discuss the various ways she has accidentally arranged for all of their murders to happen today. Emily’s like, “Well, don’t feel responsible if it happens to me because I’ve upped the ante on my own life by engaging in an all out missing persons investigation on Toby.” She and Spencer squabble for a second before Aria alerts them to the presence of Mona Vanderwaal at the coffee counter.

Spencer marches over and smacks her latte out of her hand and says, “However serious I seemed when I was throttling the life out of your tiny body a couple of weeks ago, multiply that times infinity and that’s how resolute I am when I say this thing to you: If you hurt my friends, you won’t believe what I do to you, even while it’s happening, you won’t believe it. Mona. Listen to me. It’ll be Biblical.” Mona smiles sweetly and asks Spencer if she needs to borrow some meds or needs a ride to Wren’s house or anything, and then she leans in and whispers in her ear, “Keep those orchids out of sunlight or they won’t make it through the night.” (Again with the flower motif this season! When we tuck this thing away in three weeks, I’m going to write an essay called “She Loves Me: Spencer Hastings and the Odd-Petaled Orchid.”) Mona literally stares through Spencer and then through Hanna, right to Emily, and then smirks and walks away. It’s terrifying on a couple of different levels, but mostly this: We’ve seen what happens when you cut off the head of the Scooby Squad. Can you even imagine what would happen to them if you cut out the heart?

And so here we are again with The Sweet Life of Aria Montgomery. Emily: About to get killed by A. Spencer: About to kill A. Hanna: Trying to find/dispose of a dead body/police car. And Aria’s rifling through some toys to take to Ezra’s, and her big conundrum is lying to her mom about how she might as well take all this stuff to Goodwill now that Mikey moved to Out of Town forever.

Emily takes Hanna’s advice and hits up Cavenaugh Manor. Goddamn, I miss Jenna sitting on this porch playing her flute. There are ten million newspapers scattered everywhere, which indicates that Toby does not live here anymore and neither does his family. Emily’s getting ready to go or bust out a window or something when Toby’s truck pulls up, but it is not Toby who is driving it.

(This scene on the porch is some of my favorite directing on the show so far. I actually didn’t know someone was going to die in this episode, I hadn’t seen any promos, but I had a real sick feeling the whole time I was watching, and after I rewatched it I realized a lot of it was down to these tricky angles and games the camera was playing with me, distorting perspectives just enough to make me feel uneasy. It’s very smart. Melanie Mayron also directed “Eye of the Beholder” last season, which had some of my favorite full-length, ground-up shots of the Liars, but it’s easy to forget that part because it’s also the episode where Aria flew a plane. Also, of course, Jonell Lennon brought it hard with one of the darkest, tense-est scripts we’ve seen.)

Emily storms over and demands to know what this new guy is doing driving the truck her friend pawned her sister’s engagement ring to buy for her boyfriend, and the new guys goes, “I’m your dead girlfriend’s cousin. No? I’m a swim team scout from Danby? Huh. Not that either. OK, I’m Toby’s co-worker and he’s Out of Town and I’m here to pick up his table saw?” Emily bites on that one and starts demanding answers about Toby’s whereabouts and whenabouts and did this new guy ever see him wearing a black hoodie or injecting human growth hormone into sports cream tubes or anything. The new guy blows her off, which is the number one sign he is a Bad Guy, because when Emily Fields demands an audience with you, you stand there mesmerized at your great good fortune for as long as she bestows her gaze upon you. If her face doesn’t enrapture you, you are a crooked jerky jockey.

Spencer is at home staring some more. Staring and staring and staring. This time she stares so long her brain actually goes to that Beautiful Mind code-cracking place. The “With Deepest Sympathy” banner has two not-shiny letters, the “E” and the “M,” which Spencer thinks means “Em” as in “Emily,” but I’m guessing has something to do with “E. Lamb,” but which I hope is a secret message from Toby referencing E.M. Forester’s most famous quote about love: “It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.” Spencer rushes over to Emily’s to share her theory and also to let her know she’ll be bodyguarding her all afternoon, right after she zips her up in this bullet-proof vest and shuts all the blinds and locks all the doors and seals them inside a clear titanium bubble and wraps herself around Emily as just one more shell of protection. Emily takes the “EM” banner away and pets Spencer’s hair and kisses her forehead and says, “Sweetheart, I think you need a nap.”

After trolling the courthouse and finding no sign of Wilden, Ashley breaks forth into the sunlight and sees his ghost hanging out at that pizza place where Wesley beat that man up with a slice of pepperoni a couple of weeks ago. She walks across the street, ogling like a Spencer, and almost gets hit by a car. When she regains her balance, ghost Wilden is gone. (By the way, that’s two ghost sightings for Ashley so far. First Halloween and now this. It’d better not be a tumor!)

Babysitter’s Club: Malcolm is playing silently on the iPad and – aww, Aria cut the crust off of Malcolm’s peanut butter sandwich. What a lamb. She feeds him his snack and pats his shaggy head and prays to God he can plan Angry Birds for three hours without blinking. Hanna’s like, “Which thing is weirder: that you are babysitting your boyfriend’s kid who was born when you were in like the fourth grade, or Spencer Hastings, master detective, getting her v-card swiped by A?” A police siren whizzes by and Hanna runs to the window in time to see that it is Wilden’s car, which: knowing what we know now, that’s a pretty ballsy move, because A is driving that stolen car right through town to deposit it into Hanna’s garage and she’s doing it with all the sirens blaring. Hanna bounces because she’s got to find the notes Spencer gave her on destroying evidence, and she’s out the door about five minutes before Malcolm starts jumping on the bed and bumps his chin and has to go to the emergency room, where Ezra shows up and starts acting like Aria punched his son in the head.

Ugh. Malcolm. You did this shit on purpose, I know you did. You are Ali and Wilden’s son, born in a time machine, aged quadruple-time in a soap opera incubator, and now you’ve been sent here to destroy our lives. You are page five of that autopsy report. And I’ll tell you something else: the internet agrees with me: We’re onto you, “Malcolm.”

Emily visits her mom at work to check out the bulletin board to see if there were any more beach hotties in Cape May that one summer and also to infiltrate the police database to search for E. Lamb. Pam is like, “Honey, if you’re looking for Toby, why don’t you send him one of those text mail thingies on his phone or FaceSpace him or something. Or, you know, don’t. I’ve had a weird feeling about him ever since he took you to prom and tried to murder you in that chemistry classroom and then dumped your limp body on the steps of the emergency room.” She leaves Emily alone with her computer so she can fetch them some corn nuts and Emily tries twice to look up “E. Lamb,” but gets foiled again and again. The second foil is a text from Toby, who tells her to stop looking for him and that he’ll meet her.

Hanna returns home to find Wilden’s police car in her garage playing the tape of Ashley murdering him on loop at top volume on an indestructible video monitor.

Spencer stalks Mona from the Brew to the woods, at night, and what she finds is not pretty. Or little. But it is a liar. It is the liar of Toby Cavanaugh and he is dead. Or, well, it is a body in Toby’s biking clothes with Toby’s tattoo but we never get to see his face or pecs because as soon as Spencer reaches for his helmet, Mona wails, “HE’S DEAD!” and runs off and Spencer chases after her.

For one thing, I don’t think Toby is dead, because: a) There’s no reason not to show us his face if he’s really dead, and b) Hanna literally says the words “Does A have Wilden’s body?” right out loud in a few minutes, and c) Keegan Allen’s nakedness is a series regular, if I am not terribly mistaken.

And for another thing, ABC Family, please stop suggesting Twitter hashtags to us at climactic moments. It’s driving us bonkers. You spoiled the A lair reveal and you took us out of the moment on this one, flashing up #TobysDead before the emotional punch had even really landed. There is an art to writing and editing suspense and I know ABC Family is proud of its social media success, but PLL owns Twitter because all the writers and producers and actors are involved and the fans love to talk about it in real-time. Please let us #BooRadleyVanCullen without dragging us out of the moment, ABC Family. Pretty please? With Lucky Leon’s coconut cupcakes on top?

Emily has been sitting in her car for hours waiting for Toby, just outside the 24-hour wood-sawing shop. She’s getting ready to leave when she sees Red Coat wander by. So, of course she completely disregards her own advice about using the damn buddy system, and goes chasing Red Coat inside. She is not there. But you know who is there? New guy who drives Toby’s truck. He name-checks her, tells her there’s no Tobys or Red Coats around, and she finally – finally – vibes his Cousin Nate-ness and leaves. Oh, but guess what? A or Red Coat has smashed her window and left her a funeral announcement for Toby.

It can’t be Mona who did that because she’s in the woods with Spencer, so it either has to be Toby or Red Coat or a third A we don’t know about yet, right? Or, I mean, could Toby be Red Coat? That would be too amazing for me to even wrap my mind around. There are only three episodes left and going by previous reveal patterns, Red Coat has to be someone who’s been in our visual consciousness this season. I highly doubt, but would love(!), the cross-dressing thing, so that leaves CeCe Drake or Melissa Hastings, right? Because we haven’t seen Jenna once in 3B and the only other girls the Liars have really interacted with have been Paige and Shana and all those PinkDrinkers. I mean, I guess it could be Shana, but she seems way too peripheral for that reveal to mean anything. But I also feel like it needs to be someone the Liars/the audience trusts for it to really matter, and none of us trust CeCe or Melissa. I don’t know. Veronica Hastings? That little hobbit Holden? Could it be Lucas? Byron? Oh Gods, if it was Byron!

Anyway, you think the height of insanity was Emily going to Saw Town alone at night, but wait’ll you get a load of this:

Yeah, that’s right. Hanna and Aria have driven Wilden’s car to some kind of man made fishing pond where they push it right into the water and wait like half an hour for it to sink. Girls. What in the world. What in the world. The best part isn’t that they just tried to dispose of a federal vehicle that contains evidence of one of their mothers murdering a police officer; the best part is how Hanna has totally checked out of the whole thing, emotionally. Aria is biting her fingernails and furrowing her brow and nattering on and Hanna just kind of sighs and shrugs. At this point a kraken could come bubbling up from the water brandishing every bit of evidence the Liars have ever tried to dispose of and Hanna would just roll her eyes and wear her overalls. She’s pretty done.

At home, Ashley has a new theory about the murder. It’s such an amazing line reading. She goes, “Maybe I didn’t hit Wilden [beat] [beat] as hard as I thought.” She explains about seeing his ghost and his police car being gone from the crime scene and Hanna is like, “My main worry used to be the naked hobo in my shower. What a life.”

The Liars reconvene to discuss their daily death experiences. Hanna tells about the video of her mother kiling a cop, Emily tells about A smashing her BEAUTIFUL TOYOTA and maybe killing Toby, Aria tells how Ella says it’s OK if she breaks up with Ezra even though she loves him.

Back out in the woods, a park ranger says “Jane Doe” and I swear to God I thought Mona had killed Spencer. Like, I rocketed out of my chair and rushed the TV to see what the fuck. It worked out OK, though, because it got me close enough to stoke Spencer’s bloody, broken face while she stared at the treetops and murmured PTSD nonsense at the sky. The cops suggest a psych evaluation since she doesn’t have any ID and can’t form words and hasn’t been arrested/interrogated enough times at the police station that literally every beat cop in the county would know her name. And so off she goes to – wait for it – Radley Asylum for the Criminally Insane!

HOLY COW.

Holy cow.

HOLY COW.

You win going crazy, Spence. Congratulations. You beat Mona, after all.

An old fisherman reels in a Rosewood PD hat from the man made pond with the cop car at the bottom. I hope he’s got some heavy-duty lures. Who knows how many shovels he’s gonna find down there.

Forever shouting out my screencapping partner Maggie, who says that every time Emily Fields makes this face, an angel dies. Follow Maggie on Twitter (@MargaretRosey)

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