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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (5.3): The Best of Everything

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Pepe the dog discovered the body of Jessica DiLaurentis buried in the yard the way Tippi the Bird discovered the body of Alison DiLaurentis buried in the yard. The only difference was: Pepe didn’t know any necromancers living in the walls of sorority houses who could pull people out from under the dirt, and so Jessica was for real dead. Aria lost her goddamn mind because the ghosts playing violins in her attic kept reminding her of the time she smashed Shana Costumeshop in the head with a rifle and killed her. The Hastingses stood in the kitchen in groups of twos and threes acting like some paranoid psychos. Emily and Hanna went rootin’ around in Jason’s Philadelphia business and found nothing but dead ends and a wino. And Mona started an army.

I would like to go on record right up front and say this is one of the most expertly written and directed and edited episodes of Pretty Little Liars we’ve seen in a long while, which becomes apparent in the first scene as the Liars voiceover their concern about Ali while Jason and Mr. D tell them to scram while the sun rises and sets and rises and sets over Alison’s bedroom and she just lies there and thinks about how that freaking hole in her backyard is a portal to hell.

To complicate everyone’s heightened state of feeling so weird, the Liars have a whispered conversation that includes the actual phrases: “She’s going to bury the woman who tried to bury her.” And, “Dogs dig, OK? That’s just what they do. They smell something and they dig.” Both of which are spoken by Spencer, of course, but that’s not what crushes everyone under the hulking weight of awkwardness. No, it’s Ali who does that when she walks downstairs wearing the exact same funeral dress her mother wore to her funeral.

My god, I love this show.

Emily goes, “Coincidence for sure, right?” And Spencer’s all, “One day we’re all going to get clobbered in the head by the low-hanging fruit of the fucking Coincidence Tree growing in this backyard.”

When the Liars return to school, Vice-Principal Hackett advises them that he will permit them to resume classes and he will keep the cops and the media at bay, but they have absolutely got to not do anymore dumb shit like rubbing rat’s blood all over the trophies and turning them into the police, or putting cow brains into lockers, or – oh, guys. You know what I just remembered? That kookoo janitor who lived under the stairs in the boiler room and did Mona’s bidding. Whatever happened to that guy? And remember that time the school came to life and attacked Emily, all, “ACT NORMAL, BITCH” and her dad had to climb the wall like a Spider-Man to save her? Anyway, none of that shit. Hackett’s not having it anymore.

After their reintroduction to the world of academia, everyone hollers at Spencer about how Jason is the murderer and about how Aria needs to check up on Fitz to make sure he’s not going to dime them out about being in New York the night Shana was murdered and then Emily unleashes such a wrath on this new swimmer named Sydney, whose only crime is that she wants to stare at Emily’s perfect face and talk about how she’s the greatest swimmer in the world and like maybe touch her hair.

Paige tries to keep Emily from murdering the new girl. Emily drops her notebook and Paige picks it up and Emily looks at her like, “Oh, stalking me around school like you stalked me to that bank where I told you Ali was Alive and you told the police?” Paige’s hair is like, “Hey, girl” and her face is like, “Come on, girl” and her mouth is like, “Naw, man. I just saw you drop your stuff and you look murdery so I’m trying to save the new swim team person.”

Paige: I’m sorry about Alison getting kidnapped, for real. I saw what happens when you can’t let go of what she did to you and it looks like Lucas with sideburns, so really. I’m sorry. Emily: Are you sorry for anything else? Paige’s face: I’m sorry you’re pissed off at me. I’m sorry we live in a world where my actions, if taken by a Caleb or a Toby, would seem chivalrous and make teenage girls swoon into a puddle of heterosexual goop, but when taken by a lesbian who plays with the spectrum of masculine and feminine energy are considered vile. I’m sorry my hair is trying to compete with your hair for best hair. But I’m not sorry I wanted to keep you safe. Cousin Nate, for example, is a thing we experienced together. Emily’s face: What you did by taking away my autonomy and endangering the life of one of my best friends was gross, McCullers, even if your motivation was my well-being. p.s. Your motivation wasn’t entirely my well-being. p.p.s. You look so good right now. But p.p.p.s. I’m still rightfully furious at you.

Emily storms off and throttles poor Sydney, who only wants to hero worship her! Emily’s like, “Yes, I’m Emily Fields, who knows the dead girl who’s not dead anymore but who’s mom is now buried in the hole she buried her daughter in which is also what happened to my ex-girlfriend’s faux cousin who wouldn’t get off of my nuts and so I murdered him.” Sydney stares at the ground and says she was just looking at Emily’s trophies. Like her actual trophies. In the trophy case. The swimming ones. Emily glares at Sydney real hard, remembers what it’s like to be a kitten instead of a jaguar, and feels pretty awful.

Sydney Driscoll is so great, though. She starts talking a zillion miles a second about how she thought Emily would be like nine feet tall or something and she’s so sorry she hurt her shoulder and can’t swim anymore but can she please just give Sydney 15 minutes of coaching this afternoon because she just transferred and she’s on the bottom of the roster and her face is adorable and please.

Throttling but not feeling awful is Mona Vanderwaal, because she is doing it with adrenalized finesse. She’s got a Get Well card for Mr. Fitz, and she wants Aria to have prime real estate to sign her name due to the special nature of their relationship. Hanna swoops in there because she can tell from across the hallway (by the way Mona is radiating energy that looks like a halo around the sun) that her brain-taser is set to: torture. Mona thanks them for signing the card, says she can hardly wait to see Ali back at school with a new pocketful of Secrets and Lies, and name drops Noel Kahn* before flitting off into a cloud of glorious perfection.

(*I am of the opinion that you should always say Noel Kahn’s full name because it just sounds good together, so I love it in this episode that any time someone just says “Noel,” someone else is like, “Kahn? Noel Kahn?”)

Spencer goes home from school and stands in front of the window and stares over at the DiLaurentis house all night long, until Melissa finds her and throws down some of the absolutely delectable dialogue this episode is full of, talking about how the Hastingses and the DiLaurentises aren’t common enough to be compared to the Hatfields and the McCoys; she prefers to think of them as the Borgias and the Medicis, which, if you’re not familiar: That’s the Lannisters vs. the Starks, only the Iron Throne is papacy of the entire Catholic church. Plenty of incest, rape, kidnappings, beheadings, matricide and patricide, etc.

It’s better that Melissa says Borgias and Medicis, though, because they both know Spencer is the Tyrion Lannister of this family and it sets her off every time she thinks about it. In fact, she’s thinking about it right now. She straight up asks Melissa who their parents are more worried about, and Melissa sighs a one-handed Jaime Lannister sigh and tells Spencer to please just stay away from the homicidal creeps next door.

But Spencer can’t stay away from those homicidal creeps! She’s related to some of those homicidal creeps!

Peter also wants Spencer to leave the DiLaurentises alone, so much so that he’s getting ready to sell the Hastings family home. Spencer points out that a backyard full of corpses doesn’t really up the resale value, so she suggests a koi pond because there’s already a giant hole back there.

I don’t know what the heck Spencer is even looking for; Alison is down at the funeral home with Hanna picking up the guest book from her mother’s wake. She’s annoyed because she knows the funeral director just wants to gawk at her, so she clomps outside to do Ali stuff – either help an old lady across the street and buy her a cup of coffee or pickpocket some nuclear launch codes off a CIA agent posing as a street vendor; whoever even knows what that girl is doing – and leaves Hanna inside by herself. The funeral director mistakes her for Ali, which I’ve been waiting for someone to do everysince the first promo photos of this season started landing on the internet. My buddy Karly called them “Sashley Benterse” the other day and I laughed so hard.

So the funeral director is just going on and on about sorry about your mother and whatever, and Ali comes in and rolls her eyes and goes, “My apologies, I keep forgetting Hanna’s not fat anymore. I’m Alison.”

Hanna glances at them standing side-by-side in the mirror, and thus begins my favorite series of flashbacks acting as a catalyst for present day character development in all of Pretty Little History. Everything about these Mona/Hanna scenes in this episode are perfect because it’s tilting the looking glass just so because what you thought happened is true but not exactly true.

See, two months after Ali disappeared, Hanna was sitting outside of Lucky Leon’s eating a cool dozen cupcakes when Mona found her and:

Hanna: I remember you looking more like a church mouse, to be honest. Mona: I decided to start dressing for the job I want instead of the job I have, which, ultimately, is Galactic Chancellor of the Known Universes, but today is just regular Queen Bee. Sad about Ali, huh? Hanna: Yeah, like eat all your feelings on a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of the town square sad. Mona: Have you ever noticed if you fluff up your hair and hold in your stomach and like pull the chub back from your neck and face that you kind of look just like Ali. Hanna: No. Mona: Well, I have noticed. Just in passing. Casual glances. It’s not like Ali and I shared an obsession with dolls and also with her face. I can help you have what you want. Hanna: What do I want? Mona: Immortality, my darling.
Ooooooh, Mona! You are nuttier than the global squirrel bank! I love you so much!

Aria goes on over to Ezra’s house. Amazingly, it is still torn to smithereens from that time she tore it to smithereens. He feels sorry that he’s been shot, sorry that he doesn’t have any furniture due to Aria lighting it on fire, sorry that he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. What he doesn’t feel sorry for is withholding information from the Liars that could have kept them from getting axe-murdered every week for the last two years (or trying to steal a child to whom he was not even related!) or-you know the rap sheet. You don’t need me to repeat it. Anyway, Aria just wants him to know he has to stick to Ali’s story about how she was kidnapped and he wants Aria to know as long as Shana’s on the loose they’re all still in danger.

Also, he has installed a lock that keeps teenage girls inside his apartment. Aria can’t reach it, so after they’re done, he has to let her back out into the world.

The next day, Emily keeps her promise and does some swimming coaching for Sydney Driscoll. It gets kinda wanky kinda fast.

Sydney: I heard about your stroke rate. Emily: Christ, this really is the gayest swim team on earth. Sydney: What? Emily: My stroke rate won’t work for you. Paige: It worked for me. Sydney: Oh, did you guys train together? Emily: The breaststroke mostly. Out of the pool. Paige: Well, and in. In and out, in and out. Sydney: What … is happening right now? Emily: Joseph Dougherty’s particular brand of brilliance.
Emily leaves, scowling. Can I be honest with you? This Paige and Emily angst is really working for me. So much of the drama in the fifth year of a TV show, ship-wise, has to be manufactured by cliched bullshit, and in terms of lesbians, that always plays out like cheating with dudes or rapid-spread cancer, but this whole thing where Paige made a gross decision because her girlfriend was in danger/slipping away because of her girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend who also happened to be her emotional torturer had risen from the grave, and now Emily’s still furious and probably also really confused because, you know, resurrected first girlfriend-that’s just a brand new kind of excellence.

Plus also, Paige and Ali can both be victorious, you know. Y’all know how I feel about shipping wars, about how it’s a cheap marketing ploy and a played out plot device. And that’s not even what this is. Paily vs. Emison, I mean. That’s so ridiculous because that’s not what this is.

I feel like Paige’s second most triumphant moment, after coming out, was when she stood in that room full of people Ali tortured and said, “What she called you isn’t who you are. It wasn’t who you were back then and it isn’t who you are right now.” That’s some Hanna Marin-caliber soul work right there. Some staring down an empty chair and saying to the ghost that she can’t dictate your deal anymore.

I think the most important thing we’ve ever heard Alison DiLaurentis say about herself is that Ezra called her Holly Golightly and she thought it was the greatest compliment in the world because: Audrey Hepburn – but then she realized what he really meant. See, Ali knows that if you control the story, you control everything. If you can tell other people the story of themselves, you can control those people. If you can tell other people the story of you, you can control those people. Perception is reality. Art is a lie that tells the truth. That’s the secret Ali told Mona the night Mona sent her away. The clothes you wear is a story you tell the world about yourself. Your makeup, your hair, the way you stand still: That’s a story you tell the world about yourself. And you have to keep telling it until they believe you. And then you have to root out the people who don’t believe you and make them believe a new thing about themselves. If they can’t see that they should look up to you, make them see that you have the authority to look down on them.

When Ali read Breakfast at Tiffany’s what she realized is that Holly Golightly didn’t even have a real story, a whole story; she was a shell of fables with a hollow inside. Wherever she ran, she just ran into herself. Which is a great irony, right? Alison DiLaurentis, the best storyteller the world has ever seen, the girl who controls everyone around her by holding a mirror up to them and telling an almost-but-not-quite-true story tale who they are and how much they need her, that girl doesn’t even know who she is. She’s said out loud who she is six billion times, for six billion different reasons, but she doesn’t know what’s the truth.

Alison has been robbed of a lot of things, but chief among them is the safety to figure out her stuffing. Sure, she likes the look of shock on other people’s faces when she lands the dismount of a particularly audacious narrative but mostly she weaves herself and her friends up in those things to keep them safe. But while Ali was painting the story of herself outside herself in the most vivid, outrageous colors, Paige was cracking open herself and pulling out the truth and holding it up to the light until she wasn’t afraid of it anymore. She gave a name to the pinprick of the thing inside her. And then she colored in the rest as she figured it out. The gender expression. Her feelings for Emily. Saying the thing out loud and then living it without looking over her shoulder.

So what Paige said to Mona’s Army was an enormous, hard-won truth: You get to name yourself. Paige named herself a true thing, and that’s how come she’s not afraid of “Pigskin” anymore. Ali can do that too; she can name herself a true thing, a real thing, a solid thing that’s not afraid to say, “Jesus God we belonged to one other.” She’s just got to stop getting buried alive first.

And so in keeping with that theme, Hanna is coming unraveled right now because she’s trying to remember who named her. And she’s starting to think it might have been Mona. And she’s starting to think she might have been named after someone else. She flashes back to this sunny summer afternoon when Mona was helping her try on new clothes, touching her hair and her neck and whispering encouragement to her like Hanna was a doll she’d been dressing for years. (How fucking creepy is that?! Because it’s true!) Hanna was feeling pretty good and then Mona found one of Ali’s dresses in Hanna’s closet and Hanna tried it on and it fit her just right. Ali’s dress fit her just right. Mona unzipped it a little, leaned in real close, said, “See? Everything’s better with a friend.”

I used to make the joke that Mona wanted to wear Hanna’s skin around as a skinsuit but now we know Mona really wanted Hanna to wear the skinsuit. And Alison DiLaurentis’ skin suit. Hanna has always kind of known Mona was in love with her, right? And Caleb knew it too. I think she actually kind of liked it. But now she’s realizing every bit of it was about Alison. Think about that for a second in the context of the Halloween train. Mona wearing a mask of Ali’s face trying to make out with a reborn Ali she created with her own hands. Two Alison dolls fucking each other. Mona is crackers, y’all. Crackers. Crackers Vanderjesus. Galactic Chancellor of my life.

The next thing Hanna remembers is the slow-mo walk down the hall she and Mona did when she was thin and dressed like Robin Sparkles. They held hands. Everyone stared. Emily vomited literal rainbows. #PLLBabes, is what happened. And it was a glory.

Hanna mentions it to Emily while they’re doing recon on Jason in Philly (findings: Jason has an alibi for the night his mom was murdered), and she does it by asking Emily what it felt like to come out. It’s some more freaking beautiful dialogue so I’ll just transcribe it for you:

Hanna: What was it like to stop being one thing and become something else? Emily: I wasn’t becoming something else; I was becoming who I really am.
Hanna stares out the window and wonders if her chrysalis was just another goddamn Ali mask. When she and Emily end up at Rear Window Brew, Mona is there looking amazinger and amazinger. Hanna accosts her and asks why she molded her into an Alison DiLaurentis doll, and Mona says, “Because we were no ones and we hated it and now we’re someones and saying thank you wouldn’t kill you. Metaphorically speaking.” She bounces and Hanna’s world crumbles down around her ears.

Another world crumbling around some gorgeous ears is Paige McCullers’. She’s waiting for Emily on her porch because she wants to figure out how to say “I love you” in a way that takes the white-hot purity of that truth out of her heart and injects it right into Emily’s heart without it having to go through the zillion layers of fuck-ups and insecurities and fear and anger and mistrust. The thing is, Emily knows it. It’s just that love doesn’t really conquer everything, which is a hard pill to swallow at any age, and an especially hard pill to swallow in a town where literal death is conquered on the regular. She loves Paige too, but she doesn’t trust her. And she’s angry. Really, really angry.

As Paige is walking away, Emily breathes so heavy and calls out to her and says Paige deserves the best of everything. Paige doesn’t smile, doesn’t head-dip, doesn’t smash any trash cans. She says, “Yeah, that’s what I had.”

In keeping with Capote: “All his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.” It’s dangerous to put Truman Capote characters into a Harper Lee world, but if Ali is Golightly (“It’s useful being the top banana in the shock department!”), Paige is certainly Joel Harrison Knox (“I am me,” Joel whooped. “I am Joel, we are the same people!”).

Paige, honey. Call Hanna. She can tell you where to find enough coconut cupcakes to fill up that empty space in your soul.

Other happenings: Aria confesses to Ezra that she killed Shana after Ali tells her that, in terms of pedophiles, Ezra is the most romantic one she knows. He wants to help and probably he can because he’s apparently got hundreds more hours of video footage and audio recordings of every move Aria and her friends have made over the past two years. So romantic. Also, Melissa wants to come clean to Spencer about that thing she whispered into her dad’s ear in the finale, because she thinks it will make Spencer stop crashing through town shouting out about the email Mrs. D sent about how she couldn’t protect the person who murdered Ali anymore. (It’s looking more and more like it was Veronica Hastings, huh?) But Peter Hastings will not hear it! He just wants to eat his pretzels and drink his whiskey in the dark in peace! He sends Spencer to bed.

Down at the salon, Hanna says she’s ready for a new look and Mona peeps her through some frosted glass while having a little chat with someone whose profile looks an awful lot like Cece Drake’s.

Two week’s from now: Jennabot, bitches. That’s all you need to know.

One badrillion thanks to Nicole (@PLLBIgA) for taking on the task of screencapping this magnificence for us all!

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