“Pretty Little Liars” recap (2.19) — Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt personally victimized by JennaBot
Previously, Emily Fields learned the pretty little truth that nothing takes the sting out of being stalked, murdered, blackmailed, harassed, attacked, and/or hit in the face with a hand grenade like making out with your super hot girlfriend. Jason DiLaurentis stared his way down into the earth’s many layers and fell through the whole world, landing in Australia where he adopted the code name “Bandicoot.” Hanna came clean to Caleb about the various ways blind people have been threatening her/running over her with cars, so he zoomed over to JennaBot’s house ready for some Hobo-to-Cylon combat but couldn’t get past The Gatekeeper. Spencer’s parents either died or moved away or fell into one of those holes Jason burrowed in their back yard when he was burying all the weapons he used to kill Alison – nay, Vivian Darkbloom. And Aria continued to feel all of her happy feelings safely in the arms of the lovingest feeler to ever feel, because “A” still does not know Aria exists.
In the Principal’s office at Rosewood High are Hanna Marin, Ashley Marin, Isabel Randall-Marin, and her horrible daughter Kate Marvalo Riddle. Betwixt them lies the now infamous photo of a naked Kate with a giant thumb protruding from her nipple. Also betwixt them are these unsaid things: [Ashley: My husband cheated on me with you, left me for broke, forced me to rob a bank, kill and old lady and an architect, pity f–k him; then your daughter alcohol-poisoned my daughter.] [Isabel: My fiance cheated on me with you; then your daughter called my daughter some rude things over the intercom at the equestrian club, puked on my wedding dress, busted up my wedding in the middle of the vows, and emailed this entire school a nude photo of my daughter.] [Hanna: I wonder which one of my friends/boyfriends/boyfriends’ boyfriends will die today.] [Kate: Was it foolish to hide my Horcrux inside a living, breathing horse?]
It’s a mess.
The principal is like, “Hanna, usually this level of cyber-bullying/porn distribution would lead to an expulsion, but I’m willing to overlook it if you’ll attend a school assembly built entirely around the ‘Raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by Regina George’ conceit, wherein Regina Georgia is a the psychotic ghost of your dead best friend, Tina Fey is a retired witch, Cady Heron is an animatronic blind girl, and everyone hates you because you’re so popular.” Hanna’s like, “So you mean attend a regular day of my life? Sure, OK.”
Over at Spencer’s house, the other Liars have laid out the red raincoat they collected from the claim ticket they found inside Alison’s wayward copy of Lolita and are cautiously surveying it like it might be equipped with bombs, because it might be equipped with bombs. Inside one of the pockets, Aria finds a phone number scribbled onto a scrap piece of paper; immediately, Emily and Spencer start shouting at each other about who’s the least scared to make the call. Emily whips out her phone, glared at Spencer, dials the number, and promptly pees her pants when a robot answers. It’s voicemail or JennaBot. Aria snatches the phone away and says, “You know that girl Vivian who looked just like that girl Alison who was murdered a while back? I’m a friend of hers. Want to get some coffee or something? Call me!”
At Rosewood High, a starquake creates the brightest galactic flash in the history of the universe and when it hits the earth, everyone goes blind for several minutes.
Oh, wait. Never mind. Aria has just worked up a new chartreuse belt/boot combo.
(Kudos to this episode’s director, Elodie Keene, who kept giving us these wide-angle shots of Aria, like: “Never forget!”)
Hanna is mad about how “A” is turning that whole phone theft back around on them. Emily is mad because the principal doesn’t want a war criminal like herself on the swim team due to companies not liking to sponsor murderers. Something about “brand image,” or, as Aria likes to cal it, “bullying.” And that makes her mad. Spencer is mad too, but in the sense where “mad” means “mentally insane person.”
In that music room where Noel Kahn one time played the guitar in the dark while Aria sang and Ezbian cried, Holden is hanging a sheaf of blank paper on the wall. Aria is like, “Let me help you with – oh, hey, your sack full of drugs fell out of your messenger bag.” Holden goes, “You didn’t see what you think you saw.” And Aria is like, “I think I saw a jumbo bag of black market pills.” And Holden is all, “Oh, then, you did see what you think you saw.” Brother, Aria Montgomery has got some eyeballs, OK? Don’t tell her what she sees.
Out in the hallway, Spencer spies JennaBot canoodling with Noel Kahn and his grin of perpetual smugness. Also, she spies Jason, which makes her panic a little bit because: A) NAT Club is still an unsolved thing. B) He hands Spencer a letter, a telegram, a kiss-o-gram, a postcard, a birthday card, a Post-It note, and and a notepad for her to give to her dad. All of them say, “YOU CAN’T AVOID ME FOREVER, SIRE.” And also he has carved Peter Hastings’ name into his arm. C) Spencer remembers the way he kept sobbing about Aria’s long-lost pink hair last season, which makes her think he’s got a real neon fetish, and just wait’ll he gets a load of Aria’s shoes.
Ella rushes up to him like, “I know you’ve got a lot of bodies buried in your yard and everything, but at this point, I’ll take anyone’s help I can get for Truth Up Day tomorrow. Interested?” He is not, until he finds out Peter Hastings is on the roster, and then he just goes ahead and sits right down in that hallway to awaits his arrival.
At home, Hanna is having a good cry when Ashley interrupts to postulate a theory: More than once, Hanna has mentioned that someone is committing crimes in her name. Could it be that there’s an omnipresent, omniscient force of doom haunting her life, and the lives of her friends? The same force of doom, perhaps, that ran over Hanna with a car and coerced her into eating a giant box of pig-shaped cupcakes? I actually really love that the invisible terror-ghost theory is more plausible to Ashley than a scenario in which her convicted felon of a daughter bullied her known archenemy. I’m not being a smartass. I really do love it. Ashley Marin is the best. She’s like, “I’ll go down in a blaze of indignant glory on your behalf if you’ll just promise you’re telling the truth.” Hanna promises she’s telling the truth.
Truth Up Day. Sadly, Aria has changed out of her space suit. Not sadly, Holden is attending the party. Holden who I wish were just a wee bit taller because I’m starting to love him enough to think he might be worthy of a storyline with Spencer. He tries to chat up Aria in his usual, charming way, but she’s still upset about him being a drug pusher. He’s like, “Aria, are you kidding me right now? What is this, Gossip Girl? It’s obviously just Tylenol, which I use to treat muscle stiffness after Fight Club.” She can’t stay mad at Holden because have you seen his face?
JennaBot is at Truth Up Day, giving her flute a rest. She’s playing a solo piano overture she composed called “Cataclysm in A Minor.” Also in her group are Aria and Caleb, the girl who punched her heart in the face at pottery class, and the boy who is going to punch her face in the face at anti-bullying class. Spencer’s mom is there too. But not Spencer’s dad. Jason is like, “Dammit! Foiled again by Out Of Town!”
In the cafeteria, Ashley has the students line-up and tip-toe forward at a pace congruent with the unfairness they’ve encountered in these hallowed halls. Emily breaks into a sprint, three times. Ashley reminds her to take baby steps, but now that she’s fully done all the sex with her girlfriend, she’s decided she’s over baby steps. The principal calls her over and says, “If you’re agitated at me for kicking you off the swim team for going on a dope-fueled killing spree, that’s just too bad.” Emily is agitated. So agitated that she’s putting off a distinct Spencer Hastings vibe that is about to drive Mona Vanderwaal to absolute distraction.
Mona’s girlfriend, Hanna Banana, is out in the courtyard playing dodgeball with Noel Kahn and horrible Kate. They’re taking turns talking about how hard it is being a teenager, but Noel Kahn disagrees. He’s like, “When you’re a privileged white dude like me with athletic prowess and a smile as wide as the Grand Canyon, things aren’t so bad.” He then propositions Kate for some sexual intercourse and no one slaps him in the face. So far, anti-harassment day is a wild success!
During a make-up break, Emily decides it’s time to apologize to Mona for the way she stood around and let Ali be a bitch her back in the day. You can see Mona’s eyes adding and subtracting and carrying the one as she calculates her next move. If she takes Hanna as her wife and Spencer as her mistress, where does that leave Emily? She decides to shelve the mental dilemma – after all, King Solomon had 700 concubines and he wasn’t nearly as resourceful as Mona – and make it her mission to get Emily back on the swim team.
In Mrs. Hastings’ group, she asks if anyone wants to share some injustices that have been leveled against them. JennaBot does! She for real says, “Where do I start? Oh, I don’t know: How about the day I was cornered in the girls’ bathroom and smacked?” Um. How about you start with the day when your EYEBALLS WERE SET ON FIRE by a group of girls from this school? Talk about burying the lede. Caleb, awesomely, leans toward Aria and goes, “Is she talking about Hanna?” And then starts shouting that she’s the one who threw the first punch. I mean, obviously Hanna is the kind of girl who wants to tell you the minutiae of her whole entire day on the phone every night, but who knew Caleb was able to stay awake through it all! This is the second time he’s proven himself the best listener: Once with the back-fat at the wedding, and now this!
During ANOTHER break, Spencer corners Jason in the hallway to talk about his obsession with her dad. My affection for Spencer is directly proportional to the rising hysteria she experiences when people won’t answer her questions. So this is a good episode for our relationship. Everyone keeps blowing her off and her voice eyes keep getting loonier and loonier and her voice keeps getting higher and higher and you can just tell she’s five seconds away setting someone (else) on fire. Jason is like, “Talk to your dad.” And Spencer goes, “I ALREADY TRIED THAT! GODD—T ALL TO MOTHERF–KING HELL!”
Aria and Emily put their break time to good use, calling the Vivian Darkbloom Hotline again. This time a girl answers and tells them to f–k off. While they’re chatting to someone whose voice they don’t recognize, a voice they don’t recognize pages Emily to the principal’s office, where Mona is waiting laughing about how she’s so good at doing voices no one recognizes. Other things she’s good at: computer hacking, piecing together blackmail, extortion, retail cost evaluation, and staring longingly at Emily. They discover that a football player got back on the football team by bribing the principal with a really nice office chair from his dad’s office supply store (what?), and so why shouldn’t Emily experience the same level of leniancy.
Up on the roof, Caleb tells the tale of that time he hobo-ed it up at Rosewood High and found all the secret passageways and romantic terraces and everything. He tries to get Hanna to help him piece together some more clues about her stalker, but Hanna’s like, “Emily says making out is a better way to relieve stress.” And so making out is what they do.
In the courtyard, the Pretty Little Moms (minus Pam; come back, Pam!) are cottoning on to the fact that their daughters are getting terrorized on the regular. They ask themselves, “Was it after Ali’s death that they started showing up at the police station with rat blood-covered trophies and human blood-covered shovels?” And then they answer themselves, “Eh, to be fair, that kind of s–t also happened all the time when Ali was alive.”
Here’s another thing that happened when Ali was alive: Her and Spencer were lying around discussing the various ways cannibals find true love when they overheard Peter and Veronica throwing stuff at each other in the kitchen. Ali was like, “Are they splitting up, or…?” And Spencer was all, “Nah, they’re just weirdly aggressive with each other ever since they caught my sister was making out with your brother.” Ali grins and says, “Like Zeus and Hera, huh?” Spencer thought she’s just making a reference about the way Jason’s chin looks like it was chiseled by a Greek god.
But no. No, that’s not what Ali was saying at all. Spencer overhears her mom and Jason shouting in an empty classroom about, “Fruit of Peter’s loins!” and it clicks into place. Jason is Spencer’s half-brother. Which means Spencer has been making out with a boy who slept with his sister, and that her own sister made out with their own brother. Eat your heart out, Sophocles.
We all saw this coming from a hundred miles away, but the payoff isn’t in the revelation of the truth, the payoff is in watching Troian Bellisario act the hell out of the revelation of the truth.
But not yet. First we’ve got to deal with Kate. On yet another break, Hanna and Aria and Emily spot Kate sitting alone in the hallway, and then Hanna spots a birthmark on Kate’s ribcage when she takes off her sweater. An oh, ho! Hanna is no stranger to Photoshop! Oddly, she asks Emily if she still has the photo of naked Kate on her phone. And oddly, Emily does. And lo, there is no birthmark in the photo. Hanna corners Kate in that one bathroom where everyone goes to cry and fist-fight and eavesdrop. Kate confesses to sending out the photo herself, because what better way to make people feel sorry for/want to bone you than pretending your evil stepsister emailed a picture of your hot body to everyone in the whole school. It’s kind of a genius plan, actually. The ultimate humblebrag. Too bad Kate hasn’t been around long enough to know about checking the stalls for lurkers and ninjas and blind girls. Aria bursts forth, wielding her phone, which she has used to record the whole conversation.
(Go back and watch this scene again. When Aria says, “I’m using it to record this conversation, Emily glares at Kate and gives her shakes her head with such awesome loathing.)
Hanna hurries off to tell her mom the good news. And Aria hurries off to the roof to tell Caleb. Only, Caleb’s not on the roof. Noel Kahn is, though, and as Aria climbs higher and higher into the sky, calling out, “Caleb? Yoo hoo! Are you relaxing on the tip-top of the roof or hiding behind these inexplicably sinister plastic sheets? Callllleeeb?” Well, Noel Kahn gives her leg a friendly grab when she’s up on a ladder and tries to also give her a friendly tug to her death. But out of the night like a winged vigilante, Holden appears on the scene and does some Hobbit kung-fu to Noel Kahn’s face! You know I don’t like it when girls get saved by boys, but Holden is awesome.
Spencer has tracked down Jason and she’s like, “Look, are you my brother or what?” And he goes, “Just a little bit, yeah.” The writers play that card they love about, “Ali told me. I just didn’t know it at the time.” And then Spencer storms off to get into an absolute row with her mom. She’s fully, rightfully indignant. She’s like, “For one thing, I could have made out with Jason too, after I found out Melissa made out with him! You know how I am! And for another thing, how in the holy hell did we live beside our brother for our whole lives and not know it?!” Spencer’s mom gives the coldest answer to any question that’s ever been asked. She literally goes, “Look, if I’d known about Jason before you were born, you would never have been born because I would have never had sex with your father again. So stop your crying and be glad you exist.” Yikes, man.
Once Emily has been reinstated to the swim team, Mona offers to shake her pom-poms for Emily any old time. Emily’s face says it’s not the worst proposition she’s ever heard.
After the lights are out, Spencer spends some time staring out the window thinking of all the ways incest has touched her life, and then Emily wakes up to the sound of Victoria Darkbloom’s friend calling her back for the six thousandth time. Aria answers the phone and agrees to meet him so they can ask each other a bunch of cryptic questions Ali probably answered in code before she died. And then the Liars snuggle down into their blankets like a basket of kittens and go to sleep.
“A” slithers around the sleeping bags in the boys’ room and morphs into human form when he spots Caleb, dozing in the Pokemon sleeping bag he borrowed from Lucas. “A” plucks Caleb’s laptop from his backpack and attempts to plant an explosive on his hard drive. Instead, s/he is met with a flash of light as bright as a quasar explosion. A self-defense app, you ask? No. Aria had been using Caleb’s laptop to browse accessories to match her chartreuse shoes. And now “A”‘s eyes aren’t so pretty anymore because they’re bleeding.
