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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (3.11) — Downton Grabby

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Ian Thomas used to haunt the belfry of this one church. He killed Spencer Hastings there on a cold September night, but then Spencer Hastings killed him right back. A thumb drive of N.A.T. Club porn was lost in the pre-murder scuffle. Ezbian Fitzgerald fathered a (probable lesbian) baby, which his mother sold to a traveling circus so he could make his way in the world at Hollis Junior College. CeCe Drake flitted into town name checking Alison DilAurentis, whom she walks like and talks like and menaces like. Dr. Wren performed invasive surgery on Hanna on the Marin’s kitchen table. And Paige dropkicked some Chinese carry-out to Jupiter after she spied Emily kissing the guy who kissed her dead girlfriend before killing said girlfriend and posing as her cousin.

Hanna cannot find anything to wear to school that will cover up the gaping hole she sustained in her leg when she was breaking out of Noel Kahn’s murder room last week. While Hanna tries on Halloween costumes or whatever, Spencer’s nose begins to twitch, and her eyes begin to itch, and then Ahhhchoooo! She’s like, “Oh, God. Hanna. My evidence allergies. There are clues in this house.” And she’s right. Ted has shown up for some pre-breakfast flirting and also to drop off the N.A.T. Club thumb drive that he found during the church’s biannual cleaning. Spencer and Hanna listen from the stairs. Spencer’s main thing: “Tell that old guy to give me back my shit! That evidence is mine!” Hanna’s main thing: “Right, but you know what the real problem is? There’s a video of Jenna doing your boyfriend on that thumb drive and remember how she’s got a gun now? And how we promised to keep that video locked down so she wouldn’t pull the trigger?”

This is not Ashley Marin’s first time at the evidence rodeo, so she fakes Hanna out by planting a different thumb drive on the table, and when Hanna snatches it, she’s like, “Boom! Busted! Are there videos on here of Mona killing you?” Hanna goes, “Um. Uh huh. Yep. That’s exactly what’s on there.” Man, when video footage of your best friend running under you with a car is the least of the evils you’re worried about your mom witnessing, your life kind of blows. Hanna begs Ashley not to turn the drive over to the police or else Mona will end up in Gotham Penitentiary for sure, but Ashley is like, “Mona tortured you, and now you’re torturing my eyeballs with that skirt. Get in the car and we’ll discuss this later.”

It’s Ezbian’s birthday! Aria wakes him up with a snoozle to the neck and a bouquet of freshly picked lavender – a flower that means “silence” according to the internet, which makes it a perfect symbol of Aria and Ezra’s love. She keeps silent about how she was fully doing it with him when he was her teacher. And he keeps silent about what the actual fuck she is wearing at all times. She’s like, “Good morning, my darling! Let’s celebrate your life!” He covers his head with a pillow and groans, “I can’t! My mother is a life-destroyer!” He tried last night to pen a letter to Maggie, but you know how it is once that guy’s feelings start flowing: Suddenly it’s like 4:00 a.m. and he’s processed for seventy-three pages, front and back. Aria sighs because when it’s your girlfriend’s birthday you do what she wants, even if what she wants is to revisit the emotional trauma of every damn Jackie Molina.

Paige and Emily are taking their breakfast at a table outside Rear Window Brew. Emily cannot eat because she’s never done a single wrong thing in her life so she has absolutely no threshold for compartmentalizing her guilt. Every time she has tried to chew a piece of food since kissing Nate, she has vomited. Finally she blurts out about the cheating, and just when you think Paige is going to zig, she totally zags. She keeps on eating her Frosted Flakes and is all, “Hmm, and why do you think that happened?” Emily is in so much anguish. She can’t even look at Paige in the face when she says she’s confused. Paige takes another bite of cereal, goes, “Well, I’m not confused. You kissed Nate because you got him mixed up with Maya. I had a talk with some trash cans about it. Everything is going to be OK.”

At school, Aria is telling Spencer about how Ezra wants to spend his birthday whining about all the girls his mother sold into white slavery. Spencer goes, “Why is he worried about his old high school girlfriend when his new high school girlfriend is right in front of him, looking, if you don’t mind me saying so, more fierce than ever. I think it’s the hair. You and Hanna really brought it with the hair this season.” Aria sighs, says she knows – but they are interrupted by CeCe Drake, who is ferociously pinning flyers to an announcement board and screeching at Spencer to get her ass over there and help.

Apparently Spencer volunteered to help CeCe’s boutique host a trunk show, but she forgot her promise because of how she spends all her time fending off murderers. CeCe scoffs. “Ali held off murderers with one hand while learning to fly a plane with the other hand. Grow up, Hastings.” Spencer is spared more derision when CeCe spots Emily and Paige wheeling her bike toward the school. (I cannot even express how much I love that the writers kept Paige’s bike around after that time she pedaled off into the lightning in the middle of the night with her internalized homophobia and her bangs.) CeCe goes, “Sup with Emily and Pigskin, yo?” CeCe sends all of the Liars to their Ali place at least a little bit, but for some reason, Spencer has zero immunity to it. She slips into her role as easily as if real Ali had never really died. She laughs at the “Pigskin” thing without even understanding why, really, just knowing it’s going to be mean as hell and that she’ll be on the inside of the joke instead of the outside of the joke. CeCe says Ali and Pigskin were mortal enemies, and of course Spencer flashes back.

Spencer was trying on a top that Ali wanted, so Ali insulted Spencer’s boobs and took it for herself. While she was changing into it, Hefty Hanna – who was, amazingly, sitting on the bed eating popcorn, swaying back and forth – wondered aloud why Ali’s shoulder looked like it had been walloped with a shovel. Ali rolled her eyes: “If it was a shovel, somebody would be in jail, idiot. Pigskin kicked me during soccer practice, is all. But she’s next on my beat-down list, so it’s fine.” The girls giggled about “Pigskin” because it was one of the most horrible nicknames they’d ever heard of, worse even than if someone started calling one of them “Americano.” Ali explained that Paige got the name because she had bumps on her thighs that she tried to pass off as eczema, but Ali told her they were really from “poking herself below the equator.”

Which: That is some serious Chuck Bass ridiculousness right there. Like how he’s always going, “She’s a synchronized swimmer. She can hold her breath for five minutes.” Like, vague smarm that doesn’t even make sense. Anyway, whatever. Ali has always been a dick, but even for her, this is gross. (Oh, but she’s gonna get gross-er.)

Paige does not have adrenalized hyperreality, so she is unable to escape during Spencer’s flashback. Instead, when Spencer comes out of her trance, they just stare at each other across the crowded lawn for a while. Paige gives her a tentative little wave, like, “Heeeey, Emily’s friend who almost got me kicked off the swim team. You look like you want to murder me.” Spencer is like, “Oh my God, she just thought the word murder.” And just like that, Spencer has forgotten that Garrett Reynolds exists.

In the computer lab, Caleb and Hanna Gchat about how her mom found the thumb drive and should they do some pickpocketing, or …? Caleb says the Hobo Code prevents him from stealing except in the case of starvation or various Robin Hood endeavors. They stare at each other cutely over their monitors, but then Jenna clomps over and tells Hanna to get lost, that she’s got to order some synthetic socket lube for her new eyeballs and she needs the internet.

Emily is just cruising around town on Paige’s bike, looking hotter than she ever has done. She rides up beside Nate and goes, “Hey, I’m riding my girlfriend’s bike, it’s my girlfriend’s, my girlfriend let me borrow it.” Nate wraps his arm around her shoulders and starts talking about how he’d really like it if they could go some place secluded later tonight, and does she know of anywhere far enough away from Rosewood that the sound of a chainsaw and a screaming girl won’t cause alarm. Emily tries to explain that she mislead him with her kiss, that it was actually about reaching for Maya and not for him, and of all the serial killer shit he’s pulled so far, this one is the serial-er killer-est. He just explodes in a rage: “You and Maya are just the same! You cocktease me! She cockteased … uh, like 20 dudes … on the phone, erm, in my car, and I … um … overheard it! Damn you both with your mixed signals and lesbianism! Damn you to infinity!” Emily’s like, “OK, well bye, weirdo.” And off she pedals.

Aria has tracked down Maggie in Somewhere Urban, Pennsylvania. Let me repeat myself: Aria Montgomery, the world’s worst detective save Spencer Hastings and Inspector Gadget, has, in the course of three hours, located and traveled to the classroom of the woman who conceived a Fitzgerald in her womb as a teenager and went into hiding as part of her prenatal buyout. Aria Montgomery did that. OK, so when Ezra says he “looked” “everywhere” for her, I’m thinking he opened his window and hollered “Maggie?” into the night, just once, and when she didn’t respond, he gave up looking. Anyway, Aria is posing as an undergrad, and she has many academic questions, such as: “In terms of getting laid, what’s it like teaching in a small town?” And: “How hard is it to govern that Ezra-shaped child over there in the corner?” Maggie laughs: “Oh, that little lesbian guy? He’s all right. He’s my son. I conceived him the summer before college.” Aria’s face goes:

Ooh, boy. Get ready to test your Gryffindor allegiances. Spencer has been tracking Emily’s movements with a homing device she had implanted at the base of her skull after that debacle with the barn and the carbon monoxide. On her FieldsFinder, she spotted Emily on the town square and then watched her little dot bleep-bleep-bleep along until she was back at school. Spencer tries to play it cool, like they’re just two best friends meeting up in the hallway after class, just like, “Hey, you. How was your day? How was that calc text? Cavalieri’s Principle, am I right? Listen, did Paige ever mention that she may have, on occasion – how do I put this delicately – beaten the shit out of Ali?” Emily’s face, her posture, her whole body, goes dead still. Without even turning around, she’s like, “Let me guess. CeCe Drake.” Spencer goes, “I know, but just listen. CeCe told me -” And Emily is llivid. I don’t ever think we’ve seen her so mad. She’s wheels around like, “CeCe told you, huh? CeCe told you like Alison used to tell you and now we’re going to beat the crap out of each other, which, may I remind you, is the main thing Ali got off on, Spencer. We were dogs in her dog fighting ring, and I’m not ever, ever doing that shit again.” Spencer invokes Paige’s drowning attempts of yore, calls her a snake, and Emily goes, “Get back to me when you’ve been trained your whole life to hate yourself for the way you were born. Let me know how it does your head in to hear your own family call you unnatural because of the person you love. Then we can talk about fucking CeCe Drake.” And she just storms right the hell out of there.

Jenna’s outside eating cherries in that way she has, like maybe she wants to make out with you or maybe she wants to choke you to death with her bare hands, and the only way to find out is to spin that Russian roulette wheel and reach for a piece of fruit. Hanna screws her courage to the sticking place and blurts out in one breath, “Hey Jenna those videos of you boning Toby are probably on YouTube by now but it’s not our fault because we didn’t know the church only gets cleaned once every two years and anyway we were so distracted that night by Spencer almost getting hanged in the belfry that we forgot to bury that evidence in her backyard and I know we promised and you have a gun but it’s not our fault and not killing us would be a really nice gesture OK.” Girl drops her sunglasses back over her eyes for the first time since coming out as a sighted person and it’s like the real-est shit has ever gotten with her. Well, except for when she used to sit on the porch and play the flute.

Nate is running through the school yard looking for Emily or a friend of Emily or any young girl, really, who would like to be stalked and killed. Hanna Marin looks like such a girl, so he sprints over to her and asks if she can help him get back on track with her best friend. Hanna literally goes, “DUDE. SHE IS GAY. SHE DATED YOUR COUSIN. LOOK AT YOUR LIFE RIGHT NOW. EVEN BY ROSEWOOD’S STANDARDS, YOU ARE A CREEPER.” They glare at each other for a minute, but then Jenna walks by, so they glare at her together instead. Nate’s like, “Sometimes she looks right through me like I’m not the guy who asked her on a date and tried to give her a scented candle in the most aggressive possible way.” Hanna’s like, “Yeah, sometimes it’s like she’s still pretending to be blind.” And so Nate flips out and starts shouting, “Jenna, girl! I know you saw me [do some dastardly thing that will only be revealed in the finale when Paige saves Emily from my evil clutches]!” Jenna sneers at him and feels around in her purse for her pistol.

At CeCe’s boutique, Spencer is explaining that she probably isn’t going to be able to wrangle any of the other Liars to help with the trunk show: “Emily’s kind of mad because I told her what you told me about Paige which you and I both knew I would do, and Hanna usually takes Emily’s side on these things, and Aria is off dealing with drama of her own making, like usual.” I’ve never really thought about that before, but maybe that’s why “A” never goes after Aria: She’s making shit as bad as she possibly can all by herself. CeCe’s like, “OK, but check out this flashback about Pigskin.”

Ali and CeCe were relaxing in CeCe’s car, talking shit about high schoolers and the various ways they squeal when they are being waterboarded. Ali was like, “OK, listen to this. I nicked some of Emily’s stationary and wrote a full-on love letter to Pigskin, told her I wanted to scissor with her and whatever. I told her to write me – Emily, I mean – back and hide the note on the sandwich board that is right in front of us at this moment in time.” Paige wandered up, her head tilted down, her eyes to the ground, not daring to look up at anyone or anything. She hid the note under the sandwich board – and out pounced Ali! She grabbed the note and explained the ruse and promised she would ruin Paige’s life if she stepped out of line ever again. “I own you!” she shouted as Paige’s face tried to calculate all the things she’d just lost, all the things she’d dared to believe could be hers that had never even existed.

Jeeeesus. Talk about reframing the narrative. Paige’s story is like if you woke up with your nose pressed against an impressionist painting. Like this incomprehensible disarray of squiggles that makes you feel really unsettled. If you moved the painting away from your face a little bit, the light and shadows would play with the colors and shapes and you’d feel more easy about the whole thing. A few more feet away and the painting would start to resemble something familiar. Water? Is it water? No, a little more distance and you’d realize you were looking at a reflection of the water. And if you ever could take a full step backwards, see the whole thing in frame, you’d just go, “Oh. Ohhhh.” That’s what it’s like learning Paige like this, in glorious reverse. 

OK, and Paige and Emily are studying on her bed and Emily’s thinking about what Spencer said earlier, so she goes, “Hey, Paige. Remember when we went on that karaoke date and I told you I had been in love with Ali, and you didn’t flinch when I said her name like most people do, and you explained it was because you didn’t really know her? Is that still pretty true? Because my friends maybe think …” Paige narrows her eyes and wonders a couple of things out loud, like why Emily’s friends are talking about her and not to her, and how come Emily’s flask was poisoned that night when only her friends were around, and isn’t it weird how she always manages to get GLASS IN HER HAIR or murdered by a talking doll on her friends‘ watch?

And, I mean, valid for sure, but Girlfriend 101, McCullers: Do not position yourself in opposition to a girl’s best friends. It’s never, ever gonna end well for you.

Emily goes, “I can’t really explain to you the depth or breadth of chaos that I have been through with those three, but what I can tell you is there are ways only they are ever going to get me, protect me, and you gotta deal with that knowledge and fast.”

Paige does deal with it. She suggests they hang out and get to know each other better.

Aria is preparing Ezra’s birthday dinner in the kind of haze one sucumbs to when one finds out about a probable step-child that is one half of one’s own age. Into this haze wanders Wesbian, who, like his brother, is a Feelings barometer. He senses something off with Aria, so she tells him the whole story. Maggie’s classroom, her bob, how you can be a teacher in the country and still hook-up with randoms at bars – oh, and there’s a seven-year-old kid in her class who was legitimately wearing a plaid button-up and humming Tegan and Sara.

Spencer and CeCe unload a bunch of boxes from a UPS truck, and CeCe plucks one out for Spencer to try on for the trunk show, but you know how Spencer is when she has latched onto a new suspect: She’s not paying any attention to anything but the way to make her accusations sound most impressive. She types out such a one to Hanna as she wanders into the dressing room to disrobe. She’s just tap-tapping away on her phone – “… and her parents belong to the club and I know I’ve heard her dad mention something about them owning a shovel …” – when one of the UPS boxes starts hissing. Hissing and thrashing. Hissing and thrashing and HOLY GOD, THERE’S A SNAKE IN THAT BOX. The snake slithers out, peeps Spencer, and starts striking at her! Spencer screams and screams and dances around on her tip-toes. The door is locked from the outside, and mercifully CeCe arrives before the snake eats Spencer whole. What happens next is that CeCe Drake picks up a mannequin leg and beats the snake to death. That’s a true thing. Not a thing I made up like I sometimes do. Literal snake. Literal mannequin leg. Literal beat down by Ali’s doppelganger.

If someone ever tells you there is a show better than this show, punch them in the face.

Back at Hanna’s, you have never seen Spencer hopped up like this. It’s like she dialed it to eleven, drank two gallons of coffee, chased that down with one of those movie theater-size boxes of Chewy Sprees, gave her own self electroshock therapy, jumped out of an airplane without a parachute, landed with summersault, ran around the block ten times, drank two more gallons of coffee, and then tried to explain the snake thing to Hanna. She’s like, “Do you understand that I said the words ‘snake’ and ‘Paige’ in the same sentence, and literally three hours later I was being attacked by a snake. I’ll tell you another thing, and you’d better listen good, because all of the girls that have died on this show have been girls Emily has loved, and who do you think would have been more jealous of those girls than old Pigskin? That’s right, Hanna. I said ‘Pigskin’ and don’t you flinch. Don’t you even think about flinching. It’s like Dumbledore was always saying: Fear of the name increases fear of the thing. And we’ll be the next to go, I’ll tell you that right now. First Ali and Maya, now us. You ever think about why she does all those sports and rides that bike everywhere? You ever think it’s because she’s training for a MURDER DECATHLON.” Hanna’s phone rings a couple of times during Spencer’s nuclear-level meltdown and the idea that it’s Wren just makes her want to jump out of more planes more times. But it’s Emily. She can’t find the L.J. pocket knife that was in Maya’s bag in Noel Kahn’s murder room. When Hanna hangs up, Spencer goes, “And who has unfettered access to under Emily’s bed? Pigskin, dude! I am telling you!”

The last time Spencer went after somebody this hard, it was Toby, so expect her to start selling off more of Melissa’s shit next season to buy Paige a new carbon fiber road bike.

Spencer finally drags Hanna to the trunk show, but she’s having the same problem there that she had getting dressed at her house that morning: Nothing long enough to disguise the shrapnel in her thigh. She passes on a body-hugging purple number and goes for a full-length sun dress. While she’s trying it on, Caleb sexily kidnaps her and sexily explains that he talked to Ashley on her behalf about that thumb drive, and then he sexily eye-sexes her and they sexily make out against a wall, which is their new thing, I guess, and I heartily approve.

Paige and Emily show up and CeCe claps her hands because it’s just like what Emily said before: Ali loved dog fights. CeCe ushers Emily to the back to try on the purple dress and Paige adorably, awkwardly asks Spencer if she can help do trunk show things. They start placing rings on mannequin hands and Paige tries so hard to open herself up to Spencer, like she really does just lay something so vulnerable out there, about how she’s trying to figure out her style as she figures out who she is on the inside, like maybe she doesn’t have to be afraid of being a little more masculine in her presentation now that she’s not quite so terrified someone is going to accuse her of something she’s not ready to admit. She says she’d like a fresh start with the Liars, for Emily. And Spencer’s eyes are wild the whole time, darting around and accessing escape routes in her mind and calculating which wire to cut if Paige is, as she expects, armed with a body-bomb. Paige is so nervous she breaks the pinky on one of the mannequins. She’s like, “Heh.” And Spencer is like, “Yeah. HEH.”

Hanna emerges from the dressing room and tells Paige to go help Emily change into the purple dress and Paige has never moved so fast in her life. As soon as she’s gone, they snatch her bag and start rifling through it and find something that makes their eyes light up like only evidence can. What happens next is Emily walks out of the dressing room and the purple dress becomes The Purple Dress, and even Hanna’s eyes bug out of her head a little bit. But Emily doesn’t stick around and allow herself to be properly admired. She sees that they’re tearing through Paige’s stuff, so she snatches it away despite Paige’s feeble protests to just let them do it, and Emily drags her and her handbag out of that boutique.

What they found was not the knife. What they found was that earring Aria put in Ali’s grave.

Things at Ezbian’s are going equally awkwardly. Wesbian has stopped by to drop off a gift, so he stays and helps Aria cook dinner. She spills all the secrets about Maggie, but before they can decide what to do, Ezbian himself shows up and says he talked to Maggie. The catch: She didn’t tell him about Malcombian. Ezra and Wesley can’t decide if they should tell Ezra or if by telling him they’re threatening Maclombian’s inheritance. It’s very tricky and it’s Ezbian’s birthday after all. I mean, what bad thing has ever happened when one of the Liars waited just one more day to tell a secret to a loved one?

Emily and Paige sit on Emily’s front porch drinking tea, and Emily is gracious enough to give Paige all the space in the world to be pissed off at her friends. But if anybody knows what it feels like to be free after years of hiding, it’s Paige McCullers, so she’s like, “Listen, Emily. I did know Ali. And she knew me. She knew I was gay before I really even understood that I was gay, and she relentlessly tortured me with it. However much shame I felt on my own, however much shame I felt knowing how my family would react, it was nothing compared to the way she twisted and turned it and made it look like the ugliest, most loathsome thing a person could be. The only thing I hated more than myself was her. And the only reason I am alive is because I am a competitor, and I would not let myself lose by disappearing.”

What Ali took away from little braided, khaki-shorted Paige wasn’t just the idea of Emily. What Ali took away from Paige was hope. We thought we knew the distance Paige traveled, we thought it was poolside bullying to midnight synchronized swimming, but really it was from actual hell to here, on Emily’s front porch, wrapped up in Emily’s arms. I mean, that’s one of the things Dante said right up front: Hell isn’t the opposite of love; it’s the opposite of hope. Imagine Paige, back then, thinking for one shining moment that she wouldn’t be alone anymore. That there was someone who liked her, someone like her – and then having Ali snatch that dream from her hands and spit on it like it was something disgusting, something to fear. And then one day, years later, seeing Emily kissing Maya, and that spark flaring inside of her again. After that note, after that day, how many times had Paige purged herself of the desire to kiss Emily? Because hadn’t Ali shown her that such a desire was vile? And here was Emily – Emily, of all people! – kissing another girl like it was nothing to be ashamed of? Can you even imagine how that would fuck up your head? How inexplicably hopeful you would be, how angry that you even still possessed the ability to hope, how jealous that someone else was kissing her when it was all you’d wanted to do for as long as you can remember?

That’s where we met Paige. That’s where we walked into her life. Caught between hope and hate and terrified out of her mind. 

Anyway, Paige goes inside to wash her face, and Jenna wanders up. She spots the two mugs on the front porch and gets real squirrely. She’s like, “Be careful who you spend time with, Emily, for real. And if anyone tries to give you a scented candle, you run like the wind.” And then she packs her bags into a taxi and drives away.

The Risen Mitten plays a little ditty on an old fashioned jukebox. Then the Risen Mitten reaches out and grabs the hand of another(!) Risen Mitten. They do-si-do left, allemande-right, honor their corners, and dance off into the cold, forbidding night.

I want to thank you guys for being patient with this week’s recap. As I mentioned in the tweet post, my sister has been in the hospital and it’s been a relief to both of us for me to spend some time with her without worrying about recapping. So thank you. Also, of course, a giant thanks to my dear screencapping partner Maggie (@margaretrosey) who was so worried about Paige this week, she accidentally got herself too drunk to #BooRadleyVanCullen.

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