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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (3.12) — Sleeping with the Enemy

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, people all over the world all over the space-time continuum were like, “Oh, but Almighty God must be a man because of how religious books are always calling him a he.” And Mona Vanderwaal was like, “lol, ok.” Because no offense to Jesus or anything, but he didn’t exactly have adrenalized hyperreality. Like the gods of yore, Mona Vanderwaal enjoyed leveling the occasional heavy blow at her people, and now she lives in Radley Institute for the Criminally Insane where she deals out card games and code phrases while looking inexplicably fierce in Spencer’s nana’s cardigan. Emily lost and gained another girlfriend, roofied and was roofied, and traveled one thousand nights in a single night. Maybe she robbed a grave. Maybe she did not. But definitely she enjoyed a delicious slice of pie at a diner in 1954. Spencer took her hobby of murder accusations to brand new heights. She tattooed Garrett Reynolds’ mug shot onto her ass, is how convinced she was that he killed Maya and Ali, and then later she just wrote “Paige” on her forehead with a Sharpie. Hanna accidentally: got her boyfriend’s mom run under by a car, kissed a tiny British fellow, and sustained extensive damage to her thigh when Noel Kahn’s cabin attacked her with shrapnel. Also accidental: Ezra Fitzgerald’s love child, and Aria’s discovery thereof.

PRESENT (DOOMS)DAY:

Another police barricade. Another sobbing Liar. Another dead body. Who? Who’s to say? What I can tell you is that Hanna is inconsolable, Spencer is legit stupefied, Emily looks like she’s on about day 16 of a zombie apocalypse, and Aria’s on the phone with Ezra, whispering, “Hey, will you make sure the DVR is set to record Project Runway? This is taking longer than I thought. I guess that person who has been terrorizing my friends is still terrorizing my friends.” The police officer asks Emily for the tenth time if “the deceased” was a “friend.” She stares at Hanna, says: “…yes.”

TWO (DOOMS)DAYS EARLIER:

Veronica Hastings is inside the television box talking about how Garrett Reynolds is glad to finally be going to trial clear his name so he can get back to work for the Rosewood PD Shovel Unit. If you’re wondering why Spencer hasn’t gotten around to handing over that video of Maya getting snatched from Kahn Kabin the night of her murder, it’s because she has been very busy trying to out-Aria Aria. Today is the day she thought she would succeed because even Aria Montgomery doesn’t own an Easter-colored party dress patterned with donkeys and accented with a bow as big as Mona’s love. But do you know what Aria Montgomery does own? An electric blue translucent skirt that looks like something you’d wear if you played for a Disney-themed roller derby team and your name was CinderHella.

They’ve gathered at Spencer’s to host an intervention to convince Emily that she’s dating a homicidal maniac who is in the process of systematically slaughtering anyone at whom Emily has ever batted her eyelashes. Their case is airtight: They found one of Aria’s casket earrings in Paige’s bag last week at the trunk show and also Pigskin sure did look like a murderer in her khakis and braids and baby gayness in the soft-edged light of CeCe Drake’s memories. Aria’s like, “I mean, and I guess the thing we really have going for us, Spence, is that your censure is irrefutable. Never, in all the time that I’ve known you, have you literally called a guy ‘the devil’ only to pawn your sister’s engagement ring three weeks later to buy him a pickup truck for to the purpose of getting to third base with you. Satan has never whittled you a rocking chair, is what I am saying.”

They say “Paige” about ten quadrillion times and every time they hear her name echoed off each other they get more and more manic. (I feel you, Liars.)

The confrontation goes about as well as you’d expect. Emily is like, “For starters, ‘A’ has reverse pickpocketed each of us a hundred times. Does anyone remember the two full months I I spent poisoning my own self with sports cream? Hanna: hundred dollar bills taped to paper towels in a public restroom. Aria: lesbian poetry book. Spencer: rat blood trophy. College diplomas, suicide notes, dolls, worms in our Chinese food, gift baskets, and if I had a nickel for every time some of Ali’s homemade porn ends up in one of our purses…” Everything Emily says is valid, but, again, Spencer is wearing a mule-themed ensemble and Aria is dressed like Aria. Clearly, they are beyond reason. After Emily storms out, Hanna is like, “I hope alienating our best friend in a time of dire need doesn’t drive her into seclusion with a sociopath.”

Spencer falls to her knees and shakes her fist at the sky, all: “MCCULLERS!!!!”

At school, Aria is sitting in the courtyard feeling forlorn about how Emily is so alone right now. Just kidding! Aria is thinking about Aria. Hanna explains that she’s been texting and calling Emily all day, and Aria goes, “Emily? Oh, right. The one with the dead girlfriends. Whatever. Look, I think I’ve got a stepson who’s only ten years younger than me.” Hanna’s eyes get bigger and bigger as Aria weaves the yarn about how Ezra’s mom gave his high school girlfriend a gift certificate for an abortion, but she traded it in for an IKEA gift card at one of those coupon exchange websites and bought a bunch of Swedish baby furniture instead. Hanna is like, “You know how Ali would have advised you never to tell Ezra, but instead to cipher the story and engrave it onto porcelain doll skulls and stash those skulls inside of lunch boxes inside of storage units all over the state of Pennsylvania? I think a better idea might be to actually tell him.”

High noon at Rosewood High. Spencer and Paige find themselves alone in the hallway and you’ve never seen two people less willing to back down from a fight in all your life. Because, like, if you’re going to be the best at a thing, you can’t just love to win; you’ve got to hate to lose. And these two, if they got trapped together in a canyon 127 Hours-style, it’d be an actual race to see who could chew off her own arm first. Spencer finally snaps: “If you’re feeling froggy, jump, McCullers.” And so Paige hops all in. She’s goes, “Nice jackasses.” Spencer is like, “Excuse me?” And Paige goes, “On your dress. Nice jackasses.” They circle each other like a couple of wild things, both of their hearts on fire with love for Emily. They’re like: “Don’t you hurt her!” “No, don’t you hurt her!” “You roofied her!” “You roofied her first!” “Your purse was full of dead girl earrings!” “Your backyard is full of broken hockey sticks!” “You used to have those bangs!” “You used to dress like a flapper!” “You shoved her head underwater!” “You left her in a barn to die!” “I AM THE HERMIONE GRANGER OF THIS STORY.” “AND I AM THE NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM!” They storm off in opposite directions in a huff and I have never, ever been so turned on.

I’m serious. I need a minute.

OK, where were we? Hogwarts? So, Moaning Myrtle floats by crying about how even even though all the students in the castle are being terrorized by Death Eaters and Dementors, the hardest thing of all is just being Moaning Myrtle.

Kidding again. That was Aria.

Paige and Emily snuggle up in that window seat in her room where Paige came out and they kissed their first real kiss and Emily figures she can be just as heroic with the truth. She tells Paige about the new “A,” about the grave-robbing photos, about how Spencer can’t go a day without putting a suspect in her crosshairs, and today her sniper rifle is trained on Paige. Paige goes, “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to protect you.” And Emily touches her face gently because she knows it’s true. But also, how many times does she have to say, “Even though I am the sweetest, most trusting person on this show, I’m not the one in danger. It’s the people I kiss who always end up dead.” Paige gets a text from “A,” telling her to meet up at Ali’s grave, so she’s like, “Listen, Em, I won’t leave your side for a single second – after I leave your side for the next 48 hours.” Emily kisses her and says it’s cool, she’s sure she can find someone to take her to a secluded cabin in the woods and chop her into pieces while her best friends and girlfriend get up to their usual cryptic hijinks.

At school, Spencer’s paranoia has infected Aria and Hanna, as usual. Hanna’s like, “Bad news, girls, Paige wasn’t in Spanish.” And Spencer goes, “That bitch!” Spencer’s first idea is to go to the police … with an earring they can’t prove was inside Ali’s coffin and can’t prove was inside Paige’s bag, and the memory of someone else’s memory of one time when one dead girl forged a lesbian love letter and got herself bruised up in soccer practice. Even Rosewood’s district attorney would have a hard time taking that shit to trial. Hanna’s not really feeling the police thing, though, because of how she’s now convinced that Paige covertly collected a sample of her blood and smeared it onto an anklet that she sold to an antique store. Which, at this point, how many of Ali’s possessions aren’t tarnished with the DNA of every person in Rosewood? Anyway, they decide to call their parents and tell them the whole deal, but they get a text from “A” telling them to stand down for a minute.

Radley Asylum. Mona Vanderthunder dons a nurse uniform like from some Hemingway novel, lace socks, white cap, the whole thing. She flashes a badge at the security guy and just waltzes right out the door to the tune of The Hawk In Paris’ “Freaks,” which is a song so perfect for her, it should play every time she enters a room like “Hail to the Chief” plays for the president: We’ve got a plan, we’ve got a means for your liberation / You’ll only have to blur the lines on a few occasions / We’ll make you swoon, make you hurt just a little / We’re the boys and the girls and the freaks in the middle. She smirks her best smirk because she’s probably been wandering the streets at her leisure this whole time.

The Liars retire to Hanna’s, which is probably the safest place for them now that the kitchen has been converted into a fully functioning operating room. Spencer rails about Paige some more, calling her one of Ali’s monsters; Hanna worries aloud about how Emily is going to handle losing another girlfriend to some insane shit; and Aria doodles “Aria + Ezra + Seven Year Old = 4 Ever(?)” on a notepad. Spencer gets a couple of A-mails in quick succession: One is a photo of Aria and Hanna burying a shovel with another shovel, telling them to bring Maya’s bag to Ali’s grave at 10:00 p.m., and one is a photo of Ali’s body bag promising to frame them for the grave robbery for sure if they tell Emily.

The Liars hear someone rooting around downstairs, so they Scooby to the corner and then duck back into Hanna’s room, hoping to fend off a known murderer with a lamp. Luckily, it is Caleb so no one has to take a light bulb to the cranium. He’s fully on their black ops team now. He was staking out Emily’s, but when Spencer tells him about the emails “from Paige and Mona,” he says he’s going to accompany them to Ali’s grave.

Hanna and Spencer pop down to Rear Window Brew so Spencer can enjoy her three hundredth cup of coffee for the day and Hanna can borrow one of the barista’s phones to call Emily. She’s like, “Hey, Emsy, listen, I know it seems like we cornered you and forced you to choose between us and Paige, but we just don’t want to see you get killed again.” Emily says she’s skipping town with Nate because he’s the only person who’s really there for her right now, and even though Hanna saw Nate menace Jenna so hard she left for Out Of Town in a taxi filled with luggage, she thinks it’s a really smart idea.

Pam Fields, however, is unimpressed. She’s like, “I’ve been thinking … you know how your first girlfriend was murdered late at night in the woods by a guy she thought she knew and your second girlfriend was murdered late at night in the woods by a guy she thought she knew? Do you really think it’s a good idea for you to be trotting off into the night into the woods with a guy you think you know?” Emily’s like, “Yes. And besides, there won’t be any cell phone service and I’ve never seen Nate punch a former blind girl in the face.”

Spencer strolls along the square, stops to examine a promo poster for the Halloween episode, and spots the reflection of some anime hair in the shop window. It is Toby Cavenaugh, back from his job as a teenage carpenter in Bucks County, and the camera wants you to know that Spencer is dizzy with relief at just the sight of him, so it spins and spins and spins and she’s like, “I’m so glad you’re back, you trustworthy son of a bitch! We cannot stop talking about how trustworthy you are! Emily literally called you the Dali Lama a couple of episodes ago! Get in here with your trustworthiness, you truth-telling honesty-seeker!” She kisses him and pokes his chin with her finger. For real. She’s pokes it and smiles, like, “This old thing!”

Ezra Fitzgerald is writing the next Great American Novel, or maybe an essay called Breakfast in Black and White: My Love Affair with Hepburn Women. Aria decides it’s about time to tell him he has a second-grader for a son, but when she says, “Ezra…” he just blurts out, “Love you, babe.” Which is real life writerspeak for, “Hush, please, darling.” There’s a knock at the door and it is Maggie and Ezra is like, “Maggie!” And Maggie is like, “Amy?” And Ezra is like, “Aria.” And Aria is like, “Ezra, there’s a thing I need to tell you right this second it can’t wait any longer the time is now.” But Maggie cuts her off with, “Nice to meet you for the very first time, Aria.”

If ever you find yourself in a room with the girl your mother dropped into a pit in the desert after you impregnated her and the girl your mother threatened to drop into a pit in the desert after she cost you your job, you will be glad that you kept all those feelings journals. Ezra’s face is positively delighted to find himself in such a situation, and when his next-door-neighbor shows up with a bundt cake, he’s simply bamboozled by his great good fortune. While he’s thanking Ms. Rosenthal for the cake, Aria and Maggie try to see who can make their eyeballs the biggest. Aria is like, “Boom! Barn owl!” And Maggie goes, “Double boom! Baby chipmunk!” And Aria fires back with “That lemur from Madagascar!” And Maggie is like, “That cat from Shrek!” Their eye-off ends in a truce. They’ll wait to tell Ezra he’s a father.

I know I clown on this show for never putting Ezra through the ringer, but will you just get a load of this guy standing here in his hoodie holding a bundt cake and having that face? How could you do anything to hurt his feelings? What kind of monster would you be if you put him in danger?

Hanna is taking a shower because it’s always polite to be clean and well-dressed when you meet a couple of lunatics at an empty grave. Caleb take the opportunity to pack a handgun into his sleuthing backpack, but before he gets it situated, Hanna catches him and shouts him down. She’s like, “I can’t say I paid much attention when Mr. Fitz was droning on and on and on about Chekov, but I’m pretty sure there’s a rule that says you’re gonna get shot right in the face if you don’t toss that that gun down the garbage disposal like now.” He hides it in her underwear drawer instead. And then when she turns her back, he packs it.

Mona has traded her nurse uniform for a black hoodie. She smiles at herself in the mirror until her phone rings. She answers it with, “I’m here.” Then breathes real deep for like three minutes and goes, “I understand.”

Spencer and Toby finally do the sex which results in bed head, bare legs, and me doing that thing I used to do in season one where I frantically Google “Troian Bellisario” every ten seconds to make sure she was born in 1985 and not 1995. It’s fine. It’s cool. My mouth is too try to swallow right now, but it’s OK. It’s ’85.

I think. Like. Didn’t Spencer … do something? Something … mean to my favorite character earlier? I can’t really remember. Was I mad at her? Nah, surely not. Anyway, Toby says he loves her and then bounces to go do who knows what in Bucks County.

Meanwhile, new “A” has recreated Mona’s lair. The clown masks, the Bratz dolls, the collages of Ali on the wall: It’s all there. New “A” rocks in a rocking chair in a black hoodie and Mona goes, “Change of plans, bitch” because that’s just how she talks in the Monacave. Bitch this and bitch that. Fetch me my slippers, bitch. Where is my solitaire deck, bitch. 

The Liars assemble in Rosewood Cemetery. Caleb mans the battle station at the front gate, and the Liars lie in wait. And wait and wait and wait. Hanna’s like, “I mean, it’s like Mona to make a grand entrance, but where the hell is Paige?” They get the feeling that something’s not right with this midnight meeting at their dead best friend’s empty grave, the dirt of which is still dug up. Hanna calls Nate to check on Emily …

… who is sleeping soundly under the blanket Nate covered her up with when she dozed off at the lighthouse cabin. An old rotary phone rings and I guess Mona got her hands on a new vocal modulator because this devil voice goes, “YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! STARTING NOW!” So she hops up and starts rifling through Nate’s bag, which is Rule Number One in the Lying Liars Handbook of Weird Shit Happening. Just, like, start searching for clues. She finds the note Nate said he’d send to Maya’s parents on her behalf back in episode 302. And when Nate returns from collecting firewood, she recognizes his paint-stained hiking boots. Yes, those same paint-stained hiking boots showed up in a photo with Maya from Tru North. The music goes, “CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE IT?!?!?” And every lesbian on this earth is like, “GIRL, WE TOLD YOU!”

Emily says she’s not feeling well, that she’s going to take a walk and get some fresh air and see if maybe she can find a therapist buried in the back yard to talk to about her feelings. Nate’s like, “OK, cool, but wear your jacket. I want your organs to be warm when I harvest them in a minute.”

The Liars decide Paige and Mona aren’t coming, after all, that Paige sent them to Ali’s grave so she could … have Emily all to herself? At a cabin with Nate? Caleb takes off for the lighthouse in Belmar and the Liars take off for the lighthouse in Berksomething and did we even know Rosewood is situated near a body of water?

Nate follows Emily outside, jumps out from behind a tree, all, “BOOO!” and when she says he scared he half to death, he’s like, “Not yet, precious.”

He drags her inside and forces her to watch a video of Maya explaining that she’s been hiding in Noel’s cabin, but that she’s coming home and she knows she can make it through whatever lies ahead as long as Emily is by her side. The whole time, Nate is stabbing the table with a knife and grinning. When the video is over, Emily is like, “What are you doing with this thing?” He’s like, “I killed her, dummy. Don’t you ever read AfterEllen.com?” He monologues like a pro about how Emily took Maya, but then, irony of ironies, she gave Maya back a little bit with herself, but there’s still a price to pay for her thievery and that price is someone she loves. And then this motherfucker opens up the closet door and pulls out Paige McCullers, bound and gagged. I thought, when I saw it, I’d never stop typing in CAPS LOCK for as long as I lived. Even on a show where one lesbian dies every other episode, that’s the real-est shit has ever gotten.

While all of this world-class villainy is going down, the Liars are headed to one lighthouse and Caleb is headed to another lighthouse and Ezra is at home eating bundt cake and watching Loony Toons reruns on Boomerang.

Apparently Emily anticipated that a thing like this would probably happen to her at least once in her life because she knows exactly how to talk to a terrorist. She learns his real name – Lyndon James – and uses it to calmly offer him various exit strategies. But he’s consumed with bloodlust, so Emily grabs her phone and makes a break for it, leaving Paige duct taped to the couch. (I’ma take a second to give some serious props to Lindsey Shaw for conveying a dozen emotions with only her eyeballs while her face was taped shut. Fear for Emily and fear for herself and pleading for Emily to know she loves her and is sorry she managed to Paige-up another thing. I’ve never wanted to jump through the TV and rescue someone so badly in all my life.) Anyway, so Emily just fully abandons her there and runs to the very top of a lighthouse and calls 911, but Lyndon James arrives before she can state the nature of her emergency.

The first time I interviewed Shay Mitchell, she said her dream was to be an action star, and she killed this scene, man. Emily scuffles and rumbles and tumbles with Nate. They throw punches. They slam into things. Finally they smash into each other and Emily stabs him in the chest. Caleb shows up with his gun, like, “I should have known. Ladies are their own knights in shining armor on this show. But how about a post-murder hug?” He plops down his gun and wraps his arms around Emily and KAPOW!

Sigh. So cliche. Lesbian character struggles with her sexuality, comes out of the closet, gets a girlfriend, girlfriend dies, dead girlfriend’s stalker comes to town claiming to be dead girlfriend’s cousin, lesbian bonds with dead girlfriend’s faux cousin, lesbian falls in love with another lesbian, lesbian mistakes dead girlfriend’s faux cousin for dead girlfriend, lesbian kisses dead girlfriend’s faux cousin, lesbian’s friends accuse new lesbian of killing old lesbian, faux cousin confesses to killing old lesbian, lesbian stabs faux cousin to death with a knife. Same old “lesbian goes straight” story, different day, am I right? 

PRESENT (DOOMS)DAY:

God, this is so well acted I don’t even know. So, Spencer and Aria try to comfort Hanna as Caleb is loaded into an ambulance. Looks like Lyndon James fired off a shot that struck Caleb in the chest before he died his dumb ass dead. Hanna is inconsolable and really, truly, the only person who understands is Emily. She can’t hear the police questions over the sound of Hanna’s heart breaking, so Paige – who explains to some more police that Lydon snagged her on the way to Ali’s grave after she received an anonymous text threatening to hurt Emily – sees what’s happening and swoops in to distract the detectives. Emily rushes to Hanna and they embrace across the police tape.

Spencer and Paige stare at each other in a way that’s full of sorrow and understanding and residual anger and will launch a hundred thousand McHastings fanfictions in the off season. Just you wait and see.

Roswood Hospital. While Caleb is still in with famed cardiothoracic neurosurgeon Dr. Wren, the Liars get a call from “A” who just wants to say thanks, and that she owes Emily a solid. Even more distressing is the fact that that Veronica shows up, all, “Emily, I know it must suck that you and your girlfriend were kidnapped by a stalker claiming to be the cousin of one of your dead girlfriends and so then you had to kill him to death to save both of your lives, but I think the important thing to remember is that you helped Garrett Reynolds get out of jail.” And indeed she has dragged him along to the hospital to smile smarmily at Spencer.

At Radley, the most glorious thing. OK, so Mona’s deal was that she was trying to frame Paige as Maya’s killer. She planted Maya’s cell phone on her and arranged that midnight meet-up with the Liars and Paige so she could call the phone and the Liars would be like, “Gah! Murderer!” Like, just for giggles, she was doing that shit. Or maybe to get Garrett out of jail, she was doing it. Maybe for both. But the plan got thwarted by Nate’s whole kidnapping machinations. So she’s walking with new “A,” just sort of yawning about how she would have stayed in and read Glamour tonight if she’d known some other nutter was doing her dirty work for her. She tells new “A” to get Maya’s cellphone back from Paige and that she’ll see him real soon.

New “A” is like, “You got it, boss.” And then he turns toward the camera and he is Toby Cavenaugh. TOBY CAVENAUGH. BOO RADLEY VAN CULLEN IS NEW A! Is he the one who ran Caleb’s mom off the road? Is the the one who sipped vodka from the same freezer as Ali’s body? Oh man, is he the one who rescued Spencer from that belfry that time? Has he been poking at the Liars while poking Spencer? Good twist. Gooooood twist. I originally thought he was doing triple-agent duty, but now I want to think he’s been A-Teaming it all along, only he accidentally fell in love with Spencer along the way. Either way, Spencer has been shrieking about Paige’s guilt for so long and now it turns out she is the one who’s been sleeping with the enemy. It’s just the kind of poetic justice she’d love to tackle in an AP English essay. 

You thought the most amazing thing Toby was ever going to do with his body is that time he threw his “talk to the hand” hand at Hanna, but that display of fine motor skills is nothing – nothing! – on the way he skulks up the road in his A-uniform, finally breaking into a run and swerving around the corner with his hands flailing out to the side like an airplane.

The Risen Mitten orders a couple of tickets to the Halloween episode. October 23rd cannot come soon enough.

Before I sign off for the summer, I want to thank you guys for playing along this season. Watching this show together, sharing inside jokes and laughing and crying and shrieking together is a singular experience. I don’t know any other TV recapper who gets to enjoy such a sense of community in what they do. I also want to shout out the PLL cast and creatives who read and promote these recaps. I am still mystified that these crazy talented, crazy busy people make themselves so accessible to AfterEllen. I hope we never forget how rare and wonderful they are. And, of course, an enormous thank you to my screencapping partner Maggie (@MargaretRosey), who made my life so so so much better this season. If you’re only around for PLL, I’ll see you in October. But if you’re a regular AE-er, I’ll see you real soon when I start recapping Glee season four.

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