Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Ashley and Hanna continued the Bonnie and Cylde routine they started back in season one, but robbing trains and widows had gotten so tiresome they decided to up the ante by killing a police detective and burying his car in a trout pond. Emily drove all around town looking for ways to prove that Toby is not on the A-team, but all she got for her effort was a smashed up BEAUTIFUL TOYOTA window and a tour of Rosewood’s 24-hour sawmill. Spencer chased Emily to tell her to stop chasing Toby, but wound up on a teddy bear picnic with Mona Vanderwaal and every bear that ever there was gathered there for certain because: Boo Radley was dead on the forest floor. She stumbled around in the woods for the whole night, muttering about Horcruxes and hide-and-seek and alphabetizing and re-alphabetizing former Soviet republics before a park ranger found her and delivered her to Radley Sanitorium. Aria, meanwhile, babysat.
Rosewood High School courtyard. Mona is pretending to touch up her makeup, but really she is just checking the safety on the lipstick pistol she acquired when she time-jumped into the body of a Cold War KGB agent one afternoon last week when she got bored and nothing good was on HBO. She peeps the Liars looking more freaked out than usual of a Wednesday morning, and smirks to herself because she knows …
… Spencer is missing. The Liars can’t decide how worried they should be, actually. Junior year, Spencer misses school, just go ahead and assume someone has chopped off her head. Senior year, though, she spends three school days out of five lounging around the house in her Nana’s old cardigans, looking real hard at stuff, trying to get it to burst into flames. If she doesn’t show up this afternoon, unshowered and shouting at Andrew and/or Mona, or if she doesn’t respond to any of their texts, they’ll kick their search into high gear. You know, now might be a good time for these guys to reevaluate the content of their SOS texts. They never say where they are, or what clues they’ve uncovered, or how much they’re bleeding, or what grown man propositioned them for sex, or who it is that is now dead/hospitalized. It’s just, “SOS! xx, Em.” Which: “Something terrible has happened again! Love you!” That is not helpful rescue information!
Well, but suddenly, Melissa Hastings is concerned about the well-being of her little sister, because she shows up at school all frantic and red-eyed and, “You girls always tell each other about your little schemes and hallucinations and kidnappings.” They say they don’t know anything, and you can tell neither Melissa nor Principal Hackett(?) believe them, so they trot off to call the police.
But Spencer is OK. She’s playing cards at Radley Institute for the Criminally Insane like a regular old Mona Vanderwaal. It cannot be said enough times, in enough ways, at enough volume that Troian Bellisario is an absolute marvel this season, and the fact that she will be overlooked for any major “grown-up” acting awards because PLL is on ABC Family is absolutely criminal. If she was giving this kind of performance on an AMC or Showtime or HBO show, she’d be pulling down trophy noms left and right. Criminal, I said. Anyway, Spencer gets a visit from the most gorgeous man in Rosewood: Eddie the Nurse. She asks why she’s there and he tells her it’s because she has amnesia, and also, despite all spooky evidence to the contrary – including that terrifying doll parts hospital we know is in the basement – she’s much better off here than she would be at the county asylum (which is, of course, full at this moment and all moments because this is Rosewood, PA).
After Eddie dresses Spencer’s face wounds and promises to get her some extra tapioca pudding, she goes back to her card game, pausing to smirk at the wall and whisper into the night, “Radley.”
This script by Joseph Dougherty is so masterful that I’ve had perpetual chills running up my spine for the last 16 hours.
After school, the Liars reconvene to talk about their rescue mission for Spencer. Aria Montgomery says some shit this episode, y’all. For example: “Ugh, like I need anything else to worry about right now. Last week, my boyfriend’s kid fell off the bed. This week, I couldn’t find a skull-and-crossbones outfit I hadn’t worn yet, so this is my second time in this blouse. How much trauma can a person be expected to handle?” Hanna can barely even spare an eyeroll before Emily Spencers into action, grabbing them by their shirt collars and explaining the plan: hit up every bookstore in town, every place that sells shovels, visit the graves of the dead people Spencer knew to see if she carved any clues into their headstones. Stay in touch. Stay safe. Do not drink anything out of a poisoned flask or visit a diner in the 1940s and do not, for the love of God, do not even think about getting into a car with Jenna Marshall.
Spencer is still playing cards at Radley. She pulls the Joker from the deck, stares at his face, stares at his bike, wonders if her ever carved a rocking chair for the girl he loved, plays it on the Queen of Hearts.
Over carrot sticks and talk of pretzels, Ashley and Hanna discuss the still-missing body of Detective Wilden. Ashely is getting more distraught by the second that news of his demise has not yet reached the local paper, but Hanna helpfully suggests that she’ll know about his death long before the Rosewood Gazette does, because they’ll only find out after the cops have handcuffed Ashley and carted her away to prison. The phone rings; it’s Pastor Ted. He wants to go for coffee, but Ashley can’t even consider consuming caffeine with a man of the cloth while she’s got murder written all over her face. Hanna is like, “Of course she’ll meet you, Pastor Ted!”
Aria looked for Spencer at the bookstore for a whopping 30 seconds before rushing over to Ezra’s to see if maybe she was hiding under his bed. Poor Ezra is not having a very good day either. His enemy, and, in fact, everyone’s enemy is: math. He smashes away on a calculator, all, “It’s like no amount of writing poetry prepares you for the Pythagorean theorem!” Aria caresses his back and says, “Honey, just tell those hypotenuses how you feel.” The main thing he is stressed out about is money because being a freelance writer means you have to choose between buying peanut butter and bread most weeks and that’s no way to raise a child. Aria’s like, “You think that’s a handful? You should have seen the way I had to contort the toothpaste tube to get any toothpaste out this morning. My life is a disaster right now.”
The guests of Radley Institute’s day room are enjoying a piano concerto, which is of course being presented by Spencer Hastings. One of the girls is hilariously playing a half-assed game of checkers with her head resting on the table, bored out of her mind, like they probably all are since Mona stopped doing her makeup seminars. A lady creeps up behind Spencer and says her name and you’re hoping with all your heart that it’s Wren dressed in drag doing his morning rounds at the mental health care clinic before rushing over to Rosewood General for an afternoon of neurosurgery – but no, it is Dr. Sullivan. Spencer turns around on her piano stool, blinks, goes, “Ollie ollie oxen free!”
Pastor Ted quotes some Emerson on the church’s marquee while Jamie Doyle climbs around on the roof and refinishes the steeple and prepares for the delivery of the new church bell and also cuts down a whole bunch of rogue nooses. It’s all, “Hey, Hanna.” “Hi, Ted.” “Good to see you, Ashley.” “‘Sup, Wilden.”
Whaaaat? Yes, Wilden. Sadly, he is not dead on the forest floor stuffed into Toby’s motorcycle helmet and tatted up with Toby’s signature ink. He’s walking around in broad daylight with that smarm on his face, looking exactly the same as he did before he got run under. The way he reappears is so amazing. Hanna and Ashley and Ted are in the churchyard just exchanging salutations when he walks up and goes, “Hello, everyone. I have returned from a fishing excursion. It was not quite as successful or satisfying as my police work, although I have found that both hobbies are quite similar. Goodbye.” And then he walks away.
Pastor Ted’s Emerson quote: “Commit a crime and the world is made of glass.”
Emerson also famously said: “The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.” Which, when translated into Rosewoodese, means: “The creepiest tunes are played on the blindest flutes.”
At Radley, Dr. Sullivan is trying to understand why Spencer crawled around in the woods eating bugs and faked her own amnesia, and Spencer goes, “Have you ever not been Spencer Hastings for a full 24 hours? It’s actually kind of orgasmic.” Why doesn’t she want to be Spencer Hastings? Oh, because she fell in love with someone who was secretly torturing her and her best friends and even though she hates him for it she also loves him for who she thought he was and now he’s dead and according to the orchids that arrived at her door last week so is Emily and God only knows what fresh hell Hanna and Aria have managed to create for themselves while Spencer has lost focus. Dr. Sullivan goes, “OK, I’m going to call your parents and then I’m going to call the police. Savvy?” Spencer laughs, raw and high, and goes, “I may be crazy, but even I know I don’t have parents.”
Aria decides the best way to help Ezra is to complete his emasculation and ask her dad to give him a job. She’s visits him in his study and puts on her sweetest face and says, “Listen, I know this town has an exemplary record of employing adults to work with students, what with Meredith the history teacher who konked me over the head and locked me in my basement and Harold the janitor who built a shrine to Mona in the basement and, well, you, but I was wondering if you can get Ezra a job. Until someone commodifies feelings, he’s flat broke.”
Spencer is slouched on a Radley couch, fully out of fucks to give about her sister, who cries and cries and says all these years when Spencer was stealing her boyfriends and beating her at hide-and-seek and murdering her husband and stashing him in a barn and texting as his ghost, she thought Spencer was just being an asshole. She didn’t know she was medically insane. Spencer shrugs, says, “I guess knowing is a relief for both of us, then,” and Melissa runs out of the room in tears to go call their “parents,” who are trapped in the Out of Town portal between Great Britain and Spain.
The best part of this episode to me is Spencer trying to figure out whether or not she’s actually bananas and/or whether or not her life will be easier if she just lets go and allows the banananess to swallow her whole. Watching her unravel all these weeks, it’s just proof that these questions about her sanity have been lurking in her periphery for her whole entire Hastings life. She got the original question right: A was Toby, and now she’s spent two years of her life getting every other question wrong because she didn’t know she guessed correctly the very first time. But finding out she was right about that meant she was wrong about something way worse, and so she stopped holding the world together for just a second because she couldn’t wrap her brain around how wrong being right felt and someone she loved died. Is she crazy now? Was she crazy then? Can she just go crazy if she stops fighting? Will she be able to breathe then?
Emily convenes a meeting of the Liars at the Brew to tell them the good news/bad news of the last 24 hours. Good: Spencer is alive. Bad: She’s locked up at Radley. Before they can dive into the whositswhatsits, A texts a police car video screencap of Wilden and Ashley clenching their fists at each other on that abandoned road before she smashed him with her car.
Eddie visits Spencer with some meds – shotgun antibiotics, not tranquilizers. She’s getting evaluated in 72 hours and she doesn’t need to be tripping balls when she tries to convince her assessment team that she’s not insane. Little does Eddie know that the Radley Board of Directors consists solely of Anne and Wren, one of whom is very pretty but the worst therapist in the history of the world, and the other of whom is very pretty but likes Spencer best when she’s unhinged/intoxicated. As Eddie is bidding her a fond good evening, Spencer notices Eddie’s name badge. Eddie is Eddie Lamb. E Lamb. E Lamb.
OK, so Ashley Marin is up for a job promotion that will take her to Manhattan. On the plus side, NYC boasts 97 percent less murders per year than Rosewood. On the down side, bank security is much tighter. She’s thinking of bailing on her interview because she doesn’t want to leave Hanna alone at home because there’s been a ghost twin lurking around upstairs since Halloween, and also Wilden very seriously threatened to shoot Hanna with his gun just a couple of days ago, and also just regular homicidal shenanigans that come with living in this town. Hanna says she’ll stay with Emily for a couple of days, which is incorrect! The correct answer is to bring back Mamaw Marin for the duration of this season! She can sing at whoever’s funeral and say more things about wiping dew from lilies!
Emily corners Dr. Sullivan on the street and asks if there’s such a thing as client-patient privilege, and Dr. Sullivan fully snorts before telling her all the crazy shit Spencer’s been saying at Radley, including how she found Toby’s dead body in the woods. Toby’s parents cannot be reached for confirmation or comment, though. Then Dr. Sullivan goes, “But anyway, last time I saw you, you’d broken out of that hypnosis where I was convincing you that you murdered Ali, and the time before that when I saw you, I just randomly showed up at the scene of the accident where Spencer threw Mona off a cliff, and the time before that when I saw you, it was just my boots buried in the dirt near the place where you were making out with your dead girlfriend’s ghost. How ya been, girl?”
Ella and Byron do some Ezria black ops at school, meeting up in the night to discuss whether or not it’s a good idea to help him get a job and stabilize his family. “Good” as in “Do you think it’ll break up him and Aria?” Ella is skeptical on account of they’ve already done this storyline three times and she’d much rather be making out with her hot barista boyfriend than doing secret meetings with Byron in the night. Also, their son has been missing for months, so maybe they should tackle that before they start meddling in Aria’s lesbian love life again.
Boo! Radley! “No, no, no, no, no, that’s not right,” is what Spencer sobs into her hands as Dr. Sullivan tries to convince her that Toby is still alive. She’s like, “Hold still and let me hypnotize you,” but Spencer cracks because she finally remembers that the best thing about being Spencer Hastings is the part where she doesn’t have to face down the cruelness of the world or the demons in her head by herself. She keeps Aria and Hanna and Emily safe, yeah. But Aria and Hanna and Emily keep her safe too. She asks when she can see them, breaks and says please. When Anne says no, Spencer says, “Tell them I miss them.”
Goddammit, you stupid A-team! I hate your ass faces!
Former Paige-scissorer and current costume shop employee Shana texts Emily to meet her at the Brew because – get a load of this – Shana met adorable Olympian Missy Franklin in an airport in Colorado and then saw her again when they landed in Philly and then invited her to drive to the homicide capital of the northeast to meet a friend of hers who swims for her high school. And Missy Franklin got in the car and came here. On the one hand, what in the world? But on the other hand, just watching her swim in London this summer, didn’t you kind of get the idea that she was just sweet and naive enough to go with a hippie to a second location? Emily is starstruck in the most hilarious way. They talk about whatever swim things before Missy has to catch her flight back home, and after she’s gone, Shana is like, “When Paige wasn’t telling you how she boned me, I guess she also wasn’t telling you I am a swimmer too? That was weird of her.”
What’s so amazing and correct about this situation is that Shana is super hot and super charming enough to pull Missy Franklin, but instead of making a play for her, she offers America’s swimming sweetheart up to Emily in exchange for Paige McCullers. Missy: These are my four gold medals. Paige: These cupcakes taste like old pennies. Missy: I represented my country in the official Games of the 30th Olympiad. Paige: I accidentally roofied you. Missy: I call baby pigs “tiny snorfers.” Paige: I will literally fucking kill whoever dicked with you that night of a thousand nights.
I’d choose Paige McCullers too. Any day forever.
At Radley, Eddie Lamb dresses Spencer’s wounds some more and she casually asks him if anyone has ever lost a name badge, and if the name badges also serve as some sort of microchip security clearance, and, hypothetically, if a person were to steal a nurse’s name badge, would they then have access to even the highest risk inmates down on the doll parts floor so that they could carry out the nefarious biddings of said inmates out in the world. Eddie Lamb goes, “You’re asking the kind of questions that could get me fired and also that make me love you – in a platonic, friendly, non-pedophile-like way, for once in your life – but I can’t really answer you at this time in the episode.” He offers her more pudding as a condolence, but I for one am just consoled by the fact that the sleuthing spark was back in Spencer’s eye for even a second.
Spencer tells Eddie Lamb that she knew a guy named Toby that had a badge for Radley and probably he came here to talk to Mona Vanderwaal. Eddie Lamb looks like when you’ve seen the face of God, or been psychologically terrorized by the devil, or both. He says he can’t really talk about it, but that Mona Vanderwaal actually stayed in this very room.
There’s a carving in the desk to prove her presence. It says, “Will the circle be unbroken?”
Flashback: Rosewood Presbyterian Church (because Mona and Ali would believe in predestination). The congregation sings “Will the Circle be Unbroken?” Among them: Past Mona, with her adorable nerd glasses and nerd cardigans as the Spirit moves her to make a joyful noise and adorable hand motions unto the Lord. Past Spencer, singing huskily and making lesbians everywhere think very ungodly thoughts. And Ali, clowning on the way Mona is worshiping her Lord and Savior. If it turns out Ali really is alive, it will be even more impressive than I originally thought since she apparently escaped from a new circle of hell that Satan created just for her.
Outside, Ali keeps it up with the horribleness. Like, not since shaming Khaki Paige about her sexuality have we seen her act so gross. She mocks Mona and calls her a loser and then tells Spencer she’s been keeping diaries just for her, because she’ll be going away soon and she wants Spencer to take over for her, but before all that, how about a freshly baked muffin?
Has this whole entire A thing, from the very very beginning, been about Ali recruiting Spencer? Well, sod off, A-team, SPENCER BELONGS TO US! Er, no. To the Liars. Spencer belongs to the Liars. SOD OFF ANYWAY, YOU WANKERS.
Ezra’s Cake and Cuddle Emporium. Byron has stopped by for some tea and and a chat about fatherhood. Ezra’s like, “Just so you know, I did not, in any way, indicate to Aria that I need your help finding a job.” And Byron goes, “Obviously. I’m just trying to make amends to God for being the worst. I mean, if Alison DiLaurentis can do it …” Byron says all the teaching jobs at Hollis are taken, but he has some other ideas.
Back at Radley, Spencer is playing her and Ali’s jam on the piano when Eddie Lamb drops by to ask about her friend who stole the badge that gave him access to Mona Mania. She says his name was Toby. Eddie Lamb says Toby is the rarest name in all the land, and in fact he’s only ever known one Toby: The Toby child who used to come visit his mother in this criminal asylum. OK: a) That is a huge reveal. How did we not know that? I think Annabeth Gish is Toby’s mom more than ever now. And b) My first word was “Toby.” I don’t know if I ever told y’all that. It was the name of my grandparents’ shih tzu. I’ve also known two other dogs named Toby. Three Tobys total. All dogs, though. No abs, no chins, no rocking chairs. Maybe it’s only rare as a human name?
The Liars debrief the latest Spencer news in the bathroom at school and Aria literally says, “Turns out you weren’t the weak link after all, Em! Congratulations!” Like. Just. Right out loud Aria Montgomery said those words to a girl who has lost multiple girlfriends and now her best friend to the A-team. Mona wanders in to check her makeupand Aria very nearly redeems herself by launching her tiny body at Mona’s tiny body. She says if Spencer doesn’t make it out of Radley she’s gonna throw Mona over that cliff again, and this time it’ll stick. No sooner have the words left her mouth than the principal pages her to his office. Aria’s face is great. She gawks at Mona slack-jawed, like, “How did you make that happen so fast?!” And Mona just hums her approval.
The principal wants to know if Aria is seeing Ezra Fitz, in the biblical way, anymore. Because they can’t hire him to be a substitute teacher if they’re doing sexes to each other. I don’t know why people keep acting like there have ever been any competent adults at this school except for Ella and Coachprah. I mean, clearly this place doesn’t have hiring standards. Even Jason DiLaurentis is on the payroll and he only lives In Town ten days a year. Anyway, Aria says she and Ezra are not a couple, even though none of this matters because Malcom is going to kill Ezra in his sleep before the week is up.
After Eddie Lamb leaves Spencer, another visitor appears, bearing the gift of cookies in a red tin. It’s a Mona-shaped visitor. She’s like, “Nice hair, Hastings.” And Spencer is like, “Nice throat I’m about to choke again, bitch.”
God, these two are so good together. And this writing is so tight. I can’t do this scene justice. Spencer’s rasps, “Why did you kill Toby?” And Mona’s eyes are the only thing that acknowledge the question. She says if she killed Toby, and oh, she’s so blase about the whole murder thing, but if she killed Toby, it is Spencer’s fault for not accepting her A-team invitation months ago. Oh, and P.S. Ali wasn’t pregnant. Oh, and P.P.S. Mona has all of Ali’s old diaries, scanned and ready for reading on her iPad. Oh, and P.P.P.S. She’s got answers to questions Spencer has never even thought of. It’s like the ultimate Ravenclaw face-slap!
She follows Spencer over to the piano and goes, “You know puzzles? I’ve been thinking: You’ve got bits and pieces. I’ve got bits and pieces. Let’s get together and make our bits and pieces feel all right.”
Then she fully quotes Luna Lovegood, talking about, “Don’t worry, Spence, you’re just as sane as I am.”
Ashley drops Hanna off at Emily’s house with seventeen pieces of luggage for a three-day weekend, and as soon as she pulls away (please don’t die, Ashley!) Wilden comes driving up. I really like the way this is filmed and edited. Emily tells Hanna not to take the bait and Hanna goes, “Sometimes you poke the bear and sometimes the bear pokes you.” Emily’s face goes, “Whaaaat?” And Hanna huffs, “It’s from a movie” and walks right out of the frame.
All Wilden wants is his car back. Hanna’s like, “You said you had some fishing equipment?”
In group therapy, Spencer – nah, I actually can’t recap this. It’s too good. I’m just going to transcribe it:
Spencer: I knew who I was when they found me. I knew that my family and friends would be worried. I just – I wanted to fold up and stop. I didn’t want to think anymore. I wasn’t Spencer Hastings for a whole day and nobody else showed up to take the job, so, I guess I’m stuck with it.
Dr. Sullivan: Because you’re the only person in the world that can be you.
Spencer: You don’t have to rub it in. I’m sorry, this can’t be entertaining. There are people here with real problems.
Dr. Sullivan: Just like you.
Spencer: Yeah. Just like me. I, um. I fell down. In the woods. When I was running, I fell down and I looked at the ground and I saw my hand and my sleeve and the little button on my sleeve and some dirt and an old acorn, and I said to myself, “OK, if this is the last thing I ever see, I can handle that. I’m done. I’ve had enough.” But it wasn’t the last thing that I saw. I just kept going. How do you keep going when the worst thing has happened? What do you have to change, inside, to survive? Who do you have to become? I’m sorry. I don’t expect you guys to understand. You don’t know me.
And then. AND THEN. She hallucinates Aria and Hanna and Emily sitting across the room from her, and she breaks up with them: “I’m sorry, but that’s true. You don’t know who I am anymore. And you can’t count on me.” Her face, when she says it out loud: shock, relief, the loss of all hope. It’s breathtaking. Bellisario + Dougherty: stealing the breath from your actual body. Listen, if you don’t watch this show, like if you’re only in it for the recaps, do yourself a favor and pull up this scene on Hulu. Even the way Troian punctuates her words with her body is mesmerizing.
The Risen Mitten books some tickets for a carnival and then hops into the driver’s seat in his/her brand new Murdermobile and drives on down the road. A portable lair. Of course. Of course. Genius.
A badrillion thank yous to my screencapping partner Maggie (@MargaretRosey) who has some real photographic goodies coming your way in the next few weeks.
