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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (4.23): Nice day for a Red Wedding

Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Spencer remembered that she didn’t remember most of the summer Ali went missing, due to whatever hallucinogens that really loud pharmacist adds to Adderall in Rosewood. One thing she did remember, however, was that she bashed Ali or someone who looks like Ali right in the face with a shovel, a thing that was apparently known by literally everyone in the very incestuous Hastings-DiLaurentis clan. Aria told Ezra to take a hike off the edge of the world. Hanna didn’t get the memo that Caleb’s show was cancelled. And Emily found out that Paige narced on Ali to the Rosewood PD.

Spencer is walking through the woods in the middle of the night in a wedding gown, stopping on a dime when she hears the sound of a steel trap snapping shut and Mona Vanderwaal’s voice echoing in the night, “…today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.”

48 hours earlier:

At the Brew, the Liars download the latest crimes they’ve been complicit in committing. Spencer: Still thinks she killed Ali. Emily: Has tried and convicted Paige of treason in the courtroom of her own mind. Hanna: Is the best, no crimes committed. Aria: Fashion offenses, mostly. They’re split on whether Mrs. D can actually be A, unanimous that Paige should be dealt a swift hand of justice, and Spencer is flying solo in her worries about being a killer. The Liars are like, “Ali is alive; stop worrying about it.” And Spencer is all, “Yeah, OK, but there is a teenage girl in her grave, and due to the mask situation and the way everyone in Rosewood was wearing that one yellow shirt that summer and the train station amount of traffic that was in Ali’s backyard the night she died, I probably killed at least someone.”

Emily has had enough of everything. She snaps that it’s time for her to go and since Spencer is her ride, it’s time for Spencer to go too.

Outside, Emily and Spencer try to flag down Jason, who flat ignores them and zooms away in his car. Spencer tries to chase after him; she doesn’t want him to get to the end of the only road in Rosewood and hit the Out of Town portal without giving her some answers – but her car won’t start because someone has jammed the ignition with a roll of film: a faceless blonde girl and a note talking about, “Nice job killing me, jerk.”

The next morning, Ella’s voice rings calm and true like a messenger of the Lord, over the phone with Aria. She’s slightly concerned that a visit to a potential college resulted in her and Byron financing a bender for Aria and a grifter with a guitar. She’s pretty sure it has something to do with Ezra because of how everything in Aria’s life for the last two years has had something to do with Ezra (you said a mouthful, there, lady), but Aria refuses to talk about it on the phone. Ella says that’s OK because the calling is coming from inside the house! Ella! Welcome home from Donut Castle! We almost died without you!

Oh, man! And Ashley Marin is back too! Merry Christmas! God bless us, everyone! She’s prepping for the bridal fashion show Mrs. D is throwing to raise money for homeless parrots, which reminds Hanna: “Do you ever wonder why Mrs. D hired you, fresh out of prison? Like, do you think it was her idea or did she consult with the ghost of her dead daughter?” Ashley rolls her eyes and tells Hanna not to spill her Cheerios all over the wedding magazines.

At school, Emily is still just a-bitchin’ about her bitch-ass girlfriend when Paige walks right in on the conversation. Spencer slices through the awkwardness with a machete and escapes through the window.

Emily: How was your family in Maine, the land where smart phones aren’t very smart or else girls would call their girlfriends. Paige: The way you’re italicizing random words like you’re in a comic book makes me think you’re about to punch me in the face. Emily: Like you punched Alison in the face? Paige: I beg your pardon. Emily: I know about the note that wrote to the police. You’ve been running a long con on me for years, hoping Alison would really be alive, flying around in her airplane, wearing a mask of her own face, a porcelain doll as her co-pilot, wanting me to lead you to her so you can get your revenge for the way she almost caused your internalized homophobia to kill you.

Paige: Are you drunk right now? Are you under the Imperius Curse? Emily: You sold out Alison! Paige: Unlike you and your best buds, I don’t have an inexplicable loyalty to the girl who made my life a hellscape of insecurity and loneliness for multiple years. Emily: And apparently you don’t have any loyalty to me either! Paige: Yeah, it must really suck alpaca nuts when your girlfriend isn’t loyal to you. Can’t imagine what that must feel like.

Emily marches her beautiful, demon possessed ass right out of that bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

Hanna spies Travis pushing a library trolly around the hallways, which somehow makes him even more adorable and I thought about #AwwwTravis-ing it for five seconds like ABC Family suggested, but they I read that Caleb is coming back next season and so my heart closed right up to anyone who isn’t my beautiful hobo. But Hanna’s heart is bigger and more pliable than mine could ever hope to be. She apologizes for blowing him off the other night due to her secret life as a private investigator/victim of perpetual assault. His feelings are hurt, so he ignores her, but you can hear the thoughts in his brain the whole time he’s walking away, all, “Stupid, stupid, stupid, she was trying to ask you out on another date!”

Over at the DiLaurentis place, Jessica sends Ashley upstairs to look for some place cards when she sees Detective Holbrook pull up in his squad car.

So, outside: Holbrook tells Jessica that they’re going to exhume Ali’s remains to see if it really is Ali inside that coffin because what’s weirding him out is that Ali apparently had a broken arm (from slapping a baby in the face too hard, no doubt) but the coroner didn’t report a broken arm on the body in Ali’s grave. Jessica is mad as shit that he’s gonna dig up that grave again because, assuming she really is A, she’s done plucked all the teeth and (spoiler alert) finger bones from that skeleton, which is just another in a litany of federal offenses she’s committed. She tells Holbrook to scram and stop making that face, which kind of hurts his feelings ’cause that face is just his face.

And, upstairs: Ashley finds a bag of new clothes in Ali’s room, just purchased yesterday, and in case you are confused about what you’re looking at, she says out loud, “Clothes in Ali’s room! That were just purchased yesterday!” Jessica appears in a cloud of green smoke and snaps, “Does this look like the guest room where I told you to find the place cards??” (It does not. It looks like a shrine to a dead girl.)

Emily corners Jason at school and demands to know why he ran off last night when he clearly heard Spencer and Emily yelling at him. It’s because he’s feeling a loyalty to his mom these days because of something that happened in rehab and also because he keeps flashing back to a thing he doesn’t want to talk to Spencer about. To wit:

Jason: [Stoned and half-asleep on the couch, as reliable as ever in his backwards narration.] Jessica: Look, if you’re getting bullied via text message, you find out who the shit is doing it and you throw a firecracker at their head, you feel me? Alison: This beeswax, like all beeswax, is none of your beeswax. Jessica: You think it’s Spencer threatening you? You think she’s mad because I made your dumb brother with her dumb father and then let dumb Melissa have incest with him? Alison: Don’t make me hold my breath, lady. Jessica: Let me see your phone. Jason, from the couch: [Giggles] Jessica: Ugh, this fucker. How long you been eavesdropping, twat?
Emily is like, “Well, why were you eavesdropping, twat? Are you in league with that shitbird Paige McCullers, tryin-a get Ali killed? Is that why you left me in that elevator shaft?” He looks at her like she’s a full-on mental basket, gets in his car, drives away.

Spencer isn’t sleeping well in her own bedroom because of Mrs. D standing across the yard staring at her all night long, so she retires to the couch, where Dean Stavros finds her and offers to read her a bedtime story. It must be a real snoozer because next thing you know, Veronica walks in and finds Dean asleep on Spencer’s butt. Well, she fires him right then, you’d better believe it, even though Spencer is like, “Mother, do you think I really slept with this age-inappropriate man? I only do that when it involves one-upping Melissa.” Veronica thinks that’s a pretty valid argument, actually, but she fires Dean Stavros anyway and says she really wishes she’d gone with her gut and hired Mrs. Featherbottom from Scotland.

After Dean Stavros has hit the road, Spencer asks again if Veronica will please just tell her whether or not she murdered Alison. Veronica will not, but she opens up a single memory to her: She was in the backyard cleaning up a bunch of clothes litter. Pants, shirts, shoes, scarves. Alison was cutting through the Hastings’ yard because she was past her curfew. Veronica doesn’t remember her as a brat; she remembers her as a semi-rebellious, super sad teenage girl shouldering the burden of too much insight into the way humans work.

Ali was all, “Melissa and Spencer tried to strangle each other with all their clothes again, huh? Want some help cleaning up?” Veronica did not want help. What she wanted were answers about why it seemed like there were twin (wink, wink) Spencers running around town, one of them being an exemplary student and the other one being a homicidal maniac. Ali shrugged and then homicidal Spencer stepped out of the shadows lookin’ crank and vicious.

Things aren’t going much better, Mother/Daughter relations-wise, over at the Montgomery’s. Aria is trying to find a way to tell Ella about what happened with Ezra without spilling the chickpeas on the True Crime novel. But Ella’s phone keeps buzzing and buzzing. It’s the Pastry Prince and he simply cannot sleep until he talks to Ella. Aria tells her to take the call, then punishes her for taking the call, which is a total teenager move and it actually breaks/warms my heart that Aria only gets to act like this when her mama is around. Don’t you leave us again, Ella Montgomery!

The Liars have reached a dead end trying to trace Ali’s last batch of noodle dollars back to her. They need to get in touch with her to tell her she’s in danger, which: I’m guessing she knows on account of she faked her own death and has been on the run for five years. Hanna’s got a new plan. They’re all going to model dresses for Jessica’s charity bridal show, which will give them unfettered access to Ali’s bedroom, which is something they haven’t been able to secure since Spencer broke in and attacked Veronica a couple of weeks ago during her allergic reaction to OTC meds. No one has a better idea, so they agree.

Bridal show staging room. I don’t want to say “cleavage” but there’s no way to avoid it, so let’s go ahead and get that out of the way right now. Cleavage. So, everyone is dressed like brides and everyone is tasked with a different assignment.

First of all, Aria makes up with Ella, who is so wonderful in every way. I want Ella to hug me so tight. Turns out Pastry Prince was just calling and calling last night because he wanted to know if Ella had dropped the news that he’d proposed marriage to her. Aria is excited for her mom and also for the idea that you can fall in love more than once in your lifetime. Speaking of which marvel: Travis is parking cars at this event and when Hanna asks for his help distracting Mrs. D, he lets one of his co-parkers back up into a mailbox so he’ll have a reason to chat to the mistress of the house. And then he smooches Hanna right on her lips. He really is a dreamy fellow. But also he needs to pack his bags.

Things don’t go super well for Spencer, as you’ll remember from the beginning of the episode. Jason feeds her some bollocks on toast about rehab, something Dean Stavros overhears when he drops by to give Spencer his card. Stavros is like, “That rehab facility that guy said he was in? It shut down years ago.” (Hundreds of years ago. To this day, people claim to hear the screams of the ghosts of the patients who were treated for their Adderall addiction with brain shock therapy, and the tinklings of a phonograph. Some say it is the rumba, the favorite song of lesbian ghosts, dancing a vertical expression of their horizontal desire.) That news is followed up by quite a sight: Mrs. D making a hand-off in the woods to an invisible ninja. Spencer goes chasing after the ninja, screaming, “Ali! Ali! Come back!” Because when a girl is in hiding, the best way to help her out is to shout her name repeatedly as loud as you can.

And that’s when the bear trap claps shut-on Spencer’s veil.

She runs back to the house, caked in mud and blood, to find out that Emily and Hanna have cracked at least one of Ali’s email accounts and arranged a meet-up with her in Philly on this very night. They help her take off her corset because she’s about to puke, and of course her corset is lined with finger bones. They were just grabbing at her tits all night and she didn’t even know it. It’s one of A’s skeeviest moves ever. The hair on my neck has been standing up about it for two days now.

Emily runs home to get some supplies (leave the sweatshirt, pack the gun!) and finds a very sad Paige in her yard when she rushes back out the door.

Emily: Come here to find more ways to try to get Ali killed, bitch? Paige: No, I came here to apologize. I did turn her in to try to protect you, I was telling the truth about that. But I also did it because, as you suspected, the way she fucked me up makes me hate her. Emily: Well, goodbye forever, I guess. Paige: Wait, what? Emily: I have to go; Ali needs me. Paige: Right. Ali needs you. Emily: That’s what I said. Fuck off now, see ya.
If this is the last we see of Paige McCullers-and I hope it’s not for a million reasons; I hope she leaves Rosewood triumphant, even if it’s not with Emily Fields on her arm-I want to tell you something very important. When I was a junior in high school, I wrote my best friend a letter that I now understand was a love letter. We’d been inseparable for so long, spending every minute playing basketball and softball and video games, playing with each other’s hair. But she got this boyfriend and acted like people do when they fall in love. I thought I couldn’t sleep or eat because my feelings were hurt, but really my heart was breaking for the very first time.

I didn’t know I was gay. I just knew I wanted her to be with me and not with him. So I wrote her a letter and told her so. The letter fell out of her pocket in the bathroom on the science hall on a Tuesday morning, and the biggest bully in our school picked it up. By the time the bell rang at the end of the day, every person I knew had that letter in their hands. The bully was the principal’s daughter. She had access to the copy machine in the front office.

I didn’t get bullied in high school, not really, but it was only because I was an all-state athlete. People picked on me plenty. My family was poor. I couldn’t afford trendy clothes or even glasses to correct my very lazy left eye. I had untreated ADHD so my grades were always the pits. I was awkward and gangly and shy and no one’s idea of a homecoming queen. All that and I wrote a letter to another girl in a rural Georgia high school begging her to choose me. My life was hell for a long, long time.

When I realized I was gay, I thought I’d never be able to come out. When I came out to my sister, I didn’t think I’d be able to come out to my best friend. When I came out to my best friend, I didn’t think I’d be able to come out to my parents. My co-workers. My peripheral friends. My super fundamentalist Christian grandparents. I thought if I ever said it out loud, if I said “I’m gay,” the whole world would crumble underneath my feet.

My sister held my hand, and between gasping sobs I came out to my grandparents. My very Baptist grandparents. I said, “I’m gay” and my grandpa said, “I know, honey, and there’s nothing you could ever say or do to make us not love you.”

The first time I kissed another girl, I thought my heart was going to burst right out of my chest. The first time I slept with another girl, I thought my brain was going to explode right out of my head.

I used to hide under my covers and watch clips of The L Word on YouTube, and now I’ve interviewed Jennifer Beals and Mia Kirshner and Laurel Holloman and Erin Daniels and Marlee Matlin and Leisha Hailey. I used to stay up all night reading everything Scribegrrrl had written on AfterEllen, hoping against hope that I might one day have the courage and the skill to write for AfterEllen too. I even had a secret dream of one day telling Scribegrrrl what her words had meant to me, that she was my hero. These days, I’m the senior editor for AfterEllen and last weekend Scribegrrrl and her grrrlfriend both kicked my ass at pool over beers and barbecue. She’s my dear friend. I quote her TLW recaps to her sometimes and she always blushes. I remember them even better than she does because they changed the shape of my world.

The only TV character I have ever seen in all my life who has tripped and fallen and bullied and been bullied and bled and wept and won and won and broken and healed as much as me is Paige McCullers. And if this is it for her, if we never see her again, I just want you to know that I won. In my life, I won. I know it’s not the same as seeing it on TV, but lock this in your pocket and take it in the grave: I was a 16-year-old Paige McCullers. I wrote a letter. I smashed some trash cans. I cut myself open on my own sword and bled all over everyone I ever loved. I failed and failed and failed and failed. And then I won.

Listen to Dumbledore on this one and believe him: It matters not what someone was born, but what they grow to be.

Paige, girl. Call me. Emily, you’re in a time out.

The Liars show up at a warehouse in Philly and so does someone else. They’re like, “What are you doing here?” Please Jesus, let it be Jenna Marshall and Cece Drake and Mona Vanderwaal and three locked and loaded mannequin legs.

The Risen Mitten tracks down Cece Drake, calls the Rosewood PD, eats a Butterscotch.

Next week: F is for Flashbacks.

Thank you a zillion millions to my screencapping partner Maggie (@margaretrosey). Show her some love on Twitter; this season is breaking her beautiful heart. Also, here are her full-size screencaps!

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