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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (1.21): This used to be a funhouse

Let me tell you what I hope, and I haven’t hoped for something like this in – ever, actually, because to everything there is a season and all that, but what I hope is that this show never ends. Like, in ten years when my kids are skirting around the living room on their hoverboards, I want to be like, “Hermione Jane and Katie F–king Fitch, I am not going to ask you again to use your inside voices! Mama is trying to watch her stories!” And my stories will be the eleventh season of Pretty Little Liars.

It’ll be a birthday party episode for Hannah’s son, probably. And the Liars will be in Hannah’s kitchen fussing over the cake and ice cream, and Hannah will be all dodgy when Aria reaches for a certain box of cookies because maybe there’s a zillion dollars in there because Hanna and Ashley have joined forces to take their thievin’ to a whole new level. And Aria will have stopped pretending her fashion sense is “avant garde” by then, so she’ll be wearing clothes from actual outer space. And Emily will be dating whatever supermodel they’ve flown in for her that month, because she may be the sweetest person in the known universe, but Emily Fields ain’t mad at the game. And Spencer maybe took up smoking during her bid for the senate, and so maybe her voice is just a wee bit more husky, which will make it that much more sexy/sinister when she reads the letter from A she found in the fridge saying that one of the party clowns has been rigged with explosives.

Oh, gods of entertainment, I haven’t asked you for anything save letting me live until the end of the Harry Potter series, but won’t you have mercy on my soul and make Pretty Little Liars immortal?

Anyway, apropos of that little fantasy, it’s time for the Rosewood Founders Festival, and apparently those revered explorers of yore were from the same psycho circus planet that boasts the birth of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. The PLLs are at dinner, trying to figure out why, exactly, JennaBot was paying Caleb to creep around Hanna’s house like some kind of Noel Kahn. Spencer is staring out the window all, “Um, someone is watching us.” Which, spoiler alert: is truer than you think, Spence. But the Liars are like, “It’s just the murdery scarecrows for the Founders Festival; calm down.” But really it’s that cop who grassed up Spencer for snogging Ian.

The PLLs lay it out their week as follows: Hanna will get the truth out of Caleb by employing her feminine wiles on him; Aria will concentrate solely on the existence of one, Ezra Fitz; Emily will find a balance between being seduced back into the closet by Paige and being drowned in the pool by Paige; and Spencer will try to neither murder nor be murdered. It’s a solid plan.

Over at Spencer’s place, Mrs. Hastings and Melissa are having tea in the kitchen and talking about whatever you talk about when you are incubating the spawn of the spawn of Satan. “He’s moving! Mother, he’s moving! Oh, I wish Ian were here to feel our baby’s trident-shaped tail thrashing against my womb!” When Spencer arrives, Mrs. Hastings explains the new PR plan, so that when Spencer inevitably goes to trial for the murder of Alison, the townspeople of Rosewood/potential jurors will remember her fondly. For starters, she’s gotta help the Rosewood First Presbyterian Church people set up for the Founders Festival. (Ed: Within the confines of Rosewood, PA and all texts concerning Rosewood, PA, it is understood that the words “presbyterian” and “church” are interchangeable with “Heaven’s Gate” and “cult.”)

Also, the Good Girl Spencer image means no talking to that Boo Radley Van Cullen boy. Spencer is livid that her mother would even suggest such a thing, what with known murderer/statutory rapist, Ian Beelzebub, roaming wily nilly through their house, drinking milk and smarming and impregnating people at his leisure. Mrs. Hastings is like, “Spencer, Boo Radley Van Cullen has a bad reputation and a chin that looks like a little butt. Please just don’t.”

But Spencer does because she’s Spencer. She goes on over to his house, but he kind of agrees with Mrs. Hastings. He thinks they shouldn’t be courting in broad daylight when Spencer has the most conspicuous police officer ever tailing her. I mean, Aria could ride on Emily’s shoulders under a trench coat and they’d still be sneakier than this guy following Spencer around. Boo says he and Spencer should meet in the Founders Day Funhouse, after dark, and because Spencer has never seen a TV show before, she agrees that it’s a great idea.

Ian and Melissa help Spencer help the church set up for the festival, and it comes to pass that the church lady mentions how she will be vacationing in Hilton Head soon. And, I mean, I live really close to Hilton Head, and even here – even in a place where every person I know has vacationed on that island at least ten times – the phrase “Hilton Head” doesn’t get as much play as it does in Pennsylvania. Melissa mentions that the golf course and the ocean are on the same side of that one Hilton Head hotel, and the church lady literally goes, “Oh. The brochure said they were on opposite sides of the hotel.” As if brochures say such things. As if people remember brochures saying such things. As if “brochures” is even a word in 2010 when all vacation information is accessible via web site pages. Anyway, what Spencer hears is, “There was no baby to be aborted; therefore, I was not in Hilton Head with Ian on Alison’s murder weekend.”

Aria “Stealth” Montgomery knows her parents are snooping around in her love life, so she decides the best way not to cause a scene with Mr. Fitz is to spill coffee on his pants in the middle of the hallway in the middle of the morning rush and then lunge for his crotch with a napkin while murmuring coded phrases out of the side of her mouth like, “The tuba-playing mailman will deliver the box of confectionery goodies at 3:00 p.m. according to the clock of the queen.” He’s like, “… right.” And she mops at his groin some more and whispers, “Pad Thai at your place this evening, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.”

At his place, waiting for him to finish his three hundredth lesson on The Great Gatsby in as many days, Aria bumps into Ezra’s laptop, and what to her wondering eyes should appear but his web site page. And on his web site page is a photo of him and a girl. A girl with an engagement ring. They’re smiling at the camera, both of them looking suspiciously “of age” and Aria runs out of there like a cartoon character with her pants on fire.

Things with Emily and Paige are moving right along. Paige has procured concert tickets for them, and she touches Emily’s hands in public and says that she will not be accepting money for Emily’s ticket because they are going on a date. With a chaperone. See, Paige had to buy three tickets so her dad wouldn’t be suspicious about her lezzer ways because everyone knows the only reason two girls ever go to a concert together is if there is the promise of breast play afterward. Emily looks a little weary, and Paige smiles sweetly and apologetically and explains that she really does want to come out to her family; she even looked up some kind of peer support group from the next town over. Emily says she’ll go with her if she wants, and Paige’s face is a wonder to behold, so full of grace and warmth and un-murder. My, how Emily bends the tide to her will!

Except Paige doesn’t show up for her peer support meeting, which leaves Emily in the awkward position of being flirted with by a gay named Samarra. Emily’s like, “I didn’t expect you to be so -” And Sammara goes, “I know. It’s totally bizarre that my parents named me Sammara, right? Because you hear it and all you can think about is Maugham’s Appointment in Sammara. Like I’m some kind of Emily Dickinson. Like, Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me. Right? I mean, how weird would it be if you were in love with a dead girl!” Emily is like, “Yeah, OK – but I like your bracelet and your hair is less severe than Paige’s, so I’ll see you at the Lesbian Pants Party booth at the Founders Festival tomorrow. By the way, do you make those bracelets? You should get a web site page to advertise them.”

Mona takes full responsibility for letting Caleb break Hanna’s heart/swipe her V-card. She knew he was up to no good and she promises put his balls in a vice if he turns his Letto gaze on Hanna ever again. So Hanna sneaks and meets him in the courtyard at school and he’s like, “I miss you.” And she’s like, “What did JennaBot want?” And he’s like, “A key. To what? I know not. The shape? I also know not. All I know is she didn’t pay me to sleep with you. And I miss you.” Hanna’s like, “Have fun moving back into the ventilation system.” And then she bounces.

The PLLs convene to discuss the day’s events, and it’s one of my favorite scenes of the whole series. Aria explains about the appropriately aged, ring-wearing lady all cannodled up to Ezra on the internet, and the PLLs run that info through their own filters and respond like so: Spencer says that sometimes people can look guilty even when they’re not guilty. Emily says she should probably just ask him to tell the truth. Hanna says they should light him on fire.

Founders Festival time! Sammara cozies up to Emily in the Lesbian Pants Party tent talking about, “These earrings look great with your skin tone.” Somehow Emily refrains from explaining that literally everything on earth – even that one pheasant-sized earring Aria wore to breakfast that one time – would look great with her skin tone. There’s a loud crack!, and Emily and Sammara turn around to see Paige standing there holding her broken heart in her hands. Sammara’s like, “Tell your friend these earrings look good on her.” (Worst coming out counselor ever.) Emily’s like, “You missed your meeting.” And Paige is like, “Well, I did have the most layered story of any supporting character on this show, way more so than any of your friends’ boyfriends, so I guess that’s something.” And she runs away into the crowd with me chasing behind her like Joey Starrett.

After a nice pep talk from Ashley Marrin – “I know what it’s like to be a prostitute, son” – Caleb goes to Hannah’s booth at the Founders Day festival to deliver a letter declaring his love. Mona’s threatens him with a stick of ACME dynamite, rips that note out of his hand, and then blows it right the hell up.

Aria snuggles in for a night of movies about adultery and polygamy with Mr. Fitz. He’s like, “And the theme is …” And she goes, “CHEATER PANTS! THE THEME IS CHEATER PANTS!” He explains that yes, he was once engaged to a lady his own age. But that is his past. Aria is his present. (Jail is his future.) For an amazing reason that I do not understand, they take a photo together with paper bags over their heads. (You know what I love about this show? If you’re not watching it, you can’t tell what s–t I’m making up and what s–t actually happened in an episode. It’s that insane.)

In her bedroom, Emily flashes back to Alison giving her a snow globe she bought at a gift shop on the beach, the beach called Hilton Head, and when Emily hears it tinkling, she goes over and give it a little shake and – lo! Out falls a key!

Emily texts the PLLs and they come a-runnin’. Aria abandons the brown bag faces. (Hope a cop doesn’t stop by and take a gander at those.) Hanna gallops right by Caleb, who is at the Founders Day Festival bus stop about to hop a Greyhound to Arizona. But Spencer cannot heed Emily’s call because Spencer has decided to follow an anonymous text into a funhouse in the middle of the creepiest festival on earth in the middle of the most sinister town in America in the middle of the night, and now she’s locked inside some kind of trap door and I can’t even breathe when I think about it so I have to stop typing.

Ian frees Spencer with a crow bar. Or either: Ian opens up the door and intends to murder Spencer with a crow bar. Either way, Spencer’s family calls out to her and she follows them out of the funhouse with her shoulders hunched and her head low and then she sees Boo Radley Van Cullen, and she runs into his arms and kisses him like she doesn’t even care that he’s a robot-screwing vampire with that face of his. It’s really sweet. I almost feel sorry that I hired Mona to kill him.

Aria, Emily and Hanna use Alison’s key to open up a truck-sized storage locker that contains a lunch box-sized lunch box that contains a flash drive-sized flash drive that contains, like, years of footage of them being stalked. Which means … Alison died to protect them? Alison knew she was going to die to protect them, and that’s why she gave Emily the key? Alison is not the most heinous human being to ever walk upon the earth? That can’t be right. Can it?

Next week is the finale. Let us join hands and pray that JennaBot burns the motherf–ker down.

I’m going to do a #BooRadleyVanCullen retrospective after the finale, you guys, so spread the word and Tweet your little hearts out next week!

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