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“Pretty Little Liars” recap (1.22): Oh my God, Spencer, you can’t just ask people why they’re murderers

Every time I figure something out – anything at all, like what to eat for breakfast or which clocks in my house have actually made the leap to Daylight Savings Time – I say out loud, “All right. OK.” I don’t know why. It’s weird. But I also say it whenever I finish writing something, and so when I say it in my office, my dogs understand it to mean I’m taking a break for a short adventure. (A quick walk, a trip to the dog park, retrieving treats from the pantry.) For the last six hours I’ve been trying to draw a timeline of Alison DiLaurentis’ last day on earth, and I keep thinking I’ve got it right – “All right. OK.” – but then I realize I left something off, like her sixth blackmail. Anyway, my dogs are nearing manic levels of confusion because I’m in my office and I’ve said “All right. OK.” about 300 times already this morning, but still I haven’t moved from this chair.

What I mean is: Does anyone know what the hell happened on the Pretty Little Liars finale?

I will tell you this, and I’m not trying to brag, but my roommate and I each made a list of three things we wanted to see on last night’s finale, and my list was: Spencer and JennaBot locked in hand-to-hand combat, Spencer killing Ian with her bare hands, Alison revealing that she is a time traveling ninja from the future. Which: Nailed it! Let’s talk about the comprehensible things first, and then we’ll get to my accurate predictions.

I think it is the day after the Founders Day Festival of Doom, and the PLLs are crowded around a laptop watching Ian’s home video collection. There’s footage of them from all the way back when they were actual kids, and footage of Jenna molesting Toby, too, and it’s really one of the grossest things ever, so when Emily says, “This kind of makes me want to vomit,” I’m with her all the way. They’ve already learned their lesson about how they can’t trust the police, so they decide to finally confront JennaBot to find out what she knows/wants. Besides themselves and A and Ian, JennaBot is the only other person who knows the videos exist, right? (Spoiler alert: Wrong!)

This week’s ships shake down like this: Emily and Samara have taken their relationship to the emailing level, about which Emily is positively giddy. It’s short-lived, though, because Pam comes a calling to let her know they’re moving away from this hotbed of teenage lesbian activity so they can be closer to Emily’s dad in Texas, just in case Army has a half day and he can spend some time with his family. Toby and Spencer cuddle in front of an open window and stare at the lawn like the elderly couple they are. She explains her Master Plan to him, but tells him to keep The Jenna Thing occupied while she makes the magic happen.

Hanna broods over Caleb to the point where Lucas decides to drive to Arizona and then back to Pennsylvania to fetch him. Mona approves of Caleb in exactly zero ways because she is either gay for Hanna, or she wants to make a skin suit out of Hanna and wear it on top of her Mona suit. Aria and Ezra can apparently date openly now because he’s taken a job at a college, and the ethical dilemma with their relationship isn’t that she is a sixteen year old, but that he grades her term papers. Aria is 11 kinds of excited because now they won’t have to wear those paper sacks on their heads any more. And then that girl from Ezra’s website page shows up at her front door because she teaches at the college too, and so now she and Mr. Fitz are going to be co-workers, which means a gelato sharing scenario just got a lot more plausible.

OK, so. The PLLs trap JennaBot in the music room because they’re too inexperienced with Cylons to know that “woodwinds” means nothing more than “shrapnel” to her. Spencer never operates at any level lower than nuclear, but even she has managed to ratchet up her intensity to a world-destroying degree this week, possibly because it’s still early days with her and Toby, and nothing kills a blossoming romance like watching your paramour poke his sister-robot. Spencer goes, “This is Spencer, which you obviously know because my voice was voted Number One Turn-on in the Entire Universe. Also with me is Emily, who poses no threat. Aria, who cannot shut the f–k up about Italian ice cream. And Hanna, whose hand mark I still see on your face. We found the key, we found the videos, what is your robotic deal?”

This is the part where my prediction about Alison being a time traveling ninja comes true because get this: Alison visited JennaBot at Blind Camp the day she got back from holiday-making with her grandma. (Being a full-time resident, it sent an electric thrill up my spine to hear JennaBot say the word “Georgia” out loud.) Alison thought her boyfriend liked making videos of only her, but it turns out he was perving on the whole town, including JennaBot and Toby. So, if JennaBot promised to never show her lasers in Rosewood and never turn in the PLLs for blowing up her face, Alison promised to never release the video. Flashback JennaBot is like, “Done and done.” And then Present JennaBot says she only came back to Rosewood after she knew for sure Alison was dead, and “Yeah, it was not cool to take advantage of my broad-chested vampire brother, but let us not forget that the four of you did throw a stick of dynamite at my head. So, truce?”

If my calculations are correct, this is what Alison accomplished the day she died: She boned Ian and/or wrangled away Ian’s video collection in HILTON HEAD, SOUTH CAROLINA. She worked on her tan. She made the trek from HILTON HEAD, SOUTH CAROLINA to Rosewood, PA. She met the PLLs at her house where she belittled them each in turn and spoke in cryptic phrases. She visited JennaBot at Blind Camp and showed her the porn. She visited Emily at home and gave her a snow globe with a hidden key inside it. She rented an enormous storage locker on some kind of five-year prepaid plan. She stocked the storage locker with the thumb drive inside a Tweety Bird lunch box. She visited Toby and borrowed a sweater from him. She got into a brawl with Spencer about how the jig was up and she had to tell Melissa about snogging Ian. She allowed Spencer to rub her “Spencer” bracelet all over Toby’s borrowed sweater. She planned and executed a barn party for the PLLs where she chided Emily for liking Beyonce too much. She made a murder video. She was murdered.

Am I forgetting anything? I mean, Lily Kane, I love you, but I’m going to need that Best Ghost trophy back.

Spencer’s stalky cop, Officer Garrett, is next door neighbors with Emily. Because everyone on this show is next door neighbors with Emily. (I would draw a map of Emily’s street for you, but I’m afraid the verbalization of my repeated incompetence might actually make my dogs’ heads explode. “All right. Okay. Wait, no – Maya’s parents house is on top of the Radley’s place.”) Anyway, he creeps up to Emily in the street talking about, “If you ever need another male authority figure to not trust, give me a call. Also, wanna come over and have dinner or are you still working that gay angle?” She’s like, “Thanks for the contact info. Also, it rains adorable lesbians in this town, so.”

Spencer buys a prepaid phone and uses it to text Ian about how she has the videos and bring 10,000 dollars in unmarked bills to the park in the dark because it’s not like anything bad has ever happened to them in the woods at night time. No one’s ever been, say, hit by a car. The PLLs pull out their binoculars in the cafeteria, just to keep it inconspicuous, and watch as he gets the text and flees in a perverse huff. Emily’s like, “Well, I feel even grosser than before.” So do I, Emily. So do we all.

JennaBot makes a call to someone, all, “The PLLs have the vidoes.” And Ian answers a call, all, “It’s taken care of.” And we’re meant to believe they’re talking to each other, but I totally don’t think they’re talking to each other. Anyway, about that time, Officer Garret shows up to make some monkey with JennaBot because there are literally no women over the age of 16 in this town. I don’t want to concentrate on the robot sex because that just weirds me out, but what this really means is that JennaBot has the law in her pocket. The law is JennaBot’s wocket. 

Ian misses a meeting about his baby’s christening and Melissa is freaking out because who is he out murdering now? Spencer picks her up from the church and tries to calm her down, like, “Probably he lost track of time when he was emptying his piggy back of $10,000 and then driving it into the deep dark forest.” The PLLs minus Spencer are in said deep dark forest. “Luckily” they brought along Officer Garrett. So Spencer’s just a-drivin’ and a-drivin’ while Melissa is a-wailin’ and a-wailin’ and KABLAM! they get T-boned by a whole other car that may or may not contain Lucas and Caleb. That part wasn’t really clear.

At the hospital, Spencer is unscathed and so is Melissa, but the doctors don’t know how to treat a fetus conceived in the pits of hell, so Satan III is having a little trouble. Spencer decides to go back to the church to get Melissa’s phone, just in case Ian has made the drop and is calling to check in. Only, Ian didn’t make the drop. He hired someone on Cragislist to make the drop, and Officer Garrett is cuffing that guy as they speak.

Ian apparates into the church with his wand at the ready, Dark Mark glowing on his forearm, mumbling under his breath about how he would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for these pesky kids. He says he knows Melissa was in a car wreck, but whatever, he was just waiting to get Spencer alone for murdering purposes, and anyway, “Melissa would want” him to “take care of it.” Spencer makes a break for the belfry, and there’s a bell up there just ready for some tolling. This part is tricky because Ian grunts a lot instead of using actual words, but I think the message he is conveying is that: He is killing Spencer because he loves Melissa. Also, Alison hit her head and never woke up, so he didn’t really put a notch in his belt for that one. Spencer, because she’s Spencer (and because think about this to this when you start theorizing), argues with him about how Alison was actually suffocated, thank you very much, get your facts straight, murder-boy. Ian tries to push Spencer to her death, but she clings to the scaffolding, and then someone appears in a hoodie, and it’s someone Ian recognizes because he literally goes, “What are you doing here?” before the hooded figure pushes him to his death and then jogs on out the door. If the rescuer had been wearing a Camp Mona hoodie from glamping, my life would have been complete.

The PLLs heard the whole thing because Spencer’s phone dialed Emily during the scuffle. They race to the church and find her clinging to the banister and see Ian hanging there all dead and puffy and they’re like, “Whew. Finally, things can get back to normal. Spencer can date her vampire. And Emily can use her butterfly net to catch all the lesbians floating around in Rosewood. And Aria can cut holes in her paper bag masks so she can kiss her boyfriend. And Hanna can go into the woods and mourn the loss of her virginity every time an owl swoops down to spear its prey.”

But guess what? When the cops arrive, Ian’s body is gone. And Noel Kahn is just hanging around outside the church like that time Hanna got smashed by a car. And A is texting talking, like, “It’s over when I say it’s over, BITCHES BITCHES BITCHES.” Florence & The Machine starts crooning about how she’s not calling them liars or anything, but don’t lie to her. And I mean, what if A is actually a good guy? What if Alison loved the PLLs so much she let them kill her? Do you know this song? It’s one of my favorites, and I think probably it’s saying something perfect and important – except for one thing. Alison DiLaurentis, I am calling you a ghost. Please never stop haunting me.

The bell tolls again on June 14, my darlings. 

Join me tomorrow as I count down the best moments from Pretty Little Liars‘ first season! 

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