Previously: The girls wanted to blame Noel for Maya’s murder but received one more useless clue from him with the security footage of the night Maya disappeared.
––
Single Fright Female
Sara: Hanna and Spencer are in the former’s room as she tries on outfits and complains that nothing covers the bandage on her leg from her gigantic improbable stab wound. There’s always… pants?
Lorraine: MIND BLOWN. The Improbable Wound is mid-thigh. I’m not sure she should be having this much difficulty finding something to cover it.
Sweeney: You live in Pennsylvania. There’s no way that you don’t own clothing that will cover past mid-thigh. Winter is coming, girl. (Eventually. One day. Maybe.)
Sara: Hanna is feeling whiny today, so instead she chooses to wear a gigantic ugly skirt that was a part of her Fat Wardrobe. The skirt isn’t really that bad, but the girls are both so ICK about it that it might just be my terrible fashion sense.
Lor: It’s long Sara. Gosh.
Sweeney: It also has this goofy ass fringe going on at the bottom.
Sara: Hanna’s phone rings, and Spencer hands it to her, saying that it’s Wren. Hanna just hangs up and throws the phone on her bed and Spence wonders why Hanna wouldn’t want to talk to him. Hanna gets all, “It’s not a big deal,” about it, but Spencer knows something is up. She tells Hanna that she understands if she’s fallen for “Downtown Grabbey” because he’s very pedophiley and persuasive, but Hanna still doesn’t want to talk about it. S: A+ for you, Spencer.)
Downstairs, Pastor Ted comes over to talk to Ashley Marin about a zip drive he found in his church with videos of Hanna and her friends all over it. RUH ROH. Seems like the kind of thing Ashley should immediately take to the police, but let’s not hold our breath. He leaves, and they kiss, and Ashley doesn’t seem as panicked as I think I would be in this situation.
Hanna and Spencer are listening in on the stairs, and Hanna freaks because now NotBlind!Jenna will think she handed over those videos that she promised would be kept a secret. Spencer tries to calm her down, but Hanna is in full freak-out mode. (L: Maybe it’s hard to stay calm in a long, ugly skirt.)
Ashley sets the drive on a table and walks away, as Hanna sneaks up behind her and takes it before trying to walk out the front door. Unfortunately, Hanna has forgotten that Ashley is the only good parent in Rosewood, so of course she catches Hanna and asks WTF is going on.
SHHHHH.
After the credits, Ashley Marin is still good parenting and telling Hanna to explain who took those videos and why she wanted to steal them. Hanna says it was just Mona using them for blackmail, and she wants to get rid of them to protect Mona since she’s better now. Ashley is like LOL, NOPE, and takes the drive to work so she can watch the videos herself and decide what to do next.
Pedopartment. Apparently Aria lives here now or something? IDK. She wakes Ezra up with flowers and a happy birthday kiss.
Lor: “You’re still sleeping,” she tells him as she wakes him up and it immediately makes me want to punch her in the face. HE WAS. HE WAS SLEEPING, ARIA.
Sara: He sits up in his bed, wearing tiny boxers, and I firmly believe that all 16 year olds should be uncomfortable being around their boyfriends in boxers because EMBARRASSING, but whatever. He spoils Aria’s birthday cheer by telling her that he wrote an email to Maggie. He’s worried about what might have happened to her after his brilliant mom paid her to go away. Aria tells him to just call the woman so he doesn’t have to be all sad on his birthday. (Because birthdays are really important to children.) (Just kidding, birthdays are super important to me still, too.) Ezra doesn’t think it would be fair to barge into Maggie’s life now, after all his family put her through, so he’s just going to wait for a response to his email.
Coffee Shop. Emily and Paige are having coffee before school, which means they must have woken up at 4 AM, because they both look way too put together. Em awesomely gets right to the point of this scene to tell Paige that she kissed Cousin Nate and she feels weird about it, but it felt right at the time. Paige is way too grown up for everyone else on this show when she says that Nate and Emily loved the same person who’s gone now, so it makes sense that they might feel a connection, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they like each other. New and Improved Paige is at it again!
Lor: Remember when she tried to drown Emily because she was about as grown up as everyone else on this show? Sorry. I’ll eventually get over it and jump on the New and Improved Paige bandwagon, I’m sure.
Sara: Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure it will take no time at all for us to hate her again.
Apparently Aria has time to wake her boyfriend up for his birthday, give him some counseling, and also hang out with Spencer at school before classes. And she also looks pretty amazing. If I had been on this show in high school, it would have been unwashed hair pinned back with ponytails and the makeup I managed to put on in the school parking lot every single day.
Lor: All that PLUS a million detentions for still being late to school, all the time, always.
Sweeney: Based on the PLL sleep schedule, someone in Rosewood is making a KILLING selling adderall.
Sara: Spencer is trying to talk to Aria about how Hanna is freaked over the videos being found, but Aria interrupts, because ME ME ME ME ME ME ME. She’s all depressed about what’ s happening with her adult boyfriend and his adult ex-girlfriend and she thinks that she should get in touch with Maggie herself. Spencer is like NO, NOPE, NO MA’AM, but Aria whines, “IT’S MY RELATIONSHIP, SPENCER.” Spence nopes herself right out of the conversation when they see Cece in the hallway, handing out flyers. Is it really that easy to wander into high schools?
Lor: Mine? Yes. We had a mostly outdoor campus (Florida!) so absolutely, yes. It’s kind of terrifying in retrospect. I’m at least glad that there are adult males in my city who are not pedophiles. ONE UP ON ROSEWOOD.
Sara: Spencer approaches Cece to ask what’s going on, and Cece rants and complains about Spencer offering to help with her trunk show and then never contacting her about it. Spencer gives in and agrees to help and get all of her friends to help, too. It’s funny how quickly these girls cave to Cece’s demands, just like they did Ali’s. YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW THIS BITCH. They’re interrupted when Cece sees Emily and Paige walking to school together and gets upset because if Ali were alive to see Emily cozying up to Pigskin, she’d be furious. Spencer wants to know who Pigskin is, and Cece tells her that Ali and Paige had it out for each other.
Sweeney: AGAIN WITH THE FUCKING ADULTS BEHAVING LIKE CHILDREN. Cece is already out of college. What the fuck is a 22 year old woman doing calling a high school junior nasty names.
Sara: FLASHBACK. Spencer flashbacks to a time when all the Liars were trying on clothes together. Ali rudely tells Spencer that a top doesn’t look good on her, so she can have it instead. When she’s changing shirts, the girls see a giant bruise on her back. They question it, and she tells them that a girl named Pigskin hit her in gym class, but it won’t happen again because she’ll take care of it. She refuses to give a name, and the girls look uncomfortable.
Lor: Right, because in that same flashback, Alison was a huge bitch to Spencer. And her immediate reaction after remembering is, “PEOPLE WHO HAD IT OUT FOR ALISON ARE SUSPICIOUS.” This is why these girls never figure anything out, man.
Sweeney: Alison was the fucking worst, girls. Never forget.
Sara: Hanna is chatting with Caleb on the school computers about what to do with the videos her mom has, and he tells her not to worry about it for now. NotBlind!Jenna interrupts to tell her she needs to the computer.
Emily finds Cousin Nate on a park bench, and approaches to say they need to talk. Nate continues to interrupt her to ask her on a date and be rude and shitty in general, until Emily finally just says, “We need to keep this on a friendship level.” Nate immediately gets defensive and says that she and Maya have a lot in common. Emily asks what that means, and Nate says that Maya always said she was being spontaneous when she was really being reckless. He remembers her sitting in his car, giving that same speech to a million different guys. Em says maybe they should just talk later, and as she rides off, Nate tries to call her back, but she DGAF.
Lor: I’m noticing, not for the first time, that Nate doesn’t actually talk about Maya like a cousin. At first when he was all, “just like Maya!” it seemed like it was purposefully framed to insinuate that Maya had done the same thing to him. “Cousin” Nate, my ass.
Sweeney: YUP. This moment was super skeevy and gross and weird and calm down, Nate.
Sara: Best gif selection.
Aria has apparently found Maggie, a teacher at an elementary school, and Maggie just so happens to be THE Alex Mack! Best! (L: WE HAVE A TAG FOR THIS!) Alex Mack asks if Aria is Amy, and Aria is like, “Um. Sure?”
Back at school, Spencer finds Emily and tells her she was looking for her everywhere. She brings up the Paige/Ali subject, because she thinks it’s pretty weird that Paige wouldn’t have mentioned her history with Ali to Emily. Emily thinks that Spencer is letting Cece be the new Alison by making them turn against each other. Spence says that she’s just worried because Paige has a dark side, like that one time when she tried to drown Emily. “I don’t think that was a love dunk.” (L: SEE?) Emily tells her to go fuck herself, and stomps away, as we see that someone has been eavesdropping from across the hall.
Jenna is eating cherries on the front steps of the school and her nail polish is awesome, btw. Hanna approaches and tells her what happened with the videos, and Jenna immediately tenses up. She puts her blind girl sunglasses on and ignores the crap out of Hanna, and I kind of love Jenna in this scene.
As Hanna walks off, Cousin Nate approaches and starts trying to talk to her about Emily. Hanna ain’t got time for this and tells him that Emily is GAY and is pretty straight forward about her feelings.
Sweeney: Please make him go away. Please, please, please. He’s so gross. Why are all the dudes in this town so gross? When is Toby coming back?
Sara: Aw, man. I almost forgot about Toby. Now I’m sad.
School of Lies. Alex Mack asks Aria what grade she’d like to teach and Aria says first, because it makes her feel taller.
Spencer is with Cece, getting everything set up with the trunk show. She was supposed to get the other girls to help, but they’ve all got their own shit going on, and also, Em is pretty pissed at Spencer now so that’s probably not happening. Cece is annoyed that Emily is ditching them to hang out with Pigskin, and I think Cece needs to get some college-aged girlfriends instead of hanging out with high schoolers all the time. Spencer asks what they were fighting about anyways, and Cece tells her that it was about Em.
Flashback courtesy of Cece. Ali and Cece are sitting in Cece’s VW Bug (of course that’s what she drives) and Ali is telling Cece about what she did to “Pigskin”. She stole some of Emily’s stationary and write Paige a love note, telling her that she had a boyfriend but couldn’t stop thinking of Paige. She also told Paige not to call or email her, because her boyfriend is suspicious. What a little bitch.
Just then, Paige rolls up on her bike and leaves a note under a sign in front of the cafe as a response to the note Ali wrote her. Before Paige rides away, Alison stomps over and takes the note out, threatening to show it to her dad, who’s a deacon at the church. Paige gets upset and tells her to give it back, but Ali says no fucking way because she owns her now. She stomps back to Cece’s car, gets in, and, in a worried voice, tells her to drive away. Just in case you didn’t hate Alison DiLaurentis enough lately.
Lor: Or if we needed more proof that Cece needs to look into more age appropriate entertainment.
Sweeney: THIS WHOLE THING WAS THE WORST. FUCK ALISON FOREVER.
Sara: Out of the flashback, Spencer asks what Ali did with the letter, but Cece doesn’t think she did anything. As far as she could tell, Alison was scared of Paige, so she probably just would have kept it as collateral.
Fields. Paige and Emily are at Em’s house, studying. (L: Does Emily have parents anymore? I forget.) Emily asks if Paige knew Alison, and Paige immediately gets on the defensive. She thinks that the Liars should be talking to her instead of about her, which is a weird thing to say, because they don’t even know her. She also thinks it’s strange that the other Liars were all drinking with Emily on That Night, yet Em was the only one who was drugged. (S: Legit, though.) She compares the Liars to Mona, but Emily says it isn’t the same thing because Mona was never her friend. Paige agrees and says that maybe she should just hang out with the Liars more, so they can get to know her.
Pedopartment. Aria is hanging around Ezra’s apartment, because she basically lives there, when Ezra’s little brother, Little Fitz barges in to drop something off. He apologizes for scaring her, even though he really shouldn’t because IT ISN’T HER APARTMENT. He can tell that something is wrong, because she’s wearing that Woe Is Me Aria face and asks what’s up. She wants to know why he told her that story about Alex Mack, but he says that he really thought Fitz already told her, and he didn’t tell her to make any trouble. Trouble just comes with Fitzes, you know.
Aria spills the beans and tells Little Fitz that she met Alex Mack and how she has a son who looks a lot like Baby Ezra. Little Fitz is just as surprised as Aria. Maybe this information shouldn’t be told to someone you don’t know that well before your adult boyfriend? Eh, whatever, I don’t really care, to be honest.
Lor: It’s not like we can even hope this will break them up. The pedolationship will probably endure.
Sweeney: Their hearts will go on.
Sara: Junk in the Trunk Show. Spencer is in the dressing room at Cece’s store, getting changed for the trunk show. She tries to send a message to Hanna about Paige, but it won’t go through because SURPRISE, no service. These girls seriously need a new phone plan. A snake crawls out of one of the clothing boxes and Spencer starts losing her shit, and of course, the damn lock is broken on the door. She screams for Cece, who finally shows up to open the door and beat the snake to death with a heavy object, as we fade to black.
Emily thinks that Paige is the one who snatched Maya on that security footage, because she was jealous, and DAMN that is a huge leap. Even for a girl who tried to drown someone once! Hanna’s phone starts ringing, and Spencer is immediately like, “WTF IS THAT WREN?” with her giant, suspicious eyes because Spencer has gone batshit for this episode. Hanna says it’s just Emily calling about the knife that stabbed her (wait, knife? I thought it was a piece of window? Whatever).
Emily tells her that the knife is missing from the bag, even though they’re both sure they brought it along. After hanging up, Hanna says that A must have snuck into her house, but Spence says why would A sneak in when she could be invited? COUGH COUGH PAIGE.
Lor: Well now this is just getting excessive. How’s the housing market in Rosewood? Maybe PAIGE messed it up. Lack of jobs? PAIGE. Maybe that damn PAIGE is behind the spike in statutory rape.
Sweeney: It’s a lot like how they talked about Toby. All the more so because Spencer Hastings, Loud & Wrong Syndrome’s Patient 0, is the one leading the charge.
Sara: Pedopartment. Aria is setting up the apartment with birthday decorations, with the help of Little Fitz. He says he can try to help her cover for it, but Aria knows she’ll have to come clean. She starts crying, and Little Fitz tries to reassure her. “You and I were learning fractions when this kid was born.” Just in case you might have wondered if the writers truly understand just how gross this relationship is, here’s your occasional reminder! She boo hoos a little more until getting a text from Ezra that he’s on his way.
Over at the trunk show, Hanna has shown up to help Spencer. Cece tells the two girls what they would look best in and making some snarky comments about dirty hair and whatever, Cece. Who has time to wash their hair every single day? Psh. It is interesting to note, though, that Ali probably got all of her bitchiness from this particular bitch since they say the exact same rude ass things.
Lor: Mostly the dirty hair comments were for the purpose of product placing dry shampoo, a display of which is inexplicably in the middle of this trunk show.
Sara: Hanna goes to the back room to quickly change and halfway through, is pulled back by a mysterious hand into one of the dressing rooms. And of course that hand belongs to sexy wolf boy Caleb. He lets her know that he told Ashley if she turned those videos in, Wilden and his gross cop buddies would be watching Hanna change into a bikini on a loop. This town is so sad. Every single citizen is fully aware of the nasty pedocops. Ew. He doesn’t know if Ashley will turn the video in or not, but he at least made her think about it. They kiss a little, and they are cute.
Pedopartment. Ezra gets home and finds Aria and Little Fitz making dinner. Before they get started eating their birthday dinner, he tells them that he called Alex Mack and she told him that everything is going great, so he feels a lot better now. She did not, however, mention the whole we-have-a-child-together situation, so Aria and Little Fitz side eye each other as Ezra goes off to take a shower. This guy takes a lot of showers.
Lor: I’m sure pedophilia leaves a stench.
Sara: Trunk Show. Emily shows up with Paige in tow, and Paige is hilarious like, “HEY GIRL!” to Spencer, even though she knows damn well Spence was talking shit. While Emily gets changed, Paige helps Spencer with some jewelry and tells her that Emily has changed her for the better and she’d love to try to make friends with the Liars. Spencer is obviously not interested in this idea.
Pedopartment. Ezra blows out his birthday candles, but tells the others that he doesn’t need to make a wish because he already has everything he wants. Blech. Gag me.
Aria tells Little Fitz that he needs to talk to his mother because if Ezra finds out, Alex Mack will get punished and Malcolm will be cut off. Um. Maybe Alex Mack shouldn’t be dependent on hush money to raise her child? Whatever.
Sweeney: I mean, she’s a single parent whose able to raise the kid fairly comfortable. The hush money is a valid concern. Money and distance from Ezra Fitz – basically Mama Fitz did her a favor.
Sara: Right, but probably she shouldn’t rely on a crazy ass woman to pay her bills, and also, she has a pretty good job, so.
Back at the trunk show, Hanna apologizes to Spencer for inviting Emily without knowing Paige was coming, too. Spencer tells Hanna that the missing knife might be in Paige’s bag, which is absolutely ridiculous because if Paige WAS A, that would mean she’s smarter than these stupid girls and would not bring something like that with her. Hanna sends Paige off to help Emily with something so they can dig through her purse. Spencer grabs something out of it right as Em walks out of the dressing rooms looking FREAKING AMAZING, but when she sees what they’ve done, she stomps her gorgeous self right back out and tells Paige to not be so forgiving.
Fields. Paige and Emily are back at Em’s house, and she apologizes for making them go to the stupid trunk show. Paige tells her that this is about Alison and what happened between them, so she should share. Alison tortured her through all of 9th grade. At first, Ali just tortured Paige and Paige tried to fight her back, but she had no idea what she was up against. Ali was relentless, and Paige had no one to turn to. Even if Paige did kill Alison, I’m sort of okay with it. L: LOL. A+) (S: PREACH.)
Marin Manor. Hanna asks her mom if she watched the videos. She did, and she’s going to take care of it. And by take care of it, she means throwing the evidence into the garbage disposal and destroying it. Like mother, like daughter, I suppose! Hanna thanks her, and Ashley bites back that she didn’t do it for Hanna, she did it for herself, because there were videos of her and Wilden. WTF. Ashley Marin, that is fucked up. What did Hanna do wrong here? I’m pretty sure someone else recording underage girls getting naked and then showing them to god knows who, is not the underage girl’s fault. Dumb.
Lor: Yeah, I’m not sure why Ashley is being super aggressive here. Also, I know that’s a garbage disposal, but this show has ruined me to the point where I thought, “that shit isn’t destroyed. Someone is going to find it.”
Sara: Ashley wants the videos to be destroyed because she doesn’t want to ruin things with Pastor Ted. Fuuuuuuuck Ashley Marin today, y’all. (S:So sad. Our only beacon of hope in this town.) And right on time, Pastor Ted shows up for a date and to ask Ashley if she wants to stop by the police station with the videos he gave her. Ashley starts to admit that she destroyed the evidence, but Hanna interrupts to say that she did it. Pastor Ted is all, “Oh, well okay. Time for our date!” Nobody is taking this very seriously.
Back at the trunk show, Spencer shows Aria what she found in Paige’s bag: the other missing earring from Ali’s grave. Because nothing suspicious has ever been planted on anyone on this show ever. They decide they need to warn Emily… again.
Back on Emily’s front porch, Paige steps inside to wash her face when Jenna creeps up out of the shadows and tells Em that she needs to talk to her about her friend. She sees the two cups of tea sitting next to Emily and says she didn’t realize she had company and starts backing away. Em urges her to share what she was going to say, and Jenna just says that she needs to be careful who she spends her time with. Then Jenna runs off to get into a cab and get the fuck out of Rosewood, like a smart person. As Emily watches her go, Paige declines a call on Em’s phone from Spencer.
Lor: Making her look just as suspicious as a Toby Edit should.
Sweeney: Not since Toby himself have I seen a Toby edit this aggressive.
Also, my money is on Spencer planting the thing she supposedly found in Paige’s bag. I forget everything that happens on this show, but the last season ended with her nearly being offered a spot in the A-Team, and I know that I was suspicious of her a couple other times this season for reasons I don’t remember because so little happens on this show. Jenna’s definitely A-Team and I’m pretty sure Spencer is too because she might have been smart enough to take that offer and try to actually investigate from within, since the other girls are completely useless.
Sara: A-nonymous: A black gloved hand plays a song on a jukebox. “Smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend.” Another black gloved hand accepts a key from the first one, and hey! I think this is the first time we’ve seen two As in one A-nonymous, right?
Lor: Yep! For those keeping track at home, though, it did not make the A-nonymous anymore entertaining, however.
I'm a 30-something with three kids who spends an embarrassing amount of time watching teen television dramas. There's a whole lot of Internet out there, and I plan on reading all of it before I die.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
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