Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Alison went to trial for murdering Mona Vanderwaal and Hanna went to jail for murdering Mona Vanderwaal and Rosewood’s own prosecutor named the Liars as co-conspirators in the fake kidnapping of Alison DiLaurentis which lead to the murder of Mona Vandwerwaal, but nobody thought to say that it’s impossible for any of these people to be guilty of murdering Mona Vandwrwaal because Mona Vanderwaal can’t die. I will never believe Mona Vanderwaal is dead. I saw the body in that car trunk and I don’t believe it. I went to her funeral and wore a lei and saw Mona’s mom punch a child in the face and I don’t believe it. I saw the video and I saw the barrel and I even saw Mona’s glamrock Christmas ghost, and I don’t believe it.
The story of Perd Hapley covering the Alison DiLaurentis trial is that he’s the news anchor covering the trial. He calls on special correspondent Sara Shepard, who has “been with this case from the beginning” (ha!) and asks if Allison is going down, down, down. The story of that situation is that it’s extremely personal and only the business of Emily Fields. The main thing Sara Shepard tells us is that the prosecution is calling a surprise witness today and it’s got everybody shaking in their boots.
And that witness is bespectacled ginger-haired Vanderloper Leslie Stone, who came to town after (not for) Mona’s funeral claiming to be her best friend and confidante, a thing that had Mike and Hanna’s hackles in quite a knot. Leslie chronicles the things Mona said Ali said to her, including, “If you jibber-jabber the truth to Tanner about my fake kidnapping, I will feed you to some worms.” Lawyer Julie thinks this is hearsay, but the prosecutor produces a greeting card Mona sent to Leslie reiterating the worm thing. A greeting card! “Happy birthday, Leslie! I wish I could share ice cream and cupcakes with you today, but as you’ll remember from our previous phone conversation, I have lost my appetite ever since Alison DiLaurentis threatened to feed me to some worms if I tell the police the truth about how she staged her own abduction. Hope you get a lot of good presents! Love, Mona.” The judge says the greeting card is awesome/admissible.
Well, and then Leslie launches this invective about how the Liars stalked her all around town when she came to visit after (not for) Mona’s funeral. They wouldn’t let her rummage around in Mona’s room unattended. They wouldn’t let her pop all the heads off of Mona’s dolls and shine a flashlight down into their doll guts to look for … things. They wouldn’t let her play Mona’s records backwards. They wouldn’t let her steal Mona’s books. They wouldn’t let her try on Mona’s clothes and rifle through her old coat pockets, or spend just a few minutes poking around on her laptop, or even let her flashback without Hanna standing there watching.
Spencer runs out of the courtroom like a maniac to call Caleb for some reason, but she bumps into Officer Toby on the stairs and they feel weird about how Spencer keeps making out with everyone who is not him and he keeps not telling her top secret police business. He wants to know how the Oxford interview went. She wants to know why he didn’t fucking call her the second he found out Tanner had an arrest warrant for Hanna. He wants to know if she’s still thinking about going to college in Hawaii. She wants to know what/who the goddamn hell was in that barrel in Hanna’s storage locker that Tanner confiscated. Spencer barely even has a chance to explain that she had to ride a dolphin across the Atlantic Ocean because her purse came to life and started bleeding all over a thousand-year-old chair and she was scared to get on a plane, because Emily comes clomping down the steps hollering about how barracudas have duller teeth than Leslie and they need to get Hanna on the phone stat.
There are always a couple of really standout episodes of PLL during every mini-season, but usually the one right before each mini-season finale is the most fun and exciting because that’s when all the chess pieces that have been moving around all season finally click into place at a frenetic pace. This next scene right here is the tops.
Alison is on a payphone at one end of the jail and Hanna is on a payphone at the other end of the jail and they’re conferencing in with the Liars at Spencer’s house to talk about Leslie.
Ali: Who the fuck is Leslie Stone? Did she enroll at Rosewood High when I was dead or something?
Hanna: Yeah, and where does she get off saying I stalked her? All I did was not let her ransack my dead girlfriend’s bedroom. Emily gets it.
Ali: Whatever, what’s up with the “Varjak trail”?
Aria: Well, he definitely ordered some pizza.
Ali: Let Spencer talk.
Spencer: We texted him and he called Aria back and played Edith Piaf so we broke into Mona’s bedroom because that’s where she and Hanna used to have sex to the soundtrack of Edith Piaf and hidden inside a broken mirror we found a notecard with clues on it but we haven’t cracked them yet because we can’t find a decoder parrot.
Ali: Damn. Listen, I still don’t have a solid alibi because I didn’t see anyone when I was hanging out at that busted park by myself for ten hours waiting for Cyrus the day Mona was killed, but someone may have seen me and she probably owns a jacket with flowers on it.
