Pretty Little Liars Episode 609 Recap: Drunk In Love

Inside barn prom, Aria is dressed like what Snow White bought in the vintage store on vacation in Panama City; Hanna is wearing a fuck-you-I’ll-die-a-literal-princess ball gown; Emily is wearing a Maleficent: The Early Lesbian Years sparkling pantsuit; and Spencer just took something out of Melissa’s closet because it’s just going to end up getting ripped to shreds in a bear trap anyway. Ezra takes their photos while Aria creeps on his phone and notices a confirmation for a flight from Philly to Los Angeles, which she assumes is him preemptively setting up his surveillance station at the American Murder Girl Doll School of Art & Design.

Ezra, hurry up. What is taking you so long?

Sorry, I accidentally pulled up one of my romantic videos of Aria. Switching it back to camera.

After photos, everyone retires to the couch where they spend the evening looking at Instagram photos of everyone else at prom and being assholes about who’s doing what and who’s there with whom. Realest teenage behavior in the course of six seasons. Noel Kahn is at prom and so is Lucas and so is Jenna, so definitely one of those guys could be Charles. Either way, I sure would like to see what Jenna is wearing.

The Liars spy Alison, and realize she’s there to meet Charles, so they decide to go after her.

Out on the porch, a storm is brewing and the moms are getting more newted by the minute. It is majestic. It is true heavenly splendor on this earth. They are sprawled out, talking shit about everyone in the neighborhood, most especially Jessica DiLaurentis, with her boning of Peter and hiding that Jason is Peter’s son and letting Melissa make out with her half-brother, and birthing a whole crop of kids who ended up at Radley and pretending one of them was dead, and everybody getting massacred in Veronica’s backyard and ruining her hydrangeas. At one point, Veronica legit points to the grave, says, “And there’s where that fucking dog dug her up!”

Have y’all ever seen Now and Then?

The real question is, have y’all ever had a lesbian orgy?

Veronica hops up and totters inside, and the other moms follow her because this gossip about Jessica DiLaurentis has been six years in the making and who cares if the barn gets exploded with acme dynamite? It was going to happen anyway. What were the moms going to do to stop it? Nothing, that’s what, and anyway, obviously their daughters have already sneaked out of there to go to the one place they were forbidden to go.

Rosewood prom is insane. The theme is like: Okay, But What If Stanley Kubrick Planned Pride in The Forbidden Forest? Masks and cloaks and capes and centaurs serving champagne and a minotaur DJ and everyone is covered in blood and everyone else is cool for the summer. It is exactly zero percent difficult for the Liars to get into prom. They achieve it by walking into prom in a herd with their dates and standing in the doorway lit up by a spotlight and being still and glowering around. V. sneaky. V. subtle. Clark is taking photos, even though he doesn’t even go here, a thing the Liars find suspicious but not enough to investigate at length.

Look at this!

I found a photo of when I had an emotionally resonant love interest like everyone else on the show!

Meanwhile, in the Hastings kitchen, the other moms are pickled and Veronica is straight trousered. She throws back another glass of merlot, decides her best plan of action is to stomp across the yard and crash through the DiLaurentises back door and start getting some motherfucking goddamn information from Vernon. It is truly shocking that it’s taken Veronica this long to decide alcohol and rage will provide the #SummerOfAnswers she needs in her life, but she’s there now and no amount of placating or small talking by the other moms will satisfy her. She throws the blender through the window, just because she can, and marches out into the stormy night.

Pam, put down that popover and drink your wine.

The best moment in television history: Pam watches the moms go after Veronica, starts to follow, comes back and inhales the rest of her wine with the most panicked look on her face, and bolts after everyone.

Okay I’m sorry.

What if after the time jump it’s the moms playing the Liars? My god, I would be so happy. Mona would still be Janel Parish though.

At real prom, the Liars finally peep Alison and clomp up to her yelling about how she’s going to get obliterated by her brother for like the fiftieth time in her young life by showing up at prom. Ali is like, “Let me count the places from which Charles has seized and slaughtered us, the places in which he has tortured us. Spencer’s yard. Spencer’s bedroom. Spencer’s bathroom. Spencer’s backyard. Every warehouse, every barn, every church, every haunted house, every abandoned ice cream factory, every doll hospital, every literal hospital, every graveyard, every forest, every boat on every river. Coffee shops, costume shops, restaurants, hotels, hoe downs, schools, swimming pools, my basement, Aria’s basement, empty theaters, crowded theaters, the tops of buildings and parks in New York City. Schools, cars, planes, trains, bicycles, mental institutions, hotels, cabins, and mobile lairs.” So yeah, she came to prom to meet Charles. It does not matter. He is everywhere and nowhere, how many times does someone have to say it?

The Liars realize she is correct, that their doom is inevitable, and so they decide to go out slow-dancing with the ones they love (except for Emily). I mean, Sara shows up and says she dropped by the barn prom and then decided to come to this prom because Emily is very special to her. I wish the story with these two had landed even a single emotional punch this season. It was so rote and empty. You can’t expect Emily’s relationship with Sara to feel as significant as the other relationships on the show when the other Liars’ love interests have been here since season one and Sara just arrived out of nowhere. I really, really, really don’t get it.

TOO HOT HOT DAMN.

Make a dragon wanna retire, man.

Caleb arrives dressed like Sherlock Holmes, but:

Caleb: I went to New York and got a job as a professional hacker for probably the Carissimi Group, I don’t know, and I found an apartment in Manhattan in one single day, which is the most bonkers thing to ever come out of my mouth, but what I’m actually trying to say is: If you want to move there and go to college, I will support you in every way because one time I was a hobo living in the air vents at this school and you took me in and fed me and accidentally got naked with me in the shower and fell in love with me and there is no one in this universe who compares to you in literally any way and I want to give you what you gave me, which is unconditional love and a white hot belief in the beauty of your dreams.

Oh, Caleb! You beautiful tropical fish with that hair! I am so glad you came home from Ravenswood! Good for you for using your power to empower Hanna, to provide her with opportunities to make her own big decisions to become the person she wants to be!

We have to get out of this town before I grow up and am infected with the awful disease that plagues the adult men in this town who are not Wayne Fields!

Reverse Cinderella! Let’s go!

Spencer and Toby dance too. She says she’s put him through a lot. He says he knew what he was signing up for when he fell in love with her. Spencer’s Spencerness was never a secret.

And also Aria and Ezra.

Aria: I’ve been thinking that I don’t want you to follow me to California.
Ezra: Oh, I’m only laying over in LA on my way to Thailand to hang out with a whole other group of underage girls for the summer.
Aria: Oh, cool.

The moms are rooting around in the DiLaurentis house in the dark when Rhys Matthews arrives for some reason and gets shifty with them about what they’re doing in there, when WHAT IS HE DOING IN THERE? He says he let himself into the house in the middle of the night to talk to Vernon about Jessica’s Carissimi Group donations, totally normal non-profit CEO stuff, but then he slinks away into the shadows and out the door, and the moms are like, “Fucking Charles DiLaurentis, am I right?”

Nobody look up into the knot holes on the ceiling. Aria almost lost an eyeball doing that down here.

I FORGOT MY WINE.

(That motherfucker still looks like the perfectly proportioned time-traveling son of Jason and Wren, I don’t care what you say.)

They creep around a little longer, finally following a noise down to the basement like a kitten with a string, and obviously they get trapped inside. They bang on the door and wail and wonder how their teenage daughters have handled this happening to them once per week for six seasons, and still managed to find time to have sex and frolic around in Spencer’s noir dreams. I mean, remember that time one single car drove through Pam’s living room wall and she had such horrific PTSD that she had to go to Texas to stay with Wayne on the military base and Emily had to move into Hanna’s bedroom? They agree that they’re not cut out for this shit.

Pam for real goes, “We had one job tonight!”

The Liars are ostensibly keeping an eye on Ali while they dance, but they’re as good at that as their moms were at keeping an eye on them at barn prom. She sneaky-creeps around all these nooks and crannies in the papier-mâché Forbidden Forest, and the whole time Charles is texting her about how they’re alone at last and it’s time to dance and she looks in all these mirrors and some of them are broken and probably that means Charles is Cece, right? Or maybe it’s Jenna because this is fairy tales and she plays the flute like the Pied Piper and is leading Ali to the river to drown herself? Probably it’s Wren, though. It’s always the handsome British guy. Maybe he’ll speak in an American accent. Maybe he’ll talk about how hard it was to keep his beautiful face under a hood this whole time. Maybe he’ll give me the answer I’m looking for: Where where where is Paige McCullers?

So anyway, Ali is bobbing and weaving and the Liars realize she’s missing. They go chasing her through the woods and so does Clark. The boys beat him up but then he has a gun and also a badge because he is an undercover cop, and Aria will literally never trust another man again as long as she lives.

Aria?

No, I just borrowed one of her outfits.

Ali finally comes face-to-mask-over-mask-over-mask with Charles. She asks him to take it off and he does. Her face is like, “Of fucking course.” And my heart is about to explode right out of my chest.

Goodbye forever, Risen Mitten.

Thank you thank you thank you to Nicole (@PLLBigA) for the screencaps. She’s got so much good information about the time jump in season 6B. Follow her on Twitter!