Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Emily got chased around by a whirring Jeep for about six hours, during which ducking-and-dodging she inexplicably: a) got her hands on the murder weapon that killed Charlotte, and b) concluded it’s not (just) Sara Harvey who’s after them. Caleb left home to roam the countryside, a penniless vagabond once more, because somebody leaked a story about how Yvonne had an abortion and that somebody did so from Spencer’s laptop, and so Caleb took the fall. Hanna threw a re-wedding for Byron and Ella. And Aria confessed to Ezra that she wrote his book for him while he was on one of his benders.
This is the best episode of Pretty Little Liars in all of season 6B, by a full mile. I actually watched the whole thing with my eyeballs directed at the TV and laughed and gasped and clapped (when Lucas’ house came to life to murder everyone, obviously) and swooned about the only thing in Rosewood that has always been consistently great: Mona Vanderjesus Vanerwaal. More Mona, more excellence. If PLL doesn’t pull out of this nose dive, I’ll only be recapping through the end of this season (two more episodes!), and this is the first episode since the first two of season 6A that reminded how much I used to love this show.
Do you want to split this cake?
No, I want my own.
The theme today is weddings: Alison, for example, has gotten married of to Dr. Rollins, a thing Emily correctly surmises is a desperate plea for a family. And also it is time for Hanna’s bridal shower, which she could not give less of a fuck about. Ashley honestly doesn’t care, either, because of all the contrived cardboard cutouts keeping the Liars from their romantic endgames, Jordan is the cardboardiest.
Ashley’s main plan to keep from having to throw the shower is to break up Hanna and Jordan, so she goes ahead and invites Caleb to move back into her bathroom shower where he was when Hanna saw him nekkid that first time and forgot Sean existed. Caleb demurs, and when Hanna finds out about it, she is livid. She says Ashley likes Caleb more than she likes Jordan. Ashley says she’s known Caleb for six seasons and it’s hard to get invested in her no-stakes relationship with a guy who somehow has less personality than Sara Harvey. Always the voice of the people, that Ashley Marin.
Until time for the bridal shower, though, everybody’s got things to do.
Hello, Spencer.
#StrangerDanger
Spencer’s dad has been Out of Town so long I can’t even remember his name. Paul? Patrick? Oh! It’s Peter! Peter is back and his first order of business is to remind Spencer that she continues to be a constant disappointment and will never be as loved as his favorite daughter, Melissa. He wants Spencer to “release a statement” to “distance herself from Caleb,” as if the voters of the great state of Pennsylvania care about whether or not the boyfriend of the ex-girlfriend of the boyfriend of their congressional candidate’s daughter released information about her abortion. Spencer realizes this is some baloney, just her asshole dad bossing her around about inconsequential shit, as per usual, so she asks him to please talk to her about what really matters: Where is Melissa?
Peter: She went back to London.
Spencer: Seriously?! Without answering for the her missing luggage handle!?
Peter: Her what now?
Spencer: The long hollow piece with the rectangle piece attached at the end. Such a thing murdered Charlotte DiLaurentis!
Peter: Oh, whatever. Melissa didn’t murder Charlotte. I mean, look, yes, Charlotte did die the night Melissa stopped making blackmail payments to someone who knew she buried Bethany in that hole Ali crawled out of, but that’s all.
Spencer: Why didn’t you go to the police with that information?
Peter: Because of the part where your sister entombed a girl in our yard.
Spencer harrumphs away from there, but then harrumphs back after her dad leaves, and just in time, too, because Toby stops by to join in the harrumphing. He wants to know where Caleb is because he’s just so mad that he leaked that information about Yvonne, despite the fact that behavior like that is completely out of character for Caleb, and, in fact, sounds more like the omnipotent cyberterrorist he spent twenty years trying to help the Liars apprehend in high school. But whatever. Caleb walks into the kitchen, looking innocent as the sunrise, and when Toby asks him to deny doing the deed, he refuses, and Caleb wallops him in the face with his fist.
It is NOT okay to keep killing lesbians on TV!
That trope damages a real life marginalized and oppressed minority!
If no one ever made another TV show or movie about white dudes, there’d still be more TV shows and movies about white dudes than a person could watch in a lifetime!
But the way *I’m* going kill a lesbian character will be special and different.
No. It won’t.
Obviously, Spencer and Caleb then drive to the town square to sit in the middle of the park while Spencer holds ice to Caleb’s face. Spencer still can’t understand why he won’t just tell people he didn’t leak the information, but Caleb has his reasons. Apparently. He doesn’t say them. But I’m sure they make perfect sense. Anyway, somebody peeps them and word gets back to Peter and he is torn out of the frame. What will the voters say?! Spencer is like, “Dude, half the country is voting for an actual Nazi to be president; I think maybe you’re slightly overestimating the gravity of me sitting on a bench with a boy.”
The other person who is mad at Spencer today is Mona Vanderwaal. She bumps into Spencer at the Rosewood Grille and lights into her about leaking the Yvonne thing. When the IT team went digging into the server, they also discovered that Caleb had been crawling around in there via Yvonne’s iPhone which Mona told her to “accidentally” leave at the restaurant to bait Spencer into stealing it. And now Mona’s out of a job! Honestly, it’s not that big of a deal; she did rise from the dead after three days, just a few years ago, and getting a gig on the Hill is cake compared to getting immortal. It’s honestly just the principal of the thing. Spencer can’t decide if this is all one of those convoluted Mona ploys that she pulls for fun when she’s waiting for new levels of Candy Crush to be released.
Your outfit is like if my grandma’s pajamas and my grandpa’s pajamas had a business casual baby.
Don’t pretend you have grandparents; everyone knows you were flung from space.
Spencer finally goes to meet Toby at the Brew to explain about Caleb. When she sees him sitting there, she remembers how they broke up. It was at Georgetown. She was maybe pregnant.
Toby: I think now would be a good time to have a referendum on our relationship.
Spencer: I heartily disagree.
Toby: Would having a baby be the worst thing in the world?
Spencer: Right now? When I am 20 years old and only halfway through college? Um, yeah.
Toby: This is about you not loving me.
Spencer: Actually, it’s about the fact that a baby would wreck my life and cut off my path to my career goals.
Toby: We used to want the same things.
Spencer: Yeah, when we were deciding which toppings to get on our pizza and what to watch on Netflix. We’re talking about a human baby, man.
Toby: Oh, well. It was nice when you cared about me, back in high school.
The memory softens Spencer so she confesses to Toby that A is back and that’s who leaked Yvonne’s abortion history.
Hi, I’m looking for my way back to Stars Hollow.
Why don’t you stay for some Turkish Delight.
Emily’s day is more weird but less dramatic. She stands around in the middle of town waiting to see if she hears any of that whirring, like what chased her around the forest last night, and finally she does. Luckily Ezra is there to explain to her that it’s this thing you can get installed on your car to draw attention to yourself if you’re desperate and like to set money on fire. So Emily frolics off to the bizarro alternate universe Rosewood that only she seems to have access to, seeking answers to her car chase.
Her first stop is a seedy car garage where about a hundred guys who look like extras in a pirate movie are standing around and cracking their knuckles at her. She asks the head mechanic if anybody came in to get the whirrers installed on their car in the last few weeks, anyone out of the ordinary, so like not a dude wearing beach day tank top, but potentially a handless girl or a brunette girl wearing a blazer, and like maybe she paid with suitcase handles. The mechanic tells Emily to skedaddle, she shouldn’t be here, this isn’t the place for her, get lost, she’s barking up the wrong tree, she’s asking questions she doesn’t want the answers to, she could tell you but then she’d have to kill you, it’s gonna blow, it’s not what it looks like, she just doesn’t get it does she, there’s a storm coming, etc.
So, Emily leaves and goes back through the wardrobe to real Rosewood to attend to Hanna in her hour of bridal need. (P.S. That head mechanic totally installed the whirrers on Devil Emoji’s jeep.)
Ezra’s apartment.
Ezra: Good news, I told your boss about you writing my book for me and she agreed that you can co-write my book with me.
Aria: …how?
Ezra: I’m a rich white man who asked for a thing. What do you mean “how”? Anyway, we both agreed you could add a feminine voice to my work.
Aria: That’s definitely not the most condescending thing I’ve ever heard.
Aria talks to whatever her Jordan’s name is about co-writing the book and he kisses her on the head and says, “You’re going to be a published author!” I mean. I guess “Written by Ezra Fitz. Feminine voice consultant: Aria Montgomery” is kind of like being a published author.
Used to be that three of these women would be gay for Emily.
That’s not the worst part of her day, though. The worst part of her day is Tanner shows up talking about how an eyewitness saw “an attractive brunette” placing a call from the Two Crows Diner to the DiLaurentis house the night Charlotte was killed. So I guess she’s going in order of height of the six thousand “attractive brunettes” in this town and Aria is up first.
Aria goes down to the station and stands in one of those police line-ups, and then once she’s free to leave, she sneaks into the bushes and sees Sara Harvey exiting through the back door. And that is enough! Aria stomps back inside and tells Tanner she wants to file a harassment complaint against Sara, which makes sense considering the fact that she was literally every single non-A bad guy on this entire show, but Tanner just blows her off. Before she does, Aria sneaky-peeks at the Two Crows file and finds out that the second attribute of the “attractive brunette” is that she carries a keychain made of pink dice.
I’m going to vote for the presidential candidate who’ll do the one thing I care about.
Cool, I’m just going to get drunk.
It’s bridal shower time! Hanna and the Liars and a bunch of nondescript “New York friends” descend on Lucas’ loft to drink free booze and pretend Jordan is not an Australian robot. Ashley wants them to play a party game of who knows the bride and groom best, which is amazing because no one knows anything about them because Hanna’s never talked about him to any of them. Emily guesses they met “at a work function,” indicating that she does not, in fact, know where they met, or what this motherfucker even does for a living. Amazing.
Even more amazing: Mona shows up halfway through the shower with this wedding scrapbook Hanna made when she was just a middle schooler. Hanna can’t believe Mona kept it, which is just about the most hilarious thing I have ever heard in my entire life, and invites her in to have some champagne. Not ten minutes after her arrival, my all-time favorite thing of: a room gaining consciousness and attempting to murder everyone inside it happens. Death metal like from when A hijacked the fashion show plays, and the air conditioner starts blowing everything everywhere, and the lights go off — and then the fire place explodes Aria in half!
And I will always loooove yooouuu…
WE GET IT, MONA, YOU CAN SING.
JK, JK, Aria’s only TV hurt. She’s got a little burn on her arm.
Ezra goes to the hospital to sit with her while she recovers. He reads her a fashion magazine. Soon enough, Aria’s Jordan arrives and kisses her face and takes over reading the magazine. I guess Byron and Ella are still on their honeymoon. Or maybe, like Mike, they have been magicked away from this mortal realm.
In the waiting room, Hanna confesses to Ashley that she also hates Jordan. At her house, Spencer calls Yvonne to apologize and offer a sympathetic ear. And in some alley somewhere, Emily and Mona are cleaning up the remains of Lucas’ apartment, when Emily spots Mona’s pink dice keychain.
Is this a bomb?
Only one way to find out!
Emily: Was it you?
Mona: Bitch, it is literally always me. Whatever the question, I’m the answer. Get in the car.
Thank you to Nicole (@PLLBigA) for the screencaps!
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Omg did Toby and Spencer end really because he was pissed she made a decision about her body alone ?! did he always suck like this or did he get re-written like everyone else?
Thank you for doing this hard work so I don’t have to watch, Heather <3. You're the hero we deserve.
PS: someone needs to free Emily and get her to the Dinah Shore or something.
He wasn’t angry at all, but he also didn’t comfort her. He was depressed because he thought Spencer was pregnant and he was excited about having a baby, but she wasn’t. She pretty much says she would have an abortion, which was a concept that disturbed him. I agree that he doesn’t have a say in that, but I think it’s a perfectly understandable reason for them to break up.
He always sucked like that. He’s sucked since he was A.
Yes, Toby has always been this terrible. I was yelling at him throughout those flashback scenes. Troian put in some BRILLIANT acting work, you could really feel Spencer’s pain, and Toby was making it all about him and what he wanted. It’s not really made clear if that’s why they broke up, but it definitely seemed like the pregnancy made them finally realize that they wanted different things out of life.
If you’re going to stop recapping, will someone else fill in?
Well, we’re only recapping shows with quality queer content in them now, and everything else will get a little write-up once a month in our Boob(s in Your) Tube column, so probably not. If PLL re-gays itself, I’ll keep recapping it. If not, there’s not really a place for queer recaps (which breaks my heart).
Thank you for clarifying. :)
It’s like the flashbacks are the intrusion of reality into fiction; in them, Caleb is unsupportive and condescending, Toby is unsupportive and self-involved, and the Liars are faced with the reality of dating straight white dudes.
Parts of this episode were really funny – like the house coming alive, and Toby punching Caleb – but Troian just sold Spencer’s anguish in those flashbacks so hard. That’s what really stood out for me. This show has done a lot of messed up shit this season, but it went all out on telling an abortion storyline properly. And maybe it was just Troian’s acting, (she’s always been five levels beyond the other liars, and about twelve levels beyond Keegan Allen) but god, that hit me hard, my heart completely broke for her. And then screaming at Toby that she would never have judged Yvonne for making the same decision? And calling Yvonne? Spencer’s scenes alone made this episode the standout of the season for me.
Maybe that’s why I love Spencer so much – because that’s the best actor on the show?
Or it’s because she’s so pretty.
I honestly don’t know.
Pink Drinks, Heather..! Pink Drinks!!
RIGHT. I forgot about that line! It seemed like a totally shout out to the audience, I sort of can’t believe they actually went there!
That wedding book! Like in half convinced* Emily and Mona are going to bang out their mutual love of Hanna in the back of that car.
*But actually less than half because of FreeForm’s new heterosexual mandates. Did Pat Robertson actually secretly take back over this channel?
Heather, I love you.
You know what frustrated me over the last two episodes? Not one person said the word “abortion.” Not saying the word perpetuates the stigmatization of people who choose to have an abortion. It’s extra annoying when it’s a show aimed at younger people. Makes me wonder if this is a Freeform/ABC Family mandate (have characters on their other shows “terminated an unwanted pregnancy”?) or a choice PLL made.
Thank you for the recaps, Heather.
It very well might be a network mandate. I’m thinking back to their parent network- ABC broadcast. Over the variety of Shonda Rhimes shows, multiple lead characters have had abortions- Olivia Pope on Scandal, Cristina Yang on Greys. She showed the procedure in real time, but I can’t remember if they ever said “abortion” by name. Similarly, last season on the Fosters Lena had to get an abortion for medical reasons, it was also not named. Instead they went with “she lost the baby”.
This is all off the top of my head, so it’s completely possible that I’m wrong. If I am, please someone correct it! No hard feelings. But I think you may be on to something…
“So I guess she’s going in order of height of the six thousand ‘attractive brunettes’ in this town and Aria is up first.”
Non-coincidentally, Mona is the same height as Aria.
Well the woman in the middle of the lineup looks really gay and the women on either end are wearing flannel so I think the chances of three out of five being gay for Emily are still pretty good Heather.
Heather, it literally took me about half an hour to read this, a) because I didn’t want it to end, and b) it made me laugh so much I had to keep taking my glasses off to wipe my eyes. You recapping a great episode of PLL is the reason I have kept watching this show – I’m not even kidding. I have been waiting for this recap for days. I knew you’d love it.
I CANNOT believe you didn’t mention the pink drinks that Ashley wanted to have at the party – I thought that was the show speaking directly to us, like it used to!!!! I was so happy!!! I just about screamed at my computer.
Also – Hanna Marin / Ashley Benson in that dress = perfection.
Papa Hastings – fuck off. That is all. what are you even doing here? Didn’t Veronica leave you because you were a twat?
Ezra Fitz, you can fuck off too, you sanctimonious, dis-interesting, inappropriate knob. How dare you.
Also – are Emily and Mona going to get it on in that car?! Is this a thing that can happen?! I have everything crossed. :)
Do you know why the house attacked everybody? Because it knew, now that Wayne Fields has passed on, that it was safe to.
Heather! I love your recaps! If you stop writing them I’ll probably stop watching the show, because I only watch it for the humor you bring us every week.
I guess I’m putting this here because I have no where else to express it.
I’m really happy that the show (attempted) to show and explain things like abortion and donating eggs this season. It was bold and the writers are aware that the majority of the viewers are now my age (17-21). I’m proud that they’ve shown the reality of situations we have all been in/could be in.
I’m really upset with this show. They’ve managed to remove Emily from any personal storyline, turn her into the most unsuccessful character, just to have someone move the “Evil Emoji” storyline along. They’ve tried to make a stand about fertility, but by pushing Emily to the side they’re hurting the LGBTQ+ community. I almost believe the writers (cough cough Mrs King) do it out of spite to those who ridiculed them for the season 5 finale. But who knows. Maybe they are just that blind to their actions.
I hope they really push the “evil emoji” storyline and stop dragging out Jordan and Liam. Stop trying to make it happen. It’s never going to happen. Also, more vanderjesus never hurt.
Sorry for the rant, you’re the best!
I’m so glad this show is getting better again. I’ve missed the last few episodes but will watch this one on your recommendation Heather. It sounds quite funny and not that annoying!
Yaaaaaay they’re back!!! In disappointment of this season I have started to rewatch season 1 which I miss massively! Seasons 1 – 4 were the best. Then they started to redeem EzrA after finally admitting he was evil, were awesome with the Dollhouse and then decided that having interesting plot development and characters that make sense weren’t as good as shock factor. Holding out hope for the end of the season though *SPOILERS*- we find out who has a twin and ‘Emison is back in its original form’ according to Lucy Hale.
WHAT ABOUT PATTY
I know, right?
I will just say this: I never laugh as much as I do when reading these recaps. Full belly laughs. Thank you. I’ll miss them should you decide to stop writing them.