 Back over at Aria’s, Meredith is still snooping around. Oh wait, or is it Ali?
Ali goes right into her doll and pulls out the notebook pages. Ali and Aria have a long conversation about A and Byron. Lots of vague things get said and no questions get answered. She does tell Aria that she “really needed the money” she was blackmailing her dad for. I assume to pay for those outrageously long hair extensions.
Also Ali and Aria don’t kiss so it’s 100% less interesting than when ghost Ali came to Emily. She does allude to TobAy being A, or at least that Spencer should have figured out where in the world is Carmen San Diego. Honestly, I really almost don’t even care about Ali anymore. I just can’t get worked up about something that probably won’t be answered for a billion seasons. She’s starting to seem to meaningless in the midst of this hullabaloo.
Ali tells Aria not to drink the tea and disappears out into the night. Aria wakes up in her bed and, as usual, we don’t know if if Ali was really there or just a hallucination brought on by drugs, anxiety and the actual very real trauma of losing one of your high school best friends.
Before you can say “Meredith is drugging Aria” we cut to Meredith at drug store trying to pick up as much tetramethylhydrocortooxymetholbuteradone as her arms can carry.
Oh, did I mention Aria is locked in her room? Whose bedroom locks from the outside? That’s not a thing.
Back at Spencer’s, TobAy stops by with some flowers.
What a great boyfriend. Oh wait, I just remembered he’s the fucking worst.
He also finds the key that A dropped. He dropped? Unclear at this point. Either way, Spencer lies and says it belongs to Melissa’s storage unit and that the “A” is just a coincidence. TobAy smiles and nods even though you know that stupid jerk knows it’s actually A’s key. He is a stupid jerkfaced jerk.
Meredith gets back Aria’s and goes all Scream 3 on the situation.
What never ceases to amaze me about this show is that while we’re totally used to A/MonA/TobAy being vengeful and plotting, there are a whole host of other teenagers/adults who seem to have no grip on appropriate behavior. Like Maya’s ex-boyfriend who killed her. Or Spencer’s dad. Or, I guess, Meredith. Is there something in the Rosewood water?
Meredith chases Aria through the house. Turns out Meredith is fucking batshit crazy. She ends up knocking Aria out. Like with her fist. And a fucking shard of glass.
A storm hits and all the lighting gets a bit spookier. Realizing something is amiss, Hanna and Emily head over to Aria’s to figure out what’s what. All of the lights are off, of course.
They head into Aria’s bedroom/death trap and Meredith walks up behind them cray cray style. Meredith leads the girls into the basement under the guise that Aria is down there with her thumbs up her butt. Of course Meredith locks the door behind them. How many locking doors could this house possibly have?
Well, Meredith told the truth about one thing, Aria really is in the basement. Unfortunately she’s out cold and the girls can’t seem to wake her up. Why? Because Meredith hit her. With a fucking shard of glass.
Somehow during the commercial break Aria comes to. Emily makes a plan to beat the living shit out of Meredith.
Byron shows up. It’s hard to tell if Byron and Meredith went a little Bonnie and Clyde on Ali or if Meredith has just gone off the deep end to lala land. Byron comes down to the basement but promises he won’t hurt them. He suddenly looks slightly less scary. More like a man who’s suddenly realized his own daughter is scared of him.
Byron flashes back to that night where he explains that he was fully prepared to come clean about the blackmail. Like to Ella, not to the police or anything. I mean let’s not get crazy or anything. Unfortunately after Ali went missing he no longer saw a reason to tell anyone about his affair. Plus it made him look awful suspicious that he saw Ali that night.
Starsweep across town where A hooded figure sneaks into Spencer’s house. I mean, obviously’s it’s TobAy. Remember, the key is there and he thinks Spencer and her fam are at some made up dinner. He goes to the drawer but the key isn’t there. He rifles through the drawer but Spencer comes up behind him. Then she totally slaps him across the face. Deserves it.
Just so you know, this is what my show notes say from the begining:
I’m writing this during my first pass through the episode and I want the record to show that I think that what TobAy said he wasn’t ready for was a totally staged situation in which he is revealed to Spencer that he’s a bug asshat/A thus scaring the shit out of her.
I can’t prove anything, but I just want you guys to know.
TobAy asks Spencer how long she’s known. She holds up an Arkham Asylumtag and tells him to go fuck himself and die. Okay she doesn’t say that last part but she totally should have. TobAy runs out of the room just as Spencer’s mom gets home. Spencer runs to her mom sobbing the way a girl does when she’s just found out her boyfriend of a year was actually psychopath stalking and threatening her. It’s a pretty specific type of sobbing.
Starsweep by to the Montgomery’s where Byron and Aria have a heart to heart. He tells her he called the police but Meredith left town and asks how all this got started. Aria explains that she found the journal pages. I’m a little confused because I thought that Byron already knew that, but I guess maybe Meredith was the one who stole them in the first place and she thought in some bizarre crazed move that she was protecting him? Like “I’m the only one who really loves you” style. Girl is cray.
Byron tells Aria that if it makes her feel better he’ll go talk to the police and tell them everything that happened. This probably would have been a good idea in the first place because he could have just had Meredith cover for him alibi-wise and then the police would know Ali was potentially in a lot of debt or something. Aria, now fully trusting the man she thought was going to kill her just 20 minutes ago, decides she believes her father and burns the journal pages.
Spencer goes to some apartment crying where she begs the person inside to tell her that there’s more to the story.
Inside, Mona enjoys Spencer’s slaved over meal and a nice fullbodied glass of red wine. There’s no way that’s okay to drink with her psych meds.
Tune in next week where Spencer will attempt to put the pieces of her life back together and, with any luck, Emily and Paige will enjoy even more kale together! Sorry guys, I suspect that’s the best we’re gonna get.