Welcome to the 317th episode of Pretty Little Liars. Wait, that’s not right. The 17th episode of the third season of Pretty Little Liars— there we go– the only show on television where the time frame is so warped that the writers have committed to completely ignoring weather/seasons. This week something so gay and exciting happens that I don’t even want to waste my time with build up.

We open on on the lovestruck town of Rosewood to Spencer and TobAy doing making the beast with two backs.

Wait…. didn’t our big reveal just happen last episode?! Oops! It did. This is just the worst dream sequence ever.

This is how you do a dream sequence:

Elsewhere, Aria is still on that goddamn couch! This is just like that time Melissa wouldn’t get off the couch. She was pregnant. Just saying. Aria talks on the phone with Emily about whether or not to tell Spencer about Melissa being at Ali’s the night of her murder. The two are dead set on believing Byron even though he’s a ragehead who they thought killed their BFF last week.

Emily’s mom is back on salary and appearently working at the police station now. Isn’t that convenient/going to go terribly wrong.

On a potentially related note, the family of Nate aka Lyndon Jame aka that creep from earlier in the season sent Emily a box.

It’s a collection of every super lezzie birthday card, love note and life sized cardboard cutout Emily ever gave Ali. Ooooh and a notebook! Isn’t that every teenage lezzie’s dream? To have all your unrequited love shoved back in your face? Classic. Particularly since this means Lyndonate had his little mitts all over them.

Starsweep to the Marin residence where it looks like all the moms are on salary this week! Ashley checks in on how Hanna’s doing. Probably because Hanna has been insisting on sitting alone in the dark. Hanna is doing bad, what with the whole MonA thing.

Ashley is nervous about the MonA situation and wants to call the principal, but unfortunately Hanna won’t give her the go ahead. I mean, that would be, like, so totally embarrassing. Hanna is actually shockingly honest with her mother. While she doesn’t tell her about the new A notes, she admits she’s worried Caleb will do something stupid trying to protect her.

Starsweep to Aria’s again where Meredith’s “motive” is revealed. Surprise! Her motive is that she’s just totally crazy. Seriously, they didn’t give her any other motive. Not even a drug problem or thinking she would somehow get in trouble with the police. Not even a hilarious miscommunication a la Spencer’s Dad Think Melissa Killed Ali from last season.

I hate when women’s motives are just craziness. That’s so lazy. Byron’s all, “She shouldn’t be anywhere near my family,” and Aria is all “coolbeans let’s try not to get dead, cool?”

There’s also a super emotional part where Byron shares all the feelings about not protecting Aria well enough. I tuned that part out because I really couldn’t care less about the adults on this show. Where are the titties?

The next day, Aria, Hanna and Spencer walk to get coffee together before school at approximately 4:30 am. Hanna is particularly excited to tell the girls about her new gig as a 70s lounge singer. It becomes instantly clear that Spencer hasn’t told her friends that she knows TobAy is A. You can tell Spencer is emotional about the whole thing because for the first time ever Spencer’s hair doesn’t look washed and her shirt is so not tucked in. Spencer’s hair at its dirtiest is still pretty perfect.

The liars meet Emily outside the Life Cafe where they go through Ali’s old stuff. It includes Emily’s bio notebook which Ali borrowed. I know I always like to review a little miosis before sneaking out and getting murdered. The girls flip through the notebook and discovered Ali was doing that thing where you write notes back and forth on the same notebook. Like with a friend or scissoring partner. There are notes back and forth between Ali and someone else, mostly detailing the elaborate Truth or Dare game Ali had been playing with some Beach Hottie. The girls don’t know who Ali was writing with, but there’s something written about TobAy.

If you’re like me, you probably really really want to see what’s written in the notebook. So here it is. Honestly I’m not sure it reveals much of anything but it’s weirdly gratifying to read anyways.
At school, everyone is on their cell phones dialing the phone sex psychic hotline. Hanna is all about eavesdropping. Hanna overheads Aria telling Ezra to come by at lunch. She suggests Aria just rip the baby band-aid off. She also overhears Paige on the phone with Caleb.

In the hallowed stalls of the girls bathroom, Emily tracks down Spencer. She tries to tell her about the notebook but Spencer doesn’t give a shit anymore because she’s totally busy pulling a Twilight: New Moon and not speaking to anyone ever. At least until she meets her new werewolf bestie. Not that I read those books.

Emily finally convinces Spencer to read the portion of the notebook where it talks about TobAy. Cue the pastels. We flashback to Ali’s meeting with TobAy while TobAy was in juvenile detention. Ali confronted TobAy about the notes from A, which he denied writing. He does say he wishes he knew who had because he would totally offer his services to them. Seriously he said “services.” I assume he means BJs and stuff. Oh and Ali also was also all like, “I bet you wish you could kiss my face.”

It’s a whole thing but, like I’ve been saying, I just don’t care about Ali anymore. Also the costume designer took her cue from Half Past Dead.

Spencer cries and tells Emily the truth about TobAy. Just kidding, she tells Emily that she and TobAy broke up but doesn’t give any details. Then she flips out about Ali.

In class, Aria texts Spencer that Ezra freaked out and dumped her. Spencer reacts by completely losing her shit and storming out of class. Ella, who is there by magic, tries to stop Spencer. Instead of coming up with literally the thinnest lie she would need, “OH MY GOD. MY PERIOD,” Spencer screams at Ella/the class about how reading is dumb and a waste of her time. It is, quite literally, the least Spencer moment of all time.

Spencer finds Ezra using his laptop alone in the middle of the park. Because that’s a thing people do. Spencer goes off on him about what a horrible terrible no good awful person he is for dumping Aria even though all she did was lie to him for months about the existence of his son. It is instantly clear that Ezra has no idea what Spencer is talking about. Like instantly obviously Ezra has no idea. Fucking A strikes again. That girl is good.

At work/the police station, Emily’s mom asks the police officer if she should be worried about the package. I’m unclear exactly what Pam’s job is. For some reason I thought she worked at the Banana Republic.

An officer, who I think is supposed to be Detective Wilden but I’m not sure – Is this the same actor even? – Wilden claims that he knows what Emily went through. I guess he also killed someone in self defense. Weirdly he just seems to be trying to lead Pam into saying Emily killed Lyndonate. Or maybe he just has a lot of feelings. I don’t feel bad for him at all because I saw the first two seasons of this show where he was an assface.

Meanwhile, the younger Fields does some digging of her own. Flipping through Ali’s notebook she finds a picture of Ali and Cece at Cape May.

Remember Cece? She owns a clothing store and spends her time getting involved in high school drama that probably shouldn’t concern her. So basically she’s like every other 20-something year old in Rosewood.

Ezra, unable to wait until 2:20pm when high school lets out, finds Aria at Rosewood High. He confronts Aria about the big baby situation. My favorite part is how after over a year of trying to cover up their relationship Ezra does basically his best to blow it by obviously having a lover’s spat in the cafeteria. Ezra is, of course, pretty pissed about the whole not telling him about his son thing. Oddly he refers to Aria as “the person I’m spending my life with.” Ezra may or may have not just officially joined the Lesbian Club. I will say, for the record, Ezra does the angry/disappointed thing without turning into Scary Angry Man. I appreciate that.

I can’t believe an entire page worth of stuff has gone by and it’s not even 2:20pm yet!

At the Hasting’s residence, Aria finds Spencer who has spent the last eight hours crying over a bowl of macaroni that she was eating over the sink. Aria is, thankfully, not mad.

She just wants Spencer to know that she knows that Spencer was set up. Instead of reacting as she usually does, with all the “Oh that bitch we’ll get her,” Spencer embraces her new greasy hair and permanent sad face campaign. Basically she tells Aria that they had it coming. I think the term here is Victim Blaming. It’s a problem.

After Aria leaves, Spencer texts someone and asks if they’ll meet with her. Obviously we assume it’s TobAy. Plus she sent the text from the stairs so you know she must be sad. That’s how stairs work.

Elsewhere Emily takes matters into her own hands and meets up with Cece about the picture. By now the sun is down and it’s totally romantic. Also Cece has on a dress my friend totally has! FYI It’s from Anthropologie.

Hoping to find out who the Beach Hottie is Emily asks some probing questions. Hey look it’s another pastel flashback! Now we’re at the summer before Ali’s death. Ali confides in Cece that her period is late and she thinks she’s pregnant. I find this to be particularly hilarious because what 15 year old ever had a regular enough period to know when she was late? Either way, Ali is pretty sure she was pregnant. Maybe that’s why she needed the money from Byron so badly!

Also sneaking around in the dark, Hanna is stalking Paige. To the best place ever. Literally! Hanna followed Paige to an actual lesbian girl party!

That’s right! A girl party on Pretty Little Liars on abcFamily. Filled with actual lesbian lesbians! Doing actual lesbian things! Lesbian lesbians drinking! Lesbian lesbians kissing! Lesbian lesbians doing karaoke! Lesbian lesbians wearing feathered earrings! Lesbian lesbians listening to lesbian lesbian DJs with alternative lifestyle haircuts. Lesbian lesbians making premature plans to buy a cat together, I assume.

Lesbian lesbians talking, laughing, loving, breathing, fighting, fucking, crying, drinking, riding, winning, losing, cheating, kissing, thinking, dreaming.

Jokes aside, I think this is a big deal. Really! I can’t think of an instance on any non-premium cable channel where we see the inside of a lesbian bar. I think we just won a thing. [Author’s note: the Autostraddle team has informed me that this is certainly not the first lesbian bar on teevee but I’m leaving the previous sentence in to display how excited I was.]

Emily swings by Aria’s to sort out what’s what with the potential pregnancy. Aria is still on the couch.

The two agree that they should hand the notebook into the police. At this point I’m 100% certain that notebook was sent to Emily by A. I mean, this is classic A evidence planting.

In all the hotness, a hot chick even buys Hanna a Rasberry Cuntini. This is, of course, the most lesbian moment of the whole scene. Just kidding, in my experience lesbians never buy anyone drinks, they just stare at hot girls longingly from across the room. More importantly, how did Hanna and Paige even get into this bar?

Hanna spots Paige chatting up some girl so she approaches the drink-buyer and the two start dancing. Not ’cause she’s gay, obviously, just for cover. Of course dancing with a girl at a lesbian girl bar for lesbians only leads to one thing. Drama drama drama.

Drama, of course, leads to Hanna getting carded and kicked out of a bar. And arrested.

Hold the phones. Why is Paige talking to someone? Someone who isn’t Emily?!?

Oh my god everyone I can’t believe they’re having Paige cheat on Emily. How come the queer character always gets shafted and Emily can’t keep a relationship together for two fucking seconds without some sort of – Just kidding. This is Pretty Little Liars where nothing is as it seems. If Paige looks like she’s cheating on Emily then she’s probably buying an engagement ring and planning a romantic honeymoon for two to a sexshop in West Hollywood.

Spencer preps her makeup in the car. Because you can hide a week of crying with mascara. Particularly if you make sure every time you cry that mascara gets totally messed up and runny. These are womanly secrets we should all know.

What then took place can only really be described as a full three minute scene of Spencer crying alone in the car to the song The Strange Familiar by Alibi. I looked it up.
It’s basically just like this:

Inside, it turns out Spencer isn’t meeting TobAy. She’s meeting some guy we’ve never seen before. What she wants from him is unclear. I’m guessing he’s maybe a P.I. who plays by his own set of rules.

It also turns out that Spencer couldn’t look sexier in that smokin’ hot red dress if someone was paying her as part of a commission to look smokin’ hot.

At the police station, Emily and Hanna do their best to put the pieces of their night together. Hanna is obviously awkward because she thinks she saw Paige up all on some other girls silicone pogo stick. I would define her success as medium.

Just as Wilden walks away with the notebook the girls see a haunting picture. It’s detective Wilden. Also at Cape May. Apparently everyone and their dog took a picture in front of the same buoy that summer.

When Hanna gets home Ashley, understandably, wants to know what the fuck is going on. Hanna explains that she was trying to track down Caleb but then she thought she saw Paige hooking up with another girl so she had to fake lezzie for cover and ended up getting a drink thrown on her. Makes perfect sense to me. Unfortunately Ashley doesn’t do very much listening as she’s too busy having all the best lines of the night. All of them.

She’s totally prepped to get all up in that lezzie love triangle. But Ashley? Ashley has the best advice ever.

I don’t think there’s anything better I can really say about this scene. It’s like they wrote it for Tumblr. Intern Grace and I have agreed that the Marins are officially the best characters on the show.

Aria goes over to Ezra’s to talk things over. Too bad she finds him packing luggage into his car. He tells her he isn’t angry anymore because he knows that Maggie asked her to keep quiet. He is, however, about to leave for an unknown amount of time. Like to see his son and stuff, which is a good thing if I do say so myself. Aria is heartbroken that Ezra is leaving. She was pretty sure they were going to adopt a cat together in the spring.

I want this to be the moment Ezra realizes what he’s been doing. The moment where Ezra looks at his life and realizes that dating Aria is probably, at least in part, trying to have a re-do of his high school relationship. One that doesn’t end with knocking up his girlfriend and his mother paying her off to get an abortion. Except now he has a chance to end that part differently. Sure he missed the hard part, but now he has a chance to meet his son and learn how things turned out okay for everyone. Sure sucks for Aria though.

Our final creepy cut scene just doesn’t phase me this week. Just A blow torching a little blonde doll’s face. Is it Hanna? Is it Cece? It’s a pretty hideous doll whoever it’s supposed to be. Standard crazy A shit.

Tune in next week where it will finally be revealed that not only is everyone A but everyone’s gAy. In the meantime, we can spend the next week writing fanfic about this:

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