Back in NYC there is No Business Like Show Business and as such, Alison takes the Liars minus Aria to a theater to spend the night. A real live theater where they can just pretend they’re on stage in a play called We Are So Fucked.
Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolf? I am. I am.
Aria as you may have guessed is still in the hospital waiting room.
Hour 285 here in the hospital. I’m going to have to eat intake forms and gauze to survive.
Anyways, turns out this theater is actually one that Ezra took Ali to once. Oh and one his family owns. The Fitzgerald Theater. Did you forget that bro’s got gold for days? Days!! Get ittttt.
I can’t figure out why no one came to our new play Six Hours of Physics.
Hey I have an idea. Let’s be in love until I find a new teenager to displace my feelings onto.
So the girls settle into their new theater home and slowly live every middle school theater kid’s fantasy. Of course the play set comes complete with a Chekhov’s gun on the mantle. A real live gun. Well Chekov knows as well as we do, if there’s a gun hanging on the wall in the first act it has to go off in the third act
Hanna Marin: Animal Huntress
For once the Liars are treated as humans and they start to get hungry. They skip out to the concession stand. As they start snacking they are again, for a minute, just high school students goofing off with their friends.
And after this we can all practice cunnilingus on each other!
This youngness and/or closeness seems to upset Ali though. She immediately walks upstairs to “call her friends” to let them know she’s okay. Everyone agrees this is bogus.
Did she just fart and walk away?
One of those friends just might have been Shana, because she heads over to the hospital to meet Aria. She says that Ali sent her to keep an eye on things, but Aria is generally mistrustful of lesbians. They’re always trying to process with her or give her directions to Home Depot.
Don’t be like this. I still love you.
Please can we just scissor for a minute? You used to love scissoring!
Shana offers to keep watch while Aria sleeps, and even though Aria is like so totally not interested in that she falls asleep anyways. In her defense, it’s been a long day. Shana watches her for a minute and then gets up and leaves. Shana is a terrible baby sitter.
Hmm should I draw a dick on her face while she sleeps?
Back at the theater, Alison has also “fallen asleep.” I put that in air quotes because I seriously don’t know if she actually sleeps or eats. With all that running around and scheming day and night I swear she just gets rejuvenated in some sort of Rosewood science pod created by the same people who control the weather.
This is how you get ulnar nerve entrapment syndrome.
The girls take this moment to discuss how pretty soon this will all be over and their lives are going to be totally A Free forever now. Hanna muses that maybe she’ll take up a sport. Spencer says she just wants to be happy. And Emily? Well Emily is going to finally finishing watching all of The L Word. She’s only at the end of Season One and she assumes it will only get better.
That awkward moment when you’re watching the L Word with your friends and a graphic sex scene starts and everyone has to act like they’re not into it.
The Liars even speculate how their lives are sort of almost improved. I hope that this doesn’t turn into one of these things where they decide that A was a good thing and then Alison reveals actually it was her the whole time just to bring them together. Barf.
Let’s do it.
A few hours later all is quiet on the stage as the Liars finally get some rest. Of course, as always happens when all the Liars are sleeping, someone in all black shows up.
Your safe word is Pineapple.
This person is immediately revealed to be Cece.
So you finally tried anal. eh?
She’s also immediately revealed to be… good?
Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?
Or at least she’s revealed to be in cahoots with Alison. And like weirdly sisterly in love. So the two of them head over to a diner with Noel because you can’t get a short stack in the middle of the night just anywhere, you know? And seriously if these two don’t need some breakfast sweets by now I don’t know who does.
Hello I’d like to order 100 waffles please?
Anyways so Ali and Cece have a touching reunion the cumulates with Ali giving Cece her plane ticket and passport.
Ah, twin lesbian girlfriends, I know the concept well.
Oh right, and Noel made some pervy bro remark. 
Actually I thought it was pretty funny but maybe I just have the mind of a teenage boy.
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I can’t even with this episode!! The only thing that sort of made sense was Mona’s Army, because Mona should always be the ruler of a thing. And Paige should always wear leather.
Agreed r.e. Paige.
I’ve been watching PLL since it first premiered in the summer of ’09 and I think this is the first episode where I finally felt like I was done. Done forever with PLL. I’ve been strung along for what seems like 500 episodes already and I think my heart has realized it will never know who A is and will never know how this story line makes any sense.
But I will keep reading these recaps because they’re so awesome and hilarious!
Yay Lizz! Great to see you back on PLL duty! Holy crap was Paige looking good! <3
I'm actually really upset about Shana. Losing another lesbian woc really hurts. PLL has such great lesbian and queer representation compared to most shows, so it doesn't stand out as much, but with Shana gone it really hurts. And isn't her story pretty tragic now? :'(
I understand the feeling some people have of being tired of the continuing mysteries and wanting answers but personally, I don’t watch this show that way. But I just love this show so much still. I love the atmosphere. The feeling like it’s always close to Halloween time. LOL The noir and the shifting loyalties. I watch it without worrying too much about the mystery. I just love the ride.
And also the fact that it’s had more lesbian/queer women in four seasons than any other show on TV during it’s run makes me love it even more. That’s also why I think it deserves support from all of us who want to see more TV shows where lesbian and bi women can be on it with out it being any kind of big deal.
There was just sooooooooooo much wrong with this episode that my bungee cord of “suspended disbelief” snapped and I’m plunging to my death, total free-fall. The hospital nonsense, Shana being psychotic for Jenna’s sake (please remind me WTF happened to Jenna after she was found floating in the lake!?), Shana dying after that short fall. Just. This was a bad Tuesday for queer-led TV.
The only reason I watch PLL anymore is because I want ANSWERS and for these recaps. Nice to know I have one of those things.
Also oh my god I was pissed at Shana’s death. I’ve seen to many people of color & queer characters die to deal with this shit.
Welcome Back Lizz!!! We missed you.
I am so confused. I feel like it would be impossible for the writers to craft an explanation that ties in all of the things that have happened. How can they possibly remember what has happened?! Like I can’t even keep all the minor characters straight anymore. Lucas showed up and I thought for sure he was one of the guys from Faking It.
Agreed! It’s gotten way more confusing than ever before. I don’t understand why they renewed this show for two more seasons! They definitely should just finish this year. It’s just going to get more fucked.
I just want to point out that, not only is there no security in the hospital, the airport security is also awful. Like, how the hell does Cece get through wearing a hat, sunglasses, and a huge coat?! That makes absolutely no sense. Not that the Shana thing made sense…
Also what happened to Ali’s mom?! Is she buried alive? What’s going on with that? Why are Lucas and Noel back? Is Melissa good or bad? Why is Mona’s outfit so terrible? Why did the girls decide to just go home after Shana died? How could they think she is A? Obviously this episode answered all my questions and I’m not confused at all.
Yo after 4 seasons and this episode I think I am 100% with this show!! I’m entirely confused and not convinced that the writers aren’t either. I feel like they’re just making shit as they go along. I forget characters all the time and their tiny significance to the story. Honestly I don’t really know what we’re trying to figure out anymore.
*%100 DONE
I love it more and more every episode. I understand others’ frustrations. It DOES require a certain commitment to know what is going on (which I’ve come to admire). I myself went through a brief “dunno how I feel about this anymore” time towards the end of S2/early S3. That’s when I went back and started doing all my own research and compiling, re-watching etc. It DOES make sense. There’s a LOT of things that are so tied together yet invisible at the same time. It’s really impressive tbh.
I think something that gets a lot of people is that even though it’s a fantasy/fiction story, it DOES try to tie things into actual human reality possibilities (which is great, and hard) so when something does go way off, ie hospital/airport security, the way some are superhuman in the face of death, others are like, just served up on a platter. I’ve been putting together my own site actually for all this info bc the available ones get way too mixed up with
1. The books (irrelevant to the show, but similar)
2. The things (hints) that the cast and crew say in social media/interviews (they’ve been wrong, and often misleading).
3. That there is just ONE A and when sources of information try to go on that tip, which is invalid, things get messy really quickly. PLUS
4. When you source from anyone and everyone, things just turn into a cluster of “are you sure about that?”
I knew Shana was responsible for the latest drama, and knew she was gonna be “the one” in NYC, though I will freely admit I did not see her dying this soon (i knew she’d be killed off or sent away forever eventually though). But I still def felt “yay another queer girl dies on tv…hurrah” *sarcasm*
I like though, for this show at least, that queer topics are just a PART of the story and not THE WHOLE story. I enjoy that kinda thing, and also enjoy other shows/books/whatever where it IS the main part of the story. But I feel like it’s good to have just casual queer characters and story-lines here and there. The downside to this though, as I and I’m sure many on this site feel as well, Queer topics are still a very fragile thing and it’s just really damned if you do and damned if you don’t sometimes.
Also:
Jenna is in a coma, following her near drowning at Emily’s b-day party
Shana was hit HARD in the head, twice with the butt of a real gun, which is enough to kill someone in itself, and falling in a dazed state, even a short distance when you aren’t aware enough to brace for impact is just icing on the cake. Ridiculous?! YES! Possible, yeah…but in PLL not the most dramatic/believable death.
People that haven’t figured it out, or don’t follow all the details will be shocked when they finally reveal who the “real” A is. I myself am 95% sure of it, and if they twist at the end and it is not then unless it’s something I am really impressed with, I’ll be super disappointed.
There are many different “groups” that are against this person and that, these other groups vs other groups etc etc, so it adds to the confusion when people stick with the whole “A mastermind” thing, but the actual A has to deal with these other things that come out of the blue too. I think that’s the #1 that helps people kind of suspend their beliefs is that it’s just a bunch of nonsense, but entertaining nonsense that will somehow make sense in the end (it will!), and a lot of people have just ended up going all out for themselves, whether joined by others or not.
:)
This is a great post and I completely agree. My memory is such that I remember basically everything that ever happens on a show and so I don’t get confused by PLL nearly as much as it seems other people do. And I agree that the writers have done an impressive job of tying things together going back to the beginning of the show. And it’s frustrating to me (and I’m sure to them as well) when people miss connections and then blame the writers for screwing up rather than their own forgetfullness.
Thx :) And yeah, the writing being blamed for discrepancies is a bummer sometimes. If someone feels they HAVE to point a finger, I feel the writers would be at the bottom of the well for actual responsibility. A big downside of such a complex story, is that this incarnation of PLL is “for TV” (not to mention ABC family of all places) so when you go from the writing room, to producers, network people, censors, etc etc — there’s gonna be a LOT of compromise.
Not to mention that even though the show is unrelated to the books, it is in the same universe, and has many similarities, and as they’ve been blessed with Sara Shepard’s permission, there’s certainly got to be an anchor in there somewhere in which they can’t go TOO FAR out of the “PLLverse” *coughravenswoodcough* yet have to keep it exciting, visually entertaining, the plot and editing tie in with each other (you can’t exactly leave an edit decision up to one or two people when such a deep story is concerned!), not to mention that there’s a time limit per episode, per season, actors schedules, etc etc.
So yes, overall I find it extremely impressive and imo one of the best non HBO, Showtime, etc mainstream tv series currently on air as far as the actual writing and plot go. One could compare and contrast acting, casting, visual aspects, locations, any manner of production in a whole different conversation, but the bottom line of keeping the core of the story intact has got to be near impossible with so many people involved, so they get massive respect from me.
Thanks for your post. I sense that PLL would be a much more amazing show if one could marathon everything at once, but having it spread over 5 years has been kind of exhausting.
I really want to know who you think A is!!!
If you search for “The Alliance (or The B-Team)” it may help some fill in some gaps in relation to Jenna, Shana, Melissa – BE WARNED though that there’s a lot of misinformation and speculation out there. But it at least can help tie together events that have actually taken place in relation to them.
Wait, so I am really intrigued that you feel 95% sure who A is… do you mind sharing your theory? Thank you so much!
Oh I thought it was just me who thought this episode was pretty ridiculous even for PLL, still I’ve come to realize I don’t think we’ll ever get the answers we want so I might as well just watch it cause it’s fun and has quite a bit of ladies and lgbt characters in it.
Also this recap was great and the captions were A+++
This recap is awesome and hilarious . I finally register an account here because of Lizz’s awesome recaps . The very weird part is I’m straight (I think) but I keep coming back to this website just to read PLL’s recap when there’s a bunch of other website I could read . Confused much ? Is there any forum here for a confused – not sure girl like me ? lol , the caption is very funny .
Many of us have come to this site in the same state as you, so just take your time and enjoy the community =)
Thanks!!
I don’t like the story anymore. Like the other one said, the only reason i sometimes still watch is because there are queer characters in it. By the way uh…. Hey there Paige McCullers! ;)
PLL is that place where attractive black queer women go to die.