It is with the fullest heart and greatest joy that I welcome you to the season premiere of my absolute favorite show on television: Pretty Little Liars. In case you’re just joining us, Pretty Little Liars is a romantic comedy drama that follows five girls as they try to find love and fight evil all while maintaining the shiniest hair of all time.

As you may not remember, we left our Liars in last season’s finale as they FINALLY FOUND ALISON.  We expected Alison to explain everything and then we would know all about what the hell has been going on for the past million billion years. Instead we were more confused than ever. And then Ezra totally got shot by A and instead of screaming in pain or collapsing he looks off at the New York skyline. As usual A gets away and, just for good measure, someone buries Jessica Dilaurentis. So a lot.

But that’s okay because for every cliff hanger there’s a cliff shelf, right? Wrong. I am just as confused if not more confused than ever. While my tragically adorable girlfriend always turns to me and asks (while she simultaneously plays on her iPhone) “What the hell is going on?,” this is the first time that instead of pausing the DVR, sighing dramatically and explaining the return of subtle plot elements from previous seasons, I had to just throw my arms up in the air and say “Fuck if I know!”

So it was confusing. Let’s do our best.

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We open on Ezra being taken away by the paramedics while Noel answers questions and the Liars hang back. You would think at this point the cops probably would have thought four teen girls without their parents are suspicious hauled them in, but oh well.

The Liars have their first smart idea all season and call the fucking police. Children, if you’re reading this I hope you’ve finally learned that you should call the police if you’re in trouble.

Oh. They just call to tell the police Ezra is in the hospital and there was foul play in his death. Womp. Regardless Hanna hands Aria the gun (totally bad idea) and the group splits up (another bad idea).

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Back in Rosewood, the remaining Hastings are in turmoil. It’s unclear if the tension within the family is from whatever Melissa said to her dad or if it’s from the obvious constipation plaguing the family.

They should really see a GI specialist.

Melissa says she wants to tell her mother something, but before she can she get the words out, they are stormed by good old Detective Wilden Reynolds Holbrook. H0lbrook announces that Cece has escaped custody. Does that make sense? No. She was in a room with only one door inside a police station filled with people. Rosewood PD: Work harder. Do more.

Melissa tries to tell Holbrook whatever her secret is but her father cuts her off. Hastings are not known for their truth.

Later, Papa Hastings tells Melissa she can never ever ever ever tell anyone what she told him. Ugh I hope that doesn’t include us.

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Elsewhere, we discover a news break reporting that the girls are missing. These aren’t the best school photographs of all time. I guess the biggest thing Alison missed while she was “dead” was when the girls did a group passport photo friend date.

But wait! Who is that raven-haired beauty reflecting in the TV?! It’s Mona! And what does she have planned for tonight? I don’t know but like all other good plans she needs a leather jacket to do it.

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Over at Saint Nowhere Hospital, Ezra is being taken into surgery and we get to have a little mini Grey’s Anatomy moment. Maybe someone will have sex with A in the on call room!

A tries to sneak into Ezra’s OR but for once there are police officers in the way! Although, as a side note, you can’t just walk around a hospital without an ID badge without people questioning you. Like you can be in the patient waiting area but you can’t be over by patients room and stuff. Seriously. I wear a white coat with my name embroidered on it and I get asked for ID all the time. And security would definitely notice anyone wearing all black including a black face mask. 

Emily, Spencer and Hanna make their way towards the OR but notice A on the way and just decide to hang out in a stairwell instead. Stairwells are, as you well know, the best place to take a pause and have a convo.

Meanwhile, Ali and Aria run to the nurses station to find out any news about Ezra. She can’t tell them anything because of HIPAA, but tells them he’s in surgery and stuff. Just then, Ali gets paged which is so funny because I didn’t even know she was in medical school!

Okay so A spots the girls and sends a text to someone — probably either her minions or her mom. I mean she’s out really late she’s supposed to check in by 11pm! Anyways the text says “It’s happening. Follow the leader.” My question is how the hell did A get her texts to show up in black?!

So A leaves.

And then Ali leaves.

And then Aria stands near some chairs.

I know this sounds boring when I say it like that but there was creepy dramatic music and stuff so actually it was all really exciting.

Anyways so A chases Alison through the streets of New York City.

One thing I know for certain is that if you’re being chased by a hooded killer you should run to a well lit area where there are tons of people. You can’t just kill people in front of people. That’s not a thing you can just do.

But oh well Alison runs into a dark abandoned playground. A grabs her and asks her “Wanna play?” which is so fucking creepy.

But SURPRISE! Spencer, Emily and Hanna are there to save the day.

Just when you thought the Liars finally, yes finally, had A busted, a whole bunch more As show up! It’s an A flash mob! And instead of just being adorable and hopefully ending up on Youtube, it’s terrifying and the worst.

Eventually the police show up and disperse the crowd but as usual A wins and you lose. Duh. This is the way it works.

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Back at the hospital Aria is still sleuthing for details about Ezra’s condition. Even though you might think things like “confidentiality” exist in this world, Aria overhears a member of Ezra’s care team reporting on his condition to his mother. He survived surgery but is doing medium bad.

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Across the universe Mona’s first guest arrives. It’s Lucas and he looks pissed. I look surprised because it’s been so long since I’ve seen Lucas. Like so long that I can’t even remember why he left.

Meanwhile, Holbrook gets a call from the NYPD station and starts looking into Ezra. He is shocked to discover he is a human person. And here he thought Ezra Fitz was just an extremely well dressed chimp! Imagine that. Rosewood’s finest folks.

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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.

Aria as you may have guessed is still in the hospital waiting room.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This person is immediately revealed to be Cece.

She’s also immediately revealed to be… good?

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.

Anyways so Ali and Cece have a touching reunion the cumulates with Ali giving Cece her plane ticket and passport.

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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Back over at the hospital, Aria finally wakes up. Even in her sleep she just couldn’t handle being clashing with those orange chairs. She finds a receptionist to speak with and discovers that Ezra is in recovery. She’s not family or anything but she barges into his room to find Shana who is also not family and c’mon where the hell is the security team informing them that only family members can come see critical patients and only during visiting hours. C’mon!

But before we can suss out what the hell Shana is doing there, Ezra goes into some sort of allergic reaction/cardiac arrest/bad times response. Aria yells for help and for once help comes! Yay help! Maybe the Liars should try this “yelling for help” thing more often.

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Starsweep back to the theater where Alison returns from her midnight snack. She had hoped to sneak back in but she wakes Emily up in the process. Ali tries to tell Emily to go back to sleep and not tell the others, but Emily wants to know what the fuck is going on.

Ali’s like, “No, no I don’t want to drag you into my crazy would,” which is, side note, exactly what crazy girls say when they want to drag you into their crazy world. But Emily? She has like seriously no fucks left to give. The past two years she’s been outed, doped, drugged multiple times, her girlfriend got killed, a car crashed into her house, her next girlfriend betrayed her and her life has just generally been completely threatened all the time. If Ali doesn’t come clean she’s going to seriously lose her shit.

So Ali tells Emily that actually Cece was on her side all the time and that Ezra was paying her for info and that she only dressed up as Red Coat to distract A so that Alison could stop the saw that was going to cut Emily in half and so really Cece saved Emily and wasn’t that so nice and great! Oh and by the way she just gave Cece her passport so she could leave the country. Yay!

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Back in Rosewood it’s revealed that Mona isn’t plotting a nighttime A attack, she’s holding the first meeting of The Official We Hate Alison DiLaurentis And Wish She Would Go Away Club.

Oh and Paige is there! Hi Paige!

Mona points out to everyone how life with Ali was terrible and how they all had horrible nicknames. She glosses over the part where she went literally insane for an entire year and made the Liars’ lives a living hell. She also glosses over the part where she actively called Lucas by his mean nickname. But you know, who’s keeping track.

Paige is about to leave because, she’s like a pretty good person and know she have a crazy rage problem she has to keep in check, but before she can someone completely unlikely walks in. Actually it’s Melissa who seems pretty likely. She’s basically always hated Ali. So.

Paige decides Melissa’s arrival is a good reason to stay. I mean, last time Melissa was upset about something she stayed on the couch for the entire third season. So at least we know she commits.

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Flashdance on over to the Rosewood Police Station where Detective Holbrook is marveling at the existence of internet. In his defense, this also means he just discovered internet porn, so I can see why it took him so long.

In some rare stroke of brilliance, Holbrook stumbles upon The Fitzgerald Theater. We are impressed with his sleuthing skills.

Who thinks this would be a good time to discuss the fact that the Fitzgerald Theater is not in New York City but is rather the largest theater in Minnesota and the home to Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion. I mean, doesn’t anyone else listen to NPR?

Just as Holbrook is discovering this, Aria tries to get ahold of the Liars. Unfortunately the reception in the theater is wicked shitty (fucking T-Mobile) and the Liars have her call the house phone. DO YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING?

Well, as you might guess, Holbrook calls and Ali picks up. Busted.

The girls panic and do what they usually do when they panic: stare at each other.

Unable to get in contact with her buddies, Aria decides to peak in on Ezra. The power of her undying high school love awakens Fitzipoo and he whispers in her ear a big secret. Then, I imagine, he screams like hell for pain killers. IDK just my thought.

This revelation sends Aria running out of the hospital, I imagine to a J.Crew sale or a vintage jewelry store.

Back at the ranch, the Liars decide it’s time to grab a cab back to Pennsylvania. Before they can so much as open their Uber app, they are confronted. The lights go up. It’s all very Six Characters in Search of an Author.

And you think it’s going to be the police. Sort of finally. But it’s not. 

It’s Shana.

Like fucking seriously?

So let’s be clear before we begin this whole fucking rabbit hole that Paige never actually says she’s A. She definitely tries to kill Ali and says that she thought she’d got her when she tried to burn down the lodge, but she’s never like “I’m A and I’ve been threatening you all this time.”

Anyways Shana explains that she’d trying to kill Alison as revenge for… Jenna?

Yup. Shana is in love with Jenna. I guess she really did mean it when she said she would be with her even in her darkest days. With that in mind we can finally see that the drama of the past two seasons of this show could have only been provided by the most dramatic type of drama: dyke drama. Fucking goddamn dyke drama. Say drama again. Drama.

Just before Shana can kill Alison (or, you know, conveniently tell us more details of what the fuck she’s talking about) Aria comes up behind Shana and whacks her with that fucking gun from the first act. Oh Chekhov, you get us every time.

I suppose this is exactly why Aria has been taking self defense classes all these years months weeks days.

So Shana falls a full six feet into the orchestra pit. While people in Rosewood have survived gun shots, car accidents, drug overdoses, burns, being buried alive, falls from literally the tops of buildings, Shana cannot survive this six foot fall.

She just cannot.

Wanna know why? Because everyone knows that all lesbian characters and black characters end up dead on TV. Shana never had a chance.

The girls call the NYPD and flee the scene because even though it was all in self defense, why bother trying to tell the police that. I mean, not involving the police has worked out really well in the past.

And elsewhere, a very smug Cece boards a plane to France and maybe just got away with murder.

Or maybe not. Who the fuck knows anymore.

Damn guys. I really liked Shana. I hope we find out next week that her clone, Lana, is actually the lesbian the girls knew the whole time and the person who introduced Emily to Missy Franklin. Ah the good times. What I wouldn’t do to be young again.

Anyways I have no idea what I just saw, but go ahead and tune in next week when we’ll discover that in order to combat Ali, Mona has created an all girls wrestling league. A girl can dream.

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