Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 3, Episode 18 of ABC Family's "Pretty Little Liars," titled, "Dead to Me."
Our favorite "Little Liars" have gathered at The Brew for an Ezria pow-wow and in case you forgot that Spencer had alienated herself from Hanna, Aria and Emily, she's sitting on a chair across from her three (former?) best friends who are all snuggled up on the couch. It's more than clear that Spencer is currently living in a world far crazier than Rosewood, but thanks to the seating arrangement reminder.
Anyway, back to the fan-favorite, still-creepy couple. Aria hasn't heard from Ezra since he left to meet the son he didn't know he had, except for a "I got here" text. "Well, that counts," Hanna assures her. "If you want it to."
Aria doesn't like the idea that something that's happening hundreds of miles away is going to change their relationship forever, but so it goes. Perhaps she should get herself hit by a truck transporting GC-161 so she can ooze her self in a silver blob over to Ezra, Alec Mack and their potentially supernatural offspring.
What does Spencer think of all this? Her coffee's cold so she heads over to the counter for a refill while the other three wonder if Wilden's read Ali's notebook. Emily decides she's going back to the police station after school to "take a snap" of the photo of Wilden, a fish and some friends in Cape May. Hopefully, Hanna and Aria will stay behind since their incredibly shiny wardrobes could be detrimental to Em's stealth operation.
Just after Spencer receives text from Miles Corwin, the pimp-turned-private-investigator who says he "has info," Jason decides to be relevant again and appears at The Brew. He tells the girls that the police have released Ali's remains to the DiLaurentis family and they're going to have another memorial for her at a mausoleum, where her body will be kept. I almost forgot about the body bag at the end of the Halloween episode on the train. Though the service is supposed to be "family only," Jason's arranged for the girls to pay their respects after his parents leave. Shady. He also says that the things they put in the casket are still missing and the police thinks the "creeps who did this" are keeping them as souvenirs.
Jason offers to text them the details, but Spence says there's no need: "I've said all the good-byes I want to say ... I'm finished with all of this. You guys want to pay a visit to the crypt keeper, that's fine, that's your business. But keep me out of it."
Aria then looks at Jason and says, "We'll be there." With bells on, I'd assume ... or at least some metallic garb.
At school, Hanna suggests that she and Aria get rid of the things they have from Ali's grave that magically resurfaced -- earrings and the Ouija board pointer -- since they're the only ones that have them. Aria doesn't think they should because "every time [they] react to something like this, it comes back to bite [them] on the ass." Anyway, they can't make a decision now or after school because Aria's going to Ezra's apartment to wear his shirt water the plants.
Speaking of hydration, Spencer's hair could use a shower (preferably with conditioner). She's at her locker when MonA stops buy with some faux-cornrow hair twists in the back that bring me back to the popular use of mini butterfly clips in the '90s [http://www.beautyriot.com/fashion/90s-fashion-trends-miss-g10741-page7] ... a.k.a. it's a bad hair day for both of them, for very different reasons. MonA's come to talk about the decathlon coming up. "You've been off your 'a'-game lately," she has the audacity to say to Spencer. "Let me make something clear to you, Mona. This is not a game to me. At all." MonA should be scared, but she's not. She retorts with, "Good because I'd hate to see poor Toby travel all that way for you, only to be left cheering for me" and walks away. Obviously, MonA knows Spencer knows about the TobAy situation because she was eating Spence's lasagna, drinking her wine, listening to her classical music and acting like Mickey Mouse in "Fantasia" the night Spencer found the truth about TobAy and then inexplicably found herself crying and clawing at his apartment door.
In yet another empty classroom, Caleb is texting at a snail's pace when Hanna walks in. His mom was telling him that his aunt's moving to Brisbane, this aunt being his father's sister -- the one who sent him to foster care. They're tearing down her house and this is his last chance to see if he wants anything. Despite Hanna's suggestion, he says he's not going to go.
Over at Ezra's apartment, Aria is lying on his bed in her bunny tank-top and metallic pink pants when she hears someone with keys fidgeting at the door: It's Wes. He doesn't have classes because they're "fumigating the dorms for the first time since the Clinton administration) and Ezra said he could stay there while he was in Delaware. "Do we have a problem with me staying her for a couple nights?" Wes asks Aria like he's her principal. She doesn't and packs up her things just as Wes sees the imprint her head left on Ezra's pillow. He says she should still come back to check on the plants because he "killed a cactus once." How sweet.
Meanwhile, Spencer is in an alley chatting with her PIMP, who says TobAy bought a sandwich, gas and $65 worth of hydrangeas. He's not sure why, but he does tell Spencer that of all the criminals and scumbags he's followed, "never once did any of those guys buy hydrangeas before skipping town." Mason also traced the key to the manufacturer, but, "If you want me to narrow it down to a single doorway, I'll need a bit more encouragement," he tells Spence.
Speaking of scandalous hydrangea purchases, Emily's at the police station to ask her mom what she wants to eat (not Corn Nuts) and to take that snap she needs of the Wilden photo. Mysteriously, it's no longer there. There's just a single push pin in its place. As her mom goes to pack up her back (she's just going to leave early), she finds an Eiffel Tower post card. Apparently, Hanna's shirt was foreshadowing. On the back is a message in red Sharpie in French and unfortunately, I took Spanish in high school so I'm going to need someone to translate ... and so does Emily.
She heads to Nancy Drew's and says she knows Spencer is "in a funk," but she's on her side. Spencer takes a look at the postcard, one of 25 that Emily left in Ali's casket. Turns out, Emily's single semester of French didn't do her much good and she misinterpreted the message. According to Spencer, it reads: "Stop digging. The police already know it's you who's capable of murder." "They mean Nate," Em says.
She's ready to leave, but then see's Spencer's box of TobAy-themed things and reminds her that they're "all here" for her, whenever she's ready to talk. "You can't just push us away that easily," she explains. Then, Emily regales Spencer of Hanna's ladies night debacle. "Last week, Hanna saw Paige with another girl. She assumed the worst. She thought that Paige was seeing someone else. She wasn't. I talked to her and she was just trying to help us find out who bought that Queen of Hearts costume on Halloween. The girl that Hanna was so worried about works at a costume shop. She was a flirt, not a threat."
Firstly, I find it frustrating that A) We didn't see Hanna tell Emily, B) We didn't see Emily confront Paige and C) We had to listen to Emily's holier-than-thou spiel after we were teased and baited with no payoff. She tells Spencer that the lesson is that sometimes things look bad, but there's another explanation. "What if that explanation is even worse?" Spencer replies.
Hanna and Aria have girl talk and Hanna tells her she explained to Caleb that this might be "his only chance to say goodbye" -- another seemingly important conversation we missed out because we had to watch Wes discover the imprint of Aria's head on a pillow. Anyway, Hanna says Aria can give her the earrings and she'll get rid of them tonight. "You can do whatever you want," she tells Hanna. "Look, Aria you're making a mistake." Aria replies, "Well, it's my mistake." Am I forgetting something about the earrings? Is this seriously hinting that Aria could be "A"? Please let me know.
This whole postcard situation has apparently sent Emily back into therapy and conveniently, Dr. Sullivan has returned to Rosewood. Emily is done with people treating her like a hero. "Someone had a life. Someone was a living breathing person and I ... " she tells Dr. Sullivan before trailing off. "You killed someone," her therapist finishes. No sugar-coating here apparently. Dr. Sullivan suggests hypnotherapy and Emily is game.
That night, Spencer is laying awake in her bed and looks at her Box 'o TobAy, filled with photos and notes that, to be frank, look like they're from a girl. Anyway, she's clearly not done with TobAy so she calls her PIMP and agrees to pay him $500 to look further into the key situation. Then, she sits down in the rocking chair TobAy made her and cries. She should just try to remind herself that he looks like a werewolf ... and made her life a living hell.
The next day, an overall-clad Hanna joins Caleb at his aunt's house. His Uncle Jamie, who unfortunately isn't Colin Firth in "Love Actually." Caleb's giving him the cold shoulder and Hanna asks what his deal is. He tells her his uncle would come around once or twice a year when he was little and took him to a couple Phillies games, only because "he just felt guilty that his brother ran out on me," Caleb says.
In Rosewood, Jason conveniently sees Spencer take out the cash she needs to give Miles and (as everyone knows you're not supposed to do) comments on said cash and tells her it's a "nice chunk of change." He then says the girls are coming to the cemetery at 7. "Sounds like a real party," she says. He asks what her problem is and she says, "You don't want to have this fight with me, Jason. Not now. I'll win and it won't feel good for either of us." Sidebar: I want to steal her jacket.
Back at Caleb's aunt's barn, Hanna is determined to get some answers. Uncle Jamie asks Hanna if Caleb treats her right. She says yes and then takes the opportunity to grill him about Caleb's dad. Jamie says no one really hears from him, but he's glad Caleb's mom found him. "I've never met her. Did you know her?" Hanna asks. "Yes. She deserved better," Uncle Jamie replies. "He said he needed some space. Figured he'd come back when he could handle being a dad. The thing is when you walk out, the people you leave ... they keep on having a life. They don't wait for you to come back."
Perhaps this advice would work on Aria, but no -- she's stopping by Ezra's apartment again where Wes is using a typewriter because either A) He is in another time-space continuum (a la "Lost) or B) He's writing a ransom note. He tells Aria the plants have been crying out for her and that he hasn't heard from Ezra. Suddenly, the phone rings and Wes doesn't seem too keen on answering it, dismissing it as a "junk call." (I will overlook that since Gregg Sulkin who plays Wes is British and I just assume they say things like that there). But once Aria goes to reach for the phone, he answers, looking terrified and the caller seemingly hangs up. Then, he asks her if she wants to go out to eat.
Meanwhile, Emily is under hypnotherapy on Dr. Sullivan's pristine couch. We see her memory: She's in pink and purple athletic gear. "Someone just turned on the sprinklers. She's looking at me," Emily says. The "she" is Ali, wearing that yellow top she had on the night she died. "I think she knows she's gonna die," Em continues. "We shouldn't be here," Ali says crying. "This is bad. We shouldn't be doing this." "No. Please no!" Emily shouts. She says she wants to wake up, but Dr. Sullivan pushes her to tell her what she sees. "I see ... the murder weapon," she finally replies like this is a game of I Spy With My Little Eye as dream Emily grabs a shovel. "You have to stop. What do you think you're doing. You can't do this," Ali pleads. She falls into a grave and Emily raises the shovel. She wakes up just as she swings the shovel and the screen fades to red.
Needless to say, Emily wakes up in quite the sweat and leaves Dr. Sullivan's office suddenly.
Before Caleb and Hanna leave his aunt's house, Jamie gives Hanna a picture of Caleb at six months that he found at the bottom of the drawer. "The way he's feeling, I'm not sure he'd want it right now," Jamie tells her since Caleb already has both feet out the door. "So maybe you can hold onto it for him, just until he wants to see it." Caleb calls for Hanna, but before she walks away, Jamie tells her to make sure Caleb takes care of her.
Back home, Emily finds the Eiffel Tower postcard and has a far less frightening flashback. She and Ali are in an empty classroom while Ali places postcards on her desk (Eiffel Tower included). "You and me in sweet Paree?" she proposes to Emily. "We could start in the South of France, dancing through sunflower fields, lounging around in our bikinis in the French Riviera. You'd look so good on top of the Eiffel Tower ... wind in your hair." Emily smiles, looks down at the postcards and asks, "How long are we going away for?" "How 'bout forever?" Ali says with a smile.
Spencer and her PI meet up in a slightly less covert location and he hands her the key, telling her it looks like it's "a unit in a small building on Mayflower Hill." There would be a Mayflower Hill in Rosewood. When Miles asks Spencer what she's hoping to find, she says, "We had a secret, him and me, and this will tell me whether he kept it ... [If] I open the door and if it's full of the things that I think it is, then it means there's still hope. It means that he loves me and that I wasn't wrong about us." But "if not," says Miles, "It's time to let him go."
In another part of town, Aria and Wes are grabbing a pizza when a man comes up to Wes and says, "Your mother fixed the board, but she can't buy me off ... Let's see that pretty smile after I bounce your face off the curb." (What?!) But Wes throws the first punch instead and grabs Aria's arm. They run around the corner and then he tells her that man was his physics teacher's husband. (Again, what?!) Back at Ezra's apartment over fancy bottled water, Wes explains that in order to get away from his mother, he intentionally tried to get kicked out of prep school. But his mom "made every infraction disappear with the wave of her checkbook." In an act of desperation, Wes explains, "I went for the one really crazy thing I knew would cause maximum trouble." He hit on his physics teacher, who's "very attractive in the intellectual cougar sort of way." "Did it work?" she asks. That's why he's at Ezra's: "academic suspension and an irate husband." "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Aria says. SERIOUSLY!? She finds it unfathomable that a student would get in trouble for having a romantic relationship with his or her teacher? I can't tell if the writers intended for us to laugh at Aria's lack of self-awareness, but sadly, I think not. This might the most irresponsible approach "Pretty Little Liars" has ever taken with the whole Ezria relationship.
Wes does not agree. "You're the most amazing part of this," he tells Aria. "That's why my mother hates you ... because you're unexpected." Is he also hitting on her? Are we about to have the second brother-girl-brother triangle on teen TV right now? Damon-Elena-Stefan is enough for me, thanks.
Back at her house, Hanna takes the baby picture of Caleb out of her overalls pocket, telling him that Jamie gave it to her. "He wanted to make sure that you didn't throw it away," she says. When he asks if it was in the shed, Hanna says she doesn't think so -- the bent edges make it look it was in his wallet. Look at little Drew Jr. "Why would he have a picture of me in his wallet?" Caleb asks. She says that the man holding him in the picture is wearing the same ring Jamie had on when they saw him that day. "He knew you before you were five," she says. Caleb denies Hanna's not-so-subtle assumption that Jamie could be his dad. He sniffles and walks away.
When Dr. Sullivan leaves her office for the day, she finds MonA sitting outside, with her Peter Pan collar, headband and pigtails. She has an orchid for her as an office-warming gesture. "I just wanted you to know that I'm doing so much better," she says. "What a cute little space," MonA adds, peering into the office. Dr. Sullivan notes she's leaving for a few days -- because she is an idiot -- and thanks MonA for the orchid. "It's nothing. I could never really repay you for what you did. Bye!" she says with a smile and the excitement of a small child. Look's like she's "Pretty Eyes" ... as in, "Hey there, Pretty Eyes."
Over in a far dingier apartment, Spencer finds the door that the "A" key unlocks to find an empty "A" Team lair. There are Ali remnants on the walls, mattresses and a lamp, but I'm guessing that's not what she was hoping to see to prove he still loves her (or ever did), especially considering she breaks down in tears.
At the cemetery, Jason is standing with Aria, Emily and Hanna -- who are all very inappropriately dressed for a memorial service in a sheer dress, white less number and short leopard look respectively-- decide to stop waiting for Spencer. "Unable are the loved to die for love is immortality," Aria reads on Ali's stone. "That's creepy," Hanna says. "That's Emily Dickinson," Aria fires back. Just as Jason agrees, Spencer barges in and decides to tell Jason that Ali was pregnant when he died. As he struggles for words, "Who's the father?" she says, putting the words in his mouth. "Oh, that's the best part." Though the girls plead with Spencer not to say anything, she doesn't listen: "Detective Wilden, one of Rosewood's finest," she says.
"She's just hurting and wants us to hurt just as bad," Emily says after Jason runs out. "We're your friends. We're not your punching bags," Aria adds. Am I the only one who doesn't see why Spencer telling Jason hurts Emily, Hanna and Aria? It absolutely hurts Jason, but beyond that?
Outside of the mausoleum, Aria says Spencer is more than just heartbroken, she's straight up broken. But before they have time to figure out what's going on with their clearly disturbed best friend, the sprinklers turn on and trigger Emily's memory. She heard them the night she found herself at Ali's grave with a shovel in her hand, after being drugged and kidnapped. She remembers seeing the "girl in the red coat," who's in charge. Hanna wonders if it's Ali, but Aria pretty much tells her she's crazy.
Meanwhile, Spencer is still in the mausoleum and she comes across some hydrangeas sandwiching the name Marion Cavanaugh. Shocked and hurt, she starts etching Toby's name into the marble of his mom's resting place while choking back tears. Why? Again, please let me know your thoughts.
In the weekly, "A" moment, one gloved member of the team is buying whiskey. The boss at the store tells the clerk ringing "A" up to "make sure you see an ID" and just as "A" goes to get a license from his/her wallet (which looks like it was once attached to JNCO jeans), the camera fades out.
Well, after that hour of being teased and jerked around, I could really use some of that whiskey.
Quotes Of The Night
"She's Saint Ali now? Are her bones holy relics or something?" -Spencer
"Believe me, one size does not fit all." -Aria
"I once killed a cactus. I thought the only way you could do that was with a gun." -Wes
"So what exactly brings you to my office?" -Spencer
"That sounded so much better in French." -Emily
"You got a prior engagement or something? She was your best friend." -Jason
"What kind of school do you go to?" -Aria
"Well, silence your inner Oprah, OK? It's just an old house." -Caleb
"I don't care if it's Santa Claus, consider me creeped." -Hanna