Previously: Stupid Truth-Up Day was actually pretty boring, except for the part where Spencer realized that New Jason is her brother.
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Sara: We open up at a Rosewood Swim Meet, where Caleb is working on the Super Secret Cell Phone Files in the middle of a hundred people. Genius. The girls remind us of what happened last time (calling the number in Alison/Vivian’s coat and setting up a meeting), which is actually a good thing this time because I had legitimately forgotten that this was happening. Aria is the one going to meet him, and she’s worried but Spencer tells her they’ll have her back. How has Aria not figured out yet that NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS TO HER EVER?
Sweeney: Right? They should be sending Aria in for all such shady missions. She’s got some sort of magical immunity going.
Lorraine: It’s because in her head, all her life where she isn’t actually 32 years old is a tragedy.
Sara: Apparently Spencer has been crashing at Aria’s house, because she doesn’t want to deal with her dysfunctional family right now. If she’s trying to stay away from Dysfunction Junction, she should probably go to Emily’s house instead. Their conversation is interrupted when Emily walks in with a trophy, apparently having won the swim meet. Good thing Mona blackmailed her way back on the team!
Maya greets her with a kiss and a cute poster with Em’s face on it. Maya looks uncomfortable when Aria and Spencer interrupt to congratulate Emily, too. Whatever, Maya . Don’t care. On hand to ruin this fun friend moment, Officer PedoGarrett and another cop show up to the school to confiscate Caleb’s laptop. I think they wait until big school events on purpose. (L: How else would they scope out their next under aged girlfriend?) Someone has been hacking into the school server, and the IP address was traced back to Caleb, so they have a court order to take it. He protests that even if he did do it, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave a trail, but they obviously don’t care and take it anyways.
Garrett asks if there’s any passwords they might need, and Caleb is like, LOL HOKAY, because the court order didn’t say they could have passwords. Hanna is freaking out when the PLLs all get a text: “Now it’s Caleb’s turn. – A”
Sweeney: But Aria still hasn’t had a real turn yet! Why Caleb?
Sara: SHHH.
After the Shh, Hanna is laying into Caleb about how terrible! this! is! Caleb is pretty chill about it, though, because he says he has a Magical Firewall that cops can never get through. Hanna tells him that someone is setting him up, and she thinks that someone might be Garrett. Hanna asks if Caleb can hack into his computer remotely and erase all the scary, bad stuff. He agrees, because he loves Hanna.
Okay, so now they’re still at school, but it’s class time? Wtf is going on with this time frame? Was Emily’s swim meet at 4:00 in the morning? Weird. Anyways, Aria is in the hallway, telling Holden that she can’t cover for him anymore, especially with the weird Drug Dealer plastic baggies falling out of his backpack. He cuts right to the chase and tells her he does kung fu or something. He actually said something else, but I don’t really care. It’s a form of martial arts, and his parents forbid him from it, so he has to lie. The Drug Dealer drugs were just pain pills, and he has a tournament coming up, so he needs Aria to help him. She agrees, because she’s a pushover.
Sweeney: But also because she has her own pedolationship secret to keep.
Sara: Caleb is logging on to his laptop remotely and explaining the password to Hanna. It’s a series of letters and numbers from places he lived as a kid. Hanna questions why the last four numbers are 1105, but Caleb suspiciously says that it’s for no reason. He tries to log in, but there’s no connection. Either the cops haven’t even tried opening the laptop, or they’re smart and keeping it offline. LOL. I think we all know which one it is.
Lor: They stopped for a snack break before they got back to the station, right?
Sara: Montgomerborings. PiperMom and Byron are packing some of her classroom stuff in boxes and talking about driving Aria to the city for her date with Holden that night. PiperMom says that maybe they could let Aria take the train into town, and Byron says maybe Aria could just find something to do in Rosewood. PiperMom pushes him to loosen the leash a bit and give Aria some more freedom. What sucks about this is that I think PiperMom is probably right, but Aria ruins everything by continuing to lie to her parents and make Piper look like an asshole.
Sweeney: Yes! I hate this because PiperMom would, theoretically, be right, but they’re underestimating their daughter and, more importantly, underestimating the pedophile. I think that’s the bigger problem – she’s right (in theory) about trusting Aria more, but it’s her pedophile ex-teacher they aren’t watching closely enough.
Sara: Spencer is walking the streets of Rosewood when she sees Maya chatting with New Jason. She puts her Suspicious Face on and approaches Jason. (L: Drug Dealer!) Jason asks if her (their) dad sent her. Spencer hasn’t spoken to anyone about this Super Secret Secret, but Jason tells her she should talk to her dad about it.
Jason says that he didn’t come to Rosewood and get Old Jason kicked off the cast list to come between Spencer and her (their) dad. (S: A+) Spence questions what it was about, then, and we cut to the pair sitting on a bench in a park. Jason tells her that he found letters in Alison’s Secret Box that his mother and Spencer’s father wrote to each other. The letters started out lovey dovey, but eventually turned into EXCUSE ME, WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER, LITTLE GIRL? He also found $15,000 in envelopes in the box. It only takes Spencer 2.3 seconds to realize that Alison must have blackmailed Papa Hastings into giving her that money.
Lor: Worst. Friend. Ever.
Sara: Diner. Aria is waiting at a diner with a copy of Lolita, and the other PLLs are sitting in the booth behind her. (S: You know, I’m starting to wonder how Lolita is taught in Rosewood schools. As in, do they assume that Humbert Humbert is a reliable narrator and, more frighteningly, some sort of hero?) A grown man shows up and sits with her. He asks Aria, “How much money does she owe you?” Aria is confused by this information, and he relays that “Vivian” cost him his job, his money, and his girlfriend. Sounds like a personal problem to me! Apparently he worked at a cell phone store, and Alison came in looking for information. When Aria asks what kind of information, the guy accuses her of being Alison. Vivian told him that Alison was being stalked by someone and wanted to know where the text messages were coming from. He found out who the person was and told Vivian, but she took off before giving him the money and he got fired for accessing restricted information. HALF UP FRONT, MAN.
Aria asks who it was, and the guy is like LOL CASH MONEY. Cash money in the amount of $2,000. He gives Aria his number and tells her to ask for Jonah before leaving.
After the Not Commercial Break, the girls try to figure out how they can get the money. Hanna offers Bikini Car Wash, and everyone else offers Spencer’s Credit Card. Spencer says her bank account has been on lockdown since she was arrested, so that’s not an option.
School of Wolfy Bad Boys. Caleb is calling the police station to ask when he can get his laptop back, and they tell him he can have it back today – if he cooperates with them. Caleb temper tantrums off right past Aria, who is on the phone with Pedzra Fitz. They’re talking about the job offer Ezra got because of Aria’s dad’s hilarious plan to get him to move to New Orleans. Aria thinks it would be better if her stupid dad moved to New Orleans because: 16. She tries to convince us she’s an adult, but there are constant reminders that she acts exactly like you would expect a 16 year old to act. They move on to conversation about their Secret Date at a French vegan place, and Aria says if he’s willing to eat French vegan food, he must really like her. “Aria, it’s French vegan food. I must really love you.”
Sara: LOLPD. PedoGarrett sneakily cracks open Caleb’s laptop, but Wilden (oh hai Wilden!) walks in and says the IT guys told him to leave the computer alone. (That and “turn it off and back on” is pretty much all IT guys ever say.) Wilden goes on to mention the missing page of the autopsy report which makes Garrett’s face go white, because of how he stole it for a blind girl who won’t even talk to him anymore. How embarrassing. Wilden shows Garrett a picture and asks what it could mean, but we can’t see it yet.
Lor: It’s probably a picture that somehow implicates four teenaged girls and not at all points to the creepy pedo-cop. Just guessing!
Sara: Byron finds a note on his car from A. Ruh roh!
Marin Manor. Hanna, Ashley Marin, and Emily are all setting up for a party at the Marin house. Emily is hanging up balloons outside when Maya shows up. She acts sketchy and tells Emily that they need to talk. At that exact same moment, Ashley Marin tells Hanna that they’ve been “invited to the police station.”
We cut over to Maya, in the middle of a story about how her mom found an old joint in her room and thinks Maya is still smoking pot. The joint was from before Jesus Camp, but her mom doesn’t believe her. Maya says her parents are going to ship her right back to Jesus Camp again, but Em says they’ll figure something out.
Lor: Maybe try calling out to Jesus? No?
Sara: LOLPD. Detective Creepy Wilden is sitting in a dark room, questioning the Marin girls. Is this guy a vampire or perpetually hungover? Get some better lighting, man. Wilden brings up the missing autopsy page and shows Hanna and her mom the picture from earlier. It’s a photo of the Liars minus Aria (OF COURSE) standing outside of the morgue in candy striper outfits.
Sweeney: I know you already said it, but once more for emphasis: OF COURSE Aria wouldn’t be in trouble.
Lor: AND OF COURSE IT IS A PHOTO THAT IMPLICATES THE GIRLS. Damn, I’m good at guessing things on this show were everything ever implicates the girls.
Sara: As the Marins leave the LOLPD, Ashley says they should really give her her own parking space with how often she’s at the station. LOL. I love Ashley Marin. (L: Plus, it’ll help when she’s driving down to be arrested for Free Little Old Lady Money…) Ashley wants to know why the other Liar moms weren’t called in, and uh, yeah. That’s a fair question. Ashley says that Hanna might be refusing to answer Wilden’s questions, but she’s sure as hell going to answer to her mother. Hanna tells her that they put them on as a joke and dared Spencer to go in the morgue. But Ashley ain’t no fool and knows Hanna is lying about something. Hanna insists they didn’t take the page, and our favorites ladies are at an impasse.
Montgomerborings. Aria is about to leave for her “date with Holden,” and Byron stops in to ask where they’re going. He asks about a million questions about what they’re doing, who they’re meeting, etc, but Aria still doesn’t look worried at all. Seriously, she is the dumbest. If A was ever trying to harm Aria in any way, it would take half a second because she has no idea wtf is going on around her.
Sweeney: OR SHE KNOWS SHE’S ALWAYS SAFE BECAUSE SHE’S A.
Sara: PiperMom and Aria are about to leave for Aria’s Secret Pedo Date when Piper mentions that Holden and Aria should probably hang out closer to home more often. She says that his parents are worried about Holden’s safety, and Aria is confused and half-laughing at the overprotective parents when PiperMom goes on that they’re worried because of his heart condition. Aria immediately tries to cover with an, “Oh, of course he told me about the heart condition, right, right…”
Swim Party. Spencer is grilling Emily on why Hanna is at the police station, and Emily says she doesn’t know because they just left a note on the kitchen counter. I wonder what that note looks like? “BRB! Unless one of us gets arrested, as usual! Dip is in the fridge!” (L: Best.)
Hanna and her mom are back home, and Ashley retires to her room, probably for a big ass glass of wine. (L: She keeps under her pillow.) Hanna passes along the missing autopsy page news to Emily and Spencer, and they all figure it had to be done by a cop since all of the copies of the page are missing. Spencer immediately starts putting on her coat because she’s a boss who will go solve this murder right now, or at the very least, strongly accuse someone else so people will stop thinking they did it. Spencer says they need to talk to Jonah, so she’s off. Hanna wants to know how Spencer managed to come up with $2,000 without an Old Lady or a Lasagna Box anywhere nearby, but Spence has it handled because she’s on her way home.
Pedo Cover Date. Holden and Aria are about to go their separate ways for their Drug Dealing and Pedo Kissing, but Aria stops him to ask just exactly how dangerous this kung fu stuff is. He tells her it’s pretty epic and skips off, while she looks after him with concern.
Hastings House. Spencer arrives home to a dark house and looks in her dad’s briefcase to find some blank checks. Before she can steal any, Papa Hastings rounds the corner and says he’s glad she came home. It isn’t said in a creepy voice or anything, but the music is working overtime to let us know that this is a very! intense! situation!
Sweeney: The music people really do all the heavy lifting on this show.
Sara: He starts the story of his Cheatery Cheating Ways. Papa Hastings and Mariska Mom were living apart, getting their degrees, while the DiLaurentis’ lived in an apartment across the street from him. Then he cheated and knocked up Mrs. DiLaurentis. WHOOPS. Alison’s mom never told her husband, and they moved away like nothing happened. Until a few years later, when they moved in next door. Awkward. Spencer accuses him of paying off Alison to keep the secret, but Papa Hastings has no idea what she’s talking about.
French Vegan Restaurant. Aria’s dad shows up and takes a seat, waiting for Aria and Ezra to show up. Which means that they obviously freaking won’t because that would result in Aria being burned by A.
Swim Party. Maya is sulking on the stairs, and Emily asks her if she’s okay. Maya wants to go somewhere else, and Em says that they can after the party. Someone calls for Emily, and Maya tells her to go but she’s obviously doing that “no, I’m fine” girl thing where we are actually most definitely not fine. Emily leaves, and Maya continues sulking.
Spencer tells New Jason that Alison wasn’t blackmailing her (their) dad, but Jason doesn’t believe her. Spencer says that Jason just wants it to be her (their) dad so he can continue hating him for the rest of his life. He says she was obviously raised by lawyers and stomps off. Man, there are a lot of temper tantrums happening today.
Swim Party. Emily is looking for Maya and walks outside to find her lighting a joint.
Lor: AMAZING. OF COURSE.
Sara: LOLPD. Caleb calls Hanna from the police station to tell her that he probably won’t make it to the party, because he’s really busy being interrogated and stuff. Wilden and Garrett are approaching, so he quickly tells Hanna, “I’m in a very. hot. spot. right now,” before hanging up.
Kung fu. Aria shows up to watch Holden’s match. There’s lots of kicking and punching and boring. Aria stomps right up to Holden and asks what’s wrong with his heart. He quiets her and tells her that it’s not that big of a deal. She wonders what she’s supposed to tell their parents when Holden doesn’t come home because he’s dead, and I love how Aria has managed to make even this all about her.
Sweeney: OF COURSE.
Sara: Aria worries that someone will kick Holden in the chest and kill him right away, but he tells her that isn’t how it works. He has abdominal aortic aneurysm, and aw, good job, show! That’s actually a real illness! Holden says it means that he could have a rupture whether he’s doing kung fu or playing board games at home, so he might as well enjoy himself. Aria doesn’t think she can lie to her parents about Holden’s activities anymore.
Aria: I know I lie to mine, too, but I’m not taking my own life into my hands.
Holden: Sometimes what people believe is best for you is not what’s actually best for you.
Ugh, give me a break. That line was only written in for Aria to “realize” that Ezra is what’s best for her and all of the adults in her life are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Sweeney: Holden, I want to like you so much, but you lose a crapton of points for your pointless “accidentally” pro-Pedzria line.
Lor: To be fair, you can say anything to Aria and she would interpret it as a pro-Pedzria thing. You could Spencer her and she would still convert it into a pedo-thing.
Sara: “The black bird always finds the ripe corn, Aria…” “SO WE ARE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER?” Sigh.
LOLPD. Wilden is threatening to call Caleb’s family in California, but Caleb says he didn’t do anything wrong, so that would make zero sense. Wilden’s face is like, “Human logic…. does not compute.” He slides Caleb’s laptop over and tells him to log in. Is this legal? I honestly don’t know or care.
At the same time as that is happening, Hanna is on her own laptop in her room. Spencer shows up, and Hanna tells her that they have to figure out how to hack Caleb’s computer because he gave her a message on the phone earlier. They sit down and get to work. Downstairs, Emily is accusing Maya of lying about the “old joint” story from earlier. Maya blows her off and acts like a total bitch and says that Emily is better at fitting in than she is. Um, sorry? Emily says they’ll figure out a way to keep Maya from going to Jesus Camp again, but Maya says she can’t risk it – she’s going to run away to San Francisco. She asks Emily to come with her, but Em says she can’t. Maya says, “You can’t do it for me?” which is such bullshit. YOU ARE BOTH NOT EVEN LEGALLY ADULTS. Maya is acting a lot like Aria right now. Girl, everything is not about you. Maya says, “No, I guess you couldn’t. Not with the team counting on you,” before leaving. BYE, GIRL. STILL DON’T CARE.
Sweeney: Maya. Cool your shit. “HDU CHOOSE HAVING A LIFE AND FUTURE OVER RUNNING AWAY TO SAN FRANCISCO WITH ME, NOW THAT WE HAD SEX THAT ONE TIME.” Total Aria move.
Sara: Pedzria. Ezra is on his way to the French Vegan restaurant and gets a text from Aria, cancelling. He turns around and takes off before Papa Montgomery has a chance to see him. Balls.
Computer Hackers Anonymous. Hanna and Spencer are piecing together Caleb’s password from the information Hanna has. First initials of every city he’s ever lived in, alternating capitals and lowercase, with punctuation. Spencer says, “It’s almost as complicated as my password.” She is still the best. Hanna remembers that there were four numbers at the end, but she’s blanking on what those numbers are.
LOLPD. Caleb has entered his password and Wilden starts digging through his files. At the Marin house, Spencer is trying to trigger Hanna’s memory by yelling things that last number could mean. Hanna finally remembers and types in the last four numbers – 1105. They get in the system, and while Hanna celebrates, Spencer reminds her that they still need to delete all the files.
While all of this is happening, we keep cutting back to Holden doing kung fu. It’s boring. Hanna and Spencer see that A has put all sorts of incriminating shit on Caleb’s computer, so they start deleting file by file. Spencer keeps yelling at Hanna to move faster and hit Ctrl:A, which earns her the Gold Star, with 6 minutes to spare!
Hanna yells back that she’s trying to control A but Spencer is like, Oh for fuck’s sake. HIT CTRL:A ON YOUR KEYBOARD. Hanna does it and Wilden and Garrett watch all the files disappear before their eyes. Caleb tells them he was hacked, so there was probably a virus or something. Caleb is the best. Granted, it’s easy to be the best when all of the other men in Rosewood are pedophiles and murderers but whatever.
Kung fu. Holden is still alive, so everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. He invites Aria to the next match, but she prefers dates with her pedo boyfriend to kung fu. They’re interrupted when Aria’s dad calls her to check in. He talks to Aria and asks her if he can talk to Holden, too. Aria still seems completely clueless to the fact that her dad is trying to catch her in a lie. Now that he’s been “proven” wrong, Byron looks sheepish and probably really regrets having to eat French vegan food.
Lor: Sorry, I can’t even get over the fact that Aria doesn’t get caught AGAIN. DAMMIT.
Sara: It is the most frustrating thing about this show. We just want to see Aria get in trouble, show. Give us what we want.
Caleb leaves the LOLPD and Hanna is waiting for him with a hug. She brings up the “1105” and says he could have told her it was the night that they…. ahem. Caleb says, “There was an exclamation point after it,” and AW THAT IS SO CUTE. I just love him. Garrett leaves the station, and Hanna and Caleb make out some more to throw it in his face.
Hastings House. New Jason shows up to talk to Spencer. Jason admits that he probably did want her (their) dad to be the one who was at fault. Then he says, “You know why we act like this right? Why we’re always butting heads?” and she’s like, “Because we’re wired the same,” and I’m like, “Have you guys ever had any interaction besides these last few episodes wtf?” Spencer tells him that she knows why Ali needed the money – she was afraid of something. Spencer can look into it further, but she needs Jason to trust her to the tune of $2,000 bucks.
A-nonymous: Emily is leaving a message for Maya, asking her to call and not do anything crazy before they talk. She tells her she loves her and hangs up. Someone, I’m assuming A, is creeping right outside Emily’s window. LAME.
Next time: Someone else is being targeted by A, and the PLLs get a new member in Pretty Little Liars S02 E21 – Breaking the Code.
I'm a 30-something with three kids who spends an embarrassing amount of time watching teen television dramas. There's a whole lot of Internet out there, and I plan on reading all of it before I die.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
