Pretty Little Liars S03 E03 – Nothing Happens.

Previously: The girls flushed evidence, and it was hilarious.

Kingdom of the Blind

Sara: The Liars are standing around at the School for Plotting Against a NotBlind!Girl, watching NotBlind!Jenna read braille and wondering wtf she’s up to. The girls have decided that Aria is the one assigned to this task, because Jenna trusts her, on account of the inviting Aria to play musical instruments with her thing. Aria is not looking forward to this mission, but Hanna says she’d gladly trade her Crazy Mona for a Blind!Jenna. Jenna click clacks away, and Hanna says they should push a table in front of her and see what happens. LOL.


Sweeney: That proud smile is the best. This is why we love you, Hanna.

Lorraine: She should be proud because at least she owns it. None of these girls know a damn thing about subtlety.

Sara: As the girls make their way to class (HAHA), Emily asks Spence if her mom has mentioned anything about Garrett’s case, but Spencer’s got nothing. Their conversation is interrupted by the principal yelling down the hall at Lucas about his permanent record. Lucas is all unshaven and bad boy-esque now, I guess, which is funny because he just looks kind of silly. He stomps past Hanna with a sneer, and she looks confused. Girl, don’t even bother.

She tracks him down in an empty classroom. Probably the empty classroom that Ezra and Aria were constantly using for make out sessions. (L: Ew. Don’t touch anything, Han!) Lucas tells her that he’s supposed to give his parents a letter about how his bad attitude is negatively impacting his grades, and he bitches about how impacting isn’t even a word. (This is true! Learn something new every day.) He lights the note on fire right there, and I guess this is supposed to further demonstrate that he is now a Bad Kid.

Sweeney: But a really unimpressive kind. I mean, the fire’s a nice touch, but his Evil styling is mostly, “I haven’t showered in days.” Nary a crimp or leather garment in sight!

Sara: He throws it in a trash can and leaves, as Hanna tries to beat the fire down with a bat…..? Um. Hanna. Girl. Caleb shows up just in time with a convenient bottle of water and puts it out, questioning what just happened. She just says they need to leave, and

SHHHHHH.

After the shhing, we’re at Rosewood’s Only Diner where Hanna is telling Caleb how upsetting it is to see Lucas in this much trouble when he was such a sweet kid last season. Caleb tries to placate her by saying that Lucas is just making up for Bad Boy lost time. Hanna is still worried and asks Caleb to check in on Lucas for her anyways. Caleb says he will on the condition that she not visit Crazy!Mona anymore, but Hanna just calls him sweet. Hanna, you are not allowed to ruin one of the two healthy age-appropriate relationships on this show.

Lor: Especially in favor of Mona who threw a car at you.

Sara: School for the second time in one episode. Weird. Aria is telling Jenna that she’ll play musical instruments with her, and Jenna tells her to come over to her creepy house after school so they can practice.

Lunch. Whew. Glad the girls aren’t actually going to classes. That would throw me off my recapping game. (S: Also, boring. Fifty Shades was the same way – it was fun to joke about how little work Ana actually did at work, but it’s not like we actually wanted to read about Ana working.) The Liars discuss how bad it would be if someone found the keepsakes they put in the grave with Ali, and I’m not understanding why this would be so terrible? Aria tells them not to worry because if Jenna is working with A, she can snoop while playing musical instruments. (I know she plays keyboard at this point, but musical instruments is more fun to say.) Just then, Emily gets a text message, alerting her that her make up test grade is up. Man, high school is so different now than it was long, long ago when I was there and unable to get text messages about test grades.


Emily says there’s no way she could have gotten a 94, because she didn’t even finish the test. She immediately panics, thinking that A might have fucked with her grade to hold it against her later. Aria wonders if they’re being a little paranoid, but Emily tells her that you can’t be paranoid if someone is actually out to get you. Fair. And poor Em.

Lor: Also, Piper Mom is pretty fucking stupid.

Sara: Lucas is in the science lab, and Caleb shows up to confront him about his issues. Lucas is like WAH MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. God, what a baby. Lucas says that Hanna has enough to worry about without worrying about him. Caleb, thinking he’s talking about Mona/A, tells him that he knows all about the A thing, but Lucas tells him that Mona is just the tip of the iceberg. Lucas continues saying shady shit in a threatening tone of voice, and it’s a yawn fest. Caleb does look worried, though.

Emily approaches Piper Mom and tries to talk about how her test score can’t be right, but Ella is like don’tworryaboutit ahemahem coughcough I CHEATED FOR YOU, GIRL.

Hastings House. Apparently Pregnant Melissa is home, and bitch doesn’t look even a little bit pregnant. JFC, this show takes forever. Mariska Mom shows up and says that she needs to tell the girls something: Mariska and her firm are defending Officer Pedo Garrett. Spencer tries to talk her out of it, but her mom is like whatevs, shut up, I’m doing this for free, and I obviously don’t care what my least favorite daughter wants. Spencer begs her not to defend the man who killed her best friend and Emily’s girlfriend, but Mariska Mom DGAF. Spence tries to get Melissa to side with her, but she should know that if a person has the last name Hastings, they are definitely not going to be there for her.

Fields. Emily is telling Aria that she knows her mom cheated for her, and Aria gives a patented Aria shrug and tells Emily that her mom is just trying to help. Um. Okay.

Sweeney: What, you mean you don’t assume that the world constantly works out for you / conspires to conceal your fuck ups?

Lor: Aria is probably thinking, “pfft. Cheating. My mom is supporting my gross pedo-lationship. Cheating isn’t even a blip on the radar.”

Sara: Aria doesn’t see what the big deal is, since it wasn’t A, but Em is now the second smartest Liar and points out that A knows all the secrets, and this is a pretty good one.

Hastings. Spencer comes downstairs to find Melissa chugging a glass of wine, but Spencer isn’t judging because she just wants to know how Melissa really feels about their mom defending Garrett. (Spencer’s hair looks amazing in this scene.) Melissa says she stopped caring about all this shit three months ago, but Spencer thinks Melissa is the one who put their mom up to it. Spencer goes on that she knows Garrett and Melissa were involved, and after he left Ali’s bedroom on That Night, he killed Alison. Melissa loudly tells Spencer to climb out of Spencerworld for a second and recognize that some people have lost everything.

Sweeney: LOL. Right, like how you and your parents have been trapped in Melissaworld for all of always and giving no fucks about Spencer’s vast trauma? Right.

Sara: Like Spencerworld is even allowed to be a real place in the Hastings house. Whatever.

Spencer says that when Melissa called back in June, she wanted to come see her at the hospital, but Melissa didn’t want any visitors. Spencer tells Melissa that she’s sorry she lost her baby, and I swear to you, I spent hours trying to figure out when the fuck we found out that Melissa had a miscarriage, and I have finally decided that this is the first time we’re hearing about it. Melissa hopes that Garrett gets out of jail, even if he is guilty, because he’s the only guy who has never lied to her. Okay.

Sweeney: Even if he’s guilty? What does that mean? If he is guilty then he told you a pretty substantial lie. I mean, if you never outright asked, leaving out “I murdered two teenage girls,” is a serious enough lie of omission that you can’t really call him an honest dude at that point.

Lor: And if, “I hope that murderer gets out of jail ’cause he was nice to me,” isn’t living in MF Melissaworld, I don’t know what is. She’s the worst.

Sara: Musical Instruments. Notblind!Jenna and Aria are practicing their musical instruments, and Aria keeps side-eyeing everything in the room. Which is weird because she knows Jenna can see her doing it, but it is Aria, so. Jenna suspiciously talks about Ali’s grave being opened and OMG THIS IS THE MOST BORING EPISODE I HAVE EVER RECAPPED.

The Liars minus Aria recap shit we already know. They also think that Garrett might have been the father of Melissa’s former baby.

Ezria. Aria asks Ezra if he’s ever fixed a person’s grade and confesses about the Piper Mom cheating thing. Aria says that the Vice Principal wants to talk about it with Piper, and she wonders if she’ll get fired for it. Oh please. She’s not sleeping with a student, so I’d say she’s doing better than the majority of teachers at Rosewood High already.

Lor: Which probably means she’ll get fired. This is Rosewood.

Sara: Hanna visits Mona, who is on new medication and acting bubbly like the old Mona. She tells Hanna that it helped when she visited, and that she’s had to forgive herself for a lot of things. Like running over her best friend with a car. She reaches out and grabs Hanna’s hands and asks for the scoop from back home, but Hanna is like LOL NO. She just wants information on why the Liars are still being stalked by A.

Mona says that she knows how hard it is, and that you can’t trust anyone, not even family. “But don’t worry. You’ll always have me. I’m not gonna forget any of you.” She goes on to ask if they ever found what’s left of Alison, and the soundtrack freaks out as we cut to black.

After the Not Commercial Break, Hanna is on her way out when she sees Lucas on his way in.

Rosewood’s Only Coffee Shop. Ezra sees Piper Mom at the shop and asks her what’s going on with the cheating thing. Apparently, the office received an anonymous letter from a student, accusing Piper of cheating on student test scores. She admits to Ezra that she was wrong and she’ll admit the truth in the meeting with the VP.

Crazy House. Caleb is outside when Hanna leaves, and she accuses him of following her. He’s only worried about Hanna, but she doesn’t want him hating Mona because she was her friend before the stalking and hitting her with a car thing. As they’re talking, Lucas comes out and Hanna confronts him about why he was visiting Mona. He says that he just wants to make sure Mona is actually crazy and not just faking it to stay out of jail. Likely story, punk.

Spencer calls the hospital Melissa was at over the summer, asking for hospital records to be sent over for insurance reasons. HOKAY, SHOW. RIGHT. The hospital informs her that there is no record of her stay. Curious.

Hanna and Aria are stalking Jenna as she gets in a cab. They follow.

Spencer calls the resort Melissa was staying in and finds that she stayed there three days longer than Melissa said they did, and that Mariska Mom showed up and stayed for those three additional days as well. There were also lots of spa and restaurant charges, so looks like someone is lying about having a miscarriage. Ruh roh.

Sweeney: I don’t even remember learning about the miscarriage, to be honest. I don’t even know if I should blame the show or my own limited show attention span.

Lor: Both. I mean, we just found out about it in this episode, but it was super confusing and dumb and we don’t pay that much attention. So, definitely both.

Sara: I seriously spent an entire freaking weekend trying to remember when we found out she had a miscarriage, and then finally realized that the earlier scene where Spencer tells her sister she’s sorry about the miscarriage was the show telling us about the miscarriage. I think it confused me so badly because we have never seen Pretty Little Liars be discreet about something before, and when they finally are, it makes everything confusing and stupid.

School of Yeah Right. Emily and Piper Mom run into Ezra and the VP in the hallway. VP is all smiley and happy and says that Ezra filled him in on the issue with Em’s test. Ezra told him that he stopped by Piper’s classroom and asked her to grade Emily’s test in front of him since he was tutoring her and wanted to see how she did. He understands that it could have looked like preferential treatment, and he apologizes. The VP is all up on Ezra’s D, believing every single thing he says. EZRA IS A.

Sweeney: CLEARLY. Would explain Ezria’s inexplicable immunity.

Lor: And why I find him so repulsive. No, that’s probably the dating a minor thing, but he could still be A.

Sara: Aria and Hanna watch Jenna get out of the cab in another town, and the next thing they know, she’s driving off in her Mustang. They call the other Liars.

Piper Mom asks Ezra why he did that. He says a long time ago, they used to be friends. (S: …a long time ago.) Whatever.

Spencer and Emily join the other Liars outside of a gun store, where Jenna is. When she comes walking out, all seeing and shit, Hanna confronts her.

Lor: Our adorable hand grenade.

Sara: Crazy House. Caleb is visiting Mona, and they say lots of creepy, double meaning things, and it’s kind of awesome because I love Crazy!Mona. He tells her to stay away from Hanna, and Mona smirks that they make a lovely couple.



Mona crazy screams and Caleb awkwardly leaves.

Jenna. The girls are getting filled in on the NotBlind!Jenna details. She’s been able to see since her first eye operation, and nobody knows (not even Toby) because Jenna was trying to protect herself.

She goes on to fill them in on what happened That Night with Emily: Jenna was driving out of town at around midnight and almost ran into Emily, who was standing in the middle of the street, drunk and crying about Maya. She couldn’t just leave Em there, so she put her in the car and was going to take her home but Emily freaked out and jumped out of the car when they were stopped at a light. The girls still look pissed, and Jenna asks them not to tell anyone.



As much as I think legally the Liars couldn’t get in any trouble for what Alison did, I still think Jenna has every right to hate them for being involved.

Sweeney: Fair. She’s a creepy bitch, but fair point is fair.

Sara: Hastings. Spencer gets attitude about Mariska Mom working on Garrett’s case, and Mariska tells her that innocent until proven guilty is very important. Okay, I get that everyone deserves a right to a fair trial and a lawyer, but this guy is accused of killing your daughter’s best friend, so probably not the best case for you personally to handle, lady.

Spencer tells her mom what she found out about the miscarriage. Now she knows that Melissa was faking losing the baby, and she asks if Mariska knew from the very beginning since she wouldn’t let Spencer go visit with her. Mariska says that she didn’t know before she got there – she just had some suspicions. Spence wants to know when exactly she lost the baby, but Mariska won’t answer any more questions.

Lor: Man I hate any Hastings who isn’t Spencer.

Sara: Rosewood’s Only Coffee Shop. Emily stomps into the coffeehouse and gripes at Ezra for lying for her. They study.

Crazy House. Mona lays in bed singing like a crazy person, but man, she has a really lovely voice.

A-nonymous: A gloved A puts a bottle of vodka in a large freezer…. next to a body bag. Creeeeepy.

 

Next time: Mona comes between Caleb and Hanna, and Aria’s dad is dating again in Pretty Little Liars S03 E04 – Birds of a Feather.

Sara (all posts)

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 Sweeney (all posts)

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.





Marines (all posts)

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.





Sara

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.