Pretty Little Liars S01 E08 – Spencer Hastings Don’t Do Drafts

Previously: Creepy Toby was creepy, Blind!Jenna was creepy, hell, even the PLLs were creepy.
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Please Do Talk About Me

Sara: Aria and Emily are pushing a big box down a hallway in Aria’s house, and Aria is wearing suspenders that aren’t connected to anything. I honestly did not even know that was possible.

Sweeney: Aria wore magic hipster suspenders before they were cool. Because they’re still not and never will be cool.

Sara: Hanna asks if things are weird with Aria’s mom moving out and all, and Aria bites back that yeah, it’s weird, because probably you would have expected it to be her father who left. (Since Hanna’s father left when her parents divorced.) Hanna makes a great whatabitch face and Aria apologizes for being grouchy. This especially rubs me the wrong way, because Aria knows damn well that Hanna has been through this, and she’s being a brat. And also because Hanna is my favorite and everyone else needs to LEAVE HER ALONE.

Sweeney: WORD.

Sara: The girls discuss the rest of their plans for the memorial, because I guess they are doing this completely on their own. Spencer says they’ll need to have the programs done before Alison’s brother gets to town, which brings up a conversation about how the girls never really knew Jason all that well. They describe him as a closed-off, punk-music listening to kid, and that he probably only got into Harvard because of affirmative action for goths and emos. Because punk music makes you goth or emo….

The girls finally open the box for the memorial, and we get to see what’s inside.

It’s the top part of a fountain, with five figures sitting on the edge, playing in the water. It’s really very pretty. Aria says that it will be nice that people will always see that fountain and think of the good things about Ali, and not the fact that she was an absolute bitch. Okay, I said the last part.

Lorraine: It’s what we were all thinking.

Sara: After talk of people in the future getting to see the fountain and know who Ali was, Spencer says, “That’s immortality, my darlings,” and with that had-to-have-been Alison quote, we head to an Aliback.

The PLLs + Ali are laying on the beach, when Aria says that it would be great if you could choose the age you want to be and stay that way forever. So we’re all going to go ahead and put our money on Aria choosing 32, yeah? Alison replies that the only way to stay young forever is if you die young and leave behind a beautiful corpse. Well that’s… morbid.

Lor: Also, decomposition. Learn about it.

Sara: Emily tells Ali to stop being weird, and Alison pushes the girls to admit that they’ve thought about it before – dying young in a mysterious, exciting way. Alison, meet your future. I think you two will get along great. Spencer is the cool girl of the group who is totally okay with calling the leader out and basically tells Alison she’s stupid for wanting to go out like that. Alison replies that she isn’t ready to leave a beautiful corpse behind just yet. She still has more teenage girls’ lives to ruin, obviously.

Aria is icked out by the conversation, and asks Ali to lose the morbid talk. Alison says it isn’t morbid at all.

Back from the Aliback, Aria asks where Ali got that line from, since it sounds like something from a movie, and Spencer replies that Alison was a movie.

I can’t help but mention that Alison reminds me so much of Lilly Kane – she’s popular and beautiful and you kind of love her and hate her at the same time. I think it’s pretty believable that these four girls would fall in love with this friendship. I mean, as a grown up, I understand that Ali is a mean, insecure girl. But if I knew her when I was a teenager, I definitely would have wanted to hang out with her. There’s just something special about Alison DiLaurentis, and I buy it 100%.

Sweeney: Jumping in to say that I agree with every bit of this except the Lilly Kane analogy, because Lilly was never as awful as Ali was. Certainly, Veronica was the pushover in that friendship, and this quote is the kind of thing Lilly might have said, but Ali is another level of heinous bitch. Now that I’ve gotten my epic Lilly Kane feels out of the way, yes to everything else you said. As much as we will continue to snark how evil Ali is in the Alibacks, it makes a lot of sense that a group of insecure 15-year-olds would try desperately to win/maintain her approval.

Sara: Beautiful corpse. Big eyes. Secrets. SHH.

Hanna is complaining to her mom about her credit card being cut in pieces at the store earlier that day. Hanna’s mom tells her that things are a little tight financially, so she should probably give her wrist a break from all that credit card swiping. Probably it would have been helpful to have let your daughter in on all of this sooner? No?

Hanna wants to know what happened to make them not rich (I am not going so far as to call them poor because HELLO, look at that house), and her mom says that a one paycheck family in a gigantic house with designer clothes and really beautiful purses just ain’t cutting it anymore. Mom and daughter make sad, poor people faces, and we cut over to the PLLs showing Jason the memorial stuff they made.

Hanna walks in late as Jason is saying that everything for the memorial looks great, but he might have done a few things differently; he’ll just have to fix some stuff along the way. Spencer’s face is like “Um, did you forget I’m Spencer MF Hastings?”

Jason continues to be douchey, saying that he got the “draft” Spencer emailed him for the program and “fixed” it for the final copy. BITCH, SPENCER HASTINGS DON’T DO DRAFTS. EVERYTHING IS A FINAL COPY. (L: A+)

He gets sentimental over the picture of Alison they chose to put in the program and says that he wishes his parents would come to town for the memorial. They’re still pretty emotional about all of it and don’t want to relive the memories that are everywhere in Rosewood.

He asks the PLLs to speak at the memorial, because he knows they were the closest people in Ali’s life. Then he puts his Creepy Voice on and says that a memorial is supposed to bring closure, but he will never have closure until the murderer is found and brought to justice. This immediately makes me yell JASON IS THE MURDERER I WIN.

Lor: As if we didn’t get that feeling back when he was offering to “edit” things for Spencer Hastings. Pfft.

Sara: The last thing he tells them is that Blind!Jenna will be speaking at the memorial, too. The girls question this because they didn’t know Ali and Jenna were friends; Jason gets defensive and says that Jenna told him Ali helped her a lot after her accident (The Jenna Thing), and that she really wanted to say something at the memorial.

Sweeney: I like that he scribbles it on this “final draft” program in big letters for the audience. Thanks, Jason!

Sara: After Jason leaves, Em, Hanna, and Aria look to Spencer and start asking her a bunch of questions about why Jason would let Blind!Jenna speak at the memorial. It’s like when two people are watching a movie for the first time, and one person (AHEM MOM) keeps asking the other what’s going on, and the other person is like I AM IN THE SAME POSITION YOU ARE, FRIEND. I DO NOT HAVE THE ANSWERS.

The PLLs are all about keeping Blind!Jenna from speaking at the memorial, because she could spill the beans about how Ali blinded her with a stink bomb (?) and how she and Toby have incestuous sexy times. Remember when we were lost on why the girls thought Toby was so creepy? I am also very lost on why the girls hate Jenna so much. Has she actually done anything to them besides, I don’t know, GETTING BLINDED BY THEM?

Sweeney: As far as I can tell, it’s that ominous music blasting boombox that she carries with her.

Lor: And also the always knowing exactly where they are in the world despite the fact that she can’t see them.

Sara: Gotta be that supersonic hearing.

Spencer is given the task of keeping track of Jason’s whereabouts, because, well, honestly I have no idea. She asks why she has to do it, and Aria pretty much says because she’s smart and the rest of them are not. Fair.

Uh oh. Here comes an AriaBack. We’re flashbacking to the homecoming dance, in that one scene where Aria runs down a hallway after Ezrafitz. I don’t know what it is about our Pretty Little Liars and running down hallways, but they do it a lot. They could be locked in a one room gymnasium, with no hallways or doors or stairs, and somehow, they would still find a way to run down a hallway.

We all remember how stupid that scene was, so why don’t we just spend this empty flashback-we’ve-already-seen time on remembering how much we used to love Amanda Bynes?

Moving on. Sean is telling Hanna that his friend Noel Kahn got tickets to see Band of Horses, and they can go with him. The only catch is that Noel wants Aria to go with him, and Hanna needs to convince Aria to go so everyone can go. Noel can’t ask Aria himself because he says Aria has a no boy zone surrounding her at all times. This is actually true. It’s more a no-age-appropriate-boys-allowed zone, though. Hanna says she’ll make it happen.

When she starts to walk away, Sean asks if she’s working with uber-dork on the yearbook. She says that she is, and he tells her to be careful because cooties are contagious. Yeah, I’ve never had anything against Sean up until this moment. Don’t be weird, dude. Hanna adorables that he is such a goober for using the word cooties. She is the cutest.

Maya is feeding Emily some sort of candy outside of school, and EW. I’m sorry, I just can’t do grown adults feeding other grown adults. When I first started dating my now-husband, I made that rule clear on Date #1. DO NOT FEED ME. I AM NOT A BABY. Anyways, Emily says that maybe instead of just hanging out, they should go to dinner and a movie one night after school. Maya is all, “Hmm, dinner and a movie? Isn’t there a word for that?” and Emily finally says that she is asking her out on a date. Maya cutely says she’ll think about it and leaves. THIS SCENE WAS THE ABSOLUTE CUTEST. I think Maya makes Boring Emily a little less Boring.

Lor: I think facial expressions and having actual lines to say help too.

Sara: In the yearbook room, Lucas continues to be the nicest dork ever to Hanna, complimenting her and looking at her like she is the best thing that ever happened. Snark Squad HQ approves of this thought, Lucas. AND YOU BETTER NOT HURT OUR HANNA EVER.

When Hanna mentions Lucas’ nice camera, he says he paid for it by selling his old action figures online. Hanna is surprised that people could make money by selling used things, because rich people only use things once and then throw them away. (L: And they think Ebay is… a place to park their e-boats?) Lucas says that if she has anything she wants to get rid of, he could help her put everything online. Since she just had a conversation with her mother about their financial problems, she accepts his offer.

Spencer is trying to write her speech about Ali for the memorial when she Alibacks back to the beach flashback they had earlier. It’s later in the day, and Blind!Jenna is there, wearing her usual black sunglasses. Except then she whips them off and OMG IS HER FACE REALLY WEIRD OR IS IT JUST ME?

Sweeney: THE CREEPIEST. EVEN CREEPIER THAN TOBY’S.

Lor: Creepy, but also, she was hiding like an additional 20 years under there. HOW OLD ARE YOU GIRL?

Sara: Alison says that “Jenna the Jerk” is staring at them, and she needs to take her D-list crowd somewhere else, because she’s being creepy. I know I just called Jenna’s face creepy, but I’m allowed to because I actually like her. Alison is not, because she is a bitch. STFU, Ali.

Em asks where Toby is, and Alison says that he’s probably off in the woods, sacrificing a squirrel or something. (That is kind of funny, I’ll give her that.) Spencer bravely asks Ali if she ever gets tired of shooting at the low hanging fruit on the tree, and Ali giggles at Spencer to stop ruining a perfect day. While Hanna is my favorite character at this point in the series, Spencer is my favorite BOSS of the series. That one has no fear.

Hanna agrees that it is a beautiful day, and the PLLs say they’ll be friends forever, even when they’re old. Unless one of them happens to be murdered in the near future. Someone who I am feeling a lot less sorry for as time goes on, because she is such a bitch.

Spencer is Aliback’d into the present with a text from A:

In school the next day, Hanna is badgering Aria about going to the concert with Noel. Aria tells Hanna that she isn’t interested and when Hanna pushes, Aria says that she has a lot going on with family stuff right now and just doesn’t feel like it. Hanna gives an understanding nod and leaves her alone about it.

Aria Alibacks to that day at the beach (busy day!) and Alison is talking shit about Noel Kahn flirting with a girl named Prudence, who Ali says had a boob job. Emily asks Ali if that’s true, and Alison says that Prudence had to do something to make up for her name. (Hee!) (I feel like a mean girl when I laugh at Ali’s jokes.) Alison asks Aria if she’s thinking about getting a boob job, too, since she has a crush on Noel Kahn and that seems to be what he’s interested in.

Aria is embarrassed and brushes it off, while Hanna lists all of Noah’s attributes – rich, smart, good-looking: Total Package. Alison agrees that he’s those things, but personally, she likes someone more mature. Did everyone have that one-upper friend in high school? Because I know I did, and JFC those friends are the worst. Alison tells her that little immature Noel is probably perfect for Aria. Yep, Ali is the worst.

Sweeney: It’s also hilarious, though, considering present-day Aria’s preferences. I know I’m reaching, but I’m now blaming Alison for Ezria.

Lor: Fair.

Sara: Alison is the perfect person to blame for all things. Bad weather? ALI. Economy? ALI. That bitch.

Aria Alibacks to the present and immediately sends Hanna a text saying to count her in for the concert with Noel.

Hanna goes into the yearbook room, where Detective Wilden is waiting for her. Alone. In the dark.

She asks what he needs, and he creeps that he wanted to know if Emily has seen Toby. Hanna and I reply at the same time, “Do(es) I (she) look like Emily to you?” He says he thought the PLLs shared everything, and Hanna just says no. The best thing about this scene is that it’s like Hanna is dealing with a toddler who won’t stop pestering her with stupid questions about why the sky is blue.

He mentions that Jason DiLaurentis is back in town, and he’s putting up a big fuss about the cops not solving Alison’s murder yet. Well. That’s pretty understandable. Maybe they could be collecting evidence instead of harassing teenage girls. At school. In a dark room. All alone. Wilden goes on that Hanna should probably not talk to Jason, because information could end up in the wrong hands. Hanna asks if maybe she shouldn’t share the information about the head detective on the case hanging out around her house in a towel? Hanna drops the mic, and walks away.

Jenna is typing on her Braile phone in the library when Spencer asks to speak with her. Spencer gets pretty aggressive with Blind!Jenna for no reason at all. “What are you going to say at the memorial? What do you want?” Jenna creepies that she’s going to speak from the heart.

J: What I want, you can’t give me. You and your friends are careless. Like I told Emily, you’re careless and you break things and you think you’re never going to have to pay for them.

S: We are paying for it, Jenna. We’re paying for it every day.

J: How much? Who’s counting?

Spencer tells Jenna that she knows she wants some kind of satisfaction out of this memorial, but Direboss Spencer will not allow her to use her speech to beat up on her and her friends. They loved Ali and yes, the whole blinding Jenna thing wasn’t one of her best moments, but Jenna doesn’t need to taint Alison’s memory with the truth of how she was blinded. Jenna smirks at Spencer. “You know she was done with you, right? We talked about it in the hospital. She told me why. She said she was afraid of you. Is that why one of you did what you did?” Spencer looks freaked the fuck out by this comment and just stands there as the scene fades to black.

I am usually all for BA Spencer MF Hastings, but. Again. This girl hasn’t really done anything to warrant the crazy from Spence, except get blinded by the PLLs. (And hump her stepbrother.) On the flip side, though, Jenna always speaks in this creepy, murdery voice much like Toby, so I guess it runs in the family and might explain a little of the animosity coming her way.

Lor: You pointed out to me how mean Spencer was being in this scene and I was taken aback because I hadn’t even thought of it. This show is pretty aggressive about making us think and feel certain ways about the characters. At this point, rooting for Spencer, and thinking Jenna is way rude for getting blind in the middle of Alison’s prank seems like the right thing to do.

Sara: Lucas is helping Hanna put her gently used purses on Ebay and asks her why she needs money all of a sudden. She says her mom cut her off, and he buys that without question. With that, Hanna heads into her own personal Aliback.

It’s still that day at the beach (LONGEST DAY EVER) and Lucas is messing with a model boat out in the water. Alison calls him Hermi the Hermaphrodite, because she is an awful human being. Like, I actually hate her more than Aria right now. I HATE HER MORE THAN ARIA.

Sweeney: +1. That’s a lot of hate. Alison is the actual fucking worst, and this is why I got so defensive over the Lilly Kane reference in your otherwise excellent point. BECAUSE THIS BITCH. WORST. Leave nerdy Lucas alone!

Sara: Hanna says, “Hey!” in defense of Lucas, but all Ali has to do is give Hanna a look and she is shut the fuck down. Alison tells her to never look back; something might be gaining on you. (COUGH LIKE WEIGHT COUGH). Ugh. Can I please have a turn murdering Alison?

Lor: Apparently, bitch doesn’t stay murdered so we could all technically have a turn.

Sara: Byron (Aria’s negligent dad) shows up at Hanna’s house to talk to her mom. He tells her that Hanna spoke with Aria about money, so he brought over an envelope full of it. Where are all the envelopes full of money in my town?! Ashley starts to get angry, asking why Hanna would talk to Aria about money, but Byron tells her it’s for the memorial. Awkward. Ashley is like LOL JK OF COURSE.

They share a moment where they’re both basically like PARENTING IS HARD. Yeah, okay.

Sweeney: No sympathy for you Byron. We all know you don’t know shit about parenting. Or fidelity.

Sara: Spencer, Emily, and Jason are walking down the hall at school after speaking with the principal about Alison’s memorial. They run into WHO ELSE? Detective Wilden. Because it’s totally normal for your police department’s head detective to spend 90% of his hours at the local high school.

Sweeney: Gossip Cops! Where does one apply for that kind of police work?

Sara: Wilden looks at Jason and is all SEE? I AM TOO WORKING SO THERE! When Jason says it doesn’t seem like they’ve been doing much lately on the case, Wilden reminds him that police have to keep things confidential during investigations. Immediately following this statement, he tells Jason, Emily, Spencer, the janitor, an English teacher, and five loitering students that Toby called Alison the night she died, so he is officially now a suspect.

Lor: I hope someone tells Toby so he has advanced fucking notice and can promptly concoct an alibi.

Sara: Emily is admiring her lesbian friendship scarf in the mirror when she rolls into an Aliback. Naturally, they’re still at the beach. Alison and Emily are sitting alone, watching Noel take Prudence the Boob Job Girl to Kissing Rock. Alison asks who Emily would take, and they give each other very sexual looks.

Over at Hanna’s house, the double date crew (Hanna, Sean, Aria, Noel) are eating pizza before the Band of Horses concert. Aria’s face looks bored, and when Hanna gets a second alone with her, she asks Aria to at least pretend like she’s having fun. Aria insists that she is, but Hanna says the lights are dimming due to Aria sucking all of the energy out of the room. LOL. Don’t ever change, Hanna.

They’re interrupted by Lucas showing up with all of the money Hanna earned from selling her old things. She pulls the money out of the envelope, and it looks like a fair amount of cash. Lots of envelopes full of money in this episode!

Sweeney: If you can get over the complete lack of proper police protection, aggressive pedophilia problem, and murderer/people-with-murdery-soundtrack problem, Rosewood sounds pretty sweet — winning free cars and people giving out envelopes full of cash.

Sara: Emily and Maya are on their date at the movies, talking about Emily’s dad coming home from the military soon. Maya wants to meet him, and Emily assures her that she will introduce them. The movie starts, and they hold hands.

Sweeney: Emily kind of awkwards out of this, really, and I don’t blame her. I like Maya, but she needs to calm down a little. Emily just came to terms with her sexuality enough to go on this date. She’s not ready to tell her military father and I really hope she doesn’t end up pushing Emily too hard on this.

Sara: Spencer and Jason are at her house, working on details for the memorial. Jason brings up that Spencer was the only friend of Alison’s who ever really challenged her. He would always hear them arguing in Ali’s room, and he figured one day there would be a huge catfight. Spencer asks who he thinks killed Ali, and he non-answers that the police like Toby Cavanaugh. Spencer says she doesn’t want some random name chosen; she wants the real murderer to be brought to justice.

Jason thinks it’s funny that Spencer would bring justice up, considering that one time she convinced the girls to go throw a stink bomb in Toby’s house and ended up blinding Jenna and making Toby take the blame.

Spencer says, “Alison told you that? And you believed her?” Jason doesn’t answer. “You are just like her, aren’t you?” Jason says he is in some ways, but he’s worse. PLEASE. If Spencer were to murder someone, she would do it so perfectly that no one would ever suspect her for a moment.

Emily and Maya are not watching the movie, ifyaknowwhatimean. And if you don’t:

Noel finds Aria in the kitchen at Hanna’s house, sitting at the table by herself. He wants to know if he ran over her dog or something, because she’s seemed to be very angry at him all night. She gives him the old ‘it’s not you, it’s me and my adult English teacher boyfriend’ excuse. He assumes she’s still upset about her parents splitting up and the boy back in Iceland that she lied to Hanna about. He asks a few questions about the Iceland boyfriend who is actually Ezra. Aria tells Noel that she knows what she wants to happen with “Iceland Boy” but she knows she has to be realistic. That’s our Aria. Realistic. -_-

The conversation is stopped short when Aria receives an SOS text message from Spencer. When the PLLs all arrive at Spencer’s house, she tells them about Ali ratting them out to Jason. The girls are freaked, and Aria says it’s still Alison’s movie, and they are right in the middle of it.

Hanna’s mom opens the fridge to find it fully stocked. Hanna tells her that she sold some things and bought some groceries. BECAUSE SHE IS THE ACTUAL BEST. Ashley tells her to never sell her things again, because this shouldn’t be Hanna’s problem since she’s the kid in the situation. Hanna tells her that she doesn’t mind, and it was actually kind of nerdy fun. AW.

Lor: Additionally, I appreciate where Mama Marin is coming from, but I mean… Hanna has to live on actual people food. Kid or not, sometimes you just get hungry.

Sara: At the memorial, the girls are reading their speeches. The boy from Smart House walks in, (L: YES.) and all the girls wonder why ‘Melissa’s Ian’ is at Ali’s memorial. After the girls have made their speeches, Blind!Jenna makes hers. The PLLs have nothing to worry about, because she just says that after Ali talked to her at the hospital, she realized that Alison was the strongest person she knew.

After the memorial, Jason presents the girls with Alison’s friendship bracelet. The cops found it on her the night she died, which throws the girls for a loop, because they found an Alison bracelet out in the woods. They come to the conclusion that someone put that bracelet there just so they would find it. Creepy music leads us to the end of the episode.

Lor: So, the end of every episode is this thing where A does some sort of sabotage-y act. We’re struggling to find a name for it. If you can think of anything, drop us some suggestions in the comments! On that note:

Sara: Alison’s beautiful memorial is crashed to pieces by A, in his/her usual black gloves.

Lor:  The bitchy behavior for this episode was off the charts.

 

Next time on Pretty Little Liars: Spencer’s mom proves being a boss is genetic in S01 E09 – The Perfect Storm.