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| Source: ABC Family |
On this week’s episode of the Hanna Marin show, we open with Hanna talking on the phone with Ashley while she’s away at a conference. Ashley reminds her that nobody’s allowed to come over and when they hang up, Hanna hears a knock at the door. He tells her that they’re still looking for the blood from the anklet, or more specifically, the person to whom it belongs. The blood was O negative, and so is she, so the police have an order for her to come in to give them a sample. Commence freak out.
Hanna dishes this new information to the rest of the liars, who apparently know about Jason’s involvement with the bracelet and Hanna worries that she’s being framed. When they manage to ditch our new star, Emily, Aria and Spencer walk to the coffee shop, where they overhear a blonde girl talking to the cashier who sounds a lot like Allison. When they confront her, she reveals that her name is Cece, and she knows Allison from a summer in which their families shared a vacation home and she shared some saliva with Jason. Cece, not Allison. That would be gross. She tells the liars that Allison told her all about them and their secrets, which creeps them out even more.
At school, Aria delivers some mail to Ella’s classroom, where Ella reveals that she’s going on a date that night at the coffee shop after Aria notices a dress hanging near her desk. She has time to dish a little bit about what the guy looks like, until the bell rings and she’s inexplicably forced to teach class with the dress still out for everyone to see.
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| Source: ABC Family |
Outside, Spencer looks through a yearbook and adds Cece to her digital file, which looks almost as psycho as -A’s lair. When Toby (aka White Taylor Lautner) approaches her and asks her why she’s been dodging him, she confesses that she and Jason were out looking for the anklet. Does Toby know that Jason is Spencer’s brother? She also explains that she still thinks Garrett is guilty and will do anything to prove it, which makes Toby mad because he remembers when he was nothing more than Jenna’s creepy stepbrother in her eyes.
At the coffee shop, Nate finds Emily and shows her a candle he bought for Jenna as a late birthday gift. He tells her that he wants her to shop with him because he thinks the candle sucks (it does), but she declines when she finds out that they have a date. Nate questions her coldness, after Jenna had nothing but good things to say about her and Maya.
After school, Aria walks Hanna home, where they find a Ouija board on the counter. When Hanna picks up the hand piece, it pricks her and they find a note from -A on the underside. Any normal teenage girl would have been freaked out after a creepy fed shows up at the house alone, but it isn’t until now that Hanna agrees to stay with Aria, once she figures out that -A had to have a key to her house because there’s no sign of a break in. Our little blonde scaredy cat tells Aria that she buried the toy with Allison after she and Mona had a bad experience with it. We then flash back to three days before Allison’s body was found, in which Mona and Hanna play the game in the dark kitchen, surrounded by candles. When Mona asks about Allison, the board spells out ALIVE, and Hanna sees Allison outside her window.
Aria insists that Mona paid a blonde girl to frighten Hanna because she was -A, but I think Hanna would recognize her best friend, even if she had been missing for a year. I didn’t read the books, so when I heard the theories about Allison’s secret twin being involved with the -A team, I thought they were silly but I’m slightly more of a believer now.
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| Source: ABC Family |
Back at the school, Jason just so happens to be running outside when Spencer exits, and just so happens to be doing it with a shirt on. Dang. As I resist the urge to try to move the hair off his forehead through the TV screen, Spencer tells him that she’s sorry for involving him, and he lets her know that his father is coming back to town. When she mentions Cece, he tells her that their relationship ended bitterly without giving any juicy details, then hits the showers.
Speaking of the devil, we see Emily and Nate together again when they go shopping at the boutique where Cece works. Alli Sr. shoos him away to go look at scarves, and takes the opportunity to pry about Jenna. She can sense that Emily hates Jenna (who Allison obviously shared nothing about), but mistakes it for jealousy before realizing that she and Alli had a thing. She advises Emily to warn Nate about Jenna when Nate summons her for help. One of the items he’s chosen is a pair of earrings that look like the ones Emily gave Maya before she went missing. He lets it slip that he recognized them, but quickly changes the subject, then tells her that he’s only going out with Jenna because Emily’s not into him. Too weird, dude. She dated your cousin! Your female cousin!
When Ella shows up early for her coffee date, the manager chats her up and tempts her with pastry. She asks about Emily and tells him about her date when Ted walks in and recognizes her from the dating site. Looks like the town pastor is a playa pimp! Yes, those were my exact words when he walked in.
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| Source: ABC Family |
We then see Aria drop by Radley, where she learns that Mona has visitation rights again, but she has to get shaken down by the nurse first. She also learns that the nurse has to chaperone all visits, and small, dark and crazy breaks out a deck of cards. As they build a house of cards, Aria apologizes that Hanna couldn’t come, and Mona reminds the nurse of her medication. Once they’re rid of her, Aria explains that they found the Ouija board in Hanna’s house and wants to know if she knows who planted it. The nurse then returns and tells Aria that it’s past Mona’s bedtime and she has to leave.
Elsewhere, Hanna walks and talks on the phone with Spencer, who is coincidentally at the end of her path. Spencer explains that Mrs. Hastings is going to try to get her off the bloody hook, when they see Jason and Mr. D. get out of an uncharacteristically cheap car. Spencer encourages her to talk to him, but Hanna insists that she can’t. Later we see Hanna corner Allison’s dad and apologize for “what she did,” but it doesn’t help. At this point, I was racking my brain to try to figure out if I was forgetting something from a previous episode, but we find out what happened later.
Back at the coffee shop, sweet Emily tries to bad-mouth Jenna by telling Nate that she used to date Garrett, but it blows up in her face when he feels sorry for Jenna and worries that she could have been the next to be murdered. We see the equally unromantic twosome of Ted and Ella sitting on a bench eating ice cream, where he worries that she’s getting weirded out by the pastor talk. Guy, I would be more worried that she knows you’re two-timing one of her friends to go on this date.
When Ella finishes her date, she returns to the coffee shop to look for Emily, and the manager asks her about her night. She reveals that Ted was alright, but she won’t be seeing him again. When he offers her yet another plate of pastry, she complains about her age and he sees that as his flirt window. The young gun also tells her that he can keep the coffee shop open as late as he wants because he’s the owner, and introduces himself as Zach, though he probably spells it Zac or Zakh, he’s just so cool.
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| Source: ABC Family |
As Aria leaves Radley, she runs into Hanna and tells her that Mona didn’t spill anything. Hanna confesses that she’s going to break in to see Mona, and Aria insists on tagging along. When Hanna gets to Mona’s room undetected, she’s just sitting in the dark like a psycho, and asks Mona who she told about ‘that night.’ This time she means the other ‘that night,’ when Hanna thinks she was spooked by Allison’s ghost. Aria enters and Mona asks if Mr. D. is still angry with her. Cue the umpteenth flashback of the night.
Hanna walks down the street with Mona as she explains a new code for secretly talking smack about people when they see a flyer with Allison’s face on it. Her father then jumps out of his flashy car and yells at her for telling his wife that she saw Allison. We jump back to Radley, where Hanna explains what happened to Aria, and by the time she’s finished with the story, Mona’s nowhere to be found. Aria’s next line leads us to believe that Mona stole Hanna’s car.
We see a car being recklessly driven through the dark streets of Rosewood, and when it passes Spencer, she recognizes Jason. She sees him crash into a parked car and rushes to him. He reveals that he’s been drinking and feels guilty for something, when she pushes him aside and drives his car away, leaving her car on the street still running.
When she gets home, Toby’s waiting there for some reason, as if he forgot that her parents don’t like him or anyone for that matter and he made himself a key. Spencer begs him to drive her back to her car because she had to drive Jason hope, but they’re interrupted by Wilden at the door. Even though he’s angry again, Toby covers for her and adorably scolds her for letting her car get stolen. When the cops leave, Spencer tells him that Jason was drunk and she so desperately needs to protect him.
Back at Radley, Aria and Hanna tiptoe around the quiet halls looking for Mona when they see the door to the children’s ward open and a broken lock on the floor, pried open with Hanna’s tweezers. As they wander through the abandoned ward, they find Mona sitting alone in the dark again, brushing a doll’s hair this time. She starts babbling nonsense when the nurse enters. Hanna and Aria hide in the closet and watch Mona get taken back to her room.
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| Source: ABC Family |
When Emily leaves the coffee shop, she tells her that her plan only made Nate pity Jenna and want her more. Cece seems to shrug it off and asks for Emily’s number, but when she gives her the phone, Cece looks up Jenna’s number and calls her under and threatens her with the pretense that she’s Nate’s girlfriend. What an Alli move. Emily later passes by the grill and sees that Nate got stood up by Jenna.
When Aria and Hanna get back home, Aria talks to Ella on the phone about her date, and Ella tells her that she didn’t like Ted because he plays with his ice cream like Byron, so she’s going to sleep with the coffee shop guy instead. When they hang up, she climbs in the bed with Hanna and they have the best conversation of the night.
Hanna: What’s up with your mom?
Aria: She’s a slut. Let’s just go to sleep.
Aria manages to doze off, but Hanna can’t forget Mona’s chants as she tosses and turns. She assembles the rest of the liars and tells them about Mona’s code, revealing that her rambling was to give them the message “not safe” and direct them to the website www.massugar.com, where a password is required but they can’t think of what it is. My guess: mayaknew, which was the third part of the code that Hanna failed to tell her friends.
In the -A wrap-up of the night, we see our villain in the Children’s ward during the daytime, where he or she takes the dolls and finds a tape recorder inside. On the tape we hear Hanna and Aria, and I can’t help but wonder if Mona feels remorseful for her actions and spoke in code to protect the Liars from the boss of the -A team.
Thanks for reading, Liars! Feel free to check out my previous reviews of PLL and other shows at WatchItRae.com or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, where I post links of my reviews when they go live. Stay tuned for a recap of next week's episode, "Stolen Kisses."
What do you Liars at home think?
