Pretty Little Liars- 4.20 "Free Fall"- Review

Last night Aria Montgomery had a breakthrough and Spencer Hastings had a breakdown and both were GLORIOUS! Aria finally found out that (in the wise words of Hanna Marin) "her old boyfriend turned out to be a stalking wack job", and Spencer has gone crazy trying to prove it.

The episode began with Spencer waking up at Ezra Fitz's desk at school, slobbering all over Ali's journal, in a daze. Homegirl had no idea how or why she was there and in walks Ezra warning her about going down a "dangerous path", like her brain can even function being threatened right now.

She stumbles out of the class, tries to get her life together in the ladies room and is met by Emily and Hanna. Emily is so bamboozled as to why Spencer is dressed like a normal real-life teenager, that the only explanation she can come up with in her mind is that Spence had an "accident" all over her fancy tv-teenager clothes.

Meanwhile, Ezra begins his plan to discredit Spencer by planting the thought into Aria's head that she has an amphetamine issue. He gives her Spencer's personal file, which details her past history of abuse, and that's enough in Aria's wittle bitty mind to rally the troops (Hanna and Emily) and organize a Spencervention.

When the girls sit her down to Spencervene(last one, promise!), Spence immediately realizes what's happening once Aria busts out the file Ezra gave her for the group. At that point, all tact goes out the window as Spence blurts out "Ezra's freaking A!!!", while simultaneously taking in just how brilliant his plan is. Through the course of the conversation, she accused Aria of almost getting them killed a la the Shadow Play vision from last week and Wren's ENTIRE script pad fell out of her purse, so her credibility was pretty much shot to hell. Troian gave us another fabulous meltdown scene and at this point I kind of want Spencer to stay unhinged forever.

Later that day, Spencer visited Em and Hanna to try and convince them that sure, she's cuckoo bananas, but she's still smarter than the two of them combined. The girls can't do much but agree, so the 3 devise a plan to prove once and for all that Ezra is -A. Spence also gave them the last of her pills and promised to kick her habit.

Ezra randomly ends up at The Brew, just as planned...somehow...and Emily drops her dishes for no other reason that I can figure out other than depth perception issues. Seriously, she could have just outright thrown them on the ground and it would have looked about the same. Regardless, this gives her the set up she needs to begin planting fake meet-up seeds for Ezra. He's definitely eavesdropping, as Spencer and Hanna feed her lines and all goes according to plan...for the remainder of that scene.

Meanwhile, Aria has decided to snoop around at Ezra's cabin because she's FINALLY gotten suspicious of him after a conversation about Spencer, in which Fitz let details of Toby's "accident" slip that no one ever told him. The cabin now has the coolest security system I've ever seen, and after a few tries Aria guesses the code: B26.

Once inside, she looks around for clues...or chickpeas, who the hell knows. She finds the secret basement and former lair, now empty, and heads back upstairs. A big ass book on the coffee table, "Carnivore's Delight", catches her eye and in it was Ezra's manuscript about Ali. Of course at that exact moment, Ezra pulls up. His cool ass alarm texted him and told him someone had entered the cabin. Knowing it was Aria, he goes inside, sees she found the book pages and begins to search for her in the woods. Yes you read correctly... Aria ran out of the cabin and left her FREAKING CAR KEYS NEXT TO THE FRONT DOOR. UGH!

So yeah, she runs through the woods in the middle of the night with her murderous boyfriend chasing her and naturally she thinks heading to a ski lift would be a good idea. You know, if Ezra had pushed her off of that ski lift, I wouldn't have even been mad. But he didn't. Instead we saw the face screencapped 'round the world, and learned that Ezra IS NOT A, but he is a writer who took his story waaaaaaaayyyy too far. I mean WAY too far, dude.

He tells Aria that he knew who she was when he met her and got close to her as part of his research in the beginning, but somewhere along the way he genuinely did fall for her. She screams in his face and tells him she's going to read every page of his book.They begin to struggle over the pages so you know what happens next...If you guessed "they dropped the pages onto the ground below and left them there" you'd be CORRECT!

Back at Ambrose Pavilion, Spencer shows up late wherein Em and Hanna realize that they were duped by a bad wig again! We're lead to believe that it was Mona, since she was late to her date with Mike (still feels weird writing that...) and Ezra told her he needed her help, but with the logic that this show follows it was probably Tippy the Bird.

Anyway, Spencer's mom has figured out that her daughter picked up an old habit. After promising Em and Hanna that she'd quit, Spence decided that the withdrawal symptoms didn't sit well with her, and called her Dr's office pretending to be her mother, asking for a refill. When the doctor called back and got the real Veronica Hastings, Spencer's jig was up. Veronica and Toby both let Spencer have it. Veronica told her she can't cover for her "again" (SUSPICIOUS!). Toby gave her his disappointed puppy look, topping it off with scrabble piece necklace to make her feel extra shitty. I guess we'll see if either approach worked next week.


Odds and Ends:
- Ok, WHY did neither Aria nor Ezra pick up the pages of the book? REALLY didn't understand the logic there.
- Mona looked pretty intimidated by Ezra when she and Mike's date was interrupted at the Apple Rose Grille. Either she has an irrational fear of authors or there's more to the story than Ezra writing a book.
-Did anyone else notice how oddly Hanna eats string cheese? The whole fun of it is to peel it off as thin as humanly possible,to the point where you really can't even taste the damn cheese...not pick it off and roll it into booger balls.
-From Em's "Did you have an accident?" to to Hanna straight up asking if Spence is a "speed freak" this episode was full of great one liners.
- Next week: Aria goes full-on Waiting to Exhale on Ezra...and I love it.

What are your thoughts on this weeks episode?
Was Ezra NOT being -A a huge letdown?
Let's have a pretty little chat below!

About the Author - Jasmine Alyce

Jasmine Alyce is a co-host on 3 Girls and a Podcast, alongside Fanbolt.com's Emma Loggins and Electric Sons Band Manager Christina Guererro. The show airs Thursday nights at 11pm EST.
She is also the Co-Editor/Co-Founder of entertainment website Big Girls Don't Gossip,with fellow Co-Editor/Co-Founder Alanna Bass.

Jasmine graduated from Georgia State University in 2009 with her BA in Broadcast Journalism considers herself an entertainment news/ pop culture connoisseur.