But that isn’t the only thing our Liars discover tonight. Not only do the Liars see Meredith at school applying for a teaching position, but Aria finds an envelope in her locker and inside is an earring that leads to a flashback with Aria and Ali in Byron’s office. The girls are in his office just after Byron has told Aria the affair with Meredith is over, but what should Ali pull from the couch but an earring!
Aria rather understandably leaps to the conclusion that Byron and Meredith are still together and the two friends trash Byron’s office, making it look like the work of Meredith in the midst of a breakdown. Just when we think we’ve learned all we can about the earring… Aria reveals the biggest shock of them all: Aria had put the pair of earrings in the casket when they buried Ali’s body. The earring, then, must be from whoever dug up Ali’s grave. Is it from A? Is it from someone else?
After confessing the truth to Byron about his trashed office thanks to a text from A, Aria is encouraged to apologize to Meredith by her father. When Aria apologized, Meredith threw it back in her face by saying she and Byron were grabbing lunch the next day.
But emotions quickly changed when Aria confronted Meredith about the earring only to have Meredith say it isn’t hers. If the earring isn’t hers, what could that mean? Was Byron having another affair with a student? Or maybe Ali didn’t find the earring in the couch and instead planted one for Aria to find after she “pulled” one from the couch? I’m always suspicious of Ali.
The other major storyline for Aria tonight was offering Ezra up to be Emily’s tutor. Emily, who is hesitant about it, finally takes her up on it, meeting with Ezra to prepare for a make-up test on Ethan Frome. (Side note: Ezra is looking super cute this episode. It may be his plain clothes I’m-fired look, but I don’t know.) Ezra says he’s sorry about Maya, Emily says she isn’t sure she can call him anything but Mr. Fitz.
When Emily goes to take the test, she ends up spacing out and remembering seeing Jenna in the car the night she blacked out and wound up at Ali’s empty grave. As a result, her test wasn’t exactly finished when she turned it in, but you wouldn’t know that from her results. Ella seems to have filled in a few answers for Emily in the grading process, assuring Ezra when he comes asking that Emily did “fine” on the test. Everyone understands that Emily is going through a tough time. Ezra, did you understand what Ella was telling you?
Spencer had quite a big episode herself as she continued her secret meetings with Garrett, who rather relentlessly asks for Mrs. Hastings to be his lawyer. After Mrs. Hastings confronts Spencer about these secret trips with extreme concern and strong warnings not to visit him again, it seems like Mrs. Hastings representing Garrett is nothing short of an other-worldly possibility. She even hints that people may start to think that Spencer is the one helping Garrett. Yikes!
But alas, before the episode is out Spencer goes to visit Garrett only to discover that her mom is meeting with Garrett as his attorney and wants a log of his visitors for the past five months. Why is she representing him now? Is it to protect Spencer? We know her parents have gone to great lengths before to protect Melissa… why not Spence?
Still, bad news for Spencer, though, because now Garrett is refusing to talk to Spencer… under the ruling of his attorney. But wait, Garrett, didn’t you say that you’d tell Spencer what she wanted to know if Mrs. Hastings became your attorney? Man, you can’t trust anyone these days.
Ok, well, I take that back. One person I have no doubt we can trust is Caleb. And he only proved that even more this episode by how much he loves and only wants to protect Hanna. Hanna has been keeping secrets – like the whole visiting Mona thing – from him and he knows it. He’s been trying to get her to confide in him and when she finally tells him that she’s been thinking about visiting Mona, for what he believes is the first time, he tells her that he wants to go with her. Um, how sweet! Can we all have a Caleb of our own please?!
But poor Caleb doesn’t know that Hanna has been visiting Mona for weeks now, including just the other day when she hit a small breaking point that resulted in her throwing a chair in the room at Mona’s non-responsiveness and betrayal and Wren coming in the room to take Hanna out of the room. Wren and Hanna had a heart to heart there were he told her he understands why Han would want to punish Mona, confession that his father was in an asylum as well.
Wren’s ultimate insight for Hanna was that this was particularly hard for her because it was a form of “ambiguous loss,” meaning the person is gone but still here. It’s a death, but not of a body. It’s this phrase that ultimately gives Han away though.
Caleb and Hanna head over together to see Mona, with Caleb staying out in the hall and Hanna heading into Mona’s room. Hanna, who has a nametag with “Marin” on it this time, brought Mona some make-up to try and get Mona to warm up to her. Not sure if it worked exactly as Hanna planned, but Mona finally spoke up saying, “You’re getting them again, aren’t you?” When Hanna tried to get her to say what texts she was talking about, she went back to mums-the-word Mona.
But quite a bit was happening out in the hall, too. Caleb was just playing solitaire on his phone when Wren came through the gates and saw him there, asking if he was with Hanna and happy to see him joining her this time. Caleb quickly realizes that Hanna and Wren have discussed her conflicting feelings about Mona at prior visits, particularly when Wren mentions that pesky “ambiguous loss.” Caleb is no dummy! He can tell she’s been here before now.
The episode was chock-full of juicy reveals and things that got us all thinking, but the ending was the perfect conclusion as the girls returned to the school bathroom for a place to discuss all the questions that had come to light. They heard Jenna was coming into the bathroom as they left out one of the earrings, testing Jenna and her vision status.
Jenna, who always seems to be the girl with eyes in the back of her head, took the bait and picked up the earring, pulling down her glasses and looking at it. Clearly the girl can see! The girls had absolutely hysterical reactions to finding this out, but Spencer convinced them not to confront Jenna and instead keep their knowledge a secret and use it to their advantage in the future. That smartypants Spencer!
Other notable moments:
Garrett telling Spencer, “Somebody you know well has you completely fooled. People lie, but medical records don’t.” Who could he be referring to? Ali? Jenna? Melissa?!
Toby and Spencer heating things up with a back rub. When Toby tells Spencer she’s a little tense, Spencer aptly replies “Yeah, I was born that way.”
Mrs. Hastings once again referred to Melissa as not ok in “her situation.” My guess is still the loss of the baby. Which then, of course, gets into the larger theory that Melissa was never really pregnant to begin with.
When Hanna visits Mona the first time this episode, we get the first mention of Noel Kahn this season. Mona finally looks up at Hanna.
Jenna asking Aria to come over to her house and rehearse with her only to be denied by Aria saying, “My dad’s actually waving at me from across the street.” That’d be a slick move to pull on a blind girl, but be careful Aria, Jenna can see now and she knows that ain’t true!
Caleb calls Hanna out, saying, “We stopped lying to each other a long time ago, didn’t we?” Then, to make us love him even more, we find out his feelings on Mona. He doesn’t hate her, he feels bad for her. And he just wants to make sure Hanna is safe from her.
Anybody else notice that the shadowy figures we saw tonight were lurking outside Aria’s bedroom window and Ella’s classroom? A Montgomery connection, perhaps? Or mere coincidence?
Toby did a little spying on Jenna and discovered that she’s still getting prescriptions filled on eye drops. His rather astute conclusion is that the surgery must have worked and she can now see.
Mona used the tweezers Hanna brought her to dig into her finger and draw blood. Also good to note that Mona knows full well that Hanna threw away her “Rivers” nametag.
Aria may have had one of the night’s best moments when she told Emily that Emily kept calling her Arlene when they found her that night at the empty grave. Priceless!
