Pretty Little Liars Episode 522 Recap: Tomorrow Will be Taco Night

After dealing with Hanna’s worries, Emily turns her attention back to Aria, who is making plans to have dinner with Andrew after they k-i-s-s-e-d last week.

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What? These are pants!

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They aren’t skin color! They’re way pinker than skin color! I don’t look naked!

Emily: What about Ezra?
Aria: What about him?
Emily: WHOA WHAT. Have you been brainwashed?
Aria: Unbrainwashed, actually. I might still be dating A, though. Andrew might be him.
Emily: Oh, okay, well that’s good. Ask Ezra about his “research,” will you?
Aria: I kind of like you better when you mind your own beeswax.
Emily: Beeswax! Maybe that’s what’ll hold my empanadas together!

In London, Colin arrives home with some tickets to see a play at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He’s like, “Are you into Hamlet?” And Spencer is like, “Family members murdering each other and ghosts showing up to call out the people who killed them while everybody gets spied on and manipulated and blackmailed by their best friends and moms and the whole time the main guy goes crazier and crazier because he doesn’t know who to trust and suddenly he’s staging this play within the play like a person tripping balls on a whole bucket of Adderall? You don’t even know how into that I am.”

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Look on the bright side. At least you’re not cursed with dying over and over.

After school, Hanna goes to Calebzra’s apartment.

Hanna: Well, my ass is going to jail.
Caleb: No, babe, everything’s going to be okay.
Hanna: The D.A. said Ali can get half time in jail if she’ll just say I killed Mona too.
Caleb: Oh. Well, you’ve always looked good in orange.

Ashley shows up at Caleb’s and she is piiiissssed. She tells Hanna to get in the car right now! They are going home and on the way Hanna is going to explain about the bodies in the barrels and visiting Alison in jail! And weirdly, but awesomely, Hanna does tell her the truth. Kind of. She explains about the storage locker thing. Ashley is like, “Why did you not just tell me that? I know Emily can’t talk to Pam about this kind of stuff because Pam is dead. And Aria can’t talk to Ella about this kind of stuff because Ella moved to the Galapagos after that Donut Castle chef tried to molest you. And Spencer can’t talk to Veronica about this because Veronica is a robot. But I am a regular human mom who has robbed a bank; I’d like to think you can count on me to understand.”

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I know that sexuality is a spectrum, but social biases codify sexual attraction, contrary to the biological facts, mom.

Hanna is properly chastised.

I mean, I guess the good thing about Emily is she is so stubborn about righting her wrongs when she realizes she believed the exact wrong thing about the people she loves. She’s got a fire in her as she zigs and zags around town getting into everybody’s business and trying to crack the case of Mona’s murder so Ali doesn’t have to stay in jail anymore. She goes to the bookstore to ask Ezra is he knows anything about Varjak. He tells Emily he doesn’t know who Varjak is and there was nothing about that guy in his “research” and can they just drop it. So okay, fine. Emily has another idea. She wants Ezra to take his white male ass over to Mona’s lawyer’s office and find out what the deal is there. Was he working for Mona? Was he working for the person who killed Mona? Is he just another grown man who moved to this town to get his grimy paws on underage girls? Bro-to-bro, Emily wants Ezra to go find out.

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Oooh, saucy. But I’m trying to be a little more butch right now.

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LOL Spencer you. are. not. gay.

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Melissa lends Spencer some clothes to wear to Shakespeare, and they are reminded that they never got to do this stuff when the lived in the same house in America because Melissa was always marrying guys that “researched” Spencer and her friends in their underwear in their bedrooms with video cameras, and Melissa was always having to bury the dead bodies of the people Spencer maybe killed in the yard. They cross their fingers behind their backs and promise never to lie to each other again, but to be Elizabeth/Jane Bennet-levels of awesome to each other, in terms of sisterhood, from now on.

Ezra goes to Mona’s lawyer’s office like Emily asked him to, pretending to be interested in franchising his coffee/book shop that has been in business for five minutes and employs a single teenager as the chef, barista, checkout clerk, janitor, accountant, inventory manager, CEO, social media technician, book club organizer, structural engineer, and bouncer. Emily is to bookstores what Wren Kingston is to hospitals. The lawyer offers up some terrible advice, and then Ezra turns on him and starts demanding answers about Mona. And so he is summarily escorted from the premises.

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Look, it’s none of my business, but your hair is kind of Varjak-ish today.

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Don’t you dare tell ME about Capote.

Outside, he hides in the bushes with Aria and Emily and watches the lawyer drive away. They decide they should do a stakeout on him.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

22 Comments

  1. Thank you for the Friends reference and letting me know where I knew Ali’s lawyer from!
    ALSO
    That last Sparia photo set is magical. You have no idea how much I’ve missed Radley Spencer.
    Thanks for another hilarious and super on point recap!

  2. Prediction: Andrew is A’s minion. He’ll romance Aria, and when she realizes it’s him, she’ll run right back to Ezra.
    – Spencer, what is with you and skeezy dudes this season. Put Aria in your pocket, and think happy thoughts.
    – Okay, that burn on Ali was a total sympathy thing. In order for somebody to burn you with an iron like that, you would see them.
    – May I commend Emily. The guy heard her phone buzz, but Emily has learned to TURN OFF HER RINGER when she’s spying on someone.
    – Hanna’s tough, but we all know that she’s going to be Ali’s prison bitch.
    – Spencer, can you do me a favor? Hit Ezra with your car, back over him a few times, get out, pour gasoline on him, set him on fire, behead him, bury him upside down in his coffin with garlic in his mouth, and put a big f**king rock on his grave, so that we can make sure his storyline is dead.

    • As much as I don’t like Ezra he is very important to Arias storyline. Her whole story is how she thinks she is more mature than she really is and relies on other too much (of all the plls she needs her parents the most and usually defers to others in a group). And Ezra is important in demonstrating those facets of her personality. And while it does annoy me the other 3 don’t hate Ezra for the sake of Aria being the one to come to the conclusion the relationship is bad (the talmage essay was gold) I am willing to stand the other 3 forgiving him. And 17 year old hopeless romantic Aria would absolutely forgive her toxic and vaguely abusive boyfriend. It’s a sad reality but absolutely truth in television.

  3. I figured out why Emily suddenly cares about Ezria: Emily moved her bedroom into Arias house bc Pam moved to Texas and Byron to Syracuse and Ella to anywhere else. It’s why Mike made the “I don’t need another big sister” comment or why Emily allowed Talia to stay at her house after breaking up with her (she’s not living there!). Emily cares about Ezria bc when Ezria has problems Emily hears about it at home.

  4. Also this show was great of reminding people who claim they watch the show why the liars should never go to the police.

  5. The captions in this one were particulary inspired. (Trying to find out who’s gayer would be much more interesting than find out who’s A at this point in the show for me). Good job :D

  6. I had so many frustrated moments with this episode.
    St Andrews is in GD Scotland people! It would’ve been a long ass trip to go to that interview, we’re talking a few long train journeys and a bus at least. Also the RSC is in Stratford, half way up the country. Where the eff are the researchers getting their information for fake UK based stuff. Is it that map meme where the whole of England is London and then there’s kilts above and dragons on the left? Additionally No one plays darts in the pub unless they’re on the pub team or a regular…I’m northern, in the land of darts-or arrers as we call them-snooker or pool is the game of pub choice. Jesus H (possibly A) Christ I hate Colin. He could have taken Spencer to the Globe and they could have had an real Shakespearean experience…more fool him. Can’t wait for Spencer to get back to Rosewood and save Aria from the Ezra insanity.
    Also dammit girls screenshot your stalker texts so you can print them and take them to the cops when they finally pull you in and frame you…it’s inevitable. Have we learnt nothing all these years!
    Amazing captions and as ever hilarious recap.

    • Yes because if A can hack your texts they can’t hack screenshots and it’s not like A has ever stolen things from the girls before. Have you learned nothing all these years? the show has done a really good job of showing why the girls can’t go to the cops. In season 1 when they told about the trophy they got in trouble. Garrett and wilden who are on the force have tried to kill them. And no one would believe them if they said they were being stalked. In this universe it wouldn’t happen.

    • Also if these are your complaints I feel bad for you when watching tv. Wether or not people play darts, the location of a school, none of these things matter. And every tv show exists in its own universe with its own rules so don’t worry about useless details. In the pll universe people play darts and St. Andrews moved. Simple.

      • I tend to make sarcastic comments on these threads about the crazy that is PLL, the folk in England seem to get that when its related to the PLL interpretation of England, which requires probably the craziest and weirdest suspension of disbelief ever, (for the people in England at least)…and this is a show where two of the main characters have killed people and then never mentioned how they feel about it again.
        I think you missed that I was joking, no need to feel bad for me. I enjoy TV…it’s entertainment, it’s fun…it shouldn’t be taken too seriously…like my original comment.

        • Some people when they complain about it are not joking. There are actual criticism of pll but instead I feel like fans always harp on “problems” that aren’t real criticisms. Like the time issue.

    • I too was wondering why the hell Spencer was still in London if she had a St Andrews intermew – also, that place doesn’t even have a station, so it’s even harder to get to than most purrts of Scotland! And, yeah, I was wondering about the Globe. Though, even if Hamlet makes sense thematicatly, I see Spencer liking something less obvipuss, and also I don’t see her being a purrist – I imagine her loving weird takes on Shakespurr… Maybe this is just because I really hate historicism, and finally feel like the occasional bit of Spencer’s whole “intense clefur girl” thing is actmewally starting to ring true – she just seemed like a TV executive’s idea of what that purrson was like fur about 4 seasons…

  7. The Royal Shakespeare Company are based in Stratford-upon-Avon, not London. They sometimes stage plays in London at other theatres, but this wasn’t qualified “I’ve got tickets for the RSC at the Garrick” or some such cutesy-sounding theatre choice would’ve made me much happier.

    • In the PLL unifurse, since time and location don’t matter, they purrobably could have just said they were actmewally going to see David Garrick in Shakespurr. It makes about as much sense as the rest of the show :p

    • The RSC also plays at the Barbican (in London) every season, along with their 3 stages in Stratford-on-Avon.
      It’s not so far to London – when I was working at the RSC, and feeling lonely/depressed, I would sometimes go to London for the evening. It was a bit of a trek, but doable.
      However the St Andrews thing was tote ridic, unless of course, she had flown in a private jet, after having taken secret flying lessons. But that would never happen in PLL, right?

  8. “And then when she’s ironing (???) the jail uniforms,”

    I KNOW, RIGHT??? This show has been pulling off a lot of ridiculous suspension-of-disbelief nonsense, but this was too much.

  9. Thank you, Heather for another winner recap. Your first paragraph is a brilliant summary of the entire PLL series and puts all this craziness in perspective. Your screen cap captions are hilarious: “I don’t know, Veronica. I told Ella I’d wait. But if you really think we have a shot.” Ashley does have chemistry with just about everyone on the show, but I am glad she kicked the pastor to the curb. She becomes boring whenever he is around. I hope he has finished his coffee by now and returned to the parsonage.

      • Yes, in a discussion over coffee in her kitchen, Ashley told the pastor that she would not hold him to his promise of marriage, in light of the trial revealing her indiscretion with Alison’s brother. The pastor wanted to stick by her, but she said no.

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