Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Ashley Marin stood around in her perfect kitchen in a killer dress, drinking whiskey (neat) and pondering the life she could have led if she hadn’t spent the last decade keeping Hanna out of prison. The Liars remembered the time Sara Harvey got lit up by a tractor battery that was sitting on the floor of the building where she led them to die and felt really guilty about it. A returned to town using emojis, and the minute one of his menacing messages showed up on their phones, they all reverted to the behaviors of their youth, lying and lying and lying and generally making the worst decisions known to humankind.
Byron Montgomery is sitting in the dark in his living room so close to a lamp that he could turn it on with his pinky finger without even extending his arm, but instead of that he just sits there in the pitch black and when his daughter arrives home — his daughter who has been the victim of so much torture that literally three weeks ago she told a judge that she can barely even make herself get in an elevator with other people — he waits for her to turn on the overhead light, and when she gasps and clutches her chest because she’s assuming she’s about to get kidnapped and held hostage, he goes, “Did I scare you?”
You know you love me.
No, not really.
LOL, Did I scare you? Did you think you were about to get trapped in a box with a dead man again and be thrown from a moving train? Did you think my former student that I fucked when I was married to your mom was going to lock you in the basement one more time? Hahahaha!
Hurl yourself into the fires of Mount Doom, Byron. God. Somehow he has hoodwinked Ella into marrying him again, and they’ve been creeping around so as not to upset Aria, who has historically been traumatized by nothing as much as people creeping around. She says she’s happy for them, but Ella doesn’t believe her. She follows Aria to her bedroom and says when Aria’s surprised she makes this one face but when she’s concerned she makes this whole other face, and honestly, she seemed more concerned when they told her about the engagement. She corrects Ella and points out that the face she was making was her My PTSD Just Got Triggered Face, and she wishes Ella all the best with her second marriage to the second worst man on earth. Also, she’s been watching Downton Abbey and she knows if Ella and Byron get married, Ella can’t be forced to testify against him if he goes to trial for murdering Charlotte. And for reasons I do not understand, she considers that a win.
But WHY am I the only person on this show without a love interest?!
Hanna’s day starts off bad and gets worse. Her boss, who is to Miranda Priestly what Twinkies are to wedding cake, is on her ass about getting back to Manhattan for a fashion show, and it has to be all Asians modeling, and individual packets of Himalayan salt for her lunch, and probably some wankshite coffee order. On top of that, Hanna’s beautiful and very boring fiance who doesn’t know that blonde/blonde ships never really sail, is all up in her nut and begging for attention. And on top of that is Emily getting her eggs harvested and recuperating at Lucas’ “penthouse” with Hanna. And on top of that is Devil Emoji telling her to find the hard drive her mom stole from the server farm, the one with the Radley footage from the night Charlotte died, or else.
Marin’s Magnificent Kitchen
Hanna: I can’t believe you stole that hard drive!
Ashley: The one you literally stood in this kitchen and asked me to steal 24 hours ago?
Hanna: Yes, that one! How could you?
Ashley: Whoo boy. Well, okay, I didn’t?
Hanna: Whatever mother, I remember when we had a million dollars, cash money, stuffed inside boxes of elbow noodles. Give it to me and I’ll destroy it?
Ashley: Like you destroyed that handgun from my closet by burying it in a frat house front yard in the middle of a party?
Mary Berry would not be happy about our workstation being this messy.
After Ashley leaves, Hanna calls up Aria, and they ransack Ashley’s place. Dumping out cereal boxes, pouring bottles on wine on the floor, throwing coffee canisters against the wall, tipping over the refrigerator, smashing plates, turning on the water and stuffing the sink with rags and leaving the whole place to flood like the Wet Bandits from Home Alone.
Fun fact: Spencer and Riese’s fiance, Abby, drink the same coffee! (I see you back there, Cafe Bustelo.)
I just tried to figure out how to spell “lingerie” to caption this photo properly, but Google thought I was trying to find “lion king songs,” so.
What is Caleb doing today? Well, firstly he’s sexing Spencer. Feeding her coffee and sexing her and sending her out into the world to meet with someone named “Gil” at the Rosewood Grille. She doesn’t remember putting the appointment in her calendar, but it’s there, so she’s gotta go! Like when your GPS tells you to drive into a lake! Gil does not show up at Rosewood Grille, but Toby’s fiance does. Yvonne. Beautiful Yvonne. She and Spencer talk about politics for a little while and about being Daughters of the American Revolution for a while and about Toby’s 12-pack for a while, and also:
Spencer: Trust is hard for me. I don’t know who on my mom’s campaign team I can trust.
Yvonne: Right, because of when you were a teenager and kept getting killed?
Spencer: Yeah. Like when I went out into the real world, [inexplicable welding metaphor], and now I just don’t know how to be.
Yvonne: I know what you mean about [inexplicable welding metaphor], but, in my experience, six out of ten times, the men in this town aren’t trying to murder you.
Spencer: Good point, Yvonne. Thank you for—
Yvonne: BYE!
Spencer: Oh dear, she left her phone.
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“mom’s secret box of Fruit Loops” — that’s definitely a euphemism right??
I know this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I absolutely love all the allusions in season 6B to earlier seasons. Like how in this episode Aria is keeping her dad’s secret from her mom to protect her dad and to spare her mom’s feelings, and how Spencer almost blames her laziness on the help like her father blamed his mistake (not making a lunch reservation for a client) on Alex at the country club (nearly getting him fired). I feel like these echoed themes bring the story full-circle and tie the past and the present together.
I did NOT understand what was going on with the Emily/eggs storyline. So she went through all of that for nothing, because she’s not getting paid now? God, show, give the poor girl a break even if you’re not going to give her a proper love interest!
It’s from the books. She’s bisexual in the books and got pregnant with her boyfriend. Things were rocky between them, so she gave it up for adoption so a happy couple could have a baby. But that didn’t work out. Another couple ended up stepping up, which in this case would be Emily donating the eggs.
I hate the idea of that storyline so much that I’m surprised Marlene hasn’t used it
Egg donors are paid for their “time and effort” in the United States and most agencies require payment from the intended parents prior to starting the donor on medications, so legally a donor in that situation should still get paid…just sayin’.
Good, I guess!
To be fair, “legally” a lot of things should have happened in this show, but here we are.
Like “legally Fitz’s ass belongs in jail” ?
Emily’s egg donation saga could not be more heavy handed. Why is everyone so flustered that Emily might not be making the right decision in donating her own eggs? When Ali asks if Emily could keep them (after Emily found out that the family fell through)? Like, whyyyyy. She just wants to get paid. This does not need to be another “but they could be my potential babies!!!” story line that happens on every show.
Also, I LOLed hard at A/Evil’s threat to Emily that they will “use” her eggs. Like…oh no, you will somehow implant them in yourself and birth a baby using them? Who gives a shit?
So I have always been convinced that Byron is evil and somehow involved with the entire Ali/A saga, from day one. He was always portrayed really creepily, even in their flashbacks, and I would be SO HAPPY to have it turn out that he is in some way evil.
Also, interesting that Aria’s parents can’t reach her brother at school because he’s “never in his dorm”…
I also was fascinated by the dozens of pairs of leather gloves that Sarah Harvey has in her hotel room. Even if those aren’t real leather, that was like $300 worth of just gloves.
I am totally sick of her character though…and the pacing of this show…and so many other things…I watch it every week and when it’s not actively horrifying/disappointing me, it’s putting me to sleep. But I can’t stop watching. I miss season 1! Season 1 was so good.
I though the end of the show was a nice change – Caleb turning that drive into a virus. Hopefully there is going to be a lot more of that – the girls and Caleb being on the offense instead of the defense – this season. The whole “getting chased/harassed by an anonymous villain” is getting pretty tedious.
Was it just me, or did it totally seem as though Yvonne was hitting on Spencer??
I was under the impression that Yvonne thought it was a date (Mona, what the heck was the memo you sent? “Haaaave you met Spence?”) and left her phone on purpose knowing Spencer would look at it, or was distracted by Spencer’s beauty and forgot about her phone.
I’m shipping it. Yvonne has more chemistry with Spencer than Toby ever did…with either of them.
Definitely not just you. Definitely starting to ship it.
I’m sad about how little I’ve come to care about this show I used to love when there isn’t anything gay happening.
I’m really surprised that nobody’s mentioned the ridiculous amounts of Emison going on in this episode. And Spencer and Aria invoking the cute “Team Sparia”/”You’re little but big” exchange from last year once again.
Agreed!
The Emison they’re giving us isn’t the Emison we deserve, IMO.
Since we know that this isn’t leading up to anything romantic (we already know that she and Cece’s doctor gets married) in the near future, people don’t care as much as they would if they thought it was going somewhere beyond friendship.
I did like their interactions though and I liked how this time Ali actually seems to just want to be a good friend to Emily, instead of only being nice when she wants something.
I don’t think Hanna found the harddrive. Caleb just bought one and put bugs on it.
I didnt mind Emily’s storyline until this week when it was so heavy handed. It’s been 6 seasons and she’s never had a good storyline.
In general the dialogue of this episode was terrible. It was chuncky and had metaphors that dont make sense and heavy handedness. The episode really dragged and is by far the weakest link of 6b. Not as bad as the prom episode though.
What’s the big deal with donating eggs? It’s so awkward when a show thinks something is emotional and you just sit there and goes “sooo…” (They didn’t take all of her eggs, right?)
I think the world would be a much better place if adopting and fostering was actual equal in status to reproducing and if we had less of the glorification of the perverse need of having another person be, physically, half of yourself.
Also – it feels like the writers couldn’t help themselves to mess with the lesbian’s body. Maybe it is unwarranted, but it feels like writers really want to stick dicks and babies in lesbians; that when it comes to minorities, people feel like that they have some extra right of judgment and right of interference. Like, how Muslims must answer for other Muslims behavior, or how women are asked how is it to be a woman in that job, etc; and when it comes to lesbians, which is perceived as something physical, then they feel they have some right to other matters of the physical nature i.e. sex and babies. And, taking Emily’s eggs feels like it is in the same vein – her body is for them to do with, more so than of non-minorities.
“…that blonde/blonde ships never really sail.”
Don’t say that. What about Sara Lance and Betty McRae?
“Sara Harvey is dressed like if a midshipman on a fish stick box had a baby with Kenickie from Grease and lurking around the halls of Rosewood High School”
OH GOODNESS.
I know the show is getting more and more painful every week but these recaps continue to shine shine shine