Up is down and down is up; in this episode, Aria looks normal and girly half the time, while Hanna takes a spin dressing as an art student living in Paris who gets sucked into spying. Variety: It’s spicy.
Plot: I have no idea anymore WHAT, exactly, the girls’ big secret is that A is using to keep them silent. But the mysterious A — they should rule out anyone who has a job, by the way, because A has plenty of time to watch them 24/7 and make evil plots AND perfectly time text messages — is trying to ruin the girls’ relationships for some reason (to keep them under his/her thrall?); thus, when A finds out Spencer slipped up and made out with Toby, A knocks down Toby’s scaffolding and sends him to the hospital with a broken arm, so Spencer makes Emily lie that Spencer has another boyfriend and thus Toby leaves town. But gives her the keys to his truck. THAT is an amicable breakup. Hanna, whose boyfriend Caleb is hacking into A’s recovered cell phone, doesn’t want to tell him why he’s doing it so that it keeps him safe, and thus they are frowny all the time. Caleb decrypts some cell phone video of various players in the Alison murder — Blind Jenna, her cop boyfriend, and creepy dead Ian — searching Alison’s room for something and then being about to get caught by Alison the night Alison died. So the girls minus Hanna told Caleb — behind Hanna’s back — just enough to get him to keep decrypting. Emily has no story because her significant other is only a very occasional guest star. Aria uses her old friend Scraggle (I have no idea what his name is) as a beard for her attempt to meet up with Ezra, who tries to stay away, but gets the nonsense knocked back into him by a student who blah-blah-blahs about love and courage, so they make out in the rain and then decide to sneak around with each other. Does anyone know when Aria turns eighteen? Because maybe they could just wait for her birthday. I swear, this show had better celebrate that day with a “FINALLY YOUR BOYFRIEND IS SAFE FROM THE LAW” banner.
