Pretty Little Liars - Thrown from the Ride- Review: "The Psychological Selfie"

Hey Liars fans! Sorry about being tardy for the party this week, but I'm glad you're here! Let's not waste any time and jump right into what happened on Pretty Little Liars.

The girls were at school again (which is actually really impressive) and there's a book drive going on that Hanna and Aria are working. Hanna happened to pick up Shana's old copy of 'The Scarlet Letter' and in an attempt to not let Aria know, she proceeded to make to most awkward expression ever. Mona then waltzes up just in the nick of time, as usual, and does her weekly round of making-threats-without-making-threats then sashays away.

At the DiLaurentis house, Ali started going through her clothes to try and give herself a fresh start and talks to her dad about returning to school. Turns out, Mr D. was planning on moving the family away from Rosewood ( which is actually the best idea from a parent in the series thus far, so mad props to Mr. D!) but Ali is dead set against it (no pun intended). She claims she needs her friends, so Mr. D gives in because one thing that will never change about Ali, is that she'll always get her way.

At Casa de Hastings, the police are still digging up the family's backyard as part of the investigation into the death of Mrs. D and Mrs. Hastings is ready for it all to end. Spencer tries to talk to her about the how creepily secretive Melissa and Mr Hastings have been acting, but she's just like

Although she is concerned about getting the yard manicured to look less murdery. Then comes Peter Hastings from nowhere telling everyone to relax like he's not the reason everyone's tense in the first damn place.

Back at school, Mona and Lucas are having a pow-wow, and we find out that Lucas doesn't know what really happened to Alison and totally buys the kidnapping story. He's so cute and confused...I'd love to see him and Kit Harrington have a cute/confuse off (we all know who'd win but this is the PLL review so we aren't even going there right now). I digress... Mona takes the opportunity to clue Lucas in on what's really been going on because he was starting to feel bad for Ali and she's having NONE of that in Mona's Army.

The girls are at lunch and discussing who could have killed Mrs. D and Hanna (smartly!) points out that she doesn't think the Hastings did it because only a bonehead would murder someone and bury them in their own backyard. They then get a group text from Ali saying that they'll (read: we'll) will have to wait to find out more details about Mrs. D's death from a toxicology report. In the meantime, Mona is freaking Aria the hell out being all loom-y and stare-y, wherein the girls tell her to take a chill pill.

Alison is still at home and texts Emily to call her back, almost signing the text as "-A" which is reeeeeeealllllly suspicious, so I'm just going to let that simmer for a bit.

Shortly after, Mr. DiLaurentis comes into Ali's room to let her know that she'll need to go get a medical examination as part of the investigation into her "kidnapping" to make sure she wasn't "hurt." Alison insists nothing like that happened, but proceeded to break down after her dad left the room...Uh-oh.

In school, Aria is at the computer lab and gets a chat from 'TheaterGirl' saying "If it was me, I could never forget. It'd haunt me for the rest of my life." Aria (understandably) has a mini-heart attack until TheaterGirl reveals herself as some chick from Aria's class being nosey about Alison.Aria then does a quick websearch for Shana and comes across a video of a from her memorial and imagines Shana sitting up from her casket and looking directly at her!

While Aria's busy hallucinating, Hanna is chilling at the Brew where Lucas runs into her. He's still clearly in love with her and sits down to let her know that homeschooling wasn't for him and then immediately transitions to asking about Alison. Hanna gets a phone call from Alison 30 seconds into the talk, however, and excuses herself. Ali wants Hanna to come with her to the medical examination and Hanna agrees.

Spencer enlisted Andrew (her rebound from when she was all hopped up on scripts) to help clean up their backyard when he approached her at school earlier in the day, so the two are busy being chatty in the gardening shed behind the Hastings house. The two chat about Spencer's mom putting all her energy into fixing the yard and while they're exploring the interesting topic of displaced fear, Spencer finds a dead possum in a corner of the shed. It turns out the critter was poisoned and there's a huge tub of freshly bought rat poison right beside it.


Meanwhile, Paige, Spence and Em grabbed food with the new girl and made some light conversation while Mona sat about 20 feet away giving Paige some direct side-eye and of course Em didn't notice Mona or the glances.

Later, Emily, Aria and Spencer all chat about how different it is to really have Alison home. Em says she thought things would be the same as they were (like that was so great to begin with) but can't deny that everything feels different. Aria, who generally only worries about herself, asks Em about how she dealt with Nate's death after the fact. Em reminisces and we can see that Aria is going through the exact same thing, if not worse, by the expression on her face.

Back at the hospital, Alison asks Hanna to make copies of her doctor's appointment (yes, she recorded the entire thing) so that everyone can keep their stories straight. Hanna reluctantly agrees but then asks Ali where she got the scar on her inner thigh that the doctor pointed out in the examination. Ali lied and told the doctor that she got it when she escaped from her kidnapper, but Hanna knew her friend better than that. Unfortunately she didn't know her friend well enough to get an actual answer from her.

Spencer walks in on her mother in deep thought back in the house, and tries again to get her to open up and let her know what's going on. Mrs. Hastings shares with Spencer that Jessica DiLaurentis was prepared to go to the cops accusing Spencer of Ali's mother, until Mr. Hastings threatened to go public with their affair and ruin Mrs. D's marriage. Now that Mr. D was going to divorce Mrs D. anyway, there'd be nothing stopping her from going to the police to accuse Spencer ...and Mrs. Hastings thinks that could have been enough for Peter to want to shut Jessica up...forever.

Out on the mean streets of Rosewood, Mona apparently stalked Paige for the rest of the afternoon and waited until she was alone to approach/warn her about Mona'a Army. She tells Paige that if she's not with her, she's against her and that she can't remain neutral anymore.

Aria is back at home watching and re-watching Shana's funeral online (which...can you Ustream funerals these days? Like, who just uploads entire funerals to the internet!?) and it becomes clear that she's the next liar on her way to Radley. Homegirl isn't even beginning to let this go.

Spencer visited Ali after receiving a text from her. Alison got her mother's toxicology report back and it turns out Mrs. D's low blood pressure medication was tampered with...someone swapped it out with high blood pressure medication. Spencer almost melted into a puddle when she realized it meant her dad didn't do it, since the report made no mention of rat poison. Alison noticed her facial expression and caught on, revealing that she understood how Spence felt, seeing as how her mother watched someone "kill" her then helped bury her.

After Aria finished watched Shana's Youtube funeral a billion times, she headed over to Ezra's to ask for more advice. Ezra told her she'd have to learn to forgive herself. When he comes back in from stepping out, however, he catches Aria on the phone trying to make a donation to Shana's funeral costs. He let her know that doing that is still shows more of an outward need for forgiveness, when it has to come from within first. He uses the opportunity to reflect on the time he wrote that creepy stalker book about her and her friends, and how he went on to forgive himself afterward...

...then he glazed over all of that and broke out the checkerboard as a way to take Aria's mind off being a murderess. Once the night began to wind down, Aria asked Ezra if she could crash on his couch, since her house was empty. Ezra said yes, but as soon as he broke out her old favorite shirt, Aria decided she'd better not stay (probably because she knew she may have started on the couch, but she wouldn't end up there... come on, it's Aria).

It seems as if everyone's questioning themselves in some way or fashion this week, and when we catch up with Hanna, we see that she's starting to revert to her old five-finger-discount ways, as she struggles to re-establish her identity, now that Alison's back to claim the one she was borrowing.
Poor Hanna...I really do like this new hair though!

Turns out, Aria decided to crash at Spencer's place instead of Ezra, making this the 1st time she's chosen her girls over the Ezra of it all. As Spence is catching Aria up on everything, she cuts herself with a knife. As she reaches for the first aid kit, she also finds her father's HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE PRESCRIPTION MEDICATION!

Then Mr. Hastings comes down and says that he sent Veronica to a "spa" and that Spence shouldn't bother her for a couple of days, which doesn't seem suspect at all. (I really hope the first thing she did when she went upstairs was call her damn mom.)

We finally close on Ali perusing her old social media page and seeing how many people actually hated her...will she let that stop her from returning to school next week or nah?

Odds and Ends

-Anyone who thinks Aria's going to completely lose it at some point this season say "I."

-What was up with Ali mentioning the recording to Hanna and Emily, but not Spencer?

-Any theories on how Ali really got that thigh-scar?

-Remember when Mr. Hastings walked up on Ali in the middle of the night in the street all suspicious-like and then they just cut to the next scene and never addressed what the hell happened? Pepperidge Farm remembers.



Check back in next Wednesday for my newest Pretty Little Liars review...it'll be here I promise!