Hooray! Pretty Little Liars is back! I missed it so much during its hiatus I had to do lame things like spend my time getting good grades and keeping up with my classes!

We return to Rosewood just a few days? Weeks? Months? after the super scary Halloween episode. I’m still unclear about the timeline, but I can tell you there’s still no snow in Pennsylvania.

On this week’s episode nothing happened. I mean, yes, people talked, people went places, but nothing was revealed, discovered or particularly shocking. It’s like the writers busted their cannons on the last few episodes and now the show has about as much plot line as this season’s Christmas episode of Glee. Or any episode of Glee.

We open on Mona playing cuddle bunnies with Hanna in the middle of the night.

That’s right, Mona is back. Like back back. Just like when Brock came back to Pokemon!

Mona’s been released from Arkham Insane Asylum without any consequences or jail time and now she’s free to frolic unsupervised all over Rosewood. Supposedly she’s better, which is totally possible in the real world. People really do get better. Except this isn’t the real world. It’s Liar World.

Mona announces she has to go back to school the next day and while baby face mask and talking dolls are scary, nothing is scarier than high school. Hanna opts not to call the police and tells Mona she’ll think about it.

Elsewhere, TobAy tries to run over some skateboarder with his car.

Starsweep to our favorite lesbian’s bedroom where Sargent Papa Fields is back in town and he’s decided to put Emily on lockdown.

Not because of the gay thing, Sargent Papa Fields specifies that Paige can come over to scissor whenever Emily wants. Emily just can’t leave after dark. Like the house’s alarm system will go off and everything will explode Mission Impossible IV style. Gosh what kind of parent won’t let his teenage daughter go out after dark? Oh yeah, they kind whose kid keeps almost getting dead. Parents just don’t understand.

Emily is super bummed about her new electronically instated curfew because this week’s Big Event is some sort of after dark charity run. Or maybe it’s a marathon. I wouldn’t know because I haven’t seen the inside of a pair of sneakers since Borat was popular.

Starsweep to daytime where Hanna’s Grandma Paula Deen is babysitting for unknown reasons. In case you don’t have a keen an eye as Intern Grace, that’s Betty Buckley. You probably know her from when you saw her star in Cats on Broadway in 1970. Or maybe when she played Mrs. White in Stephen King’s Carrie: The Musical. Okay I guess she started in Eight is Enough. Honestly I have no idea who Betty Buckley is but everyone else seems to know.

Either way, Grandma Paula Deen encourages Hanna to forgive Mona. I mean, Mona even sends her a muffin basket. I personally would totally forgive Mona. But then again we all know how I feel about a good muffin basket.

At school, Mona is there and it’s weird.

The Liars also remind Aria about what Garret said about her dad, Byron, on Halloween. Aria throws a hissy fit and then reminds her friends/the audience that Ezra has a son he doesn’t know about. Basically the girls recap what happened the last two episodes.

The proceed on to social studies class where they are confronted by Meredith as their new teacher. At first I couldn’t remember who the hell Meredith was, but then I realized she’s the former student Byron slept with. You know, the reason for Aria’s parents’ divorce. Awkward sauce. And the end of class the four try to have a Jets and Sharks style face off with Meredith, but instead it’s just awkward and no one knows the dance routine. You’d think Meredith would be remotely the adult in the situation and explain things to the principal to have Aria excused from the requirement or transferred to some other class.

In the halls, Hanna tries to comfort Mona who is getting the stare-down from everyone in school.

Mona opens her locker and it looks like brain is for lunch! I’m not going to lie to you, I gasped. Still, I’m pretty disappointed in whoever pulled that prank. Someone worked really hard to carefully remove that brain completely intact from a cow skull and now it’s just been trashed. Preserved tissue doesn’t come cheap in this economy you know!

After trashing the brain Mona walks parted red sea style back to her locker, stopping to whisper to Lucas. Remember Lucas? He used to be another male character we didn’t care about.

Post brain situation, The Liars convene in their office aka the girls bathroom to smoke cigarettes and take uppers. Mona wanders in and tells them she knows they didn’t put the brain in there because she totally helped Emily “figure out who killed her girlfriend.” Um. Says the chick who tried to pin Maya’s death on Emily’s current girlfriend.

At lunch, Caleb and Hanna rehash the situation. I’m so proud the writers even thought to have someone ask, “Do you think Mona did that herself?” It insults my intelligence when the main characters don’t ask the obvious questions. I assume they’ve been reading these recaps and altering the dialoge accordingly. Hanna comments that Lucas has been limping and reminds Caleb/the audience that Aria stabbed someone in the leg on Halloween.

Over at another table, Spencer and TobAy watch as Jason and Mona canoodle. Spencer is generally just grossed out about the fact that Mona looks about 12 and Jason not a day over 45. She then changes the subject to Jenna supposedly leaving town. Spencer muses that maybe Jenna thought she was next to get whacked. TobAy pointed out that Tammin Sursok was probably just off filming Sleeping Around with Jesse Bradford and she’ll be back next episode. Maybe then she’ll get whacked. It’s hard to say who will get whacked next.

Starsweep inside of the school where Emily is checking in with her totally paranoid dad. Just then, she notices that the creepy guy working reception at the Lost Woods Psycho Terror Resort is working as the school janitor and chatting up Mona.

Emily grabs Hanna and the two sneak down to the basement of the school, which we’ve never seen, to scope the janitor’s office.

He has a big box of Mona’s stuff including the creepy baby face costume I hate so much.

Starsweep to Ezria land. Aria also makes an incredible discovery over at Ezra’s apartment when– just kidding. Got you! Nothing happens. Aria just gets a mocking jay pin for good luck from Ezra.

Aria also gets another gift. This one is a threat from A telling her to tell Ezra about his son.

Elsewhere Spencer and TobAy go out for a run in prep for the aforementioned nighttime charity 100K. The two see Jason, and Spencer warns him not to cozy up to Mona. Jason is unimpressed. He insists it’s his right to hug whatever potentially unbalanced teen girl he wants. I suppose, constitutionally, it is.

Starsweep to the Life Cafe where Emily is working and Hanna and Aria are crime solving. Caleb is, for once, actually acting like a high school boy and hitting Emily up to feed him some free food. The scoobies muse over the fact that, according to a file Caleb stole, Mona actually insisted she go back to Rosewood High. In retrospect, I’m sort of shocked the school doesn’t have any sort of anti-bullying zero tolerance policy. So Mona’s up to no good at the school. Riveting.

Back at the Hasting’s ranch, TobAy and Spencer catch a little tubbin’. Not to be overly observant, but is it just me or are hot tubs kind of weirdly back in style?

I feel like I’ve been hearing a lot of pro-tubbing talk going on these days. For the record, however, there are literally infinity people I would rather see Troian Bellisario in a hot tub with.

+ Spencer and Emily
+ Spencer and Paige
+ Spencer and Samara
+ Spencer and Santana
+ Spencer and the Kool-Aid Guy

You get the idea.

As the two are tubbin’, Spencer starts to hear some rustling in the bushes. She gets up in the tub to investigate calling out to the big great wooded unknown. Spencer turns her back to TobAy as she leans over the edge of the hot tub towards the woods.

Just then TobAy tries to– Ha! Got you again! Nothing happened there either. Spencer just looked a bit crazy and ominous music reminded us that TobAy is bad. Okay, so my theory is that while obviously TobAy is on the A team, his job is basically just to divert Spencer and slowly drive her mad. And maybe get some booty.

While TobAy and Spencer get hot and wet, Aria sits at home dreaming about her older manfriend. Her father walks in and tells Aria that Meredith, lying, said that class had gone very well. Just as he’s about to leave the room, Aria asks her dad what he thought of Ali. Byron’s all, “I think all your friends are lovely amazing young women who will make incredible future leaders of America.”

This would have been a really good time for Aria to say, “Okay, but I heard a rumor that Ali was fighting with you before her death. Is this true? I just need to know.” Instead, she just acts like she still misses her friend a lot.

Starsweep to the Marin residence where Hanna watches the hit new Youtube video “Mona’s Apology” over and over again.

Basically Mona says that because she was bullied and thought she was ugly, she lashed out and became a psychopath trying to kill people. Grandma Paula Deen points out that anyone who wants to be forgiven that badly is probably a creepy weirdo.

Speaking of creepy weirdos, Lucas shows up at Hanna’s door. He has the last of Caleb’s money, reminding us/the audience that he borrowed some to pay off debt last season. He reveals to Hanna/reminds the audience that Mona has been sneaking out of Arkham Insane Asylum all season. We’re obviously not shocked since we saw it go down, but you think Hanna would have been a little a little surprised. Nope.

Hanna confronts Lucas about his leg injury and he says it happened in a skateboarding accident. Hanna assumes this is a lie and that he was just stabbed by Aria. Obviously we’re supposed to think he was run off the road by TobAy. I think this is just total misdirection and Lucas was actually just hurt in an unrelated freak masturbating incident.

Are we ever going to get to this stupid night race? Is this thing really happening? Let’s take a bathroom break and a page break.

Okay! Finally! The big nighttime race thing. Let’s see, what’s important here. Well to me the most important takeaway from this episode is that, over by the volunteer tent, Aria’s wearing the coolest sweatshirt ever.

She and Caleb watch in amazement as people fawn over Mona. Apparently the cool kids loved her sob story video. They hadn’t been as worked up about anything since the Google commercial featuring the It Gets Better Project videos. Aria asks Caleb about the whole not knowing his dad thing. He found it generally non-favorable.

Grandma Paula Deen sings the national anthem (uninvited) and the racers are off!

Spencer: Why is your grandmother singing the national anthem?
Hanna: Because she can.

Wait– where’s Emily? Oh yeah, she’s under house arrest! But her dad is leaving for a few hours and in a stroke of genius (kind of) Emily switches she and her father’s phone cases.

Using the power of Technology, Emily disarms the house and skip off to the nighttime charity run (I’m still not believing this is a real thing). Did she really need to sneak out? Couldn’t she have just had Paige over for some late night sneaking in IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

Spencer, Aria and Hanna ditch the racetrack and go down to Creepy Janitor’s office. The three find Emily down there trying to break into the office with a paperclip. Obviously that will never work! Spencer takes over and successfully breaks into Creepy Janitor’s office using a bobby pin. The last dozen times I tried that while locked out of my apartment while my puppy was locked in it worked approximately not at all.

Quit cut to the finish line where Mona sees Meredith. She gives her this look I’ve only used when incredibly hot girls cut me in line at the bathroom. Like a, “I’m having a lot of feelings about you but also that was fucked” look.

Once in Creepy Janitor’s office, the girls find Ali’s diary. It was just sort of out in the open you know? Why doesn’t anyone in Rosewood seem to use bookshelves. Or safes. Or leave private things at their homes. Either way Ali’s diary instantly flips opens to a passage about Aria’s dad. Cue the pastel flashback. Look! Grace got me this amazingly perfect screen shot.

So yeah Ali was blackmailing Byron. C’mon guys give me something New! Aria is, understandably, upset. The Liars rip out the page and rush out of the office when they hear someone coming. The Creepy Janitor confronts them but TobAy sweeps in to the rescue as per usual. Next time he’ll probably bring a white horse. I couldn’t hate him more if I tried.

Just The Liars and TobAy walk out of the building, the storage shed catches on fire!

I’m going to be honest, this probably would have been exciting/scary/thrilling except I had turned away for a second to crank up the heat in my freezing cold basement. Slightly ironic that I missed the beginning of the fire scene in doing so.

Instead of getting to watch this fire burn down, we cut to a comercial break and then to Emily’s bedroom. Is Paige in there calming Emily down with scissoring? Nope, but her dad is there on the phone with Emily’s principal.

He is unimpressed. It seems Meredith was hurt in the storage fire. Emily’s dad wants Emily to let him in but is concerned his army career kept him away so long that they no longer can connect with Emily as well as he did back when she lost it and came out. He reminds her that he knows what it’s like to lose people. Like lose lose people. Um, abcFamily, we get it, he was in the army. You don’t need to constantly remind us and have him exclusively wearing army clothes. We follow this show with enough zeal to remember basic facts like that.

Also where is Emily’s mom? Is she not on payroll this week?

Over at Aria’s, Byron has just gotten home from driving Meredith home from the hospital. I guess they’re dating again? Or maybe she just doesn’t have any appropriate friends or family. Either way, Byron turns his previous personality on its head and goes apeshit on Aria about how he “knows what her friends are capable of.”

Turns out someone sent Meredith a note leading her into the fire and she thinks it was The Liars.

Aria keeps saying “No we didn’t do that,” and her dad keeps saying “Yes or Nooooo.” It’s a whole big thing.

After Aria kicks her dad out of her room she calls Spencer who has just come from giving yet another pep talk to Jason.

Aria: A set us up.
Spencer: What?
Aria: That’s why Meredith opened up that shed. A sent her over there and made it look like we did it.
Spencer: Does A go by the name of Mona? Is this her way of proving to us that she’s worthy?
Aria: I gotta go.
Spencer: Wait, Aria is it your dad? Do you want to come stay at my place?
Aria: He’s never going to let that happen.

But wait! Someone’s behind Aria’s door! Who’s at the door?

That’s right, Byron heard that whole thing and now he knows… um… I guess I’m not sure what he knows? That A is back I guess? And that his own daughter is scared of him? There are just so many questions he won’t have answers to.

Spencer hangs up the phone and walks over to her own house. After she’s out of sight Mona comes out on to Jason’s front porch with a bandage. At first I’m sure you’re thinking what I was thinking, that Jason had started a new all mummy rock band, but no. He has a big round stab wound. But Jason took all those pictures of Aria and seemed pretty in love with her, why would he want to throw her off a train? Unless he thought that only Garret was in the box and that he had killed his sister’s murderer.

In the final cut scene we get our usual dose of hooded A. A loosens someone’s front bike tire. I was so fucking scared it was going to be Paige. You know how she loves a good late night bike ride. Instead it was some boy with an Academic Decathlon textbook who, unsurprisingly, has an epic bike fall moments later. Looks like A needs to boost his extracurricular if he wants to go Ivy League next year.

Tune in next week to see A whack off members of the Anime Club, Scrabble Club and Women in Wood Technology Club (all real high school clubs I was president of). Maybe we’ll even figure out why abcFamily has to show the scariest commercials ever when I’m all alone in my basement at 11pm.

In the meantime, for those of you who miss the fashioncaps, abcFamily just started putting out Style File with the show’s costume designer Mandi Line.

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