MASK OF HEINOUS MYSTERY
So, Emily somehow procured boxes of Dead Alison's stuff from the mother, and everyone is reading through journals and things. Then they unearth this creepy old thing and somehow act like it's shocking to see, except that almost everyone they've been harassed by lately has worn a mask of some kind. Masks are so hot right now. Also, masks are so hot. Temperature-wise.
Spencer
Mona told the girls that Spencer's sister, Melissa, was on the Halloween Crazy Train -- an episode in which Aria was locked in a box and another person Connected To Things turned up dead and Adam Lambert was there shrieking things into a microphone -- and so now every time Melissa comes back to town, everyone freaks out. Spencer must have felt bad psychic vibrations when she got dressed this morning, because that sweater looks like an awful fresco of the journey to the afterlife.
Hanna and Caleb
"I'm sure your mom didn't kill anyone, Hanna." "Yeah, but it's really going to blow for a while until I prove that, especially now that you're leaving the show to go do the spinoff." "I know, I hate that, but unfortunately I am too awesome and therefore we could never break up any other way and that gets dull in TV land." "I know, I know." "Thanks for at least dressing like your sadness, Hanna." "You're welcome. Thanks for wearing a good coat."
Church sign
Also, the gospel this week Has Meaning. I really want them to use this every week as a sign of foreboding. It could, in fact, just BE a Sign of Foreboding.
Aria and boy
So, Aria is now on a date with her self-defense teacher, who at least seems to be her AGE, unlike her gross romance with Mr. Fitz that everyone kept pretending was not icky. Behind his placid expression I'm fairly sure he's thinking one of two things: 1) "Why is she wearing that outfit for a movie night on the couch at her house? And do we think I could play her shirt like a guitar?" and 2) "Since when does 'movie night on the couch' actually involve watching a movie?"
Emily, Spencer, Aria
SPENCER. You ar supposed to be the one I can trust! Why are you wearing that shapeless floaty thing? I call it a maxi-sad.
Emily
During her check-up Emily does the world's worst job of pretending she hasn't ever taken whatever particular kind of pain meds she stole from her mother. The doctor also doesn't believe she hurt herself falling off her bike, but at least she's gorgeous and looks great in leather.
Mama Emily
Nia Peeples gets a call from the doctor, who saw through Emily's shiftyness, and she realizes it was HER pain meds that Emily stole. She's angry, and Emily may be pretty ,but her lying compentency falls under "little." So she can't really come up with an answer but then gets snotty and refuses to go with her mother, so Nia Peeples grabs Emily's arm to pull her into the car. And everyone around them is like, 'WHA-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?" YOU GUYS. THERE WAS A WOMAN IN A HUGE BLACK VEIL AT A FUNERAL AND NONE OF YOU LOOKED AT HER TWICE. GET YOUR GOSSIP PRIORITIES RIGHT.
A
So naturally, A is now officially jacking with the grown-ups: Hanna's mother is going to look guilty of murder, and A calls child services on Nia Peeples because of Emily's bizarre A-related injury history that she obviously can't explain and then the arm-grabbing incident; and now Aria's mother's boyfriend wants her to run off to Vienna with him for a year, and Aria gets so freaked out by A's antics that she tells her mother to go so that she doesn't get hurt. And Spencer's mother has to wait for her just desserts until there's room for her on the payroll again.
Hanna
Hanna thinks her mother is lying about being in New York, so she goes to her office to bust her (and does, and Sydney Andrews is hella mad about Hanna snooping through her things). This shot is noteworthy to me because I think the director must have hated this outfit. Hanna is carrying her giant plastic-y purple purse directly in front of the Danger Zone of that dress, and shot her so tightly for the rest of the episode that we couldn't see the problem. EXCEPT. Nobody is perfect...
Hanna
... and the perils of the necessary mid-shot foiled the whole scheme. It's totally a bra-dress with cutouts. It's pretty bad but at least I believe that Hanna would wear it. The lines are smudging between their styles a little bit lately (which I guess makes sense; friends do tend to influence each other in that way), so I'm just glad this didn't end up on Aria, who seems more likely to set fire to this dress than strap it on.
Evidence Wall
Hanna sneaks in and snaps pictures of Detective Sean Faris's evidence wall, which is surprisingly thorough considering that he has only been doing this for about an hour and I've been watching this show for YEARS and have no idea about any of it. The show should give us an evidence wall every week. It's like a cheat sheet. Remember when Ian got killed in the clock tower? No, but Detective Sean Faris does. He even already has Aria's new boyfriend of two hours on the wall -- but no Noel Kahn, I don't think, and no Hanna's Nerdy Friend who was in the shit for a while. I guess even Detective Sean Faris loses the plot sometimes.
Evidence wall
But my FAVORITE is that poor old Wren over there gets to be "Dr." Kingston, as if Detective Sean Faris is making a nasty inference about his qualifications. Let's wait until you solve this thing before you start judging people, DSF.
Caleb
Caleb continues to be the person I am most happy to see in a scene. He tells Hanna's dad that she needs him, and later, Hanna's dad picks him up while he's walking home (what?) in the darkness (huh?) wearing nothing reflective (CALEB, A IS ON THE LOOSE; YOU KNOW BETTER), and then tells Caleb that Sydney Andrews came to his house on the night of the murder and asked him for a large sum of money. He left to go attend to something and when he came back, Sydney was gone - and so was the handgun he keeps in his drawer. Oh, Sydney. You are always mixed up in killing people. PLEASE GOD let Wilden come back from the dead and rip off a wig.
Mask
Okay, so back to this sucker. Clearly, when we saw it earlier, the eyes were empty black holes. But now we're being asked to think there was REALLY obviously another mask underneath it, because look how sloppy it is all of a sudden. I'm so sure they wouldn't have noticed that immediately, if it had looked like this earlier. It's almost as if they hadn't written the second half of the episode yet when they shot the first half.
Mask II
And so Aria peels off the plaster and reveals something that is supposedly the spitting image of Alison DeLaurentis. And, I mean, I guess it's sort of similar. But my personal feeling is that anyone who looks at a creepy-ass shiny doll mask of your face and is like, "Oh, YEAH, that's CLEARLY YOU," is not actually a friend and in fact should be banned from your life. IT can NEVER be a compliment, right?
Spencer and Toby
Oh and we spent a LOT of time with Toby being a sad potato about his suicidal mother, because he thinks the paperwork -- the stuff he bartered for with A by handing over the RV that contained the contents of Mona's A lair (that sentence is insane) -- confirms she killed herself after a session where she sounded uplifted and committed to getting better. And what they learn when they break into the mental institution, and go into Toby's mother's conveniently uninhabited room, is what we all saw coming: His mother did not kill herself after all. So now basically there are dead bodies all over the place -- Alison, Ian, Garrett, Wilden, Toby's mother -- and nobody knows who offed ANY of them, because Rosewood's ENTIRE police force is the worst (and also two of them are dead). I suspect, like the last ending to CLUE, it will turn out that a different person killed each of them.
Creepy Mask Man
If you are like me, you saw this guy and went, "HOW DO I KNOW HIM?" And then you, like me, realized he was one of the aliens in Galaxy Quest, and you, like me, stopped to think about how that movie is actually REALLY good and criminally unsung.
And THEN: All the girls sans Spencer go to the creepy mask maker to get answers, except they go in the middle of the night to his shack in the woods, which -- again, you guys, I know you don't want A to see you, but we've already established that A can always see you, so at this point maybe just try to go places ONLY during daylight hours. Just a suggestion.
Masky Quest
So now some poor extra pretending to be Emily is getting a mask made of her head, in exchange for info, which consists of this: Alison had him make a bunch of masks in her image, "so all her friends could look like her," and then asked him to break the mold. Which he did. THAT'S IT. THAT WAS NOT WORTH ANYTHING. MAYBE YOU GUYS SHOULD JUST START THROWING THINGS AWAY INSTEAD OF TRYING TO FIND CREEPY MASK-MAKERS WHO LIVE IN WOODLAND DEATH SHACKS.
"Emily"
Also, HOW TERRIBLE IS HIS EMILY MOLD. He totally smooshed her nose. He's not even a GOOD creepy mask maker.
More masks
And THEN Hanna sneaks into the back room and finds a mask that they all decide is CLEARLY Spencer's sister Melissa. These guys are mask savants. To me it just looks like a rejected SAG award. Aside from the absurd idea that ANY of these girls would've spent money getting masks made of themselves when they could be giving it to people who will buy them beer, I thought of something else dumb about this storyline: Why would any of these people wear masks OF THEIR OWN FACES, and ESPECIALLY when they were planning to do evil? If you are a shadowy figure of mayhem YOUR FACE SHOULD NOT BE YOUR CALLING CARD. IT DEFEATS THE PURPOSE. AAAAAH.
Sydney
Hanna's mom Sydney Andrews is sad that people just don't connive on TV the way they used to -- why, nobody in Melrose Place needed MASKS. Wigs were good enough. Also, she is pretending to take a bath so that she doesn't have to talk to Hanna and therefore keep feeding her lies.
Melissa
And Melissa wears an awesome blazer while she flips back on Spencer a question that Spencer asked her earlier: If Spencer had to choose between saving Melissa and saving someone else she loves, which would she choose? And Spencer either can't answer, or doesn't. Basically, Melissa issues some veiled threats that make her sound super guilty and which therefore probably mean she isn't unless they're looking to end this show soon. Also, I mean... birds, masks, what next? Chemistry-class beakers with MEANING?