Hanna
So basically, per the Halloween episode, Alison DiLaurentis is alive, and yet somehow the show seems to be making that boring. I don't know. I watched this and a lot of the plot details started washing over me, but I do know that Sydney Andrews was having trouble getting a job and Hanna put on this dress that looks like it creeps up a bit too high under her chest. I know the idea of this show is to be more budgetarily accessible than others (like a Gossip Girl), but this dress looks super cheap to me, and Hanna would rather die than suffer that fate. I feel like, if A really wanted to torture her psychologically, he would be leaving her notes asking if she paid the full price of $15 or got it on sale.
Hanna
The back of the dress is laced like a corset, dropping more Xs than a crappy Family Feud team. And Mona is wearing a thong strapped to her chest, and both of those dresses look like paper-thin nightmares. Mona is, plot-wise, having trouble getting Hanna to rekindle their friendship. Maybe she should stop chasing around after someone who's being tortured by an anonymous enemy and just go hang out at the mall, or with the chess club. Give up on this one, Mona.
The Liars
All of them look a little bit as if the premiere, which was timed with the launch of the Pretty Little Liars line from Aeropostale, was required to be costumed entirely via other Aeropostale outfits. Emily could not look more boring. Aria's pants at least do look a bit like she might have killed something, so that adds intrigue. Murder Pants: get some.
Toby
And Toby is back, and still having sex with Spencer, but the problem is he's grown his hair to the most absurd levels of 1983 Heartthrob. I keep expecting him to pull away and be wearing the tiniest, tightest shorts, with socks pulled up near his knees, while he carries a wooden tennis racket.
Ezra
Now that Ezra is A, he spends a lot of time saying ominous-sounding things, like that he thinks his days here are numbered and someday he wants to be the man Aria thinks he is. It's like... suddenly he's shot at sinister angles, shadowed, with grim undertones, and it's hilarious -- they are obviously having fun with their villain having a face -- and then also makes everyone else seem really dumb for not asking each other when Mr. Fitz got so creepy. HOWEVER, he's getting Aria back, and the show making him A is brilliant because it's about the only way to apologize for the last three years of us all screaming about how gross it was that he was a teacher and then a PROFESSOR boning a senior in high school.
Filmstrip
And then the girls watch something and A has left them a message in it about how finding Alison. A is a technological genius, and also: If Ezra is A, wouldn't ALL THE GIRLS WHOSE PAPERS HE GRADES be like, "Hey, that handwriting is looking familiar"? Maybe he farms out his threats to writers for hire who all live in California and are sitting at home right now going, "Man, this guy seems like a douche, but whatever, I need electricity."
Hanna
The girls finally realize that if Alison is alive, this means the body that was "proven" the hers belongs to someone else. So Hanna puts on her favorite sweatshirt with tiny marshmallows glued to the shoulders, and does some Googling. That sweatshirt is a good choice in case A decides to set them on fire again. Instant delicious toasted snacks. They end up finding another girl who died the same weekend, in similar circumstances, but then maybe it's not her after all; mostly that's a catharsis for the girls about which is worse: knowing your friend is dead (the Liars, supposedly), versus not knowing (the other girls, because their friend's body wasn't found). But I believe they then concluded it WASN'T that girl's body. So. We'll see if that goes anywhere.
Spencer and Toby
Remember Toby's mom? Yeah, no one else did either, except Toby. He and Spencer want to know if she killed herself, and no one will tell them who faked the records, so they decide to threaten the head of the corporation that bought it, and it works, and they're going to check into it. HOWEVER: Although I like Spencer's coat, I wish I'd been able to get a shot of the dress in full, because it looked like the person who sewed it spilled coffee on the measurements or something. Very wrinkly and crinkly and pulling in odd spots.
Mona
In another outfit that looks badly made, Mona -- dressed as watermelon sherbet, with cranial knobs -- decides to goad Ezra into talking to her by waxing poetic about all of Aria's extra special attention from him. It's nice to think that somebody noticed, and in fact, the principal knew all about their relationship and REHIRED EZRA ANYWAY AND ALLOWED HIM TO TEACH HIS FORMER GIRLFRIEND ROSEWOOD IS THE WORST DON'T MOVE THERE.
Mona
Mona then points out to Ezra that his reading list is all about double identities and people wearing masks, and makes all kinds of insinuations, and then Ezra says something vaguely threatening to freak her out. I am not sure how Mona managed to be A, and deal with A ,and have A's lair for a while, without actually knowing Ezra was A, but I'm more concerned with why she wore those shoes to do some obvious digging with a potential psychopath. You can't flee in those, girl.
Hanna
Ugh, we also have to sit through Hanna and Caleb breaking up, because he's on Ravenswood. An aside: I watched one episode of it and it's aggressively so-so, but I saw the cold open on the tail end of a PLL episode, and WHAT is the deal? It's all, "So, Ravenswood's soldiers were all surviving the war and in exchange kids had to die but it happened in groups of five or something and so then our group of five didn't die, or, well, not all of us, and then also we had doppelgängers in the past, and..." I can't. If I need a manual to understand even the PREMISE if your show, BEFORE anything has even happened on it, then I'm out. Even PLL didn't need a handbook in its first season. ANYWAY: Hanna must have known, deep down, that she and Caleb would be breaking up (because he has to go back and can't tell her why, in part because he probably doesn't follow it either), because a pre-emptive depression is the ONLY reason I can EVER fathom why Hanna Marin would wear sweatpants as part of an accessorized outfit. Much less sweatpants with elastic ankles. Someone call Satan and ask if the polar vortex just hit down there, please.
Aria
"Hey, Ezra, what's up? Have you ever imagined what my head would look like as the centerpiece of a table at a funeral? Just wondering."
Emily
Emily and Paige, her girlfriend, are super stable and supportive, which either means a) Paige is going to die, b) Paige is going to disappear, c) Paige is going to cheat on her at Stanford so that someone else can hook up with Emily, d) Emily is going to decide she's still in love with Alison even though EVERY SINGLE THING that they've uncovered reveals that Alison was a horrible human being and played them all every day of her life, and in fact in this SCENE Emily even says that Alison clearly didn't know how to love others, but rather collected love from them like trophies; e) some combination of all that. However, I don't hate her skull t-shirt.
Emily also gets a visit from Alison, in the dead of night, and that ends with Emily thinking Alison wants to meet her at some kissing rock place, and then Alison doesn't show up. So in the end it was probably just Dream Alison talking. OR WAS IT? It was. Maybe.
Alison's Journal
And then Hanna reveals that, back when they were at A's lair in God Knows What Episode, she found a journal of Ali's and recently broke into it and it's full of coded stories about them all, and everyone else, and they should try and translate it. Please note that this page appears to include the phrase, "If secrets had a pentagon." She was so into poetic geometry.
The Liars
Naturally, the girls gathered at the mausoleum to talk about all this. The names on the other stones all must belong to crew members or writers or something -- one of them is Marlene King, which is the EP. Aria is also wearing a leather jacket that feels like sabotage. Like A left it for her in a box and said, "Please dress up like a salt-water taffy accident or else I will shave off your eyebrows," or something.
Sydney Andrews
Sydney has a job now. I know you were losing sleep over it. I believe she's working for the DiLaurentis family, or something? It requires her to wear business attire, at least, which is nice for her because she looks foxy in it.
Spencer
And Spencer is in a trench poncho, which I don't really think serves ANY purpose at all except to make it awkward to reach for things. She finds out from her father that Radley looked into Toby's mother's death and it was a run-of-the-mill accident. She also catches him looking snuggly with Mama DeLaurentis, who is divorcing her husband, and since these two ALSO have a son together who is MIA all of a sudden, and Papa Hastings is acting creepy, Spencer packs her bags and heads to Toby's to live there.
Toby
And Toby is leaving Spencer to travel back in time and star in "Fame."
Alison's diary
Alison also wrote a poem about a motel where she used to hide, or something. On the way there, Emily's car breaks down, so Aria steers them to Ezra's cabin in the woods, but lies that it's a relative's cabin. This serves as the new place that the Liars go when they need to be locked in strange storage rooms and menaced by banging windows, only to open the door with shovels in hand and find a person there who is not A.
This Guy
And that person is This Guy, who is Hanna's new love interest. He seems nice enough, and like a non-terrible actor, and he is not as generic as the other ones they tend to hire (except for Caleb), so... let's tango, This Guy.
Aria
No, Ezra is not faking a brain explosion; that's just his earbuds. However, if he were to turn his head and check out the polterwang on his girlfriend, it might blow for real. It's so bad that the pants actually need to be neutered...
Aria
... and her belt turned itself clear around to the back in an effort to avert its eyes.
Ezra
Ezra goes to Hanna's to do some snooping, under lame auspices. He must be so relieved that we all know who he is now, so that he can show up and commit his crimes in a suit, telling lies, rather than wearing black gloves and a balaclava and breaking in like he did during the Good Old Days.
Hanna
Hanna reveals that one particular story is about her: Alison caught her making out with Aria's little brother Mike. Given that this happened while Alison was alive, and she was either 14 or 15 when she died (which was the year before their junior year), this means Hanna was maybe 14 or 15 when she hooked up with Mike, who was either 12 or 13. That's not ideal, but for Alison to shame her for it when she was theoretically sleeping with Ian and/or Ezra at this point... This show is troublesome. Mike will be delighted to hear that Hanna apparently only hooked up with him because she was overweight and insecure, and everyone forgives her (except possibly Mike, when he finds out), and Alison remains a bad person, and PLL has given up on Hanna's fat suit, it seems.
Spencer, Aria
Spencer and Aria get stuck in a room for a while, of course, probably at A's hands, and this leads to Spencer going full Cameron Frye with her suspenders. Unfortunately for them, while they're in there, A steals Alison's diary, complete with all their color-coding and decryptions, and then texts them a thank you for tipping him off about the decrepit Busy Bee Inn where Alison is probably hiding. This upsets the girls. Look, obviously nobody wants a person to be murdered, but Alison is TRULY AWFUL and at this point maybe they should just call time on this thing and go to college. I'm not saying they should root for A to fillet her, but they are in awfully deep over somebody who was wretched to them. And for a while it was about who killed Ali, but then there was other blackmail, and now... are we back to just who killed Ali? Is there any blackmail in play anymore here? WHERE ARE ALL THE EVIDENCE WALLS? Those were so useful.