Welcome back to my weekly review and recap of Pretty Little Liars. To catch up on the previous episode, click here.
This season of Pretty Little Liars has been moving at a break-neck pace, and “She’s No Angel” was no exception. The fifth episode of the sixth season brought several interesting clues to light, and we even got to figure out (at least until this theory is debunked) whether A is a he-A or a she-A!
#CreepyDancer
The episode opens with Spencer (Troian Bellisario) having a dream about a creepy young girl (Maddie Ziegler) showing off some pretty sweet ballet-like moves in a tiled room with bathtubs. As she dances, Spencer has some brief flashbacks to when she woke up with blood on her hands in the dollhouse. Her dream ends as she picks up a sandal with “C. Dilaurentis” written on the side and a shadow approaches.
Since Aria (Lucy Hale) wants to forget the events of the dollhouse, she freezes Spencer out. As they talk on the phone, Spencer eats the cookies Sabrina baked with marijuana at the end of the last episode. When Aria asks her what she is eating, Spencer just says she is distracted because she thinks her mother bribed the school into giving her the valedictorian title.
Mona returns!
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After what seems like forever, Mona (Janel Parrish) finally returns from her spa getaway with her mother. She shares her concerns with Hanna (Ashley Benson) that Ali (Sasha Pieterse) may be plotting revenge. However, that seems to be the least of her worries when she is confronted by Lesli Stone (Elizabeth McLaughlin), Mona’s friend who testified against the girls at Ali’s murder trial. Lesli is a little bitter that she lost her fellowship, teaching position, and reputation after supposedly bending over backwards for Mona.
Give her a break, Lesli. She was held captive for months in a creepy Saw-like bunker. Show some compassion!
Later on, Lesli apologizes to Hanna and says that, with time, she will be able to forgive Mona as well. Lesli says she wonders if Radley helped Mona or made her worse, and Hanna says she doesn’t believe Mona was the only one who went crazy in Radley. She explains how Radley has all of the answers, but Lesli says the police should ask the questions because taking matters into their own hands is what got Mona into trouble in the first place.
From #OMGSpencer to #YouGoSpencer
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Hanna notices Spencer acting a little antsy, but Spencer just says she’s just horny and craves sex with Toby. She also craves cookies…a lot! Spencer seems to recognize Hanna’s disgust with her and goes to a meeting for drug addicts, where she runs into Dean (Nathaniel Buzolic), the drug and alcohol abuse counselor who tried to help her in the fourth season.
Spencer tries to make a run for it after seeing Dean but gets caught by the group’s moderator when she steals some yummy munchie treats. She decides to stick around and Dean drives her home. He tells her he’s just a phone call away if she needs help. Spencer eventually gives away her last cookie in a symbolic gesture that she is done trying to numb the pain she faced in the dollhouse.
When Spencer gets home, she sees Mona putting an apology note in Ali’s mailbox. Spencer asks Mona if there could have been another young eleven-year-old girl in the doll house or if she saw a large tiled room. Mona says the room sounds terrifying but it must live in Spencer’s head. When Spencer turns away, Mona has a concerned look on her face, implying she might actually know something.
Aria’s potential future. Could she spend it with Clark?
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After telling Aria about the Cardillo Fellowship, which includes a cash prize and a summer internship at a Los Angeles-based magazine (possible foreshadowing for Aria’s career in the upcoming time jump this season?), Clark (Titus Makin Jr.) takes Aria to a junkyard to shoot some photos. When they arrive, Aria notices A is watching them. However, she turns the tables after realizing that Clark accidentally took a photo of A. Aria swipes the negatives.
Additionally, Clark asks Aria out for dinner and she declines, explaining that she’s not dating for awhile and has been through a lot this past year. Clark says he knows about it because he saw her on the news. He just didn’t want to bring it up and make her feel self-conscious. At least we can say he’s honest about knowing her past, unlike a certain former boyfriend of Aria’s (hint: rhymes with “mezra”).
Sara asserts her independence
After Sara (Dre Davis) talks to her drunken mother on the phone, Emily (Shay Mitchell) suggests she should get emancipated. They enlist Caleb’s (Tyler Blackburn) help in doing so, and he tells Sara that she will need a job in order to show the courts she can support herself. He ends up hiring her for his web design company. This makes me wonder if Sara actually has skills to work in web design in the first place and how Caleb can actually afford to pay her.
To celebrate, Sara and Emily decide to get tattoos. Sara gets a back tattoo of a bird coming out of a cage and Emily gets the Japanese symbol for “courage” on her lower stomach (or as the tattoo artist called it: “something closer to the good china.” This was an innuendo I was even confused about until I saw Emily getting inked). Sara seems to enjoy making symbolic gestures in unsubtle ways, like when she got a haircut in the third episode.
#Allenzo or #Lallison? Is there a couple name we can use?
After the policemen monitoring her house say disrespectful things about her, Ali informs her father, Kenneth (Jim Abele). He tells her to just suck it up because “bad behavior has a way of catching up with you.”
Later on, she meets with Lorenzo (Travis Winfrey) and they have that long-awaited (at least that’s what the writers think we should feel) kiss, much to Kenneth’s chagrin. When Ali says she wants to go to Hanna’s, Kenneth forbids her with the fear that she will see Lorenzo. He tells her that if she keeps this up, he will take her far away. In an aggressive statement, Ali asks her father if she will just be shoved in the ground right next to Charles in Aunt Carol’s yard. Kenneth asks what she’s talking about and Ali walks away in anger. However, I don’t think Kenneth is trying to play dumb. I think he legitimately has no idea what Ali is talking about. It looks like Ali and Jason aren’t the only Dilaurentis family members who had secrets kept from them.
It’s “A” girl!
When Aria examines Clark’s negatives of A, she notices a rather feminine-looking hooded figure, deducing that A is a girl. She immediately texts her friends with this new information. Sara sees Aria’s texts on Emily’s phone and gets scared. She doesn’t like how Emily is trying to track down their captor and didn’t even tell her. Emily explains that she was trying to protect Sara and how they are so close to learning the truth.
Back to Radley
Hanna and Spencer go back to Radley. Here, Spencer realizes that the dream she had about the dancer took place in Radley and not the dollhouse. She even notices a poster featuring the girl along with the slogan, “Good health starts with good nutrition.” The creepy dancer may be creepy, but at least she instills positive messages!
In the same room, they find Charles’ file, confirming his death. They also end up running into Mona, who just stole Lesli’s file from Radley. It looks like Lesli was a patient at Radley, and not only did she possibly know Charles, but she was also roommates with Bethany Young, the girl who was murdered instead of Ali. Mona tells Hanna and Spencer that she wanted to steal Lesli’s file to potentially save their friendship. The girls believe that Lesli thinks they were responsible for Bethany’s death and that she wants revenge. Kidnapping Sara was just a rehearsal until she got the real Ali.
Mona talks to Lesli on the phone and tells her that she did everything she could. When Lesli asks what she means, Mona’s response is simple: “They know.” Lesli is frustrated with Mona for “ruining everything.”
Creepy “A” epilogue: A gets pieces of Aria’s hair (possibly the same hair cut from her head in the dollhouse) and places them on a tennis ball to make a small wig. A brushes the ball like it’s a human head.
Current A suspect: Lesli. The evidence is stacking high against her, but there are also four more episodes left until the mid-season finale.
Rating: 9/10
Do you think Lesli is connected to A? What is your current theory? Let us know in the comments!
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