CONFESSION TIME
Pretty Little Liars: The Guilty Girl’s Handbook
By Karen Malmquist
AFTER TRYING TO RUN HANNA OVER WITH HER CAR, outing Emily to her parents, and trying to kill Spencer, Mona Van Der Waal just might have made up for all of that on Tuesday’s new Pretty Little Liars.
Emily and her mom are in a motel, and Mrs. Fields is on the phone, explaining what happened to their house. Apparently the car was stolen, and there was no one in the driver’s seat. She’s obviously frustrated, but doesn’t want Emily to miss her college guidance meeting today.
The other three Liars are at Spencer’s, when Mrs. Hastings walks in. She says they pled not guilty on the homicide charges, but the judge isn’t granting bail. Ashley is also being transferred to another jail—in Munsey. Hanna gets mad, and Aria and Spencer follow her as she charges upstairs in a huff.
Side note: Spencer totally looks like she’s been sorted into Gryffindor with the outfit she’s wearing.
Hanna thinks this is all her fault, but Spencer insists that her mom never loses a case. Hanna tells them to go to school without her. How late does school start in Rosewood that they all have time to hang out at each other’s houses before classes start?
Mike tells Aria that he’s going to a party with his teammates after the game. He says he’s also taking martial arts classes from Jake to defend himself. Great, now we have to see Jake again.
Ezra finishes up a call with Malcolm, who sent him an adorably abstract watercolor painting of them. Emily enters the room for the guidance meeting, and lets Emily know how concerned he is about her and her mom, and wishes them well. He then asks if someone besides Mona has been targeting them. Emily insists it was just a guy speeding, and changes the subject to a random college in Maryland.
Ezra tells Emily that some small schools in Maryland are looking for students like her, and that the community service she did in Haiti the summer before would attract a lot of places.
Hanna gets a call from her mom, assuring her that they’re going to be alright. They both agree that things can change, and lets her know that Mrs. Hastings is going to bring Hanna tomorrow to say goodbye for the time being. She hangs up the phone and turns to someone, saying, “Thanks for coming.”
It’s Mona! Hanna tells her that she’s going to confess to killing Wilden. And Mona’s going to help her. “What a great idea!” said no one.
Hanna says that whatever they do to her after the confession won’t be as bad as her mom’s sentence.
Some guy named Beckett Fry shows up at Spencer’s, and as Veronica’s intern, he’s in charge of dropping off all the Marin case material to the house. Spencer is immediately interested in helping him carry his boxes when she realizes there’s probably a lot of material against Wilden in there.
Mona, who Hanna’s recruited because she’s an expert at living a lie, coaches Hanna on how she’s going to confess. She says Hanna needs to have a good reason for killing him, so Hanna brings up her theory that he killed Ali in her mock confession.
Aria runs into Jake, and asks why her brother is taking self defense classes from him. He says Mike told him that he’s worried that his teammates are targeting him. Jake tells her that if she and Mike are in trouble, he can help her out.
Spencer is back at Radley, this time to visit Eddie Lamb. She opens up a cookie box in front of him, saying she wants to thank the people who took care of her. But instead of cookies, it’s papers from the sanitarium. The papers indicate that Wilden might have fudged the report from Toby’s mother’s suicide, because they don’t match up with the official report from that night.
Mona tells Hanna that she needs to tell the police that she wore the Manolos to kill Wilden, but then threw them away. After drilling the show story into Hanna’s head, it’s time discuss the gun, and why Ashley’s prints were on the bullets.
Rumer Willis is employed again! She’s playing Zoe, Emily’s friend from the Haiti. She says she’s planning another service trip for the summer, this time to Nicaragua.
Caleb visits Ashley, and she tells him how worried she is. She says she knows Hanna wants results fast, and is worried that she will do something irresponsible in the name of helping her mom. She says Hanna got that from her. Caleb says Hanna also got her mother’s bravery, and promises to do his best to keep her out of trouble. As Ashley gets taken back to her cell, Caleb tells her that Hanna loves her and would do anything to help her. Ashley says that’s what she’s worried.
Zoe, being a big-shot supervisor for Habitat for Humanity, offers to write her a recommendation letter for schools.
Mrs. Fields approaches, saying they won’t be able to stay in their house for months, and asks her to drop off private police files to the station.
Mona continues their mock interrogation. She asks the kind of messed up questions the police will ask her. An imaginary scenario plays of Wilden cornering her in the woods, and Hanna firing the gun in self-defense. Mona sternly tells Hanna that she needs to be convincing in claiming self-defense.
Suddenly Caleb appears in the kitchen window. He asks why Mona is there, and doesn’t believe Hanna when she says Mona is helping her “move on.” She says the thought of moving back in with her dad and new family makes talking to Mona seem reasonable. She asks him to leave her alone for now.
Veronica and Beckett are working late at the Hastings house, and Beckett pulls Spencer aside and asks if she wants him to slip the Eddie Lamb file back into the box before she notices. Spencer quietly says she’ll take care of it.
Aria hears some commotion outside, and decides to call her brother. Some other guy picks up the phone, says he’s “unavailable,” and hangs up on her.
Mona takes Hanna upstairs and continues the interrogation. She has Hanna recreate the entire crime in her head. Mona tells her to s no one was going to help her, and that he’d been after her family for too long. She reminds Hanna that she shot Wilden twice. Hanna imagines that Ashley is next to her at the scene.
Later, Hanna is about to sneak out to the station, but Caleb catches her. Does he have a key or something? If he wasn’t such a nice guy, this would be alarming.
Jake shows up to help Aria find Mike. She gets a call from Mike, saying he’s fine, not unconscious like the guy said he was. He says he’ll probably stay at his friend Billy’s house tonight, and then hangs up. Jake says he’s worried about Aria, and offers to stay with her for a while. I know I’ve said this before but… I miss Ezra.
Hanna accuses Caleb of thinking Ashley really killed Wilden. He says he did. Until he spoke with Ashley that day. Does no one remember Melissa hinting that she might have done it? Now would be a good time for her to return from “London” and own up to it.
Emily comes back to the motel. Her mom is going to start looking for a new job. She forces a smile when Emily happily tells her all about the potential trip for Habitat for Humanity. Emily says she can even come home early to help around the house. Mrs. Fields starts full-on crying and says Emily doesn’t need to schedule her whole summer around everything going on at home.
Someone saunters into the police station, and… it’s Mona! She approaches the front desk, and says she’d like to talk to someone about a murder. This could go two ways: she could turn Hanna in, or she could turn herself in.
Aria and Jake flip through channels, and they talk about seeing “Insideous 2” together. I get that the movie is one of the show’s sponsor’s, but dedicating an entire scene to it is a massive eye-roll. At least have some useful characters pretend to be interested in seeing it.
Spencer shows her mom the file from Radley, saying that Wilden was at Radley the night Marion died. His account of the death doesn’t match up with Eddie Lamb’s, and Spencer thinks someone paid him off to change the report. As Veronica is telling Spencer not to focus on this right now, she gets a call from the station. Mona just confessed to killing Wilden.
Spencer texts all the Liars, who follow Veronica to the station. They watch as Mona sits down to be questioned. She flashes them a faint smirk as the blinds close in front of her.
A is seen drilling holes into wood. Looks like they’re making a table? Sure, a table is a nice gift for the Fields’ living room, but maybe replacing the walls they crashed into would be more helpful.
Next week, real action starts happening, with Jenna supposedly dying. She and Jenna seem to know a lot about the whereabouts of Ali (fingers-crossed it’s a twin theory clue!), and Spencer may or may not be knocked out in the water outside the Hastings’ lake house. There’s also a shot of Red Coat walking around in front of the DiLaurentis house.
According to one of the sneak peeks for next week’s episode, Mona’s confession helps Ashley. Her confession doesn’t fully match with the evidence, but Ashley gets to await her trial from home. However, the bail is set higher than usual, because a police officer was killed: a whopping $1 million.
In another promo, Mona is seen back in her old room, brushing her fingers over the etching of “Will the circle be unbroken?” on the desk.
