‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Emily & Paige Break Up As Jason Returns – Hollywood Life

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Spencer’s Violent Past Trumps A Sad Breakup

We're one episode away from the Season 4 finale of 'Pretty Little Liars' -- so it's no real surprise that the March 12 episode was full of shocking reveals. There were breakups, make-ups, make-outs, and even some intense flashbacks that revealed one Little Liar's violent history. Pretty Little Liars is this close to its tell-all finale episode with Alison (Sasha Pieterse), so needless to say the action was at an all-time high during "Unbridled." For example, did you know that Emily (Shay Mitchell) was a genius computer hacker? Because she is! Read on to find out what happened on PLL. 

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Reading Time: 6 minutes
March 11, 2014 9:52PM EDT
Pretty Little Liars Recap Emily Paige Breakup
Image Credit: Courtesy of ABC Family

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Emily And Paige Break Up

Paige (Lindsey Shaw) and Emily’s breakup was the biggest marquee item of the night, but I was more concerned with the fact that Spencer (Troian Bellisario) seems to have some legitimate brain damage going on.

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At the beginning of the night, Spencer was seriously freaking out because she thought that she bludgeoned whoever is in Alison’s grave on the night of her disappearance, and a new “A” present with the message, “You know me, Spencer — you killed me” didn’t exactly help. Dean (Nathaniel Buzolic) seemed to be helping matters with his smooth words and cuddles, until an ill-advised couch cuddle with Spencie got him ejected from the Hastings premises.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to my husband and hire the 60-year-old Scottish woman with the diaper breath,” Mrs. Hastings snapped.

Thankfully, Dean leaving ended up being the impetus for a pretty major reveal. Due to her drug addiction — to Adderall, natch — Spencer had gone full Jekyll and Hyde the summer of Alison’s disappearance. (Though she conveniently remembers none of it, and neither do any of her bestest friends.) Alison came across some perfect blackmail material when she walked in on Mrs. Hastings cleaning up after a bloody Melissa versus Spencer incident, and being that this happened the night before the “Alison incident,” the Hastings parents have totally suspected that Spencer killed Alison this whole time! Wild!

But of course, we as viewers know that Alison isn’t dead, and now the cops do too, thanks to Paige. The fallout from Paige’s letter was pretty massive — and not only in the romance department.

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Jason Returns

At the beginning of the night, Emily didn’t want to believe that Mrs. D (Andrea Parker) was actually Mrs. A, but a visit from Jason (Drew Van Acker) swayed her in the opposite direction.

Jason — who was last seen splayed out on top of an elevator — refused to talk to his old pal Emily about his mother, and a flashback sequence revealed that the whole DiLaurentis family thought that Spencer was the only bad seed in town. (They blamed her DiLaurentis hatred on the Jason half-brother situation — but wasn’t that revealed after Ali’s disappearance? Oh well.)

Jason was quickly proved unreliable when Dean showed up at the Bridal Expo (more on that in a second) to say goodbye to Spencer. Spencer dropped a line about Jason’s rehab center, and Dean — rehabilitation expert that he is — noted that the center had been closed for two years. FISHY, JASON. Also, do you realize that the Internet exists, making your alibi incredibly ill-advised and ridiculous?

Speaking of ridiculous people in Rosewood, the police actually managed to do their jobs after reading Paige’s letter. They pulled some serious True Detective s–t,  accessing Alison’s file to find a photo Mrs. D had provided of Alison the night of her disappearance. This photo featured little A with a broken arm, but “Alison’s” bones did not feature any such fracture.

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Bridal Expo From Hell, AKA Every Bridal Expo

So Mrs. D was looking pretty shady, but that didn’t stop everyone on the show from going to her bridal expo.

Ashley (Laura Leighton) was first to volunteer to help out with the show, but a snooping incident — that conveniently happened right as the police were questioning Mrs. D about that photo — got her on the big bad’s bad side. Ashley poked around in the master bedroom for no good reason at all, but it’s a good thing she did because she found a bag of clothing in Alison’s size. Ashley quickly relayed this information to Hannah (Ashley Benson), who realized that this proved that Mrs. D knew that Alison was alive, thus creating the necessity for all of the girls to model for the Bridal Expo.

Also working at this deathly Bridal Expo was Travis (Luke Kleintank), who initially blew Hannah off (to the relief of Haleb fans everywhere), but they later made out once Travis helped Hannah do some Expo snooping. Hanna and Emily snuck into A’s Expo-Lair, where they found a menu and a computer and somehow all of this led to the reveal that Alison was living somewhere in Philadelphia. They managed to connect with Alison on the phone — and the episode ended with them going to meet her, though clearly it was not “her” that actually showed up — but we’re going to have to wait for this epic reunion next week. Darn!

Oh, also, Spencer got freaked out and ran after Mrs. D in the woods, then came back to the hotel to find freaking bones in her bridal sash thing. A can be really dark sometimes, guys.

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Speaking Of Aria

Are we forgetting something, here? Oh yes, Aria (Lucy Hale) — the star of the show!

Aria actually got to enjoy the rare pleasure of having a parent in her life, as Ella (Holly Marie Combs) returned from Austria to actually be a decent human being and raise her own children. Luckily, Aria finally found some lady-balls and confronted her mom about being such an awful human, and I nearly punched my television when Ella was all, “are you mad at me, Ezra, or yourself?” (YOU, Ella. The answer is you. We are all mad at you.)

Later in the night I eased up on Ella, when she showed up to the Bridal Expo — because, DUH — and poured her heart out over said heart breaking over her cheating bastard husband. Then she revealed that her Euro boyfriend what’s-his-face proposed, and Aria and Ella hugged, and it was sweet.

But, um, yeah — that was basically it for her. We ended the night on Emily, who finally got Paige to admit that she cared more about not caring about Alison than she cared about caring about Emily. (Sorry.)

“You totally played me, and you got exactly what you wanted — revenge on Alison,” Emily said. Paige begged for her lady to forgive her, but it was too late — Paily was dead. Not as dead as Maya, but still pretty dead! Sad. Paige should have watched Season 2 of Jersey Shore — then she would have known that sending an anonymous note never leads to anything but pure and utter chaos.

So there you have it, Liars. Ali will finally reunite with her gal-pals due to the heat from Paige’s note, and this will surely be epic as it’s like, five years in the making. But what did you think of tonight’s episode? Were you shocked by the big reveals? Will you miss Paily? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

— Shaunna Murphy

More ‘PLL’ News:

  1. ‘Pretty Little Liars’ — Does This New ‘A’ Even Make Sense?
  2. Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: A Shocking New ‘A’ Is Revealed
  3. ‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Aria & Spencer Go Completely Insane
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