Pretty Little Liars – The Glove That Rocks the Cradle

By: Michelle Lopez

Marco (Nicholas Gonzalez) had Spencer (Troian Bellisario) come in for questioning about the night she met Marco at The Radley. Detective Maple (Jim Titus) slams Spencer with a barrage of questions trying to get her slip up and admit anything incriminating, but Spencer’s an old pro at this stuff. She dances around the questions until Maple’s rapid fire questions leave her screaming “I don’t recall.” Macro calls Barry off and tries to play good cop explaining that he’ll have a warrant for her arrest in a few days so she should get a lawyer.

At the DiLaurentis house, Emily (Shay Mitchell) surprises Ali (Sasha Pieterse) with the nursery she’s created in Ali’s childhood bedroom. Emily’s a little concerned with what Ali’s reaction will be since they’re dancing around in the grayest of gray areas. Ali seems freaked at first, but comes around and invites Emily to stay in her house as long as she’d like, after all, they are having a baby together.

Ezra (Ian Harding) is concerned about Aria (Lucy Hale) after noticing her having nightmares. He thinks he has the solution to whatever is plaguing Aria’s dreams, dance lessons. Ezra’s excited, but Aria’s got too many AD shenanigans scheduled to commit to an hour of dancing. Luckily, Spencer sends an SOS text regarding her early morning interrogation so Aria has an excuse to blow Ezra off.

The liars convene, Spencer explains her credit card error and Hanna (Ashley Benson) flips out. Spencer feels bad enough and having the reason she drank herself into a stupor berate her for doing so puts her over the edge. She shuts Hanna up by reminding her that she witnessed Spencer and Caleb breaking up because of her. The liars start to scheme and decide to break into The Radley during the weekly staff meeting to steal the receipt. Hanna volunteers as tribute, understanding that she’s got a lot to make up for with Spencer.

At The Brew we see Ezra meeting with his publicist, Jillian (Klea Scott), to discuss the upcoming press tour. Jillian wants to leave Aria out of the tour and focus on Ezra and Nicole. Ezra’s not keen on leaving Aria out since he’s still walking on egg shells around her after their fight last week. When he returns home he breaks the news to Aria, but she doesn’t mind. She promises to attend the events to support him, but the limelight isn’t high on her priority list.

Hanna’s summoned Caleb (Tyler Blackburn) to the liar meeting to bring him in on the plan. He created The Radley’s security system so he can shut it down with one snafu. If the system is down for more than ten minutes the security company is alerted. AD decides to boot up the game board to up the ante and tells Hanna to pick something up from a computer store and drop it off at Rosewood High. While Hanna and the other liars are distracted AD texts Aria to let her know that she’s got some secret shenanigans to pull tonight.

Hanna and Caleb head back to the loft bickering over Hanna’s turn. Caleb doesn’t want her to go alone, but Hanna’s learned the consequences of not following the rules. She needs him to focus on helping Spencer since they both owe it to her. Caleb isn’t following so Hanna explains how she gave Spencer permission to fall for him and that she was present when Caleb professed his love to her through the barn door after the infamous “Haleb” kiss. Sure, Hanna’s afraid of losing AD’s game, but losing one of her best friends is scarier.

After the liar meeting, Spencer decided to stay behind and help Emily assemble some baby furniture. She thinks she can use Marco’s feelings for her to convince him to drop the case. Emily’s not so sure, that’s an awfully big risk to be taken based purely on presumed feelings. Spencer points out Emily’s doing the exact same thing with Ali. She’s nesting like Alison and she are going to be a happy family, but they haven’t actually discussed the logistics of their situation. Ali agreed to have the kid, but nothing beyond that.

Off screen Hanna’s picked up AD’s package (a/k/a a hard drive) from the computer shop. Ignoring Hanna’s objections, Caleb plugs in the hard drive and finds that the only file on there is a Patsy Cline song. Caleb asks if Hanna thinks that Lucas (Brandon Robinson) would have any attachment to the song, but Hanna still refuses to believe that he’s got anything to do with their torture.

Having completely ignored Emily’s advice, Spencer’s stops by Marco’s apartment to convince him to drop the investigation. She tries to make him see that she’s not evil. Yeah, she may be involved in a murder but the guy was horrible so why is it that big a deal that he got murdered? Marco’s doesn’t believe in vigilante justice so he tells Spencer to leave while he takes a call from work. Spencer’s disappointed, but doesn’t leave empty handed. She steals a flash drive with Lucas’s name on it and sends another SOS text to the liars.

In the barn, the liars discover drive contains video of Lucas confessing to the police that he lied about being with Hanna the night Charlotte died. He doesn’t believe Hanna was involved, but that the rest of the liars are more than capable of murder. Hanna is still Team Lucas, even after watching him throw her under the bus, so the liars try to convince her otherwise – even bringing up that time Hanna bonked Lucas over the head with a boat paddle in the middle of Torch Lake and left him to drown thinking he was A. Hanna’s still not turning on him so Aria suggests they stake out the school and watch the locker Hanna’s got to drop the hard drive in to unmask AD. Aria’s so confused about being a part of the show she didn’t realize nobody mentioned a locker yet but the liars ignore her slip up.

The next day, Emily stops by Ali’s house to drop off more baby stuff and notices Ali rushing out the door without eating breakfast or taking her neonatal vitamins. She freaks and lectures Ali on the importance of taking care of herself because of the baby. Ali is nonplused by this ridiculous display and snarks like OG Ali about Emily’s pregnancy mood swings.

Hanna’s gotten her instructions from AD so she assemblies the liars plus Caleb to plan out their attack. Emily and Ali are going to stake out the school while Caleb and Hanna handle the Radley receipt situation. Aria’s busy with Ezra nonsense so she’s out and Spencer is at the crux of this so she’s benched. Everyone leaves except Caleb and Spencer. He apologizes for being the reason she’s in this mess, but Spencer’s not looking for his sympathy. He assures her that he and Hanna won’t let her down again but it’s cold comfort all things considered.

At the loft, Hanna grabs the hard drive and heads out to find Mona (Janel Parrish) at her door ready to play AD’s game. Hanna tries to blow her off, but Mona knows Hanna and the liars too well to miss what’s happening. The liars don’t trust Mona, even though she’s proven time and time again that she’s on their side. Despite the rejection, Mona will do anything to help her best gal pal so she offers to help the liars knowing that they’ll give her the cold shoulder after.

Over at Rosewood High, Hanna makes the drop and heads to The Radley while Emily and Alison watch for AD aka have a heart-to-heart and miss anything AD may do. Emily admits she freaked out earlier because she’s scared which Ali understands but not because of the baby. She knows that Emily is testing her, but doesn’t know what Emily wants. Before Emily can respond they hear a noise in the hall and sprint off after the intruder. They split up and Ali ends up knocked down and possibly injured. They forget about AD and rush home to make sure Ali’s ok. While they’re rushing home Aria’s busy in the baby’s room ransacking the place (liar dolls, fake blood, etc). Ali and Emily (“Emison”) arrive home to the noise of a clumsy AD minion trying to escape. Emily grabs a candlestick like she’s a character from Clue and hunts the intruder down, but Aria manages to get away.

At the press event, Ezra’s stalling hoping that Aria will show up, but she’s busy with the above-mentioned AD nonsense. Jillian insists they start so he gives his talk and opens the floor for questions. The fans what to know if there will be a sequel delving into his reunion with Nicole, but Ezra’s quick to shut them down. He’s over Nicole and all about his co-author Aria. Jillian shakes her head knowing this is going to damage sales.

The liars sans Hanna meet in the baby’s room to discuss their failed attempt at catching AD while straightening up the room. They’re disgusted that AD would stoop to this level while Aria guiltily listens. They figure the hard drive was a pointless errand so AD could ransack the nursery. Spencer notices Aria’s earring on the floor and gives Aria a questioning look as she hands it back.

At The Radley, Hanna’s searching for the receipt with no luck. Caleb rushes in telling Hanna they’ve got to leave. Hanna refuses to let Spencer down so Caleb bashes open a pipe to flood the room. Caleb leaves Hanna in the control room while he reboots the system. When the system comes online Hanna sees Lucas knocking on a hotel room door and skulking away when nobody answers.

Back at the barn, Spencer receives a call from Marco. He wants the flash drive back and threatens to send officers, but Spencer’s not afraid. She tells him that if she did have the flash drive it’d be difficult to explain why the lead suspect in a murder was at Marco’s apartment alone with him in the middle of the night. Marco knows he’s beat and hangs up.

The liars find Lucas (Branden Robinson) searching the loft for the second edition of “Arcturus.” He doesn’t know anything about the board game, but he was delivered the first edition of “Arcturus” and told to meet at The Radley to hide that he was friends with Charlotte. The second edition is about turning vengeance into a game and he doesn’t want anyone getting ideas from it. Since Lucas isn’t AD the liars go home. Hanna pours Lucas a whiskey and tells him she never suspected he was tormenting them. She asks if their business partnership was ever real. Turns out he couldn’t find investors so he sunk all his money into her business. He’d do anything for Hanna but he can’t help her anymore since he’s broke.

Marco has Spencer come in for “questioning,” which is really just him letting her know that he’s on to her and her friends. They may have destroyed the receipt and saved Spencer but he’s going to switch focus and look into the other liars.

In the nursery, Ali and Emily work on cleaning up the mess AD left behind. They joke around, but their conversation quickly turns serious. Emily wants to know why Alison always pushed her away but Ali doesn’t have an answer. What she does have is some truths Paige made her face last week, she loves Emily. They kiss and “Emison” is finally canon.

Aria arrives home after a long few days of AD shenanigans and lying to her friends. She notices a cut she got on her arm while ransacking the nursery and breaks down in tears.