Pretty Little Liars: The Remains of A

Broken-hearted Hanna has traded her “I’m sad” sweats for “I’m mad” fatigues and is ready to do battle with A over breaking up her and Caleb. She’s even willing to touch an old person, which would normally totally creep her out. This girl means serious business! It takes her about three seconds to perfectly forge a note in Garret’s handwriting to arrange a meeting with his mystery contact, whom they figure has to be A. Of course, things start to go wrong pretty much immediately; poor Mrs. Reynolds flatlines the second Hanna touches her to switch the note. Good thing no one noticed Hanna and Spencer guiltily fleeing from the room in a panic as cardiac monitors blared. Fortunately, Mrs. Reynolds is stabilized and operation “lure-A-to-the-church-tonight” is back on.

Meanwhile, Aria is hanging out at Ezra’s taking some “professional” pics of him in his jammies to get ready for her new photographer’s assistant gig. Aria basically seems to be living there, so I guess everyone is now totally okay with the whole (former) teacher-student thing? I mean, “Ezria” is pretty cute, but isn’t Aria still, like, a minor? Just sayin’.

Cut to Spencer, who is Googling "April Rose, PA” at her house which, as usual, is sans parental supervision. Toby is rambling on about some job opportunity and then decides to just awkwardly sit and stare at Spencer while she’s doing her work. Just as the two start making out, Spencer’s dad appears for the first time this season. Apparently, he's been out jogging.  Anyway, Toby leaves and the always-personable Mr. Hastings reveals that key evidence from the prosecution in Garrett's case may be dropped, which means Garrett would be free. A distraught Spencer runs out.

Over at the coffeehouse where Emily has somehow managed to keep her job despite doing nothing but chatting with various friends every time she works, Hanna brings the address of the clothing donations box that included the jacket Emily was wearing the night Allison’s corpse went missing. I’m not exactly sure what they expect the donation bin to reveal, but way to explore every angle, I guess.

Spencer is now hanging out on a park bench (Googling April Rose on her iPad instead of her laptop) and meets up with Jason, Allison’s brother (and Mr. Hastings’ not-so-secret-anymore love child, thus making him Spencer’s half-bro). Speaking of Mr. Hastings, he’s parked about five feet away glaring at them, but apparently no one notices. Spencer asks if Jason knows April Rose and he says the name doesn’t sound familiar, but that she could have been one of the girls him, Garrett, and Ian (Spencer’s sister’s deceased husband who was previously believed to have killed Allison…but who hasn’t been a suspect at one point or another?) secretly videotaped as part of their super-sketchy NAT Club. He reveals he thought Ian and Garrett were paying girls to set up their friends, and April Rose could have been one of those employees. Jason doesn’t seem to feel all that bad about having been part of a club of creepy voyeurs, pointing out that that time in his life was a total blur to him. Well, that makes it totally okay!

After Spencer leaves, Mr. Hastings approaches Jason to tell him he needs to let Spencer focus on her future, and also awkwardly throws in that Mrs. Hastings doesn’t hate him (somehow I doubt that was keeping Jason up at night).

Hanna finds out that there is a thank-you party for the volunteers tonight in the church rec room…at exactly the same time she was planning to lure A to the deserted church. Oops.

Back at Ezria's, Aria conveniently finds a bag of cash (and I’m not talking $1s, I’m talking $50s and $100s, and lots of ‘em) in Ezra’s sock drawer while he’s showering. Wasn’t he just complaining about needing to pool their resources because they’re almost out of ramen noodles? Of course, she’s a little disturbed so she hurries over to discuss it with Spencer and Hanna over cheese fries (do these girls ever go to school?). Could he have somehow gotten the $50,000 cash reward Jason was previously offering (then allegedly withdrew, but we know he didn’t really) for info on who stole Allison’s body?

Emily has gone to the donation drop-off location alone (um, what happened to going with Hanna tomorrow?) when a diner across the street called Sputnik's sparks a blurry memory of her missing night. Apparently A took her for coffee and dessert? How sinister. By the way, is anyone else surprised when there are other restaurants in town besides the two they always go to? Em goes in to have lunch, but when the waitress clears her plate, Emily looks down at the placement that has a maze on it and has another vision of the night she can barely remember. She's writing, "I'm sorry I left you” on the paper placemat and then sees a dark-haired man with a weird, squiggly tattoo on his hand.

It’s finally time for the church party and, at Hanna’s insistence, Spencer has asked Toby to go as Hanna’s date. I’m not really sure why, except for the fact that Hanna didn’t want to drive with her mom (who is also there, unknowingly on a date with the pastor) but it seems like there should have been an easier way to get out of that. How ‘bout saying: “I’m going to wait for Emily and go a little later, but thanks for the offer, Mom”? Toby’s looking as spiffy and awkward as ever, and Hanna is being a terrible date and leaving the poor guy hanging every two seconds so she can suspiciously look around. Yup, it was really necessary to bring him.

Meanwhile, Spencer is about to head out her door when Jason enters with the news that he found April Rose, which turns out to be an antique shop (with a huge ad in the yellow pages), not a girl.  They go to the shop, which of course is open even though it’s like 10 pm. Jason talks to the owner while Spencer searches around (for about 10 seconds) until she stumbles upon a familiar gold anklet on a creepy mannequin.

Cue the flashback to a Spencer-Allison girls’ night where Allison is wearing the anklet. Spencer asks where she got it, but gets no straight answers about it or its origin besides that fact that Allison never wants to take it off and that she got it from a friend that Spencer doesn’t know. She then throws on some fabulously sexy heels and ditches Spencer to pick up some fake IDs so they can have “the best summer ever”… and we all know how that turned out.  In the present, Spencer and Jason buy the bracelet, paying the store owner $400 for it because he initially says he can’t sell it to them because it doesn’t have a tag. They turn the bracelet over to the police assuming it will incriminate Garrett.

Emily finally walks into the party and she's greeted by Holden, Aria’s former kung-fu fighting alibi for her secret rendezvous with Ezra. When she looks down, she sees the mark she remembers being on the wrist of the man she was at Sputnik's with. It’s not a tattoo at all; it’s a stamp for a party that changes venues. Holden awkwardly mentions that he used to see Maya there sometimes, and then abruptly runs off. Emily gets one more vision of the night she wound up at Alli's empty grave – and the back of a head that sure looks a lot like Holden's (but it could also be Lucas, I think!).

It’s finally time for Operation A, and Hanna sneaks in to the dark, creepy organ room alone to hide under a pew, because I’m sure A won’t notice her there.  She hears some footsteps and suddenly, two shiny shoes are standing in front of her. It's the always-intense Detective Wilden and he has Hanna's note. He asks why she's helping "him," but she doesn't know who he's talking about. Turns out, it's Garrett. He then drops a not-so-subtle hint that there’d be less of a problem if Hanna would do some sexual favors for him like her mom did, at which point she runs off.

Back in the land of Ezria, Aria confronts Ezra about the secret cash stash. He quickly comes up with a story about selling a '67 Jaguar his grandfather left him when he lost his job. He didn't tell Aria because he was embarrassed. It seems to make sense but then he gives a creepy, conspiratorial glance at the sock drawer when Aria’s not looking – there’s definitely something else going on here.

The next morning, Mr. Hastings tells Spencer the police had been looking for the anklet for two years. It had blood on it and it was Ali's and someone else's ... not Garrett's. The judge threw out the case and Spencer runs upstairs into her room and throws a pretty epic, scream-in-your-pillow kind of tantrum. At that exact moment, she gets a text from A: "Hey Spence, I have one more surprise for you. Garrett isn't their killer. -A." Is this supposed to be surprising? Because I'm pretty sure Spencer's dad just said that and I think we all knew it anyway.

In the last scene, A (wearing the usual leather murder gloves) is eating some delicious sherbet and searching the classified ads for a room for rent. Hmmm, could A be a character we haven’t met yet who will soon be officially moving to town?