‘Pretty Little Liars’ Season Finale Recap: Red Coat Revealed 

On the season three finale of Pretty Little Liars, everything we thought we knew went sideways and everything goes crazy in the best way possible. In an episode that felt both long and much too short at the same time, alliances are reformed and some puzzle pieces fit into place.

But this is Pretty Little Liars, after all, which means we’re left with more questions than answers. Who was the body found in the woods? What (or who) was in the trunk? Is Alison really alive? Is there a second ‘A’ Team? 

And how many beautiful Rosewood ladies has Shana actually hooked up with off screen? There’s more action happening at that year-round Halloween store than at Rosewood’s “pink drink” loving lesbian bar. 

As per usual with this show, as one question is answered five more pop up to take its place. We should have known we were in for a bumpy ride as soon as we saw Jenna, who has been entirely absent from this half of season three. On Pretty Little Liars, just because a character is gone doesn’t mean they aren’t still planning your murder .

The latter half of this season has been nicely building up to such an action packed episode, where mysterious red coated strangers fly in on planes, houses are set aflame, and the girls are all saved by a ghost. With so much action and so many mysteries flying at the audience fast and furiously, however, some of the emotional moments didn’t land with the same impact as they might have in a less crowded episode. 

Take the reunion of Toby and Spencer. Or the breakup of Ezra and Aria. By moving at such a rapid pace, the episode obviously had to skim a bit on the emotional impact of these breakups and makeups. But perhaps, in the case of Toby and Spencer, that was on purpose? 

Toby’s Alive and Shirtless, But Is He Really A Good Guy? 

Wearing her subtle super-villain dark eye makeup and black nail polish, Spencer lures Toby “pretty eyes” Cavanaugh out to a diner to reunite. It turns out what Mona offered Spencer in the last episode was the information that Toby wasn’t actually dead. Spencer should have just checked social media, everyone has been saying that for weeks!

Toby explains that he signed up with Mona on the ‘A’ team for the same reasons Spencer did: protection and information. Spencer buys the explanation, especially when Toby’s baby blues cloud up with tears. Also, the promise of more shirtless Toby probably didn’t hurt. 

Unsurprisingly, Toby’s shirt is off about five minutes after we discover he’s alive and not evil. This show has priorities and my friends, they are the correct priorities. I knew they could never really kill the abs off the show. Without Toby around, who would go running with no shirt, or build houses with no shirt, or wear doo-rags with no shirt? 

I’m pretty sure Toby was taken down by the ‘B’ team entirely because by putting on his shirt, he closed off the source of his powers. Like Superman pretending to be Clark Kent, Toby with his shirt on is just not as useful in a high-stress situation. 

Do we really trust Toby though? The episode didn’t have a lot of time for protracted explanations, but even so, Toby’s struck me as rather weak. He just said “same as you” to Spencer, misted up, and then popped his shirt off. As explanations go for terrorizing you and your friends for months, it’s kind of weak sauce isn’t it? 

I can’t decide if the show decided to only skim Toby’s motives to keep us guessing as to which side he’s really on, or because in an episode this packed they just really didn’t have time to delve into everything Toby’s done and how it could possibly have helped Spencer and the girls. I guess that will need to be an issue they address in season 4. 

For now, Spencer and Toby are back together grossing out Mona. Although perhaps Toby will have bigger fish to fry, considering the ‘B’ team handily set him up for a little arson. 

— Read the full recap including all the WTF moments and sound off in the comments at BuddyTV HERE!!

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: The ‘A’ Team Gets a Surprising New Member 

This week on Pretty Little Liars, the show sets up a series of domino pieces which look to fall in a spectacular fashion next week on the third season finale. The result for this week, however, is an uneven and at times even plodding episode. Only on Pretty Little Liars could you say an episode with a kidnapping was “slow”.

The big moment, and one that re-contextualizes the whole episode, occurs at the very end. While rifling through her pillowcase of neatly wrapped pills (it’s seriously nice of Radley to provide sandwich bags for patient’s spit-out meds) Spencer pulls out a black hoodie. 

In voice over we hear her accept Mona’s invitation to become a member of the ‘A’ team. “You don’t have to ask me again Mona. I’m in,” Spencer says. 

We know she’s willing to kidnap small children, but how far is Spencer willing to go as a member of the ‘A’ team? And did we just see her villain origin story, or is she working another angle? These will be questions for next week’s finale and possibly beyond into season four. 

Flipping the script and turning one of our liars into a member of the ‘A’ team is a shrewd move on the part of the show. It keeps the already-familiar formula from becoming too stale and is sure to cause some discord among our favorite friends.

 It also gives Troian Bellisario more interesting material to work with. And if we’ve learned anything from these last few episodes of season 3b, it’s that Bellisario can do just about anything. Most impressively, she can do it all without ever once brushing her hair. At this point I hope one of the ‘A’ team benefits includes free hairbrushes. 

The storylines not involving Spencer and a treasure map, however, dragged a lot. Emily did nothing but work as a conduit for information and take the girls on the weirdest candy striper trip ever. Hanna was bogged down in Caleb’s Uncle Daddy Jaime storyline, when her real strength lies in dramatically destroying crime scene evidence. And Aria continued her streak of being the worst babysitter ever by literally losing the kid before even picking him up. 

Mona’s Marauder’s Map

The episode begins with our liars being reunited, but only briefly. The short scene made me realize just how much I had missed the interaction between all four girls these last few episodes. Also, let’s admit it: minus Spencer these girls are pretty much doomed. Without Spencer, Emily becomes the brains of the operation and she’s just not as wily as our favorite Hastings. 

While in Radley, Spencer decides to use her time wisely to Nancy Drew her way around the Sanitarium. Her new best pal Eddie, who has some weird sexual tension with Wren I’d love to see explained in a flashback involving slow dancing, gives her an old board game Mona used to love.

Because this is Rosewood, this board game looks like the opening credits to Game of Thrones. Also, because it’s Rosewood, Spencer realizes the board game is a map Mona created to figure out the best places to escape Radley. 

“So I just follow this trail past the Night’s Watch, make a turn at Winterfell, and then take the window in King’s Landing out of here? Simple enough!” Spencer barely puts her palm on the window and the thing swings free like the opening act of a horror movie where the ghost is inviting you in. I mean, it’s just super obvious this window is open. 

I imagine there’s an institution break whenever there’s a strong breeze. Welcome to Radley Sanitarium, where our motto is “Why even bother?” We have it in Latin on our crest. 

—Read the full recap including all the ‘A’ team revelations at BuddyTV HERE!!

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Spencer Continues To Unravel In Radley 

This week on Pretty Little Liars, Spencer enjoys a relaxing vacation from her life in Radley Sanitarium. Wilden resurfaces, but Hanna is no longer afraid of him now that she knows she can just run him over whenever she’s tired of his questions. 

Aria tries to help Ezra get a teaching job, and we discover that Rosewood actually has a principal, which is by far the most disturbing revelation of the night. Plus Emily meets Olympic swimmer Missy Franklin and finds out Paige’s ex Shana, she of the year-round Halloween store, is actually a swimmer too. I guess Paige has a type!

Last week’s episode of Pretty Little Liars was so big, so crazy, and so full of potential game changers that it’s easy to see this week’s installment as something of a letdown. But the creative team behind Pretty Little Liarsis smart, infinitely smart really, because you can only stay in that edge-of-your-seat place for so long before it gets tiring. 

There’s keeping things fresh and moving the story along, but if you’re always trying to top yourself things can get absurd really quickly. And yes, I’m saying this about a show where last week Hanna rolled a police car into what looked like a very tiny puddle. 

After a big episode like last week’s, with Toby’s supposed “death”, the show slowed down the pace a bit. Because Pretty Little Liars is so good at juggling multiple storylines and keeping a million balls in the air, it would be easy to feel like a lot happened in this episode. But really, not much did. 

The show decided this episode would be Spencer’s show, and it cleared some of the more dramatic and heart-pounding elements out of the way to let actress Troian Bellisario do her thing. 

While Spencer had a lot of big, emotional moments and even spent her time in Radley in full Nancy Drew mode, the rest of the girls’ stories this week were a bit thin. Emily met an Olympic gold medalist and…that was about it. Aria is once more wrapped up in Ezra drama, and their relationship looks to soon return to its inappropriate beginnings. Hanna spent most of the episode sprouting “moving to New York” exposition and honing her new zen attitude toward crime. 

Make no mistake, this episode was all about Spencer, and as usual Bellisario hit it out of the park. Although I seriously wish Mona had chosen to bring a hairbrush on her visit to Radley instead of some cookies. Spencer really needs a style intervention. 

— Read the full recap including all the Ezria drama and Wilden’s return on BuddyTV HERE!!

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Is Toby Really Dead? 

This week on Pretty Little Liars, all of the liars completely flip out in their own unique ways.

For Spencer, a type-A (puns!) overachiever, this means actually ending up in a mental institution. If you’re going to flip out, you might as well commit 100 percent right? 

Emily continues playing Nancy Drew, even when every cooler head prevails upon her to let it go. But Emily has started up her side business in fighting crime and can therefore not be bothered with a little thing like common sense.

Hanna, finding a dead cop infinitely harder to shove into a lasagna box, slowly unravels. Her future life of crime is presaged in her fashion choice of leather jackets and business attire with weird spikes. Her outfit looks like what would happen after Sons of Anarchy and Smash spent a drunken night together.

Unlike Spencer, Hanna achieves a zen-like inner peace about her life of crime. “Whatever, we’ll just throw this car into a lake and then do some light meditation. The car always sinks Aria; such is the circle of life.

Finally, Aria starts to freak out about the implications of being some little kid’s stepmom.  While Spencer is going literally crazy, Emily is waiting outside what looks like the first act of Hostel, and Hanna is covering up the murder of a cop, Aria is dealing with a scrape.

This isn’t quite ‘out damn spot…on the rug!’ but it is perilously close to being the funniest Aria subplot in comparison with the other girls. I say this all the time, but it really does feel like Aria is on another show sometimes.&nbp

Is Toby Really Dead?

Obviously the biggest shocker of the night was the revelation that ‘A’ (or Mona) killed Toby. But is Toby really dead? I mean, would they have killed him off the show without forcing him to take his shirt off one final time?

I always assumed if Toby was going to die it would be in some tragic hot tub accident or he would be accidentally drowned while trying to recreate that one Backstreet Boys music video with all the water. It seems wrong to think such a big, important character would be shuffled off the mortal coil off-screen.

Why didn’t Spencer check the corpse’s face…or abs? If ‘A’ magically has control of all alphabet breakfast cereal, I don’t see why grabbing a sharpie and drawing on a tattoo is too hard to conceive.

—Read the full recap including Hanna’s zen new attitude towards crime and Spencer finally snapping at BuddyTV HERE!!

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Spencer Finally Snaps 

This week on Pretty Little Liars, Spencer finally completely loses her mind and it’s a glorious thing to behold. If you’ve been enjoying the half vampire, half rage-monster Spencer has become since finding out about Toby, than this was unhinged Spencer at her very best. 

On a skank spiral and with nothing to lose (her hairbrush having been lost many weeks ago) Spencer finally just snaps and dives directly for Mona’s jugular. It was like watching one of those nature documentaries on the science channel. Or like that moment in Mean Girls when Lindsay Lohan imagines the mall fountain as the communal watering hole. If it wasn’t for Wren and the surprisingly jacked academic decathlon member Andrew, Spencer would have ripped out Mona’s throat and then retaken her tribe of nerds. 

(PS: I think the show is giving teenage girls unrealistic ideas about life. Namely, that dudes in the academic decathlon look like extras from Magic Mike. The only magic there is the magic of television. Your debate team is probably not hiding an Abercrombie model. The more you know!)

Spencer’s amazing mental breakdown was clearly the highlight of this episode, the rest of the hour being more of a mixed bag. As usual, with Spencer off getting good intervention from Wren, poor Emily is left being the only Nancy Drew of the group. Meanwhile Hanna wraps herself more firmly in Caleb’s uncle-daddy storyline, while Aria’s big plot of the night involved spilling wine on a rug.

I’ve mentioned it before, but sometimes it literally feels like Aria is on a completely different show than the rest of the girls. Spencer is going insane, Hanna is reuniting her boyfriend with his deadbeat dad, Emily is almost being chopped in half by an elevator, and Aria is…trying to figure out how to lift a red wine stain out of a white rug. One of these things is not like the others.

Every episode of Pretty Little Liars usually contains about five thousand working parts and subplots. How they tie together can sometimes be a hodgepodge. Such is the case with this episode, where every moment we aren’t watching Spencer play strip academia seemed like a waste of perfectly good meltdown screen time. 

Giving the girls fairly equal screen time really didn’t work this week. Spencer and Emily’s plots were a lot stronger and more interesting than Hanna and Aria’s relationship capers. Who wouldn’t rather get to the bottom of the Alison mystery or watch Spencer leap across a table to strangle Mona? 

Next week it looks like the girls join forces again, but for this week the scattered plots made for an entertaining yet ultimately equally scattered episode. 

— Read the full recap including all about Spencer’s breakdown and Emily’s close call at BuddyTV HERE!!

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Toby Doesn’t Live Here Anymore 

This week on Pretty Little Liars, Spencer continues to spiral down the rabbit hole, Aria wears an actual rabbit on her shirt for no real reason, and Dr. Sullivan works some hypno-voodoo on Emily. This hypno-psychobabble magic is initially to help Emily reframe her experience killing Nate, but turns into her worst nightmare when she falsely remembers killing Alison. Dr. Sullivan: Rosewood’s worst and only psychiatrist strikes again! 

Once again, the lynchpin of the episode is just training the camera on Troian Bellisario and letting her break your heart. Spencer’s breakup spiral is a beauty to behold, as she just continues going more and more insane. Sane Spencer is a truly frightening creature, but off-the-deep-end Spencer is a whole different animal.

When things were going well, Spencer was the go-to girl for breaking and entering and general espionage. Now Spencer is carving Toby’s name into tombstones, like a really morbid Carrie Underwood. “I dug my key into the side of his…mother’s mausoleum tile!” Spencer’s country music career would be so weird.

By the end of the episodes the girls are finally like “Seriously though, what is up with Spencer? There’s normal breakup behavior and then there’s turning into an angsty teen vampire. Who’s the last one who saw her out in the sun?”

After finally letting Spencer in on the big Toby secret, the show has been steadily asking more questions about Alison’s final days. While Spencer twists in the wind with her hurt feelings, the rest of the girls are going back to the main mystery of the show. Instead of hunting after ‘A’, they’re trying to determine just what happened to Alison.

The theme of the week seemed to be unchained memories, as Emily recovered some big secrets from her psyche. Caleb also realized a big secret, but isn’t ready to deal with the repercussions yet. And Spencer realized that no matter how much she wants to hold on to the Toby from her memories, perhaps he was never real to begin with.

— Read the full recap including Emily’s unearthed memories, Spencer’s downward spiral, and Hanna and Aria’s questionable fashion choices at BuddyTV HERE!!

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Was Alison Pregnant? 

This week on Pretty Little Liars, the liars’ relationships are tested while Spencer slowly goes insane and no one even notices until she brandishes a giant pair of scissors like a horror movie villain. I’m not saying the girls are bad friends, but the general unwashed and unhinged look Spencer was sporting this whole episode seems like it should have been a tip off that something was wrong. 

But it’s hard to notice your best friend is walking around in a stupor when your own relationships are at risk. Between Paige flirting it up at ladies night, Ezra leaving to meet his son, and Caleb knifing brains in Mona’s locker, now isn’t a terrific moment in the love lives of our favorite liars. 

The follow-up to last week’s excellent game-changing episode moved the plot along at a breakneck speed and continued to drop more mysterious breadcrumbs along the way. Secrets were revealed, possible betrayals were uncovered, and a pretty huge discovery about Alison was unveiled. 

Spencer’s Heartbreak

The emotional cornerstone of the episode, however, was Spencer’s emotional and barely contained heartbreak. She walks around all episode with that particular unwashed look only people going through bad breakups sport. Somehow it takes most of the episode for her friends to notice something is seriously wrong with Spencer, but she looks about a hair’s breath away from snapping at any moment. 

She spends practically the whole episode either yelling at people or crying, her emotions barely contained behind her once-steely Hastings facade. It’s thanks to a great performance by Troian Bellisario that Spencer never seems weepy despite her constant crying. Instead she is angry, defiant, and broken. She’s finally questioning whether or not the girls might actually deserve the trouble ‘A’ rains down upon them. 

It’s exhausting just watching Spencer, whether she’s knifing a TV dinner or crying in a car while applying her makeup. She has the spent look of someone who has used up all her tears, yet has somehow still found more. 

But the great thing about Spencer, and about this show, is that she’s not willing to sit around and be the victim. None of the girls are, whether it’s Emily running through the woods after a hooded man or Hanna putting her stalking skills to good use. These girls aren’t willing to wait on the sidelines. They have always been proactive instead of reactive, even if the ‘A’ Team is always ten steps ahead. 

As the episode ends, Spencer sends what I can only imagine is a private eye to find out just where Toby’s ‘A’ key leads. She might be in a dark place, but no one sleuths like Spencer Hastings. 

— Read the full recap including Ezra finding out a big secrets and TOBY’S DO-RAG at BuddyTV HERE!

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Winter Premiere Recap: Was Another ‘A’ Team Member Revealed?

On the winter premiere of Pretty Little Liars, Mona makes her triumphant and psychotic return to Rosewood High, where there is absolutely no background checking when it comes to hiring creepy janitors.

Meanwhile the show begins peeling away some of the layers of mystery around the ‘A’ Team, including possibly learning the identity of another member of this murder-happy squad.

Here’s my theory: anytime someone takes off their shirt they are now immediately an ‘A’ Team suspect. This episode alone both Toby and Jason were shirtless, because this show really understands its audience.

We all know by now that Toby is an uncover creeper, but with the reveal in the final moments of the episode that Jason has a suspiciously rusty screwdriver-shaped hole in his side it’s looking more like Spencer’s half-bro is a little more than half-involved in the drama.

On Pretty Little Liars, no one is ever who or what they seem. Lucas spent most of this season looking like a meth addict about to shiv someone, but now he seems more like a victim. Byron Montgomery was never going to win any parent of the year awards (unless the category was ‘Best Use of Emotional Manipulation Related to Adultery’) but now he seems capable of murder. Mona might say she’s “better now” but we all know she’s still donning that black hoodie. And of course, now that we know Toby is playing Spencer every appearance and glare seems perfectly full of menace.

It’s been a few months since our last trip on the Halloween train with our favorite liars, and the show came back full steam ahead. Instead of easing the audience back into the show, we drop back in feet first. No time for a breather, there are mysteries afoot and skateboarders to run over!

We don’t even really learn what happened with Alison’s body bag showing up on the train. Was that Ali in there or just some more decorative jewelry made from her bones? And if the later, I’m sure we can assume it all went into Aria’s collection.

Having had the pleasure of taking part in a conference call with showrunner Marlene King, I was pleased to learn the creative team behind Pretty Little Liars has the show’s central mysteries well mapped out in advance.

On a show with as sprawling a cast of suspects as this one, it seems like it would be easy to drop the ball or introduce red herrings with no closure. But King assured that the writers have the beginning, middle, and end hammered down when it comes to the mysteries and this allows them to throw in subtle winks and clues along the way. Even props, according to King, can become very important to the overall tale.

The premiere introduced new clues for us all to puzzle over (Eh tu Jason?) and new characters to fear. But in my opinion the show’s brightest moment was when Aria showed up to the charity run in a hoodie with spikes on the shoulder. Because nothing says “I’m serious about this race” more than weighing yourself down with five pounds of metal on each shoulder.

—Read the full recap of all the ‘A’ Team action at BuddyTV HERE!!

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Interview: Gregg Sulkin Says Be Suspicious of Wesley

Gregg Sulkin’s career has been pretty magical, and not just because he played a werewolf for two seasons on Wizards of Waverly Place. The London native has found big success in this country, especially in the realm of entertainment beloved by teen girls.

Now he’s appearing on ABC Family’s hit murder mystery Pretty Little Liars as the younger brother of Aria’s main squeeze Ezra Fitz. Last season we found out Ezra was a bit more complicated than we initially thought. He’s got some baby mama drama and a wealthy family that’s just a little bit nuts. That’s where Wesley Fitzgerald, played by Sulkin, comes into the picture. Just like everyone in Rosewood, Wesley has some secrets we’ll soon discover when Pretty Little Liars returns January 8.

BuddyTV was lucky enough to speak with Sulkin about what we can expect from Wesley, playing that creepy Rosewood ambivalence, and what it’s like reuniting for the Wizards movie.

So obviously at BuddyTV we love Pretty Little Liars. Had you seen the show before you got cast?
No, I’d never seen the show. Of course I had seen the posters around town on all the billboards, it was kind of hard to miss because it’s everywhere. Every girl I think I know watches the show. I had never seen it, but of course I had heard of it.

What can we expect for Wesley coming up when Pretty Little Liars returns in January?
Well there’s lots! You’re going to see the relationship between him and Ezra grow. You’re going to see a lot more drama and you’re going to look into Wesley’s past. He’s a charming guy, so you may also see some possible love interests. You know, there’s always drama.

Well it seemed like there were some sparks flying between Wesley and Aria, who is obviously Ezra’s girlfriend. Are we going to see any more of them interacting in the season coming up?
Yes, you definitely will.

‘Pretty Little Liars’ Scoop: Showrunner Marlene King Dishes- Is a Male Character Coming Out?

This should come as no surprise, but expect a healthy heaping of drama when Pretty Little Liars returns to finish out its third season on January 8. On a conference call with reporters, showrunner Marlene King assured us that all the characters and couples are in for a rocky road in the second half of season three. 

“No one escapes the drama in season 3b,” King assured.

But could some of that drama come as a result of a male character questioning his sexuality? Pretty Little Liars has been highlighted as a show which handles the issue of gay teenagers with sensitivity and reality. This is due in large part to Emily Fields, played by actress Shay Mitchell, who is not only a core member of the liars but also a lesbian.

The show has received a GLAAD nomination this year, and rightfully so, as Emily’s dating life always gets as much drama, heartbreak, and attention as her straight counterparts. It shouldn’t be, but that’s rare on television.

King touched on how attached fans were to Emily’s first love Maya, citing her character as the hardest time they’ve had killing off a character…and they’ve certainly killed many!

So when asked about where the gay boys are in Rosewood, King admitted the writing staff had been toying with the idea.

“We actually have been talking about revealing that a character we’ve already established on the show might be questioning his sexuality,” King said. “So it’s possible that you will be seeing that.”

Who could it be? Your guess is as good as mine, but that’s not all King had to say about the upcoming season.

—Click to read the full article with all the scoop about Emily and Paige, a possible love triangle for Aria and Ezra, and a hint as to when Spencer finds out Toby’s secret at BuddyTV HERE!!