Pretty Little Liars Season 3, Episode 2 Recap: Who Is on the "A" Team?

It’s no lie: We loved this episode! There were tons of clues — and usually getting clues on this show is like pulling teeth. (Get it — “teeth”?) In this week’s Pretty Little Liars (Season 3, Episode 2: “Blood Is the New Black”), we found out soup can be a dangerous weapon; the girls learn that Jenna has a lot in common with Jack Nicholson (meaning they both wear sunglasses indoors even though they don’t need to); and we plan to be next in line to get a massage from Toby.

Wherein Aria Gets Byron to Read the Writing on the Wall (Literally)

Father’s Day happens to be this weekend (in real life), but we’re guessing that it’s gonna be a looong time before Aria (Lucy Hale) and Byron (Chad Lowe) do any father-daughter bonding, considering that Aria and her dad make Angelina Jolie and Jon Voight seem like the best of friends. Wait — so trashing your dad’s office and framing his mistress isn’t the best way to tell Dad you love him? Who knew!

Of course, the big mystery now is just who does that earring belong to? We had assumed that it belonged to Mere-Death (as Ali seemed to pronounce her name), but since it apparently doesn’t, we can’t help but wonder if Byron had another woman on the side — or more likely, if Alison (Sasha Pieterse) planted the earring there. And by the way, could Aria really not think of a more appropriate memento for Ali’s coffin than an earring from the floor of her dad’s office? Not exactly heartfelt.

We could write something about how it’s promising that Aria and Ezra (Ian Harding) successfully had dinner with Ella, or that we’re impressed that Aria got Ez to help Emily (Shay Mitchell). But frankly, all we can think of regarding Ezra is what his underwear drawer looks like. This underwear drawer is to us what a jewel-encrusted artifact is to Indiana Jones — we’d do anything to see it, even if it means fighting scary Nazis.

Wherein Hanna Picks a Very Strange Time to Give Mona a Makeover

Hanna (Ashley Benson) may not be great at geometry, but a love triangle is a different story, with Wren (Julian Morris) giving Hanna complex medical jargon, making Caleb suspicious. (And what hot love triangle doesn’t involve complex medical jargon?) We still think Caleb and Hanna will work out their issues (of course, when don’t they have issues?), but we’re worried that Wren is up to something. And we’re waiting for the day when he stops flirting with underage girls, but it sure hasn’t come yet.

We were starting to think that Mona (Janel Parrish) was pursuing a lifelong dream of becoming a mime and therefore would never talk again. (Instead of pretending to being trapped in a box like most mimes do, she could pretend to be trapped in the trunk of a car.) That is, until she finally asks Hanna about the new texts. But does Mona know who’s sending them? Then again, we’re not sure how much we would trust someone who has such an unconventional use for tweezers. (Who knew that tweezers would be something that ever require an instruction manual?) 

Wherein Emily’s Future Goes Down the Drain... Along With That Tooth Necklace

You know that things have gone drastically wrong when you’re on the brink of repeating a grade and yet Hanna is somehow in the clear. But that’s exactly the situation Emily finds herself in, having missed so many classes. That’s why it doesn’t hurt when your teacher is also your best friend’s mom — but you’d think that before filling out Em’s test for her, Ella would have at least thought to shut her classroom door first. C’mon, Ella — that’s “Sinister Behavior 101.”

But it’s not easy to concentrate on English exams when you’re having flashbacks to being driven around by Jenna. By the way, we’re just going to assume that newly un-blind Jenna (Tammin Sursok) doesn’t actually have a valid driver’s license, right? (Of course, given how many people have been hit by cars on this show, we’re guessing the Rosewood DMV is fairly lax.) 

And in case anyone is thinking about getting us a necklace as a gift, we would much prefer a necklace with candy on it to a necklace with human teeth on it. (But please don’t drop it in the toilet before you give it to us.) And does this mean that we can add the Tooth Fairy to the list of possible “A” suspects?

Wherein Spencer Realizes She Now Has Two Parents Whom She Can’t Trust

Remember the Jim Carrey film Liar Liar, where a kid makes a wish to prevent his father — a lawyer — from being able to lie? We’re thinking that Spencer (Troian Bellisario) would like that same power after this episode, given her mom’s deception about defending Garrett (Yani Gellman). (Then again, pretty much everyone on this show could stand to be a bit more honest.)

And we still can’t figure out why on earth Spencer’s mom would ever agree to represent Garrett, but we wonder if Garrett’s “girlfriend” (i.e., Melissa) has something to do with this. Our motto: When in doubt, blame Melissa.

Of course, the main thing we’re mad at Spencer’s mom for this week is for interrupting that ultra-steamy massage-turned-makeout session between Spence and Toby, just as Toby’s shirt was coming off. How dare she! And we never want to stop looking at Toby without his shirt, since Toby’s abs are about as amazing as Jesus’ abs are in every Renaissance and Baroque painting ever made. (Seriously — what was Jesus’ fitness secret? We want to know!)

Clues:

- The girls have every reason to question Emily’s faulty, alcohol-soaked memory, but it seems like Jenna was the one who drove Emily to Ali’s grave. So does that mean that Jenna is definitely on the “A” team? And what else could Jenna have wanted out of Ali’s coffin (besides perhaps her teeth) to justify digging up the coffin? No offense to Jenna, but she doesn’t seem like the type to do a lot of digging unless it’s absolutely necessary.

- Spencer’s mom siding with Garrett is just really creepy. What would make Veronica decide to defend Garrett in court? And does this situation somehow have to do with Melissa, since we know how close Garrett and Melissa had gotten at the end of Season 2. Oops, sorry about that — the less that any of us has to picture Garrett and Melissa making out, the better.

- Speaking of Spencer, we have no idea how she plans to use the knowledge of Jenna’s vision against her, but we have a feeling it’ll be awesome — until it inevitably comes crashing down on the girls in some way.

- It appears that Mona’s whole “insane and silent” routine may be an act (although that was definitely real blood from those tweezers). Mona must know who’s been sending the new batch of “A” texts and whether that person is in fact Ali, whom Mona saw sitting in her hospital room last week. Another clue to suggest it’s Ali? The fact that “A” was wearing the red coat in the final scene while buying enough hoodies for a “team” of people. Hoodies have never been so popular.

- It appears that several members of the Montgomery family get spied on this week, including Aria at her home while holding the Earring of Doom, and Ella in her classroom while fraudulently completing Emily’s test for her. Is there any doubt that someone is gonna find out about what Ella did, leading to her possibly getting fired from the school? We sadly agree.

- Meredith applying for a job at Aria’s school doesn’t help Aria and her dad’s already-frosty relationship. In fact, things are so chilly between Aria and Byron that nearby birds have started migrating south. We now wonder if Ali and Meredith had more interactions than we realize, given that Ali helped Aria catch her dad and Meredith in the act. So did Ali plant those earrings in Byron’s office because she was mad at Meredith for some yet-unexplained reason? 

Other Things That Need to Be Discussed:

- Until Hanna threw that chair, we had assumed that the only way a chair could cause you pain was if it didn’t provide your back with enough lumbar support. By the way, maybe Hanna can start a petition to get “Chair Throwing” added to the list of sports at this year’s Olympic games? We smell a gold medal for our girl.

- There was much talk about earrings this week, but we would pass on the drab ones that Aria found in Byron’s office in favor of the foot-long, blue-and-yellow, feather-like earrings that Hanna wore early in the episode. Those earrings resemble tassels from a graduation cap — and given what happened this week, they might be the closest thing that poor Em ever gets to a graduation tassel.

- We kept waiting for Hanna to give Jenna another good slap, but it sadly never came. Make it happen soon, Hanna, since it appears that your slap in Season 2 didn’t really take.

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