In which I am judgy about how the show handles Maya. Unfun fact I learned from a podcast, this episode has ~3 minutes of Maya before she runs off into the night, while we spend at least 4 minutes on Aria at Holden’s tournament alone. Big meh.
The show decides to punish me for paying attention, because they have Aria discuss Spencer sleeping over for a week since the previous episode, followed by Emily emerging with the state championship swimming trophy.
Emily re-joined the team a week ago and she’s competing/the big star?
The power of Emily Fields, I guess.
Can’t believe we see none of these Sparia sleepovers, SMH.
Maya greets Emily with a gigantic sign, but magically disappears when Caleb gets arrested and the girls are discussing that. Where else does she have to go, she doesn’t even go to this school anymore.
Hanna does not know what a hotspot is and I do not think she learns what it is even by the end of the episode
OK let’s summarize the Aria plot really quick: Holden’s secret is a martial arts competition, which is a secret because he has a heart condition. Aria’s approach to this is to...follow him to his tournament and watch him compete.
Aria, you accomplished nothing by showing up here, this is very Ella-coded behaviour.
2A is like, Jason is here to be hot to Aria and be a bit of a creep who is part of the NAT club. 2B is like, Jason is here to be bros to Spencer, please forget any mention of us saying he was part of NAT, Spencer feels no need to bring that up.
It’s very in-character of Spencer, who will want to believe in her family always, and well, Jason is family.
Aria has a weird little convo with Jonah while the liars eavesdrop - everyone looks to Spencer for the money, but her bank account has been locked since they all got arrested in the midseason finale
Maya shows up to the swim team party prep very sad because her parents found a joint in some boxes and want to send her off to True North again. Maya’s offscreen parents suck, they have fallen very far from the hippies who have tattoos for their wedding rings.
While I do find it cute that Ashley and Hanna are so down to host a party for Emily’s team, at least until they get dragged into the police station, again I have questions about the timeline. Emily was off the team till a week ago, why is she hosting. Do they not normally have celebration parties and this is Emily’s desparate attempt to feel like part of the team, and that is why Ashley is icing store-bought cookies like a knockoff Pam Fields
JK JK Pam Fields does not want a bunch of teenagers in her house, she would not do this.
Wilden, as the one cop in Rosewood who likes digging for evidence, no matter how inappropriately, has actually consulted the hospital cameras and realized the girls went into the morgue. He of course drags only Hanna and Ashley in because he likes a power play.
Spencer confronts her dad. It’s very Spencer to only confront her dad about the cheating once it ties into the mystery. We learn that the Dilaurentis’s moved away to Atlanta when Jessica was pregnant with Jason, and moved right next door when Spencer was 5 years old. That’s about ~11 years away? Weird-ass behaviour.
At the swim team party, the team is...watching a recording of the meet they just competed in? Sure.
Emily comments that Paige was like a rocket coming off the platform, and it’s Hanna who has to point out to Emily that Maya is clearly bummed out over in the corner. Good job, Hanna.
Emily is not a particularly great girlfriend in this moment, she would like to go back to the :D :D :D energy of the party
The Spanna CTRL-A scene...I love it....Hanna asks Spencer if she can hack and Spencer is like that’s what Caleb is for and you can tell this is just how Caleb is categorized in Spencer’s mind: Hanna’s bf who can hack shit for us
Anyway they figure it out, mystery 4-digit code and all, and it’s fun to me that it’s specifically Hanna and Spencer who save Caleb here.
Spencer makes a point of saying Caleb’s password is almost as complicated as her own.
Emily finds Maya smoking weed outside and I have at least two ??? comments about this scene
The first is Maya saying “No more about the teammates” - I know there was supposed to be some kind of Maya-Paige confrontation this episode that fell through because of scheduling.
I keep trying to reverse-engineer it given Maya’s bizarre comment here and Paige’s even more bizarre comments in the next episode and coming up empty. Like, I can’t tell to what degree the bizarreness is because they are setting up plot/mystery stuff for next season, versus insufficiently replacing that scene.
In canon as it stands, is Paige even at this party? Maybe if she only heard the last bit of this patio conversation that would explain her opinion of Maya next episode lmao.
Okay, my second ??? comment is that Emily reacts to Maya lighting a joint like she walked in on Maya shooting up heroin. It’s very weird the way the show frames this as some kind of betrayal, when Emily literally smoked with Maya in the pilot + even Maya at her worst here does not appear to be the type of stoner who has it disrupting the rest of her life.
The biggest problems Maya has are her parents’ overreactions and whichever creeper’s texting her nonstop
Anyway, Maya decides to run away to SF, does the obligatory asking Emily to leave with her, Emily is not down, Maya sprints off into the night as one does from the Marin patio
In this final Emily/Maya episode, they do not even hug or kiss. Another unfun fact.
Lol when Ashley walks into the party from the station you see her visibly decide she is not in the mood for any of this teenage bullshit and that all of this is Hanna’s problem now
The sad deflated shark as Emily is calling Maya at the end of the episode....the real MVP of the Sharks to me
the way they portray it like byron is being unreasonable for being so strict with aria after they found out about ezra like............no! he’s right! it was a bad thing and he should be trying to protect her!
