'Pretty Little Liars' Ep. 3.23 Recap - Creepy Carnivals and Candy Stripers

It’s been a while since the Liars have been seen together as a foursome, but at the start of Tuesday night’s episode, it looks the gang might be back together.  The girls are so excited to see Spencer that they are able to ignore the fact that Radley Sanitarium, from the inside, looks to be located on Shutter Island. 

They tell Spencer that a body was found in the woods far from where Spencer said it would be, and it’s not Toby.  This is good news to the girls, since apparently a random body showing up in Rosewood in and of itself is no reason for concern.  They expect the news to cheer Spencer up and make her want to go home, but to no avail – Spencer is not convinced and happy to stay put.

With her mom in New York, a very messy Hanna is crashing at the Fields’ residence.  She leaves Emily’s room (probably to Tasmanian Devil the rest of the house), just as Em’s mom enters, telling Emily not to get all bent out of shape about her crazy friend.  Emily asks her mom to tell her as soon as she hears anything about the I.D. of the body, and her mom agrees. 

If she hadn’t, Emily could’ve probably just waltzed on down to the police station to check out her mom’s computer herself like she usually does, but she’s too busy with swimming, Paige’s ex, and stepping in as replacement Spencer to be bothered with that right now.

Fresh off her promise to the Rosewood High School principal that there is nothing romantic going on between her and her former teacher, Aria and Ezra are out at a café holding hands.  Aria points out that this may not be the wisest idea, but Fitz insists that nothing is going to change.  Just then, Maggie calls.  Oh hey, change!  Malcolm’s karate class is getting out during Ezra’s substitute teacher interview, and despite the fact that Maggie doesn’t trust Aria after the infamous chin bump fiasco, Aria agrees to pick him up.

Back at school, the girls are trying to figure out a way to show Spencer that the body in the woods only had a 4-pack, and therefore couldn’t have been Toby.  Aria suggests they check out the report, but Emily points out, “the report doesn’t say ‘not Toby’ it says ‘John Doe.’”  For a small town, there sure are a lot of Does turning up lately.  Emily decides that the only logical thing to do would be to sneak into the morgue and take a picture of the dead body to show to Spencer.  What could go wrong there?

Back at Radley, Spencer and her new buddy, Eddie “E.” Lamb, who is kind of like the Cinna of the nuthouse, are interrupted from looking at a board game by a dapperly dressed Wren. 

There’s clearly some tension between Eddie and Wren, and I personally am totally Team Eddie.  After all, it’s been 30 seconds, and Wren hasn’t said a single stereotypically British thing yet!  After Eddie leaves, Wren asks Spencer if Wren is to blame for her mental breakdown, which is more than a little presumptuous.  He notices Spencer eyeing the board game that Eddie gave to her, which looks to be some sort of Risk treasure hunt.  He tells her that Eddie used to play that game with Mona.  This Eddie sure does like hanging out with crazy teenage girls. 

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Back at school, Aria’s mom is in her empty classroom again.  I think she actually got fired earlier this season, but no one at the school has the heart to tell her, so they just let her linger around cleaning chalkboards and stuff.  She sees Hanna walking by, who just came from a courtyard make-out session with Caleb. 

Ella asks Hanna about how much she and her mom knew about Caleb’s dad, Jamie, before they recommended him to Pastor Ted.  A member of the church restoration committee, Ella learned that Jamie took the church bell to be fixed, and came back with one $8,000 cheaper.  Rosewood must have some sort of bell pawnshop, so this is a major reason for concern.  Hanna was already suspicious of Jamie after she saw him pay for a pizza with what appeared to be money he stole from the church.  That dinner Jamie is treating her and Caleb to later is looking a little less appealing for Hanna.

Over at Radley, Spencer follows what appears to be a map drawn on the unnamed board game, which leads to an unlocked window. 

They really need to up the security budget in this place.  Later, while trying to lure Spencer home with a new blouse, Spencer’s mom asks what happened between Spencer and Toby.  She then drops a bomb on her clearly already unstable daughter, saying, “The last time I saw someone in this state, clinging to a secret it was Alison.  A few weeks later she was dead.”  Flashback to Spencer’s mom looking for a late-night snack, when houseguest Ali comes walking in bleeding from the mouth and saying she had to go home for a minute.  

She begs Mrs. Hastings not to tell her parents, and she’s clearly pretty worked up.  

Back in the present, Spencer’s mom asks Spencer “Is Toby not the person that we thought he was?”  Well, that depends.  If you thought he was a hoodie-wearing accomplice to a mysterious woman in a red coat working closely with a possible sociopath, then you were spot on!

At dinner, Jamie gives Hanna a gold necklace as a thank you gift for getting him his job at the church.  His phone rings, and he makes a comment about cell phones that sounds very curmudgeon-y, before realizing it’s boss man Pastor Ted and excusing himself.  When he returns, he reveals he just got fired for his alleged bell tower switch-em-up, and leaves to go try and sort it out.

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Later, Hanna and the other two sane Liars sneak into the morgue by wearing candy striper outfits because at this hospital, credentials are way less important than cute costumes. 

With Aria on the lookout, Hanna and Emily enter the morgue, prompting Hanna to misquote another 90s movie saying, “I smell dead people.”  In case the situation needed to get creepier, the girls discover the John Doe is inside his body bag wearing an A mask, just as Aria sees Red Coat get out of and then back into the elevator.  The girls haul out of there, just barely getting a look at the man’s face.  Whaddya know, it’s not Toby.

Spencer and Eddie are bonding about her new favorite board game, which Wren had told her was Mona’s as well.  Eddie clearly is not a fan of Wren, and when Spencer asks him if Wren was behind the faulty visitor’s badges, Eddie answers, “Trust your instinct.  Mine told me the minute that guy got here, it wasn’t for the right reasons.” He gives her a pill, but after he leaves, she takes it out of her mouth and hides it in her pillowcase, along with a small stash of similar pills.  At a quick glance, her meds all kind of look like jellybeans, and since this mental hospital has let fake visitor passes and faulty locked windows go under the radar, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were giving their patients candy.

Back at school, Caleb finds Hanna for possibly the first time in the show’s history, doing homework.  She’s cramming for algebra, and is far too distracted by it to discuss Caleb’s daddy issues.  She probably should hunker down and study, since she’s taking algebra as a senior, but Caleb presses her.  She tells him about the dice-decorated fiver, and says she’s not sure his dad has really changed.

Over at karate class, Aria is waiting to confuse Malcolm about his family dynamic even further.  When the class lets out, however, Malcolm is nowhere to be seen, and his instructor tells Aria that he left with a young girl named (gasp!) Aria Montgomery.  She asks Aria if something is wrong, and Aria, looking frazzled, says no.  Aria, I know you’re not used to the parenting thing, but usually when children get kidnapped, you tell people.  Aria finds a poster for the town carnival in Malcolm’s cubby, and guess which letter is circled!  Over at the carnival, Malcolm seems perfectly comfortable, yukking it up with someone wearing a black hoodie and black leather gloves.  Stranger danger, Malcolm!

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When Aria arrives at the carnival, she finds her mom, who decides now is a good time to discuss her boyfriend’s insta-family.  Aria sees Malcolm in the distance with a hooded A figure and hurries past her mom, but when she chases after them, she loses them in the crowd.

Back at the Marin house, Hanna has either decided to ignore the fact that her mom didn’t want her staying home alone, or the Fields have kicked her out for being too messy (they are a military family, after all).  The doorbell rings, and it’s Jamie, who tells them he’s been trying to make sense of the bell heist.  Caleb’s not buying it, and lashes out at his dad, getting emotional when he tells him their relationship is done. 

Wanting to deliver a copy of J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey (Franny is a genius in the novel) to Spencer, Eddie is approached by Wren, who tells him Spencer needs her rest.  After a brief back and forth, Wren asks, “We’re not having the same problem again, are we, Eddie?”  Congrats to Wren for being somewhat authoritative for the first time ever!

Back at the carnival, Aria is on the phone with Emily, wondering if she should call the police to report a missing child.  Since this is no-brainer, Emily tells Aria to walk to the police station, and she’ll meet her there.  Hanging up, Aria sees a tent for a Faust puppet show, and inside finds Malcolm eating ice cream and looking like in addition to being abducted by a person, he may have also just been abducted.  Aria asks who picked him up from karate, and he says it was her friend, Alison.  Oh Malcolm, you have so much to learn!

At the precinct, Emily runs into her mom, who for the first time seems annoyed her daughter keeps bothering her at work.  She’s staying late, and acting hurried and carrying a missing person box, says she’ll explain later.  When she arrives home, she tells Emily she has information that Emily has to keep from her friends.  Oh Pam, you have so much to learn! 

She takes Emily’s phone away, which somehow guarantees secrecy, and tells her that they found another body, right where Spencer said Toby’s was.  Due to trauma, they haven’t yet been able to identify it.  Freaked, Emily realizes Spencer could be right about Toby after all.

Speaking of Spencer, she is wandering the halls of Radley because this place is not exactly Fort Knox.  She must have kept some of the clothes her mom brought her because she’s suddenly wearing a white nightgown (very Girl Interrupted of her) that I’m pretty sure they don’t usually distribute at the sanitarium.  There’s a light breeze in this indoor facility, making Spencer appear particularly ghostlike.  She’s following the sound of a woman humming, and in the next room, finds Ali.  Looks like another friend is about to be visited by pseudo-ghost dream Ali.  Possibly trying to seduce another one of the Liars, Ali invites Spencer to dance. 

Spencer asks Ali if Toby gave her the bloody lip, and Ali replies, “Girls fight much dirtier than boys.”  Ain’t that the truth!  She then asks Ali about the star drawn on Mona’s board game, and Ali directs her to the next room over.  In the room, there’s a rocking horse with a star on it, an innocent toy that Pretty Little Liars decided to make creepy again by hiding things in its neck.  Inside, Spencer finds a staff nurse badge with Mona’s picture and the name “Ali Dee” written on it.  Staff badge or not, wouldn’t someone recognize a former patient walking around?  She also discovers a CeCe Drake visitor’s badge, authorized by Wren.  Suddenly, Ali disappears, and Wren is standing in the doorway inquiring what Spencer is doing.  She confronts him, asking why he would violate Mona’s no visitor policy for CeCe.  He says that CeCe got kicked out of college (or has he calls it, “University”) for a stunt Ali pulled at a frat party.  Since CeCe was able to recover from that, she thought she could help Mona get over what Alison did to her.  When Spencer asks how CeCe knew Mona was in Radley in the first place, he replies, “Melissa called her.”

Ever the happily family, Ezra tells Aria she’s Malcolm’s new hero.  According to Maggie, “he mumbled something about puppets, and then fell right asleep.”  Sounds to me like a concussion, but whatever.  Overwhelmed with the stress of knowing someone pretending to be the ghost of her best friend kidnapped her boyfriend’s son earlier that day, Aria says she can’t do it anymore, and leaves.

Back at one of Rosewood’s curious amount of creepy carnivals, Hanna and Caleb are being cute and Hannah’s pants are awesome.  Caleb goes inside to get coffee refills, but comes back as the bell tolls to see her reading a text:  “Hear that?  It’s the sound of your mistake.  When you want the bell back, gimme a ring!”

Instead of talking with Caleb about the text that implies his dad was framed, Hanna brings her phone to Aria’s house.   Suddenly, Emily comes running in, somehow bypassing her mom’s fool proof “if I take her phone away, she’ll have no way of telling her friends” plan.  She reveals the news about the second body, saying they found Spencer’s purse close by.

IN her room, Spencer opens up her pillowcase, which is as much of a hiding spot as she needs, considering the security at Radley.  From it, she removes the pills, along with her very own A team hoodie and two tickets to the Faust tent.  Looks like Spencer wanted to get to know Malcolm!  We hear a dialogue between Mona and Spencer, presumably from when Mona came to visit.  During it, Spencer says, “You don’t have to ask me again, Mona.  I’m in.” 

At the episode’s end, we see a body being rolled into the morgue, conveniently exposing Toby’s tattoo, the same one Spencer saw in the woods.  Could Toby really be dead?  Has Spencer turned on the girls?  If Malcolm’s mom is Alex Mac, does that mean he’s able to morph into that silver goo stuff, too?  Maybe we’ll find out next week on the spring finale of Pretty Little Liars!

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