Pretty Little Liars - Recap: They Should Write a Book or Two About All of This!

Episode 20 of Season 4 of Pretty Little Liars, “Free Fall,” filled Aria Montgomery (Lucy Hale) in on that which the other Liars have known for a few episodes now and then some. Though, what did we actually learn about Ezra (Ian Harding) by the close of this week’s show? He has this great idea for a book series about all of this. Wait… Meanwhile, Spencer’s (Troian Bellisario) amphetamine addiction totally caught up with her, possibly giving us some new theories as to who tried to murder Alison. While Emily (Shay Mitchell) and Hanna (Ashley Benson) spent their most important screen time during the episode by visiting the reptile exhibit of a zoo, it became increasingly clearer that Mona (Janel Parrish) might be the key to everything. Here is the Recap and Review of Season 4 Episode 20 of Pretty Little Liars, “Free Fall”!

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Episode 20 began with Spencer Hastings awaking in her pajamas… behind the desk of Mr. Fitz. That’s right, everybody! Spencer allegedly slept walked her way all the way to Rosewood High and continued her unconscious studying of Ali’s diary there. She was discovered by none other than Ezra himself, who seemed totally threatening in his insistence that Spencer is heading into dangerous territory. In the school bathroom, Spencer quickly changed into her unfortunate gym outfit, if you can even call those sad rags clothes, and Emily and Hanna joined her to discuss the Aria situation. Though, it was sort of difficult to discuss Aria’s murderous boyfriend with Spencer looking like such a wreck. Soon enough, Ezra was covering his bases. In an attempt to start planting the seeds of Spencer’s sanity issues, Ezra pulled Aria aside and passed off Hastings’ school records, files that indicated a very similar past drug issue.

I’m not sure the ensemble leant to her by Hanna was any better for her image, but Toby (Keegan Allen) certainly didn’t seem to mind. Spencer has, of course, been dodging Toby as her drug-addled quest to destroy Ezra, the ultimate A, carries on. Poor Toby spent the entire episode basically begging Spencer for a date night, though it never actually came to be. In fact, Toby ended up becoming nothing more than an excuse to dodge dinner with her mother. Her mother, Veronica (Leslie Fera), in turn, was already being used as a means of illegally attempting to acquire more drugs from her doctor. Well, Spencer continued to try to pretend to be her mother's voice double over the phone, a move that eventually came back to bite her in the ass when the doctors called Hastings Manor to check in on her odd requests.

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Spencer was certain that the intervention that would take place during Episode 20 was the big reveal to Aria; however, the littlest Liar beat her to the punch. With evidence pegging Spencer’s drug problem thanks to the school record, Hanna and Emily simply couldn’t back Spencer in good conscience. The most frustrating scene this week had to be the moment in which Spencer began to figure out, bit by bit, that A had planted Wren’s prescription pad in her purse and cleverly undermined her entire investigation of Ezra. We didn't know for sure, however, whether or not A edited Spencer's records to indicate a very similar past experience with prescription drug abuse. Spencer, no offense, but it also didn’t help that you kind of mistook that film noir moment where Aria was nearly shot to death in the back of a club for reality.

He’s freakin’ A!!!!

No go, Spencer. I’ll be honest, though. I don’t feel like it really mattered whether Spencer was completely lucid or absolutely wasted out of her mind when it came to her research. The facts are the facts!

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Hanna and Emily reconvened in Hanna’s kitchen following Spencer’s meltdown. The two began to theorize what could possibly explain the entire Ezra ordeal. Hanna, for one, seemed to still believe that Spencer’s research, even the information dug up thanks to the extra energy from the pills, was valid. Emily, on the other hand, reasoned that A could have planted all of those clues to frame Aria’s boyfriend from the start. Luckily, Spencer arrived probably jonesin’ for another dose, yet she handed over the rest of her stash. If they’re going to trust her, she needs to be clean and going through withdrawals, not strung out and on faux speed! Well... In any case, Spencer concocted a clever scheme using the meeting place she pieced together from the diary. Apparently, Ali and Ezra regularly rendezvoused at some sort of particular romantic location. Remember, Alison is desperate for money and never made the pick-up from Shana. Emily still has that cash stashed in a bag of coffee grounds. If they could stage a fake meeting with Alison in which they pretended to drop off the cash, they could lure Ezra, the man most likely to be A, out of hiding.

All of this was planned behind Aria’s back. As Aria began to fill Ezra in on just how wacky Spencer reacted to their makeshift intervention, she nearly slipped and let Fitz in on Spencer’s accusations against him. A near-slip experience is basically a death wish for Spencer, though, as Fitz’s creep-o face indicated. Ezra took things a step further here, pressuring Aria to alert Spencer’s parents to her addiction issues, though Aria initially refused. Ezra also did an adequate job of painting his student, Spencer, as a sloppy writer and total lunatic. After all, Aria, Spencer is the girl who ended up locked away in an mental institution simply because she found a body in a motorcycle helmet with a tattoo stamped by his butt! Oh, wait… Fitz was never actually told about all of those gorey little details. Just like that, #ARIAFOUNDOUT. Well, I’m getting ahead of myself. #AriaBeganSnoopingNow.

Emily, meanwhile, did a fantastic job of convincing Ezra to take the bait and crash their fake meeting with Alison. At The Brew, Ezra sat sipping his coffee. Emily, feigning clumsiness, smashed about a thousand plates all at once on the pavement outside. While slowly scooping up the shards, Hanna and Spencer phoned her from afar and fed her exactly what to say out loud to lure Ezra to the zoo that evening. That is correct; Pretty Little Liars took us to the freakin’ zoo this week, and I was sooo happy! Zoos smell, but they’re so great.

Aria took matters into her own hands and ventured out to Ezra’s secret love cabin/ A’s dank evil lair on her own. There, she found the most high-tech keypad lock I’ve ever seen on the door of the most rundown cabin there probably ever was. I mean, seriously, the inside is nice! Having said that, I’d hate to ruin the magic for you, but I will anyway. Ezra’s cabin is the back of Merlotte’s from True Blood. They film on the same Warner Bros. lot! Aria managed to very quickly find the trap door to Ezra’s spooky lair that’s normally laden with pictures of all of her friends, but the basement was cleaned out beforehand. Noticing a strange gargantuan carnivorous cookbook on the table, Aria dug up Ezra’s secret stash hiding inside. The most incriminating piece of evidence she ever could have found was… a story written about Alison, the Liar. Yikes, Aria. Don’t look now, but your psycho soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend just pulled up in the dirt driveway! Aria swiped the pages, hopped out the window like a cute little lying bunny, and carelessly left her keys on the table. Ezra, needless to say, was not pleased.

Emily and Hanna wasted all there time waiting for Spencer to begin the plan at the reptile house at the Norris Town Zoo! That’s right; Ali and Ezra thought it was hot to kiss in front of poisonous snakes because, well, they are poisonous snakes! Makes perfect sense! Because she was supposedly hitting up Andrew for one last dose of drugs, Spencer was seriously late to show up posing as Ali in her ratchet blonde wig, but at least she made it one piece. From a distance, Hanna and Emily waited for the signal. I’m not sure exactly how the Liars managed to stay in the reptile house after the zoo officially closed, but nobody kicked them out. Once Spencer began to move towards the location of the stashed money, Spencer popped up behind her friends with a slightly better Ali wig in tow. Meaning, the person wearing the Ali wig through a few glass exhibits of lizards was not Spencer at all. Suddenly, the empty reptile house began behaving like a haunted fun house of doom. Lights flashed, exhibit speakers boomed, snakes hissed, and somewhere in their midst was someone masquerading as both a ratchet Ali impersonator and a drugged-out Spencer impersonator all at the same time. Who was this mysterious intruder invading their scheme? Good thing Emily managed to snag the dough before someone else could, and the trio of Liars made their escape.

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Previously, we witnessed Ezra crashing Mona’s seemingly stellar date with Mike Montgomery (Cody Christian), who almost received an “I love you” this week! Well, I think what we’re supposed to assume is that Mona is now caught between working with/ using Fitz and falling for Mike. Thus, it can be assumed that Mona was the one who later dealt with the Liars in the reptile house. This gets more confusing as the final scenes of Episode 20 transpired. Just bear with me.

There was a chase sequence at this point. Ezra trailed Aria through the woods, shouting like a crazy person for his girlfriend to trust him. He had an explanation, Aria! How could you not trust the man who’d begun to pen an entire novel about your formerly dead best friend? To make matters worse, the only means for Aria to escape the mountainous terrain of the forest was to literally take the last ski lift trip down the non-snowy slopes. Unfortunately, Ezra managed to snag a ride on the same seat as Aria, and the two were locked in together until they’d reach the summit of the slopes.

At home, Spencer was confronted by both her mother and Toby, who was called over following Veronica's concern for her daughter. Toby was no help, but he was certainly sad to learn that his girlfriend had been seemingly ditching him for pleasure. He left a nice Scrabble letter “s” necklace as a gift for Spencer, though! Meanwhile, it seems Spencer’s past drug issues were no fabrication after all, and this time, there will be consequences that go far beyond pulling strings.

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Brilliant.

The ski lift ride was obviously the best part of Episode 20. Ezra confessed to everything, and I’m not sure if we were meant to believe any of it. He did know Alison, and he knows she's still breathing today. In fact, he cared enough about her to obsessively attempt to solve this murder mystery for himself while documenting it all in a nonfiction crime novel. Aria was originally just research, so I’m guessing hooking up with a teenager was simply journalistic on Ezra’s part? This adds a whole new inappropriate dynamic to this student-teacher relationship. In the end, Ezra ended up knocking the typed pages of his tale from Aria’s hands. Lost forever to the forest floor! Well, that is until A later scooped them up. For what it’s worth, Ezra did claim to honestly love Aria, though I’m not sure how much that matters when there is a huge possibility that he got her friend pregnant and tried to bury her alive. Can you ever really get over that, Aria?

Aria returned home to find Mona on her sofa as her date with Mike winded to a close. She said nothing but walked up to her bedroom and began to sulk before violently tossing the book Ezra had gifted her straight into the lens of the camera. Wow, thanks, Aria, and here we were supporting you!

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Okay, there was a lot left for us to analyze by the end of Episode 20. First, if Ezra isn’t at all evil and is just a twisted freak who’s been stalking these teenage Liars for research, I’m probably going to be a little upset. Yes, that is totally bizarre and upsetting, but if A turns out to be someone trivial, I believe we all have a right to be pissed off. Anyway, Ezra seems too vindictive to simply be writing a novel about Ali’s murder. We also know that someone is actively out to get Alison, and things have sort of been narrowed down. Next, what’s Mona’s involvement? Does she know the truth behind Ezra’s book, and why would she care? By the way, who scooped up those pages? Lastly, knowing that Spencer’s drug addiction creates strange scenarios that involve things like vivid hallucinations and sleepwalking, could she have mistakenly tried to kill Alison the night she went missing, only to not remember the attack today? Remember, in Spencer’s dream from last week, Alison was afraid of her, and that all took place in Spencer’s subconscious. Honestly, can that kind of medication even do that to someone's mind when it's abused?

What did you think of Pretty Little Liars, Season 4 Episode 20, "Free Fall"? Were you happy with the big reveal? Do you believe Ezra? What is Mona's involvement? Could Spencer's drug use be behind the murder attempt on Ali?

Thanks for reading my Recap and Review of Pretty Little Liars, Season 4 Episode 20, "Free Fall"!