The intended prime suspect for most of the night was clearly Spencer’s dad, with his checks made out to ‘cash’ and his buying Spence the Titanic diamond and his quoting of 90’s hip hop songs.  A rich, white Mitt Romney-type only references Young MC when he’s got something to hide, right? Plus, Melissa was all ‘I’m pretty sure that dad killed Alison, so definitely focus your attention on him and DON’T LOOK AT ME LOOK OVER THERE!!!’, so I’m sure he’s definitely guilty and she’s definitely innocent.

But then there were other weird happenings, like Maya buying a ticket for San Francisco but then driving away from the bus station with some dude. Sounds like someone wants people to THINK she left town.  Speaking of the Maya thing, do we really think that cops would be investigating the disappearance of a 32 17 year old who left a note saying that she was running away? Did they suspect for some reason that she wrote the note under duress, like with a gun pointed at her or something? Unless that note was crafted from cut-out magazine letters and was also splattered with blood and possibly semen, there is no way that this was realistic.  And don’t even get me started on The Glovey Shot™ – the story of Maya running away made the front page of the NEWSPAPER? Bitches, please.

More weirdness came from Aria’s brother Mike, who was back from wherever and also was suddenly jovial and sweet and no longer an emo nightmare.  He kept insisting that Aria go to the father-daughter dance because it would help her keep up her Holden cover and get their sad and totally ineffectual father off her back.  From what I remember about Mike when he was last on the show four years ago, he was kind of a dick? Who sort of hated Aria? He clearly wants her to break up with Fitz (I picked up the subtext of the scene where he explicitly said that she should break up with Fitz), so why is he helping her by telling her to go to the dance? Also, he’s a dj now. God, EVERYONE’S a dj now. I hope the female population of Rosewood High and their fathers really like My Chemical Romance.

Mike went all Relationship Yoda on Weeping Poet Dad too, telling him to hear Aria out about Fitz.  Mike, I don’t understand your motivations which leads me to believe that you are either purposefully fucking with people’s heads, or you are off whatever medication they surely gave you while you were away.  You are never around and when you are around you make no sense and I, for one, do not care for it.

Nobody casually destroys expensive technology like Hanna Marin. First it was the ol’ flash drive in a blender trick, and now she’s just tossing her phone into sinks full of water. Phones don’t grow on trees, Hanna! Way to overreact to the threat of a 100lb woman politely insisting that you please hand over your phone.  It’s kind of like a soldier swallowing his cyanide capsule because it started raining or something (yep, definitely exactly like that).  Get a grip. I’m saying that the girl had less destructive options, like…WALKING AWAY.  That probably would have been just as good.

Speaking of overreacting to the Threat of Ashley, why did Aria have to leave the dance early to go talk to her? She couldn’t have done it the next day? Man, for a tiny person, Ashley’s got some serious swagger to provoke the kinds of reactions she gets out of those girls.  Maybe she’s a wizard and everyone knows and they just never talk about it, but they all know what she’s capable of so they freak out when she starts butting into things.  PLEASE TELL US IF ASHLEY IS A SECRET WIZARD, SHOW, SO THAT THESE THINGS MIGHT START TO MAKE SOME SENSE!

But Wizard Ashley is too smart for the likes of Aria Montgomery (aren’t we all), so she didn’t buy a word of the shit Aria told her (seriously Aria?  you created a police report out of thin air that happens to look EXACTLY like the real one?  GOOD COVER STORY – YOU’RE SUCH A PROFESSIONAL LIAR).  Ashley called a meeting of the minds with Ella and they discussed the sitch while drinking coffee out of squound mugs.  Ella doesn’t like the idea of involving the cops because A ‘knows things about our family that could hurt Aria’.  Hmmmmmmmmmm.  Another secret sibling? Ella and Byron are actually a lesbian couple and Ezra is Aria’s biological father?  I CAN ONLY DREAM.

Of course, later, Spencer’s dad had a totally legit-sounding explanation for why he had a check stub for $15,000 from around the time that Alison disappeared as well as a folder full of creepy photos of her – he had hired a private investigator to try to find out what happened to her. Why, you ask?  Well, because he thought that maybe his precious Melissa had killed her.  He knew that Melissa had been meangirling Ali and thought maybe she took things too far.  Also, his gun is missing, but we knew that right?  Didn’t we see the Gloved One take it a few weeks ago?  I can’t be bothered to check.

So, Mr. Hastings and Melissa are pointing fingers at each other, Mrs. Hastings is nowhere to be found (I would totes ditch this family of lunatics too if I had the chance) and Spencer’s head is probably going to explode soon.  Partly because her family seems like a bunch of murdering murderers, but also because this happened:

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! What was that all about?  Was it even Toby? It could literally be ANYBODY, so I’m not going to think about it too hard because I’m sure we’ll know who it was within the first five minutes of next week’s episode.

Aria got a call from that phone dude and he told her that Allison was getting texts from a second address, in addition to Melissa’s old law firm.  Zoinks!  When the girls drove to the out of town location, they found a doll hospital, which is totally a thing, don’t even worry about it.  And it looked like this:

I think this hospital might be kind of bad at doing its job.

Looks like this window could use a serious makeover by this guy:

If you're too young to know who this is, I don't want to hear about it.

While outside the doll parts farm, Aria put on Vivian Darkbloom’s coat and some dude was like, ‘Vivian?’.  So…this will be something.

Three episodes to go you guys. We can do it. The promos for next week are below (along with a screencap from one of them because it was too damn funny – skip directly to the comments if you don’t want to see it).  Check ‘em out and then hit the comments with updated theories, complaints about the complete lack of Wren in this episode or whatever you like.

US Promo:

Canadian Promo:

I know that you don’t have to watch the promos if you want to remain spoiler-free, but I cannot resist posting this screencap, because it is hilare.  Sorry.

C’mon – you know you’re coming back next week to find out what the fuck this is all about, right? Aye, mateys.