I wasn’t in love with this episode. I think I let my expectations build up too much after seeing the promo last week that made it look like the majority of the ep would take place at crazy Noel’s house with crazy Jenna by his side, getting drunk and playing threatening party games. Don’t get me wrong; the dropping of the love bomb all over Aria was hilarious (but still confusing), and the game of Truth or Dare was fun, but aside from those two things, a lot of nothing happened and Spencer was hugely disappointing with her willful stupidity (I guess she really decided to embrace her inner Aria Daphne after all).

Let’s start with Emily – she’s happy and in love with Paige (uh oh, ten to one odds that Paige either buries someone, or shows up buried, in someone’s backyard very soon), and at the start of the hour was still oblivious to the contents of the Maya Space website. I still can’t get over the fact that this sounds like a hopelessly behind-the-times Italian talking about his favorite social networking site. I even do the hand gesture when I say it. You know the one. The same one you’d do if you were talking about a spicy meatball. And that’s not racist, because some of my best friends are Italian and that is an unimpeachable defense to a racism charge as we all know.

She eventually sees the site thanks to Hanna, so she sits in her room watching Maya read some of the most seventh grade style poetry that I’ve heard since actual seventh grade. It made both Emily and I cry, but for different reasons.

Despite all of the eyesex he had last week with Spencer, Caleb has decided that he’s not giving up on Hanna, so he posed as A to get a meeting with her. She finally broke down and told him about A’s involvement with his mom and it BARELY SEEMED TO REGISTER. Just me? If I was Caleb, I would have been throwing stuff across the room if I found out some under-medicated teenage dipshit had tried to kill my mom as part of a high school revenge scheme. She wants him to keep his distance from her as a safety measure, or because his hair is ridic and she’d rather make out with Dr. Wren, but he’s not having it.

Okay, Spencer and Aria. This is where all of the action was this week, with Spencer dealing with the fact that she FORGOT TO APPLY TO COLLEGE and Aria dealing with a bombshell about her boyfriend. Sort of. Maybe. I need input on this one.

So Spencer found her early admission application to U Penn (Penn State substitute I presume?) at the bottom of her bag, and immediately I called shenanigans. I was not HALF the student that Spencer is when I was in high school, but when it came to stuff like college applications, there’s no way that I would have forgotten that I had one all stamped and ready to go in my purse. But conveniently Cece, the Liars’ sudden new BFF, knows a guy who works in admissions at the school, who just happens to be going to a party that Cece was invited to that night, and she tells Spencer that she can give him her application there. SURE.

The party turns out to be at the Kahn family lakehouse and Cece is apparently really tight with Noel’s older brother. More NAT clubbers? Also, the hand stamp at the door of the private house party was the same as the one that Maya and Holden had. Cece was all nicey-nice to the girls and then at the party seemed to be showing Spencer and Aria off like she was a gross frat dude bringing a couple of naive high school girls to some kind of Lifetime movie date rape party. I believe at one point she introduced them as her ‘ducklings’, so we know she’s obnoxious anyway.

Then they sat down to play only the Truth half of Truth or Dare, with Aria going up against Noel Khan, who was ALL about trying to get her to admit that she fucked their teacher. However, Aria was suddenly all crafty because he wasn’t technically her teacher when she started sleeping with him, so she didn’t end up admitting much.

The better match up was Spencer and Jenna. They went toe to toe, with Jenna trying to get her hands on the video that showed half of Rosewood coming and going from Ali’s room on the night that she disappeared and Spencer trying to get info about the night the grave was dug up. Noel blew Jenna’s former story that she had seen Emily drunk in the street – they had actually found her at that diner. But was that Noel in the flashback? Or one of the literal dozens of other guys on the suspect list?

But by far the most ludicrous thing that happened at the party was Cece telling Spencer that the mysterious U Penn admissions guy had shown up for the only five minutes that Spencer was out of the room, but that he had taken her application and seemed impressed with everything that Cece had said about her. And then Spencer BELIEVED this. Even more crazy was the email she received from the school LATER THAT NIGHT confirming receipt of her application. Sure. What – this guy went back to the office after the party to enter it into the system instead of waiting for Monday like a normal person? Oh Spencer, what is WRONG with you? That would seem shady even if there WASN’T a team of people out to destroy your life, but there IS. God.

Okay – Aria and Ezra. Ezra’s brother Wes finally came to town, because he was supposed to get the Jag back that Ezra had sold. Something about it being a family heirloom and Ezra not having the exclusive right to sell it. But what he was really doing there was fucking Ezra’s shit up by a) totally flirting with Aria and b) spilling the beans about a former girlfriend of Ezra’s who got pregnant. Wes told Aria that their mom stepped in and ‘took care of it’, but never really explicitly said what she did.

I had the impression that she paid the girl to get an abortion (when he said ‘took care of it’, he made a suction-y sound – why else would he do that?). But then online, lots of people are just as certain that she paid the girl to go away and have the baby on her own, meaning there’s a Little Fitz somewhere out there. (Then again, there were a ton of people on imdb who were SHOCKED that Ezra wasn’t a virgin before Aria. SERIOUSLY? He was fucking engaged for Christ’s sake. So, my point is, people online aren’t always right.) I definitely like the idea of a bastard child less, because a toddler would really harsh the Crazy Killer Ezra goodness. Or not – Dexter seems to pull it off for the most part. But here’s my thing: if she DID have an abortion, I fail to see the issue (other than the larger one of his mom being a major cuntess, but Aria already knew that). I don’t feel like he had any obligation to tell her about that, so who the hell knows. I guess, like everything else with this show, we wait…

You know what I realized while watching this show last night? I really, really, REALLY miss Harper’s Island. Did anyone besides me watch that? It was the absolute perfect batshit crazy summer show, with a big mystery, lots of suspects and 13 weeks to eliminate them one by one. It was fantastic – it was actually scary at times, and you never quite knew who was guilty until the end. Best of all, it was solved in 13 weeks instead of 13 years and a side of perpetual blue balls (*ahem, PLL*). If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Just don’t spoil yourself on the ending or it won’t be nearly as fun.

ABC Family is promising that someone will be revealed as part of the A Team in the August 28th summer finale, and that it will be one of twelve people. They’ve created a suspect tracker (not on it: Jenna, Cece, Noel, Jason, Mike, Holden, Wren, Center Stage, and more, but DOES include each of the liars. Hmmmm….), and you can vote for who you think will be the one revealed. So far, Ezra is the #2 suspect, no doi, with Paige being #1. For the record, I don’t think it’ll be Ezra because a) I can’t see them breaking up him and Aria so soon and b) I see him more as the ringleader than a team player, and obviously the ringleader won’t be revealed for another six years or so.

So, that’s it for me. Was I just having a bad night or did you find the episode disappointing too? What’s your take on the Ezra situation? Did Maya’s poem remind you of the hundreds of terrible poems you wrote in junior high school too? How shady do we think Cece is? Very or COMPLETELY? Why does everyone in Rosewood seem to have a lakehouse less than half an hour away from their actual house? Why not just live at the freakin lake? Most importantly, do we think that maybe Spencer and Aria sat in one of those cartoon machines that switches people’s brains? Because Spencer was seriously a dumbass last night, and Aria was actually the most together one. Watch the promo for next week and then hit the comments with your thoughts!