Y’all! This was our first Char-free (!!!!) episode! And you know what else? The show gave us some (really shitty) answers about some things we’ve been demanding to have answers for! And even though those answers were, indeed, REALLY shitty, at least they are answers. And hopefully one of them means that another character will be leaving soon. However—with the dismissal of Char, we have added not only Cordy to the cast, but also some British fop named Ryan. Do not want. I want Lexi and the hot guy whose dad owns a casino. They were fun.

Alright, so since I don’t really want to invest too much time/energy into this recap because I am SLAMMED at work (and because I’d rather spend time/energy on my New Girl recap later tonight!) I’m gonna make this short and sweet. And, really, this episode is one that is super easy to make short and sweet as there was a lot of filler in-between some pretty major plot changes. Yay for forward progression, show!

The first major change is that Sutton back, bitches. Like, seriously back. She tried to not be back since she has a giant gash on her forehead due to the whole Car in the Lake business and is nice enough that she didn’t force Emma to get a matching one, but in a weird little plot point that I don’t think was fully explained, Sutton had to run out of her hiding place in Mercer Manor to attend the VERY SAME ballet benefit  [SIDEBAR: I've never quite understood why institutions, like professional ballets and museums and places of that nature that are not non-profits or by-donation-only admittance, have benefits. Wouldn't the money from the crazy expensive tickets be enough to cover costs? I mean, I guess things like scenery and costumes and lighting and paying the talent are super expensive, but. Seriously. There are much more worthy causes out there.] that everyone she knows was at because—as she was getting ready to go out somewhere (WHERE, SHOW?!)—she got freaked out by someone being in the house. Now, as a lady who sometimes freaks herself out when she’s home alone, I totally understand not being comfortable when you hear someone walk into your home when you think you were alone. So I won’t really blame her for that. But, since everyone she knows was at the benefit, she ran into not only Thayer, who had appropriately called her out for using him a bit earlier in the episode, but KRISTEN. And since Kristen saw the gash on her forehead and made Ted patch it up, Emma can’t be Sutton anymore. So, presto change-o, the girls are back to being themselves again. Or so it seems.

The second thing is that Sutton swears Annie Hobbs saved her from her watery grave and that a dark haired guy was seen swimming in the opposite direction. Now, about half the male cast has dark hair, so that really isn’t helpful information. Unless you thought that maybe Justin did it. But that means it could have been ANYONE else. My money is on either Dan or Derek since they’re both in Adrian Pasdar’s pocket. Anyway, Annie Hobbs, who apparently also hung out with Sutton for a bit before Sutton moseyed her way back to Rich People Land, AZ to let her people know she wasn’t dead, and got a hotel room. Except, when Sutton/Ethan/Thayer went back to the hotel, there was no Annie. Convenient.

On the Laurel side of the story, she is still really hurting from the break-up. So much so that she must play her violin and sing about Jesus when she thinks no one is listening. But! Cordy was listening and it just so happens that she 1) used to work for a record label, 2) is helping organize the music for the ballet benefit, and 3) thinks Laurel is awesome. So Cordy books a band that she knows (?) Laurel likes, and then ever-so gently coerces Laurel into joining them onstage to play her violin/sing with them. Now, it turns out that the band is The Good Mad, which is the band that Allie Gonino, the actress who plays Laurel, is actually a part of. So, yay for Gonino’s manager for insisting that The Good Mad be on the show. And, actually, I really dug them. I haven’t taken the time to really check them out, but if you’re into sort of folkier sounding songs that involve violins, you should look ‘em up.

ANYWAY. So, Laurel has this awesome night despite the fact that Justin showed up at the benefit with some very Jersey-looking bitch. But then after the benefit, she confronts Justin and demands answers. (As she should.) Justin finally says he’ll tell her why he’s so weird around Ted. He then takes a deep breath and . . . it’s because Ted killed his mom when he bolted out of an OR after he received a weird phone call, and let an intern finish up the routine surgery. So that was a bit of a letdown and also made Justin seem really, really immature and pathetic. Which is insensitive of me, because I know that if someone killed my mother, I’d become a vengeance demon faster than you could blink. But, the way that he acted it or the way it was written or something just made it seem very juvenile. Anyway, the only part of this that might be worth anything is that we now know that a random phone call at some point in the past freaked Ted out enough that he left during a surgical procedure. Oh, and also, Laurel told “Justin” (that may not be his real name) to get the hell out of her life since he USED USED USED her. So maybe he will. But probably not.

Other things that you should probably know:

• Cordy and Adrian Pasdar decide to forget the past and see where it takes them. I’m getting a sinking suspicion that Cordy is no bueno.
• After Emma yelled at Sutton for being an ungrateful bitch, Sutton told Emma that she always planned for her to be a part of the Mercer family.
• Ryan, who is the heir to a frozen foods empire, is into Mads. I don’t really care about this, but I’m sure this show will force it down my throat. Or maybe Ryan will turn out to be bad news bears.

So that was it! I know I glossed over a bunch of stuff, so please do discuss in comments. And let me know where you think Emma started walking to at the very end of the episode. Was she walking into Mercer Manor? Walking away from it? For some reason the way the camera was situated made it really hard to tell exactly where she started going. Also, where the eff do you think Annie Hobbs is? And what are your conspiracy theories about Cordy? TELL ME EVERYTHING.