On last night’s episode of Pretty Little Liars season 5, episode 9, “March of Crimes,” Ella and Zach’s relationship comes to a halt. Check out our full recap for the episode here.
Pretty Little Liars kicked off right where last week’s episode ended. The girls are furious with Ali over staging the Noel break-in and we can’t say we blame them. The boy had a knife! Ali won’t have any of the accusations and turns everything around on the girls for being bad friends. It’s not like they’ve lied to cops and risked their lives for her or anything like that.
The girls seem to be splitting at the seams recently. There have always been problems going on between the Liars but with Ali back everything is starting to spiral out of control. We wonder if this is something Ali is doing on purpose or if these are just the accidental consequences of her being back.
Emily is on her way home when she passes by Noel in his car and he is conspicuously listening to a recording of a conversation between Ali and Shana. With the windows down. In public. Great idea, Noel now Emily is onto you.
The next morning at the Marin household Ashley brings up shopping for Ella and Zach’s engagement party but Hanna immediately puts up a fight. During the argument Hanna’s flask falls out of her bag and is spotted by her mother. This seems like a relatively tame lecture for an underage girl using alcohol to soothe her problems.
The connection between Ezra and Shana continues when Det. Tanner shows up at school again to question Aria. The detective believes that Ezra may be been dating Shana, which leads to a bit of a blowup from Aria. Ella points out that people have “blind spots when it comes to those they love.” So wise, Ella. Maybe Aria will start believing Hanna now.
On her way to the doctor Spencer drops by Caleb’s place to give him a nice kick in the behind about Hanna and the influence he has over her. He doesn’t seem to cave, though, and only becomes defensive about the whole situation. There is some skirting around the topic of Ravenswood and hopefully the show will start to fully explore Caleb’s issues as opposed to solely focusing on Hanna’s drinking and insecurities.
Back at school, Ali is trying to talk to Hanna but she drunkenly won’t have it. Hanna lashes out at Ali and asks her to stay with someone else and essentially blames her for their problems. This feels awfully familiar to last week’s blame-game between Aria and Hanna, except this time it’s actually accurate.
So Emily waits .5 seconds after being offered the assistant coach title and sneaks in the coach’s office to get Noel’s locker combo. She uses his code to steal his keys and proceeds to break into his car where she finds photos of Ali from the time she had been missing as well as a tape recorder.
While searching through the car, Emily gets a call from Spencer who is at the eye doctor. Her eyes have been dilated so she is having trouble seeing and while in the waiting room she think she see two Jennas. Emily comes to meet her and sees (haha) that it is actually Jenna and Sydney, who is oddly wearing sunglasses inside. Emily is furious and demands to know about the two girls and their friendship. Because Emily’s anger holds no weight, Jenna merely declares that she is not the one to be nervous around. Ali is the one causing trouble.
A bit later, Hanna is guzzling down some beer at Caleb’s. Caleb is confused as to why they aren’t going to the engagement party and Hanna let’s it slip about her situation with Zach. We guess she really does have a big mouth. This time it’s a good thing, though, since someone needs to believe her.
It’s right before the engagement party and Aria is feeling more than a little anxious. She confesses what she knows to her mother and apparently this hasn’t been the first time that Zach has been inappropriate.
While Ella is realizing the truth, Caleb shows up at The Brew where he confronts Zach. Zach is still trying to play cool and even pulls out a note from Hanna that said she would be “less shy” next time. The note is clearly from “A” and not Hanna. Caleb is having none of it and just punches Zach in the face. Nice.
Emily is also on her way to the party when she gets sidetracked by Sydney. Sydney explains that her and Jenna have been friends for years and has come to Rosewood to help protect Jenna from Alison. Emily doesn’t believe her, though, and chooses to stick by her manipulative best friend/sometimes lover.
At this point the engagement party is off. Aria and Hanna have made amends and poor Ella is devastated. We don’t blame her, we were big fans of Zach before this weird arc happened. But not to worry because Byron shows up to comfort a sobbing Ella. Is this hinting at a possible reconciliation?
While all this relationship drama is going down, Spencer is off to her lake house to hide all the pictures and recordings from Noel’s car. Noel, as shady as ever, also happens to be hiding in said lake house. Spencer finds him spying on her from behind the couch and Noel claims that the photos are his insurance if he ever needs it. Spencer basically doesn’t care in the slightest and proceeds to stab him with a fire poker until he storms out.
The episode ends with Ali getting summoned to the police station because a man has been caught for her kidnapping. Ummm, what?! When they arrive at the police station they find a stranger confessing to the crime that Ali made up in spectacular detail. Call us confused.