Pretty Little Liars Season 6 Episode 16 – TV Review

PLL Where Somebody Waits For Me Aria

I’m just doing it on purpose, now.

Nothing important happens this episode.

TL;DR Ezra is out as the suspect dujour, and Melissa tags in; Alison’s romance with Doctor Dude somehow comes back to life; Emily did get paid for her eggs after all; Veronica has cancer, and the Phillips campaign is planning to use it to ruin her; Hanna and Jordan’s dearth of chemistry hits new lows.

Not even a fucking honeymoon suite can make it the least bit convincing.

Not a lot is happening, but here it is:

Spencer eats up a lot of screentime, as Caleb’s hacking into the Phillips campaign files shows that they’ve discovered Veronica has breast cancer. An interestingly magnanimous Mona helps warn Spencer, but Spencer sits on her hands and doesn’t alert Veronica to what’s up.

Aria and Spencer find a secret passage in and out of Radley through the hole in Sara’s closet. Aria is also caught by Liam for forging Ezra’s chapters, and then Ezra shows up back in town, too. He admits the reason he was cagey about where he was the night of Cece’s death was because Byron and Ella asked him to not say he saw them hooking up that night. Who cares?

Emily finds out that B not only stole her eggs, but damaged the storage freezer they were in, leaving dozens of other eggs destroyed as collateral damage. She feels guilty about this, naturally. But hey, she apparently still got paid. Holla for that dolla.

Hanna can’t muster an ounce of chemistry on a romantic getaway with Jordan, but seems right at home reminiscing with Caleb about their failed relationship. Spencer better watch out.

And the Liars fill in Alison about B, and how it seems B thinks the Liars know who killed Cece, and want to extract that information from them. Alison also reignites the paltry flames of romance with Doctor Dude. It is dissatisfying.

What about Lorenzo? Bitch.

We’re into the final quarter of PLL’s most status quo-changing season, and they chuck us a filler episode? The only subplot with forward momentum is the Veronica one, and Spencer does fucking nothing about it.

Everyone else just treads water with melodrama. Get the lead out, girls. Don’t you know your show is concluding?


Why I hate this episode:

Aria’s stuff is the worst. Firstly, nobody cares that she’s been ghostwriting Ezra’s chapters. Liam barely gives a fuck, with his only concern being how she’s going to explain it to Ezra. Ezra has always been a bleeding heart, and Aria knows how to pussy whip him good, so I think he’ll understand. And he could just tell Aria’s boss that he changed his mind on the direction of the book, scrap the stuff Aria wrote, and give them the chapters he wrote. Easy.

And Ezra’s explanation as to why he didn’t refute the Liars when they accused him of goddamn murder is insane. Byron and Ella made him promise not to talk about where he was that night because they didn’t want him telling anyone about their reunion. But all he had to do was tell the Liars that he didn’t kill Cece, without telling them that he also saw Byron and Ella. What the fuck? I don’t understand.

It would be impossible to believe that anyone involved in the production of this show could be satisfied with the scenes between Hanna and Jordan. But there they are on screen. It’s kind of impressive just how vast the disconnect is between them.

Emily’s time this episode is spent angsting about how B’s rampage has affected innocent people. Shut up, Emily.

The stuff about Veronica hiding her cancer has potential, but the episode squanders it with Spencer’s meek refusal to talk to her about it.

Sadly, Alison is tossed the Soap Ball this episode. She has apparently epic feelings for Doctor Dude, and they’ve been seeing each other on the DL or something. Because their relationship, as he’s her sister’s doctor, is inappropriate. But now that Cece’s dead, Alison’s free to get on that dick anytime, anyplace. The nadir of the episode comes at the end of their pledge of love scene (poor Sasha Pieterse fumbles her way through that one) when they have a big, daytime soap opera-style kiss. The camera pulls out through the windows and double frames the shot with flowers and everything. It’s laughable.

The flashback of Hanna and Caleb conflicting over their lifestyles in New York is tedious. There’s nothing in it that a little dialogue could have more easily and more quickly accomplished. Wasteful.

How did Emily still get paid for her eggs if nobody bought them?

Oh, and there’s no way a luxury hotel would just allow a bunch of space in the building to go walled up and unused. Unless the people who renovated Radley are B or B-adjacent. Which would be Carrissimi Group esque, and that’s not a good thing.


But it’s not all bad:

I’ll admit I haven’t been paying too much attention, but I hadn’t really put it together that, as Emily says, one of the Liars’ loved ones most likely killed Cece to protect them (I’m still holding out for B to pull a switcheroo and have been the murderer all along, and they’re just being dickish to the Liars for shits and gigs). Ezra and Byron have already been checked off the suspect list, but new evidence points to Melissa. And Melissa’s done it before, baby. I’ll allow it.

Mona manages to steal the show (though, with an episode of such dullness, that’s not much of a feat). It turns out Yvonne’s foolish mistake of leaving her phone at lunch last episode was arranged by Mona. But Mona didn’t tell Yvonne that Spencer stole it. Because Mona’s true motive was for Spencer to get the phone, access the Phillips campaign files, and find out they’ve illegally obtained Veronica’s medical records and are planning to use her breast cancer to ruin her. Because Mona, accurately, thinks that’s pretty filthy. What a sweetie.

Caleb later confronts her in a lift and threatens that if she’s lying about all that, that he’ll get her. But he apparently already got her, because Mona alludes to them having been an item at some point. Who knew Caleb would be such a slut?

When Ezra returns to Rosewood, he happily shows Aria his new chapters, which she knows will conflict with the chapters she wrote under his name. He offers them to her to read first, before she passes them onto her boss. Will she destroy them and keep her own fake writing career going? Signs, based on the brain activity displayed by these characters for the last six years, point to “yes.”

Roma tells Alison and Doctor Dude that, on the night of Cece’s murder, a three minute call was taken at the Dilaurentis house from some shady-sounding restaurant. Both Alison and Doctor Dude deny being the one to pick it up, which means one of them is lying, or Cece broke in to answer a phone call.

Roma also points out to Emily later that it’s curious that Rosewood hasn’t seen a murder in five years, but the instant the Liars come back to town, it happens again. Send them all to the chair, Roma. Or at least Aria.

Oh, and B taunts Hanna with a breakfast plate of Jordan’s face, with a fork in one of his eyes. Now that’d be hot.

PLL Where Somebody Waits For Me Hanna Jordan egg fork

Hefty Hanna strikes again.


About ijusthateeverything

Sincerity is death.

3 responses to “Pretty Little Liars Season 6 Episode 16 – TV Review”

  1. Anonymous says :

    I think the comment that Mona made in the lift referred to a time Caleb and Mona kissed for a plan to catch A (with Mona pretending to be a victim) at some point, rather than a secret romantic past or something between them. :/

Leave a Reply to ijusthateeverything Cancel reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: