Pretty Little Liars season 7 episode 11 review: What A.D. knows; Emily, Ali update
Everything that we heard during the first half of the season was true. Mary had the child, but it was Spencer’s mother who raised her and picked her up a good five minutes after the child was brought into this world. Effectively, she did raise her, but it was still a betrayal … and not one Spencer was excited to hear so shortly after almost dying at the end of last season.
As for Spencer receiving a note from A.D. after that and a guide to what looked like the most disturbing game of Life ever, this was jarring after such a big reveal. This is one of the stranger parts of the show — you get such a real, human story that is paired up with something so over-the-top. At least the game led to something more personal, as Spencer unlocked a letter from Mary Drake explaining further why she did some of the things that she did. It was more information than she had previously.
Jealousy all over the place
The good news for Emily is that she got a new job working at Rosewood High. The tricky thing is that both Alison and Paige are also working there. Can you say awkward? It also does not help that Ali is sending seriously mixed signals about what happened between the two of them. Clearly, she’s jealous of the time Emily is spending with her ex, but she can’t get herself to a place where she admits to being in love with her.
In the end, Paige pointed out to Emily that Alison has a victim complex — it may be true that she finds herself in terrible positions a lot, but you can say the same thing about the rest of the cast.
Holden’s back!
While Ezra tried to figure out precisely where he was following the revelation that Nicole was still alive, we saw a completely different sort of story play out with Aria. She was trying to plan her wedding, and came across an old friend in the process in Holden! He was helping with his sister’s business, and the two got to talking and bonding. It had to suck for Aria to explain the Nicole situation to him.
Hanna, and the rest of the story
This was probably the weakest part of the story for us, mostly because we find her job to be rather boring and we would’ve preferred seeing her as a foil to someone else in here.
Eventually, everyone did come together at the end of the episode to look at Spencer’s new creepy board game, and to get in the process a new, super-creepy message from A.D. — they know what happened to “Dr. Rollins” last season, and that could spell trouble.
As for the cliffhanger, we saw Jenna talking with A.D. about the game presumably … or, shall we say, the endgame.
Overall
“PlAytime” was the perfect example of everything the show does well (great characters, interesting twists) with everything that makes no sense (how A.D. has the time to construct most of his stuff … seriously, how?). It was entertaining, but also not earth-shattering. Grade: B.
What is coming up on Pretty Little Liars in the final season?
Be sure to head over to the link here for some further details, including a promo for what is coming up next. (Photo: Freeform.)