Pretty Little Liars Recap/Review: "Gamma Zeta Die!"

Larianny Perez ’17/ Emertainment Monthly Writer
In this episode of Pretty Little Liars, major characteristics are revealed. We see Emily gain an interest in the college search (now that she has to kiss her swimming career goodbye), and we see Hanna do what she has to do to protect her mother. Clues about the phone number and more tricks of A are shown in this past week’s episode “Gamma Zeta Die!” Here’s a recap to help you remember everything that is going on.
In a previous episode Melissa told Spencer, “I’ve been protecting you since it started,” and that Spencer is not aware of the bigger picture at stake! What bigger picture? We don’t know! In this episode Melissa is in London.  Does this mean she won’t be able to protect her little sister? Or is being in London a cover up and she is in fact still in Rosewood?
Spencer comes from a well off family and some may think that she had it easy! However, having to live up to her family standards was definitely not easy. But what happens in this episode may seem like her mom has the magic power to get Spencer into an Ivy League school. Mrs. Hastings hires Brendon McGowen, a private admissions counselor, to help Spencer get into college. The girls are definitely bitter about the fact that they don’t get that privilege and have to get into college on their own.
Emily sees that she no longer has swimming scholarships lined up (because she can no longer swim), so she has to be the sailor of her ship and sail her way to college! She takes advantage of the college visit she goes on to talk to a sorority sister and see how she can receive a scholarship.
Emily and Spencer get into a heated discussion when they get to the sorority party because they have different agendas. Emily actually wants to try and get into the school where as Spencer just wants to find out where the phone number the bird hummed came from! In this scene between the girls we get a deeper sense of Spencer’s character. The way Troian Bellisario plays Spencer shows that Spencer is focused on solving the mystery and she has taken the lead of the four girls for so long that now she just expects them to do what she wants! For once Emily is not there to back Spencer up; she is going to do what she has to do, which is to get into college. Something that Spencer doesn’t have to worry about because her mom will take care of it for her.
I’m proud of Emily! It shows that she is tired of people pushing her around and it is time for her to do something for herself! Education is very important and this show seemed to fly over the subject and focus more on plot. I am glad that this episode contains interest in college because these girls cannot stay in high school forever.  It might even be interesting to see how this show would play out once they are in college and A is still harassing them. For example, how would they take care of themselves without the others around? Just a thought…
Well, how does Spencer know that the phone number Ali called was the sorority house? She figures it out with the help of Aria and one of the students at the campus! During class the students of Rosewood High are given a booklet of colleges they can visit that weekend; Spencer and Aria connect the prefix of the phone number to one of the colleges in York County. That is the one Emily is considering going and Spencer just goes because she wants to find out whom Ali was constantly calling. Once at the college Spencer talks to a student to help figure out where the phone number came from. He is able to tell her that it comes from Greek Row. This helps to narrow down Spencer’s search!
At the party Spencer and Emily split up because they have their own agenda. Spencer asks around if anyone knew Ali and has no luck.  At one point Hanna shows up at the party and asks to see both Spencer and Emily. Spencer tells Hanna to sit while she goes and finds Emily. In her search she gets pushed up against a wall by a couple of drunk girls. And of course, she magically hits the wall hard enough to reveal a hidden room. But what she finds in that hidden room is the interesting part: there is a phone! The big question is…why would board shorts [What Ali called the boy on the other line] go into a hidden room in a sorority to answer his phone calls? Good question, right?
As Spencer leaves the room she spots markings on the wall that look as if someone was trying to escape.  Hmmm…what could this mean? Was someone being held captive there? Was the guy Ali was talking to help captive there? If so, why?! So many more clues are being dropped onto the audience’s lap that it’s hard to put it all together! Some of the clues seem like they don’t fit! But that is their plan, in the end all of these pieces will fit together and everything will seem much clearer. But until then, we will keep guessing and asking questions!
Remember how Aria told her mom she should go to Austria with her boyfriend? Well, she changes her mind and decides to stay because she cannot bear to part with her kids.  Apparently Mike (Cody Christian), Aria’s brother, does not want her to go, yet when she is in an accident he is downstairs playing a video game instead of with his mother. The accident Aria’s mom is in is concerning small black and yellow insects. You guessed it, bees! And lots of them! They came into her car through the air ventilation and start attacking her. A texted Aria, “This is just the first taste of my venom.” WOW.
Aria’s mom is on A’s list and Aria wants to get her out as soon as possible so that nothing worse can happen to her. That is why Aria talks to her dad because she knows he can convince her to go to Austria with her boyfriend. He does just that! Now will Aria’s mom be out of A’s targeting range? We will have to wait and see!
No one wants to believe that Hanna’s mom, Mrs. Marin, is guilty of killing Detective Wilden, but the evidence that came up in this episode is making it harder to think otherwise. Mrs. Marin went to Mrs. Hastings’ house.  FYI, Mrs. Hastings is a lawyer. She goes there wanting to tell her side of the story, considering the fact that she thinks the police are building a case against her. Mrs. Hastings tells her to go no further that she has a contact in the police station and once she finds out information about the case she’ll get back to Mrs. Marin. So for now, Mrs. Marin has to wait to see if they are really building a case against her. If Mrs. Marin is guilty why would she feel the need to go to a lawyer to defend herself? You’d think that someone who is not guilty would stand their grounds, but no, not her! But, based on her history with the police, it is understandable that she does not want to leave things for chances.
Mrs. Marin receives the phone call that she was not hoping to receive. She asks, “How bad is it?” and Mrs. Hastings replies, “You should come to my office tomorrow morning.” Wow, it’s that bad! Hanna overhears this whole conversation! Mrs. Marin is looking more and more guilty in Hanna’s eyes! Hanna loves her mother, what would you do if you found out your mom could have killed someone? You’d want to protect her right? Well that is what Hanna does! But, for Hanna to protect her mom, she needs to know if her mom even did anything or not, that is why she does an investigation of her own.
Hanna went snooping around her mom’s room and noticed that the door to her closet is locked. Her closet has never been locked before so why now, all of a sudden? Does she have something to hide? Hanna definitely wanted to find out, so she unlocked the door and found something that she did not want to find: a gun, or what she thinks is the weapon! Is it her dad’s gun? Could it be the murder weapon? Possibly! Why else would Mrs. Marin lock her closet door? Melissa didn’t flat out say she killed Wilden, just that she has been protecting Spencer…So could Mrs. Marin have killed Wilden?
Part of me still wants to believe that Mrs. Marin is innocent and A is just setting her up! A is everywhere and nowhere all at the same time! So A could very well be putting all of this together in order to have the biggest betrayal of all time–a daughter against a mother! BUT, that is just a slight theory I have that could very well be incorrect after seeing the end of this episode.
Hanna now has the gun in her possession, but what is she going to do with it? She has so many options to choose from, like giving it back to her father, but she decides to go to the sorority party that Spencer and Emily are at. There, Hanna shows Spencer the gun at which point Spencer goes off looking for Emily and stumbles upon the hidden room!
Hanna gets tired of waiting for Spencer and decides to take action. She leaves the party and starts heading to the woods. Emily spots Hanna leaving the party. Emily, confused, tries to follow her. Emily and Spencer meet up in the woods and start looking for Hanna. Hanna finds a place in the woods and starts digging a hole where she plans on hiding the gun. She believed it was far enough away from Rosewood that the police would not find it and her mom would not go to jail. Sadly, as she takes out the gun and is about to place it in the ground, three cops appear! Uh-oh! =/
Spencer and Emily then see Hanna being brought into a police car. My question is…How did the police know to look in the woods? Did A call them and leave them a tip? So was A trying to make Mrs. Marin look guilty because she knew these chain of events would happen leading Hanna in the back seat of a cop car? If so, this A character is very smart to have had everything planned out.
A texted Spencer saying, “Maybe Hanna and her mom can share a lawyer.” Ironic that A sent it to the daughter of the lawyer, right? Nope.  A knows what they are doing! They are always 3 steps ahead of everyone. As for how, I don’t know!
At the end of every episode there is a clue. In the last episode it was A, or someone in the A team, gluing Melissa’s molded face back together. In this episode it was a dusty picture of the old housemother of the sorority house the girls went to. One of the sorority sisters told Emily that this housemother knew you were going to sneak out before you got the idea yourself.  So, this picture is the last clue of tonight’s episode; what does this mean? Does it mean that A knows what they are going to do before they get the idea to do it themselves? Maybe that would explain how three cops showed up as soon as Hanna was going to bury the assumed murder weapon!
After this episode I needed to take in a deep breath and take everything in! Will Aria’s mom be safe in Austria? What will happen to Hanna? Will she go to jail? Where has Mona been in the past few episodes? She went cold turkey…that’s grounds for suspicion! Could she be a part of all of the doings in the past few episodes? Is Melissa in London or not? Is Mrs. Marin Wilden’s killer or is it Melissa? Or is there a third person that we haven’t thought of yet? Pretty Little Liars will forever be my guilty pleasure, even if they do annoy me sometimes by not revealing anything big! But in tonight’s episode they did a good job with some character development because as the season progresses and the stakes get higher it is truly testing the character’s boundaries to see how far they will go to get what they need and want!