I love that Emily still wants to stick up for Toby and be his friend; the same way Aria will always try to negotiate with or defend Noel; the same way Hanna puts up with Lucas's bullshit; the same way that Spencer... Nope. Can't think of a one. Has not yet slapped the teeth out of her bitch sister's face is not really the same thing, and Melissa just married a child-fucker, so hers is coming. Spencer needs a creepy stalker buddy she can turn to whenever she wants to be brutally rebuffed and/or spied upon. I nominate Alex, so she can get a real boyfriend.

But most of all, I love it with Emily because Toby is so very troubled and she is in no danger at all and, I guess she's the Sweet One? But it's flattering, in a way, that they gave her such an inordinately fucked-up woobie to show it off with. You know? Like, your regular weirdos all over town just are not weird enough to show how truly vast, and open, and compassionate, is Emily Fields' big gay heart.

Which is why her mom is so dreadfully important to me, I guess. Everybody knows that you can't love other people until you love yourself, but nobody ever tells you that the opposite is also true: You can't really love yourself until you love everybody else, because they're just the pieces of yourself that you said no to.

Spencer invites Alex up to her parents' "little place up in Bucks County," but then gets distracted by the menacing queer beauty of Noel for a good long while, and then she tells Alex to wait for her outside so she can jump him, but then it's too late and Aria's having a little meeting with him, of her own, all about how one boyfriend should never blackmail another boyfriend of hers. Noel pulls this amazing/insane move where he's like, "Ezra Fitz accused me of that obvious thing I clearly did? You better think about the kind of person that would say that." (But then also, isn't it true that Alison broke up him and his girlfriend one time, and he knew all the Liars were in on it, and maybe he is killing everybody and sending mean texts.) Aria heads in that direction even though she wasn't the one that had the flashback, and Noel doesn't know what she's talking about, and then Sean pulls him away for some bromance. Aria's shrug is both cute and eloquent.