Hot for Teacher is the eighteenth episode of Season 4 of Pretty Little Liars. It aired on February 4, 2014.
Plot[]
Spencer's hunt for the truth takes a dangerous turn. Will Hanna be able to figure out Spencer's secret? Emily looks to make amends with Alison through Shana.
Synopsis[]
Alison tells Shana over the phone that she needs her to get in touch with someone whom Ali previous told her to avoid in order to get something she desperately needs. Ali stresses that "she can’t know yet," and Shana promises she’ll be careful. Ali tells her she’ll call back from the same payphone to give instructions on where to take it.
The Liars walk into The Brew as Shana finishes the conversation, and they discuss whether they should trust her now that they know she's working with Ali. Emily thinks so, but Hanna and Aria disagree. Emily tells them her dad’s chest pains were caused from anemia, not a heart attack, and disagrees when Hanna says Shana was probably the one who tried to attack Emily at the school. Spencer suggests it could’ve been someone from the crew working on Ezra’s play. After A’s message at the dentist, Hanna thinks that for safety’s sake, they should wait for Ali to find them instead of looking for her, and the others promise not to.
Spencer takes ADHD medicine and stays up all night looking online for any information related to Ezra, and analyzing the pictures she took of Ali’s diary pages. She runs out of medicine, and when Andrew texts her that he’s doesn’t have any, she calls her doctor’s office and says she's Veronica Hastings.
Ezra asks Aria to stay at his cabin with him for the weekend. When she says she needs to stay with Mike, Ezra says he can stay at a friend’s house, and he tells her it wouldn’t be possible to go check on him at any point. He continues to pressure her, and she tells him she’ll figure out a way to be there.
Outside of the police station, Det. Holbrook and Hanna are loading evidence boxes filled with her shoes into her car. They talk about a book he recommended to her; he tells her he’s busy with "all things CeCe Drake," commenting that fugitives cause a lot of paperwork. Holbrook tells Hanna that the details in investigations always turn out to be the most important.
Emily sees Shana and asks her if Ali is all right. Shana acts cold towards her and doesn’t provide any information, but she halfway agrees to tell Ali that Emily is sorry.
At school, Aria is surprised to find out Hanna and Holbrook occasionally talk. Hanna thinks Spencer is lying to them, and wants them to hang out with her over the weekend, but Aria lies to Hanna, saying she's visiting her father in Syracuse.
Spencer pays Brenda $50 for five of her pills. Ezra talks to Spencer in the hall about a subpar essay she wrote that included a paragraph from Wikipedia. He asks why she thought he wouldn’t figure out what she was up to and asks to meet her after school, but Spencer says she’ll take the current grade instead. Aria visits the guidance counselor, Jesse, and asks to talk. Back at her house, Spencer is investigating Ezra online again, and Hanna and Emily call from Hanna’s car and ask her to let them in. Spencer tells Hanna she’s at the library, and when Hanna calls her out because her car is in the driveway, she tells her she walked there. Hanna asks her to come over later to help with her closet, but Spencer lies again, saying she has to redo an essay for Ezra.
Aria, who is still at school, tells Jesse she’s been lying to everyone and doesn’t know what to do anymore. After he asks why she thought her friends wouldn’t approve of her getting back with her boyfriend, she suddenly makes up an excuse and leaves.
Hanna and Emily stay parked outside of Spencer’s house trying to figure out why she’s lying. They see Shana leaving the DiLaurentis house, and Emily wants to follow her, but Hanna is still paranoid about researching anything involving Ali, so she drives away.
At the school's file room, Ezra is going through Spencer’s file, which includes notes that she took medicine for ADHD and has a doctor’s note on file with the school nurse, when Jesse walks in, thinking it was the teacher’s lounge. They introduce themselves, and Ezra puts Spencer’s file into his bag after Jesse leaves.
Shana shows up at Emily’s house asking for her help. Someone is seen taking pictures of them on the doorstep from a parked car. Up in Emily’s room, Shana tells her she didn’t know Paige was into Emily when she dated her at swim camp, and she acted like she wanted to come between them to get information, like that Emily is protective and loyal. Shana says she answered Wren’s ad asking for help packing up quickly, and he asked her to be discrete when he found out she went to Rosewood High School. She says she remembers Ali taking the snow globe from her grandmother’s to give to someone special. Shana explains that she was trying to get something from the DiLaurentis house for Ali, but didn’t get the chance, and she asks Emily to help.
Spencer finds proof that the Ravenswood lair was Ezra’s and decides against leaving Aria a message telling her. At Ezra’s cabin on Saturday morning, Aria tells him that she wants to go home because she’s tired of lying to everyone. Ezra tells her that her feeling torn between her friends and him may not be a bad thing because it might mean they’re growing closer, not just that she and are friends are growing apart. He tells her, "If what we have is going to last, you have to start thinking of me as the person you're closest to, the person you want to share everything with, and I have to that with you." Then he tells her he didn’t mean to put any pressure on her with starting up the relationship again so quickly. She decides to stay at the cabin with him because she wants to make it work.
Hanna confronts Spencer, who keeps trying to lie to her, and Hanna doesn’t take it. Det. Holbrook overhears their argument and asks Hanna about it.
Emily is in Ali’s bedroom pretending to search for a pair of her mother’s earrings she left when she stayed there. When Jessica DiLaurentis goes to check the bathroom, Emily takes down the French twin poster and finds an envelope inside the paper backing. She opens it and finds $5000 cash and a note.
Ezra is cooking and says he doesn't have chickpeas, so Aria offers to go get some even though the store is an hour away. As soon as she leaves, we see a can of chickpeas in his cabinet, and he goes through the trapdoor into his basement. The contents from his lair in Ravenswood are in there, including the tri-monitor survellience computer. On the computer, he scans through pictures of all of Shana and the liars' activities that we've seen in the episode so far.
Emily goes to work and calls Shana to give her the envelope, and Shana tells her to keep it safe until she can stop by the coffee shop after her swim meet. Emily puts it in a bag of coffee beans.
Hanna calls the Hastings house because Spencer hasn't been answering her cell, and Mrs. Hastings tells her she can stop by to pick up the nail polish she claims she left there.
Shana gets into her car after the meet. She looks in her rear view mirror then screams as the scene cuts to black. It's assumed she saw someone in her backseat.
At Spencer's house, Hanna gets on her computer, where Spencer apparently hasn't closed any windows during her stalking, so Hanna quickly figures out that Spencer believes Ezra is Board Shorts, and the Ravenswood lair is his.
Spencer goes to Ezra's apartment complex, where Hanna catches her. Hanna tells her, "you've gotta be on crack if you think Ezra's A," and Spencer tells her about the clues from Ali's diary and The Hart and the Huntsman, but Hanna is not convinced. They hear a car peel out and speed away and go inside. Meanwhile, Ezra is sitting in his car with a notebook and his black baseball hat, scanning through videos and images. He has multiple video cameras set up in his cabin, where we see Aria asleep in bed. He gets an alert from a security portal showing images of Spencer and Hanna outside his apartment building. Spencer opens his apartment door, but then notices a camera in the vent across the hall. She pretends she's tired and doesn't know what she was thinking, assuming Ezra can hear her, and she and Hanna leave. The scene cuts back to Ezra watching them from the video camera in the vent.
Back at the cabin, Aria wakes up and goes looking for Ezra; he startles her from behind. He says he was up late reading and forgot to lock the back door. He tells her she was right about their relationship not working if they don't tell the truth. He acts nervous and tells her he's glad she stayed.
Spencer, Hanna, and Emily discuss the new findings. They decide not to tell Aria until they're positive Ezra is A, assuming she's safe in Syracuse with her dad. Emily tells them about helping Shana and says she never showed up to meet her at the Brew. Spencer thinks Ezra wants Shana to lead him to Ali.
We see Ali at the payphone, and the scene changes to Shana’s phone ringing in her car. She wakes up, still in the driver’s seat, and answers the phone. Ali asks if she has the money, but Shana is not listening as she realizes she doesn’t know where she is or what just happened. She sees the Rosewood sign in front of her with a message telling her not to come back. She tells Ali she has to hang up and she doesn’t have the money. Shana hangs up, throws her phone out the window, breaking it, and drives out of Rosewood. Ali opens her wallet, and we see she is down to about $40, We also see that she has a photo of all the liars together. We see she’s at a bus station, where she gets on a bus, crying.
Someone in a black hoodie (A) is sitting at a desk watching an old movie. The person opens an envelope, spilling out 4 prescription pads belonging to Wren Kingston.
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Troian Bellisario as Spencer Hastings
- Ashley Benson as Hanna Marin
- Shay Mitchell as Emily Fields
- Lucy Hale as Aria Montgomery
- Sasha Pieterse as Alison DiLaurentis
Guest Cast[]
- Ian Harding as Ezra Fitz
- Sean Faris as Gabriel Holbrook
- Aeriél Miranda as Shana Fring
- Wes Ramsey as Jesse Lindall
- Andrea Parker as Jessica DiLaurentis
- Nikki SooHoo as Brenda
Featured Music[]
- "Hit and Run" by Young Summer - (the Liars talk at the Brew)
- "Sail" by AWOLNATION - (Spencer pulls all-nighter researching Ezra)
- "I am Dust" by Gary Numan - (Ezra is in the lair in his cabin's basement)
- "Table 8" by Jesse Glick - (at the Brew when Emily calls Shana)
- "Courage or the Fall" by Civil Twilight - (Ali is at the bus station)
