Entertainment

We Have To Reevaluate 'PLL's Spencer

by Christine DiStasio

A Was Here — this post contains some Pretty Little Liars spoilers. Last week on ABC Family's Pretty Little Liars fans learned that Spencer's not exactly mentally stable. So while we were all gunning for a EzrA reveal, what we really got was the sense that Spencer Hastings might have some secrets of her own — that she, apparently, might not even know about herself. Talk about being your own worst enemy.

Since Pretty Little Liars returned we've seen Spencer go from kind-of-obsessive to borderline crazy about finding out who A really is and who tried to kill Alison. (She was always kind of obsessed with the situation, but it's gotten excessive lately.) But since it seemed like typical Spencer, we didn't let it concern us too much by thinking, "Spencer's been here before," "She's a classic overachiever," "She's just really concerned about her friends." That was our first mistake — writing it off as typical Spencer because "typical Spencer" is getting crazier and more suspect at every turn.

Executive producer Oliver Goldstick told E! that Spencer's behavior is only going to get more and more erratic — even though we can't imagine anything more bizarre than sleepwalking to school and waking up at Ezra's desk. He also told the site that during the summer of Alison's disappearance, Spencer's mind wasn't in its healthiest state thus resulting in "gaping holes in her memory." So what went down during those gaping holes? Goldstick didn't reveal details, but he did say that there are some difficult realizations ahead about what she may or may have done and confrontations she might have had. Did Spencer have something to do with Alison's attempted murder? Again, Goldstick didn't say — but he did reveal that there will be people around to remind her of what she did and that "somebody was taking notes that summer." We'd be willing to bet that that "somebody" was Ezra and that, during Aria's breakdown this week, a journal will pop up with all of the details. Just a hunch.

Last week we learned from Ezra's stolen file on Spencer and from Mrs. Hastings, herself, that Spencer's got a history of drug abuse and apparently, mental instability. And it was a flooring revelation because we'd always put so much stock in Spencer's intelligence and reliability as being the most useful tools in figuring out what happened to Alison. Even when she went to Radley and started having crazy eyes that were almost crazier than Ezra's, we were able to believe in her. But now what?

I'd hate to use a cliché but, in this case, it applies — "The whole is only as great as the sum of its parts." And for Spencer Hastings, her crazy is starting to undermine her intelligence. Especially since she's taken on this project of deciphering the journal on her own. Spencer might be holding the answers (or at least huge clues) to all of PLL's biggest questions and she doesn't even know it. This is the person in charge of piecing together the information the Liars already have to come to a logical conclusion? As far as we, and Spencer, know, she could be on the road to implicating herself and again, she'd have no idea. Giving her a history of this particular kind of mental instability is discrediting her as being the most intelligent of the bunch.

Opening the door to the fact that what Spencer thinks she knows, might not actually be the truth is a huge deal. Especially on a show like PLL that proves that what we know isn't what we know time and time again. The essence of Spencer's character is being an overachiever with a highly sophisticated brain and now we've learned that her flaw, like Emily's to be accepted, Aria's to love blindly, and Hanna's to throw herself in front of the bus, is that her brain for all of its apparent intelligence, isn't stable. Her character isn't stable and that's a problem. How can we consider her the most intelligent what she doesn't even know what she knows? We can't and it's as simple as that.

Image: ABC Family