TV Review: ‘Pretty Little Liars’ 6×16 “Where Somebody Waits for Me”

Pretty Little Liars

Welcome back to my weekly review and recap of Pretty Little Liars. To catch up on previous coverage, click here.

I’ve been optimistic since the season 6B premiere of Pretty Little Liars, but this week’s episode is making me lose hope. “Where Somebody Waits for Me” featured filler storylines, hardly any interesting developments and the loss of my dignity for sticking by this show for over six years.

A romantic getaway interrupted

Hanna (Ashley Benson) and her perfect fiancé, Jordan (David Coussins), are enjoying some time off while lying in a heart-shaped bed. Unfortunately, the romantic getaway is cut short when Hanna receives several texts from her friends and later gets breakfast ordered from her anonymous stalker. This breakfast includes eggs and bacon forming a frown face and a fork stabbing one of the eyes. At the top of the plate, we see “Poor Jordie” written in ketchup. Could it be possible foreshadowing? Hopefully, yes because we need something to spice up this season!

Sara Harvey’s secret Poe-inspired lair

After investigating the secret hole in Sara Harvey’s room at the Radley, Team Sparia (Troian Bellisario and Lucy Hale) find switches and plug sockets and deduce that Charlotte learned all of her tricks from playing with them. They also find a secret exit and believe that’s how Sara has been sneaking in and out of the Radley under everyone’s nose.

Sparia tell their friends about the underground lair and Emily (Shay Mitchell) decides to do some investigating of her own. After learning there was a malfunction at the Hollis Medical Center resulting in the loss of her eggs, Emily starts searching for a fridge where their stalker could have stored them. Her search turns out to be for nothing but her friends try to comfort her by saying, “It’s ok. You have plenty of eggs. You can donate more! You have the money for your original eggs anyway! Use it to go back to school!”

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Do they realize the stalker could basically steal Emily’s baby? It feels like the raised tstakes I mentioned in my previous recap are getting swept under the rug as “no big deal.” This egg storyline better blow up in Emily’s face eventually because it’s probably the most interesting storyline on the show right now. To have Mitchell’s character get pushed to the background feels cheap.

Veronica Hastings’s secret

Caleb (Tyler Blackburn) informs Spencer about the Hastings opposition research he found on Yvonne’s phone. Spencer’s mother, Veronica (Lesley Fera), is sick. While Yvonne and her mother might not know anything about it, the Phillips campaign will likely try to leak the story to make Veronica look like she’s not well enough to run for office.

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Later on, Spencer confronts Mona (Janel Parrish) about Yvonne “accidentally” leaving her phone at lunch. It turns out that Mona told Yvonne to leave it behind to see if they can trust Spencer but Mona never told Yvonne about Spencer actually having her phone. Instead, Mona wanted Spencer to find out what the opposition plans to leak. 

How Haleb ended

Caleb and Hanna get together for a drink to discuss the latest developments with the “A” drama (with Caleb referring to their anonymous stalker as “A” for the first time). This scene is used as an excuse for him to tell Hanna how much stronger she is now and to give us a flashback on the beginnings of Haleb’s breakup. Basically, Caleb would’ve rather stayed outside to feed a stray cat rather than be inside during Hanna’s big fashion party. And this makes them realize they don’t know what the other wants anymore.

But Caleb still goes back to their apartment despite this tense conversation. Maybe we haven’t seen the official end of their relationship yet.

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Ali’s not-so-interesting secret

Alison (Sasha Pieterse) comes clean to Spencer about her relationship with Dr. Rollins (Huw Collins). Since her and Charlotte’s dad didn’t want anything to do with them and Jason was obsessed with work at the Carissimi Group, she ended up turning to Dr. Rollins and fell in love with him. She says she doesn’t want to keep this relationship a secret any longer and even tells the doctor himself how she wants to go public.

Why is this relationship such a big secret? Maybe I know nothing about rules regarding doctors’ romantic relationships (and if you do, feel free to prove me wrong in the comments below!) but it’s not like he was Ali’s doctor. This is nowhere near the level of secrecy that Aria and Ezra (Ian Harding) faced.

And speaking of Ezra!

Liam (Roberto Aguire) returns to Rosewood to read the latest chapters of Ezra’s manuscript. However, it turns out Liam only wants to read the chapters to confirm his suspicions that it’s actually Aria, not Ezra, who wrote most of the book. Liam encourages Aria to finish the chapter on the conditions she tells Ezra the truth.

When Ezra finally returns, he apologizes to Aria for not telling her everything. The night of Charlotte’s murder, he saw Aria’s parents together and they made him keep their rendezvous a secret. And later on, he went to the House of Pies and talked with a trucker named Earl for three hours about politics. So this confirms our suspicions that Ezra would rather be seen as the creepy ex-stalker rather than come clean to Aria about anything!

Also, Ezra says he spent the past few weeks in Albany and ended up writing the next three chapters of his manuscript. This should be fifty shades of awkward when he finds out his ex-girlfriend already wrote most of the book for him.

The murder weapon is NOT a golf club!

While we were originally led to believe the weapon that killed Charlotte was a golf club, Detective Tanner (Roma Maffia) tells Ali her sister was struck in the spine with a hollow, metal rod with a rectangular shape at the end. Additionally, someone called the DiLaurentis residence from a landline at a restaurant called the Two Crows. The phone call lasted for three minutes but both Ali and Dr. Rollins swear they did not take any calls that night.

Later on, Spencer tries to lift up her sister Melissa’s suitcase and discovers the handle is broken. But the missing part is hollow, metal and cut with a rectangle on the end. And that was the most interesting aspect of this episode even though we know it’s only a red herring.

Creepy Devil Emoji Epilogue

I never thought “Whistle While You Work” from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be creepy but this epilogue made it so! The song plays as the mysterious stalker cleans switches and installs screws in that device in the Radley Hotel’s basement.

Closing Thoughts

Call me crazy but I’m still going to stick by this show (mostly because I have to write these recaps but also because I’m trying to stay optimistic). The episode may have been titled “Where Somebody Waits for Me,” but a better title would have been “Where Somebody Waits for Me to Become the Show People Fell In Love With Six Years Ago.”

Rating: 3/10

Do you still enjoy Pretty Little Liars? Do you think it can become the show it once was? Sound off in the comments below!

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