Ezra. Sheesh. You could write an epistle on this guy. I don't for one minute buy that he suddenly up and dropped his extracurricular activities. It is one thing to have literary aspirations , but we're talking about, to borrow Hanna's colorful phrase, 'a grown-ass man' who had multiple lairs/apartments/god-only-knows how many other undisclosed locations filled with years of meticulously compiled surveillance/photographs/intercepted communications/written material on these underage girls and who was monitoring their whereabouts 24/7. He admitted to purposefully pursuing a sexual relationship with Aria (whose age and identity he professed to be well aware of) for the purposes of ostensibly gathering material for his 'book'. And yet now the girls are walking around as if concussed and like season 4 never occurred.

I couldn't help but smirk when Ezra was attempting to console Hanna on the most recent episode by regaling her with his stories about his gourmand sartorial choices....I wanted to say "And when was this, Ezra? After you as it turns out didn't knock-up Maggie in high school? Before you became briefly engaged to Jackie? Prior to the short fling/tete-a-tete with 15 year old Alison DiLaurentis? Or perhaps it was after you resolved to become the Shakespeare of the true-crime genre? You really do get around. For someone who was purportedly 'cut-off' you sure did have a pretty high-class reconnaissance operation running." And now that the object of all this travail, all this apparent blood-sweat-and tears (Alison) has returned and the entire ordeal is only becoming more baffling...we're supposed to believe he's blissfully retired that vintage Remington typewriter of his. For what inane reason I cannot fathom, it at least currently appears like the writers have back-tracked and ignominiously put Ezra-as-A to bed, but to my ears he has not gone quietly and is still wide awake and deliriously clamouring away at those keys in the darkest dead of night. To have the series ultimately revealed as some form of narration/elaboration upon his novel- and from now until the end to flesh out all of the sordid and morally repellant intricacies that this would entail- to really augment his character by conferring him with the fetid psychic terrain of a Humbert Humbert-type antihero (which a large majority of the men in Rosewood don't really even attempt to deny possessing to one degree or another)- would be a fitting possible dénouement in my very humble opinion. This of course conjures up Carroll as well, as one of the girls the Alice character was based on and written for was the very prepubescent Alice Pleasance Liddell and it is still debated as to exactly how innocent the flavour, so to speak, of his affection for her was. But I guess we'll have to see. There are all these other convoluted threads that still need detangling- the entire Cavanaugh-DiLaurentis-Hastings family triangle. Toby perhaps possesses the most motive and the most heartache in regards to his mother and whether or not Bethany is revealed to be related to him in some way, but as was mentioned- how is he financing all this? Is it really realistic to expect that an adolescent boy of his background, the shunned 'black cat of Rosewood' as I think I recall Keegan calling him in an early season 1 interview, is capable of all this?

It is curious in regards to CeCe Drake that she happens to share the same initials as Carroll (Charles Dodgson= C.D). Another rather interesting fact was that Carroll was an Anglican deacon...which of course puts one in mind of pastor Ted and the question of how he was able to have procured that hefty sum of money for Ashley's bail so readily. Perhaps in Rosewood serving the Lord is a rather lucrative profession. Toby should take note if he does indeed relinquish that rather disconcertingly quick police badge he acquired.

There are numerous avenues they could take the final -A reveal down, which is frustrating in itself because one would think that with only two seasons to go we would at least have narrowed our focus a bit more, but up to this point every season finale has only asked more questions than it has answered. I am hoping that with this one we will at the very least be able to cross a few suspects definitively off the list and hone-in on the ultimate candidate more clearly. I still have my fingers crossed that Ezra and all the consequent madness that was/is his 'novel' will be involved in some capacity, despite all his protestations to the contrary. There is just far too much about him that simply beggars belief, "What's that, doll? This sketchy underground lair of mine that's plastered with photographs of you and your friends, alongside an extensive timeline of all your comings and goings?- oh don't you worry your pretty little head, darling. I'm a writer- it's what we writers do! Think of it as a man cave, only with that special Ezra Fitz touch! Nighty-night!" Nope. Sorry. I'm just not buying what you're selling Mr. Fitz.

I just love the Hemmingway quote that was mentioned earlier- "All things truly wicked start from an innocence." I think this is at the heart of the entire show- the juxtaposition of sweet feminine delicacy mired with the perverse and criminally vulgar. That, in its own way, was the essence of Mona and if the whole dollhouse scenario is to take place I wouldn't bat an eyelash to discover she's the one running the whole debacle. The criminal-master-mind-feigning -victim spiel is her bread and butter. Both she and Jenna have it down to an art. Then again, this whole 'Charles' anagram could not even be involved, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.