The last few episodes of “Pretty Little Liars” have been nothing short of a-mazing. After last week’s cliffhanger with the liars trying to decode Alison’s annotated newspapers from the summer she disappeared, and the revelation that she was likely back in town a day before she appeared to her friends, I was counting down the minutes until 8 p.m. tonight.

Personally, I’m a huge fan of Alison DiLaurentis and I find that we learn more about the liars as a whole when she’s in the episode. Needless to say, I was just as shocked as Spencer was to see her shuffling around his living room in the opening scene of the show, which we (unfortunately) have to assume was a dream sequence. The one useful piece of information here was when Ali told Spencer, “don’t get hung up on the details and miss what’s parked right in front of you” as she motioned to the bag of her stuff Jason had given to Spencer. Why then, at the end of the episode, do we see Spencer and Hanna packing all of Ali’s things in that same bag to give to the police? This part didn’t make too much sense to me, as Ali was always five steps ahead of the girls, and they knew it.

Speaking of being five steps ahead, A really covered her ass when she bribed both the doll shop owner, Martha and her son, Seth, into telling the girls what they needed to hear. Although Seth’s testimony about Vivian coming into the doll shop and him warning her that two people were after her (Melissa and Ian? Melissa and Garrett? Garrett and Jenna?) was shocking and creepy when he said it, it ended up being less so by the end of the episode when our suspicions are confirmed that A is behind all of this.

Since A was bribing him with lollipops (Really? That worked?) we now have to disregard everything he seemed to know and how he knew it. We don’t know if Ali was buried alive, that she came into the store the summer before last, and even if the descriptions of the dark-haired couple (the woman of whom could see) that was looking to hurt Alison were accurate. A is yet again manipulating people and getting them to tell the story he/she wants told instead of what really happened.

So what’s going to happen with Ezria, the star couple of the show? They can’t be done forever, but it seems like the Montgomerys were left with no choice but to get Ezra fired when he refused to accept a promotion in another state while Aria spoiled her parent’s plot to ship her off to boarding school. A little extreme, huh? Seeing that application with the note from Byron attached asking Ella to send over Aria’s transcript was probably the most jaw-dropping moment of the episode. Before the opening of “page five” that is, but we’ll get to that. Did they really think they were going to send Aria off because she made a decision they were unhappy with? Yes, she went a little too far threatening to expose her father to the Dean of Hollis College for the affair with his graduate student, but she does have a point. And fighting fire with fire is what these girls do best.

The best and most shocking moment of the episode (and maybe the season in general, with the exception of the girls’ trip to the morgue) was when Jenna casually pulled page five of Alison’s autopsy report – the missing page – out from a box in her room and gave it to Toby! And even better was that she didn’t know what it was… or did she? I’d like to think she actually didn’t know what it was but she knew enough to not trust Garrett and destroy something he claimed was so powerful. Turning him in to the police and seeing both Melissa and the girls’ faces when the cops came banging on the Hastings’ door to arrest him was the cherry on top of the cake. Way to go, J!

With the season two finale just one week away, there’s but a few days left to speculate about A’s identity before it’s revealed. My money’s on Melissa, always has been, but seeing a nice curveball thrown into the mix would make next week’s episode even better. I can hardly wait.