This 'PLL' Moment Is So Crazy That It's Amazing

Warning: there be spoilers ahead. If you're not that way inclined, turn back now. One of the foremost joys of Pretty Little Liars is also the show's Achilles' heel: its proclivity for full-on, WTF absurd plot twists. Its telenovela-level drama reached dizzy new heights of ridiculousness with Pretty Little Liars Season 7 Episode 1, in which the gang is alerted to Hanna's presence in a church via the usual snide text message. Their rush to rescue what looks like Hanna's lifeless body hanging from a beam only precedes their rush to conclusions: "She's dead." But then Caleb senses something isn't right. "It isn't Hanna, it's a mask," he says.

You guys, what? The big reveal is that what appears to be Hanna's body is some sort of... er... creepy doll's face stitched onto a fake human body? It really looks like a human body. And it presumably feels like one too, since the Liars had to carry it down from the beam. How do you make a fake human body, anyway? And did Uber A have to buy a blonde wig too, and cut it exactly into Hanna's haircut? How do you squeeze a fake human body into clothes? So much effort. So many questions. While this should all be intensely creepy, the scene also basks in its own absurdity with this wonderfully campy shot of the fake Hanna face lying on the floorboards. New desktop wallpaper? Done.

And you've got to see the "real" face of fake Hanna:

Visual proof that Uber A is single-handedly funding Rosewood's china doll industry. The hilariously melodramatic vibes are par for the course for the show, which never knowingly under-does a scene. Remember when Toby was in the slammer and wore a do-rag?

Or, hey, when they decided to try and push a Ravenswood spin-off on the back of one of the Pretty Little Liars Halloween episodes in Season 4, Episode 13? Sacrilege. Plus they forced our four heroines to dress like this the whole time:

But obviously, the most absurd of the twists have been using siblings at every possible opportunity to explain away the unexplainable. Still, I would argue that this latest twist is the most absurd yet. Partly because it had a huge Twitter campaign behind it, partly because I'm an eternal optimist who was expecting more of the first episode, partly because how the hell do you make a mask of a human face that looks like a human face up close?

Unlike the protagonists of my favorite show, I'm not forced to lie to my nearest and dearest due to a series of sadistic text messages. Pretty Little Liars is the most absurd show on the small screen, and that's why I'm obsessed. If you're out there, Pretty Little Liars scribes? Never change. I will be enjoying the campy absurdity until the day I'm forced, kicking and screaming and crying, to say goodbye to my favorite.

Images: Warner Bros. Television (5)