You Know You Love Me, A

Let’s tie the last few episodes of Pretty Little Liars together and count the continuity issues!

Last week: Aria and Ezra indulged in a public makeout session in the parking lot of her high school where he just resigned. Thousands of PLL viewers melted in their seats.

This week: No mention of Ezra. Aria seemingly alone and later flirting with Jason di Laurentis. Did I miss the scene where they broke up? Was it buried somewhere beneath the passion?

Last week: Emily’s mom is extremely anti-gay. She is finding it very difficult to accept her daughter. She looks through an old box of crap and cries.

This week: Not only does she accept Emily but she’s inviting her girlfriend over for dinner. Who ends up in her bed. I’m seeing a pattern here, Em.

I’m not sure of the exact timeframe of this one, but I’m sure the actor playing Jason changed. And now the new Jason gets speaking lines, more intrigue, and more of a plotline.

This week the big mystery of Ian was solved when Melissa followed his text messages to find him dead in a barn. Must be a hard acting bit; he went from dead to dead. Way to go, A.

And that brings me to my biggest issue. A is someone residing in the tiny town of Rosewood, privately torturing and manipulating four girls. A is not Gossip Girl, a mystery blogger in the massive metropolis of NYC targeting a number of wealthy, pretentious families and exposing their scandals online. So when she sends the girls messages signed off XOXO, A? That’s a little much. Consider your competition, writers.

Mimi

I Hate Asking You To Lie Like This…But

The return of Pretty Little Liars stirred up that Nancy Drew crime-solving fire in each of us that so long ago tired of the Mary Alice Young mystery. It wasn’t the most cutting edge, though ABC Family would like to believe so, but it was satisfying enough.

The second you are transported to the seemingly-quaint surroundings of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, you realize that this is a town unlike any other. Students engaging in sexual acts with faculty, incest, a looming murder of a middle schooler, and full-on family interventions? Normalcy, hardly.

Nerdy Lucas was overly nice, Mona lost her only saving grace of being Hanna’s defensive little dog, sneaky Noel Kahn was back at Rosewood Day, and now there’s a Jason Thing. The girls immediately started off on the wrong foot with their shrink, who decided to split them up. And forbid them from seeing each other. Yeah, let’s see that one pan out.

My favorite character, dark and moody Caleb, was shooed by Hanna in a short, vacuous scene and just lent more time to discussing Ian’s whereabouts. Dead? Alive? A? This show is providing itself with the uphill battle of not turning every twist and turn into previous plotlines. Toby, Alison, Jenna…

It’s strange the things that continue to fly under the radar in this show:

1. There shouldn’t be any leading designer stores in a town resembling Stars Hollow. 

2. The girls’ parents are only around conveniently (hello – Spencer’s dad?) so it seems each sixteen-year-old girl owns her own 4 bedroom single family home.

3. The little one dresses like a prostitute. Is her wardrobe supposed to be described as trendy? Are booty shorts and thigh high boots trendy?

PLL‘s main downfall is that remarkable music is rarely offered, and on this premiere, they only presented a weak Christina Perri song for a weak assortment of scenes.

Mimi

That’s What You Said Right Before You Got Caught

The return of 90210 was a series of cheesy one-liners, warbly cries, homophobia, hostage scenes, cheatin’, killin’, and poor, poor Adrianna. And Annie’s Chris Brown/Bruno Mars wannabe boyfriend is soon to be written off the show, going the way of the drug dealer recluse boyfriend and soon to be forgotten.

On Gossip Girl, Serena kept Dan waiting…and waiting…and waiting. He asked if her current scheme was worth it and she responded making him feel worthless, an act we’ve witnessed for years. Nevertheless, Dan later comforted Blair, of all people, paying her the compliment, “You’re an evil dictator of taste.”

All the while, Bass Industries was sinking and none of the family was willing to salvage it, much like their once-strong bonds. And speaking of sinking, Serena was on some wierd tangent about “sink or swim” for the entire hour.

And we’ve caught wind that the Bass/Van der Woodsen clan are old news, anyway. There’s a new Trump Tower and everyone seems to have a room key.

On Pretty Little Liars, Ian was the new suspect and Noel Kahn was once more merely a silly little schoolboy. Aria’s mother informed her that she was able to keep a secret and then played matchmaker with Aria’s old babysitter and her secret lover. The best line to come out of the setup was, “They did not have English teachers like that when I was here.”

And suddenly, as of this episode, there is a new, nameless student at Rosewood Day who sells electronics and wants in everyone’s business. Because that’s what they needed.

The girls have been getting less and less discreet in public. Usually all whispers and secret hideouts, now the quartet is found loudly voicing their suspicions about Ian at the school Dance-a-thon.

The Dance-a-thon was a pretty lame theme, with rip-roaring Howard Jones music and constant rule breaking. Emily got drunk and hid outside, Hanna got dumped, Aria was tortured watching her beau with another woman, and Spencer was hastily trying to cover everyone’s tracks.  

Mimi



Secrets Keep Us Close

“I’ll grow old and I’ll grow brave and I’ll go.”

On the Season Finale of Pretty Little Liars,

When A says, “You found my bracelet, now come find me,” Spencer says, “I think we’re supposed to go to where we found Ali’s bracelet.” Really? You gathered that in all your acclaimed brilliance, Spencer? She seems to consistently draw the short straw on fun, extra lines from the script.

The highlights of our little finale were Spencer and Melissa’s temporary heart-to-heart; where Melissa warns Spencer not to play Ali’s games, Aria and Mr. Fitz’s moonlit heart-to-heart-to-other-places; and Toby returning to pour his heart out to Emily who sticks the cops on him.

Spencer shared a secret. A shared Emily’s secret. Hanna learned Aria’s secret (and she’s getting good at this!) Good thing secrets keep them close, right?

Then the precalculated worst way to end this season was by adding a Mystery of the Episode that was solved in a character who was just introduced, and Hanna doing a terrible acting job of getting hit by a car.  You wouldn’t think that would be difficult but it must take a lot of talent.

Mimi

You Are Just Like Alison, Aren’t You?

On Pretty Little Liars, Jason di Laurentis was about as off from the books as Emily Fields is, and had shown up for yet another long, drawn-out Ali Memoriam.

We had to watch Hanna limp out her faux-relationship with what’s-his-face when all her feelings were toward Lucas, the rapidly-less-nerdy kid.

One more betrayal of Alison’s reared its ugly head after her death. Being repeated in her words by Odd Girl Jenna and Big Brother Jason. 

Emily suddenly mentioned her father-character as being absent due to the military. So it can be a big deal when he comes home. I’m sure her mother already mentioned him at some point, like, “your father and I were worried sick” if only because this show has major continuity issues.

Jason was way too interested in his late little sister’s group dynamics, constantly bringing up the way things used to be; a bit of a Toby Cavanaugh himself.

The Rosewood movie theater, which has already made one tiny-town appearance, plays (bottom rate, old timey horror) movies right away; without previews or even opening credits. Believable? Hardly.

Our episode theme was forgetting Toby and the twist at the end proved we were making way for Ian.

At last, the girls realized they had been duped when Alison’s, “original” bracelet turned up, from the hands of her blood relative.

Pretty Little Liars hijacked my MP3 Player, with Carolina Liar‘s I’m Not Over and US Royalty‘s Every Summer. Good one.

Mimi