Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

The original Pretty Little Liars, based on the books by Sara Shepard, ran from 2010 to 2017. On a recent rewatch, what struck me was that it was so easy to track changes in television landscape and pop-cultural discourse throughout the seasons – and from the perspective of 2024, the idea of having seven seasons of twenty-plus episodes already feels like an artifact of a bygone time. Pretty Little Liars, when it was good, was a revelation: an exercise in showcasing how young women are controlled (in the most literal interpretation of it, they find themselves trapped in a dollhouse), and not just by a hostile presence in their life (who mainly communicates through text messages), but by all the systems of authority around them – parents, cops, teachers. These authority figures are hapless at best, deliberately engaged in manipulation of and violence against them at their worst. All of this played out within the natural confines of a show that ran on the Disney-owned and conservative-leaning Family Channel (now Freeform). And when it was bad, it was terrible – the first season is dominated by a level of fat-shaming that feels deeply out of date now, the aftershocks of the horrors of the late 90s and early 2000s (although what Ozempic et al will wreak society now may just return us to these good old days), transphobic name-calling and worse, a super-villain who is revealed to be trans in later seasons, played by a cis actress. The show’s main queer character ends up with her former bully, and Aria Montgomery marries the teacher who has been grooming her since she was a teenager. What is presented as a happy ending comes across as much darker than was probably intended.
All of these conditions make the idea of a remake/sequel a mere five years later interesting, to say the least, especially transported to HBO Max (now just Max) and into the creative realm of Riverdale’s Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, fresh off a show that seemingly had absolutely no limits in terms of how wacky it was allowed to be, which often translated into a fever-dream of a television show (there are plenty of listicles on its wildest storylines, and they truly are wild). Not only is Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin (Summer School in its second season, which arrives after a long break, perhaps in part due to the strikes last year) set in the same universe as the original show, there are also clues throughout that this is now happening in the same universe Riverdale (and therefore also the 2018 remake Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) was set in. All of these previous shows by Aguirre-Sacasa had a distinctive visual language that encompassed the worlds he was building, and Pretty Little Liars is no exception, but not unlike Sabrina, it’s even more interesting because it contrasts so perfectly with what the original show was: on the original PLL, set in the beautiful and affluent town of Rosewood, the darkness of the story was offset by the perfect surfaces of an upper-middle class context, where everyone had a refined wardrobe and even those who had had fallen on economic hardship had massive, beautifully furnished houses (Ashley Martin, Hanna’s mother, was always hustling the hardest to maintain the lifestyle, with her famous lasagna boxes of squirrelled-away money). The girls made frequent daytrips to Philadelphia, and even Emily, from more modest means than her friends, had a shiny Toyota Prius. In contrast, and maybe with full awareness that aspirational consumption doesn’t sell as well in an era of gritty television about teenagers, the new PLL is set in Millwood, Rosewood’s working-class and much less sparkling neighbour (think Pawnee vs Bloomington, but more), where the closest city is Pittsburgh. In the first season, everything is dark and gloomy: the houses feel stuffy, with lived-in furniture and indirect light sources that never seem to reach the corners. Everything, including the school, looks like it is in dire need of a fresh coat of paint if not major renovations. The other main settings, like the pizza parlour where everyone meets all the time (no fancy coffee shops here) and the cinema where one of the main characters work, feel like they have fallen out of time, have remained unchanged even if their patrons now have mobile phones. This sense of different economic circumstances extends to the new Liars: Pregnant Imogen (Bailee Madison), whose single mum tragically dies in the first episode (Carly Pope reappears frequently throughout after as an apparition, maybe in reference to the original Laura Palmer of the show, Alison DiLaurentis, but with less hope of returning from the dead), now lives with her best friend Tabby (Chandler Kinney). Imogen’s house, which Tabby’s mum is trying to sell, is heavily mortgaged, and even Tabby’s family is far removed from the splendour that fellow real estate agent Ashley Marin lived in. Faran’s (Zaria) mum is a lawyer, but the only visible sign of privilege here is that she takes ballet classes at her school (from a shockingly ableist and racist teacher), while her mum works in a cubicle in Pittsburgh. Minnie’s (Malia Pyles) mums have an antique shop in town that looks like it came straight out of the original show, creepy dolls and all. Noa’s (Maia Reficco) single mum is a nurse and struggling with an addiction to pain killers after a work injury, and Noa is wearing an ankle monitor and has to do community service at the beginning of the first season because she tried to protect her mum, who seems less than thankful – later on, Noa has to take over her mum’s shifts at the pizza store so she can detox.
Along with the existence of economic stress factors that deeply impact these teenagers (they seem to have jobs because they have to, not out of interest, while in the original show, only Emily ever had to consistently hold down a job during her high school years), the mechanism for throwing them in the path of a killer, again named A, is different. As drawn-out as the conspiracy around A was in the original show, at least for the first few seasons there was never any doubt that the original Liars had wronged them somehow (Mona x Hanna forever). Here, the “original sin” goes back to 1999, when all of their mums conspired to bully a girl ultimately into suicide, a death that prefaces the show and sets the tone a lot more darker and seriously than the original PLL started off as (it also reminded me of the way that Skins’ fourth season starts with a character dying the same way, and how the repercussions play out throughout the season – I wonder if that’s a coincidence). The five girls aren’t even friends to start off with, except Tabby and Imogen – their main connection is that they are struggling against Original Sin’s Alison DiLaurentis, who is still very much alive – Karen Beasley is a queen bee and mean girl, her twin sister Kelly like a paler shadow, and things really start escalating when one of them (it’s fairly easy to guess which, but the doubling and swapping is a great reference to both the original books and show, which loved playing with it, and probably also again a tie-in with Twin Peaks) falls from the rafters of the school trying to Carrie Imogen. The girls become friends over trying to solve what is happening to them, not unlike the unfortunately overlooked One Of Us Is Lying, which in its two very smart seasons (I always got the sense that it was much better than it had to be, and created with a lot of integrity and love) felt like a more ambitious and timely follow-up to the original PLL before Original Sin came out.  
Whoever the killer is, he seems intent on avenging the 1999 death and appears to hate bullying, in general. It’s a solid mystery, connected to a dark family history (that tracks back to Rosewood’s iconic Radley Sanatorium, setting for many original mysteries but since closed and turned into a fancy hotel – Imogen and Tabby go on a field trip there and meet a recast Eddie Lamb). There’s body horror reminiscent of the original show, with dead bodies disappearing and reappearing and slasher movie influences (fittingly, since Tabby is such a horror movie fan). Where Original Sin truly succeeds is all the horrible things that are happening apart from the central mystery of the show: Karen’s dad is the local sheriff, a predator to young boys in his care and controlling and terrible to his daughters and wife. Imogen’s pregnancy is the result of a rape that she has kept quiet about because it is obvious that she can’t trust the system to help her, and later we find out that Tabby has gone through the same ordeal and is working on trying to find the culprit on her own, again because she has no faith (rightly so) that the local police would be any help. She is also avoiding the advances of her much older boss, who is trying to use their shared love of movies to seduce her (but is promptly called out for it, because luckily, Original Sin is not repeating the errors of the past). One of the few call-backs to the original show is Imogen’s intention to give her baby up for adoption to a “nice couple in Rosewood”, easily identifiable as Aria and Ezra, but she reverses her decision in the second season because of “weird vibes” she got off Ezra, a damning verdict on PLL’s greatest sin of never holding him accountable for his predation. A will eventually give each of the girls a chance to confront the worst person in their lives to test their ability for justice and forgiveness, but among them, one of the most complex and horrifying is Mouse’s: she’s never learned who her biological father is, and had a traumatic experience with almost getting kidnapped that her mothers refuse to be forthright about, so she is meeting a man whose daughter has disappeared by role-playing with him – something that initially feels more emotionally charged and difficult than you’d expect from the show, but quickly turns into a horror story as the man begins to  stalk her (Mouse is also the youngest at fifteen). The true horrors here aren’t the ones related to the killer, just like the original shows had its secret big bads (dirty cops, Byron Montgomery’s obsession with controlling his daughter, Ezra, whatever that truly horrifying storyline of Alison’s pregnancy was). The other question underneath the surface of the show is the mums, the reformed bullies, who have caused so much emotional damage: is having grown and changed from the people they were as teenagers enough to be forgiven for their terror, or will it haunt them forever? Has Karen Beasley herself, in shedding off her skin and assuming that of her meek sister, successfully atoned? In the second season, summer has arrived in Millwood, and somehow Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa achieves a just as visually unsettling and alienating effect with direct light as he does in the first season with his poorly lit interiors: and the sun doesn’t last long, anyway (the retro cans of soda, perhaps relics from Riverdale’s final 1950s form, contribute to it), as the trials and tribulations continue.  

2022-, created by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Lindsay Calhoon Bring, starring Bailee Madison, Chandler Kinney, Zaria, Malia Pyles, Maia Reficco, Mallory Bechtell, Alex Aiono, Elias Kacavas, Sharon Leal, Jordan Gonzalez, Ben Cook, Travis Patton, Kate Jennings Grant, Lea Salonga, Gabriella Pizzolo, Derek Klena, Carlson Rowland, Elena Goode, Eric Johnson, Jennifer Ferrin, Kim Berrios Lin, Zakiya Young, Carly Pope.

Pretty Little Liars – Because without fear, there can be no courage.

What if we chose to interpret the ending of this show, seven or eight years in the making, differently from what is obviously expected of us? What if the conclusion that it is entirely okay and happy to marry your first high school loves, your bullies and tormentors, the paedophile teachers who spun your love falsely into a tragic love story, was entirely false and a lie, somehow brought to life and sustained by a network lacking the courage to allow this theory to be brought to full fruition? I choose to believe that these two version of Pretty Little Liars, which have coexisted from the beginning, still do so, that there are two entirely different readings of what unfolds here which are both valid, but force the individual reader to emerge from entirely different tunnels if they choose to follow that path. 

More than that, I choose to believe that the show encourages this reading of itself. For what other reason would we start this finale with Mona’s glimpse of a snowball, with five girls still trapped in the small town of their birth, with no means of escape, constantly making more decisions that will trap them there? Looking back at these seven seasons, maybe that was the point all along: all those paths that potentially led out of Rosewood, the big-city careers, the lovers who left for other colleges, the fiancés from other countries: at each of these forks in the road, the girls chose a path that led them straight back to Rosewood, as if the world outside didn’t even truly exist as an option. In the end, does it even matter that A bound them there, that the central mystery of their lives brought them back again and again, if that choice itself over time became one that each of them made willingly? Because each of them had options that took them away from Rosewood which bear considering now, at the end of the long road. Emily could have followed Paige where she went, wherever she managed to stay alive. Spencer could have gone anywhere, with her grades. Aria was an editor and could have edited anyone but her high school teacher, who has groomed her into a bride to be. Hanna designed fashion, which could be done so easily from anywhere else but Rosewood. But still, here they are: back in the old haunting grounds, trapped in this place forever. 

If we choose to deliberately change or perspective of this entire show, then this is the story of one girl, solving a mystery, getting on top of things, ready to sacrifice anything just to be able to write her own story. What if Pretty Little Liars was only a story with a happy ending if we had to accept Mona’s point of view as the valid one? What if the girl who, in the end, has finally made it out of Rosewood, to Paris, won the game and everything else that was at stake? It’s one thing to marry your high school sweetheart and to raise children together, and another altogether to best the villain for good and manage to trap them in a dollhouse of your own making. These are two entirely separate paths and only one of them leads out of Rosewood, into the world beyond. 

The five girls will always exist this way, and there is no way out of it. Maybe the positive way of reading it is that nobody outside their circle will ever understand their suffering, the story of their lives: that nobody but Ali, Toby, Caleb and Ezra will ever comprehend what it means to grow up in this war, with those sacrifices. But the other reading is that only Mona truly won the game, because she truly faced her demons, and came out on top, trapping the thing that had trapped her for so many years in a dollhouse: that only Mona gets to leave, because she won the game in the end. And none of that even mentions the core of the mystery, which in the end, maybe was never the point at all. 

The girl was jealous, more than anything, of the closeness, of the affection, of the fact that these four or sometimes five girls were willing to die for each other, for their friendship. She was seething with jealousy. She had been brought to a different continent, but nothing ever made her feel this close, this understood. 

And I think nothing will ever make up for the fact that this show, in the end, decided to go down this path – a last minute decision that Spencer would have the twin, not Ali, that the way the books would be paid homage to would be for Spencer, and Troian, to perform in that way. It’s hard to even conceive at what point this decision was made, and how much this show has lost just based on avoiding all the things that the viewers may have predicted. Maybe a better course would have been to think things through from the beginning, but then, perhaps it is interesting that this is where it ended up with. There was never a way out from Ali and Emily, regardless of any kind of objection that someone might have had regarding the complete rewriting of Ali’s character, or the problematic fact that Ali, for many seasons, was written as Emily’s tormentor, someone who ridiculed her for who she was, and more than that, tortured her girlfriend almost to suicide: and that wasn’t even the worst of it, because it doesn’t take into account that Ezra Fitz was forgiven for preying on teenage girls who were also his students, for spying on them, and being fully aware of the reality they faced, yet doing nothing to save them except writing a good story about them. In the end, Ezra has come full circle by marrying the student he preyed on, and becoming the topic of discussion in a high school English class led by Ali DiLaurentis. It’s very hard to find a way back from this, or to somehow salvage seven years of storytelling, a few of which arguably earned the title of best show on television (for a few episodes, for a few, hopeful moments, where Pretty Little Liars didn’t shy away from what it could be). 

Spencer’s twin watched, and grew more and more jealous of the intimacy of a close friendships, of sacrifice. And then she chose to intervene, and somehow managed to pass as Spencer herself, because maybe, in the spur of the moment, and maybe that’s the truest story PLL has ever told, the girls were too self-involved to realise that one of their best friends had been transplanted by a stranger. As Troian Bellisario tries to master these strange vowels (and fails, which is the hardest lesson out of this – that wanting to be Tatiana Maslany can be the ruin of an entire show, that acting can measure up, but voice-lessons sometimes don’t), the show descends into its last moments of madness. It’s a good conclusion, in a way, that this whole time, a fake Truman-show version of Rosewood existed that imprisons those who set foot in it, that looks so very much like the real thing, yet isn’t quite there, and is inescapable. It’s a Dollhouse of sorts, for those who never make it out alive. Hanna and Caleb are deeply unhappy in their marriage, because Hanna is still willing to sacrifice all for Mona, and nothing, not even the child, will make up for it. Ali will always have been the girl who tortured not just Emily, but all of Rosewood High. Ezra will never not be a pathetic high school teacher who so eloquently seduced an underage girl that he is now married to her, and basing an entire career on writing about what a special little snowflake he is. Toby recognised Alex Drake as not Spencer not from making love to her, but from the lack of personal marks on Spencer’s favourite collection of poems. 

There is nothing much to be said here. Seven or eight years, with the potential of being one of the most eloquent story about the horrors of patriarchy, traded away for whatever travesty this final few seasons chose to be. There are glimpses, still – glimpses that I thoroughly have to believe Marlene King was aware of, when she had Mona play with her dolls, in the end, the only person who truly got what she had always wanted. 

Some thoughts on 'Playtime'

 Pretty Little Liars - 7x11 Playtime

I am very cautious about this last season, and this last half of the season, because at some point about two years ago, this show had a glorious streak of episodes that gave me hope it would become the show it always had the potential to be - and then it didn't. But, nevertheless, I couldn't stop thinking about this episode after watching it, and Pretty Little Liars has been with us for such a long time now that it's impossible to leave behind so close to the finishing line. 

And there is a certain beauty to the fact that the plot device that will get us there is a tiny murder model of the very town that has captured our Liars. They tried to leave (everyone except Alison, who is bound to Rosewood like a ghost, I guess), but were all called back. They tried to be successful in the outside world, but in the end, they couldn't escape. And now, they've been sent a literal tabletop game version of the life they've lived (for how long - about seven years, as well, with the time jump?), and it is asking them to play. At first, they refuse, but in the end, and so eloqently throughout the episode, not one of them can escape who they are (which, in most cases, is someone gloriously, shaped through trauma but also incredibly strong, but it still inevitably ties them back to Rosewood). 

Of course Spencer will try to play, and win the game, without telling the others. Of course it leads down a dark path where she finally asks the question of her chronically un-motherly mother (and of course she was biologically tied to all of thi all along, and has been Alison's cousin this whole time). 

Of course Aria will go off on her own thing, half-assedly planning a wedding to someone who has, for years, lied and spied on her (did they bring back Holden specifically for that "of course you would think that was normal" reaction, a bit of a self-assessment on part of the show for its conistent failure to call Ezra out on his bullshit instead of giving him redemption arc after redemption arc (the biggest lie of this show is that getting shot for someone pays off grooming an underage girl into a relationship and then never, ever letting her go). 

Of course Emily is too busy trying to save everyone again so that it doesn't even occur to her that in your early 20s, you shouldn't somehow end up in a small room with two of your ex-girlfriends who are both problematic in their own way but only one of them has haunted your life like a spectre and almost bullied the other to suicide. She wants to save both of them, and that has always meant not really being able to help either of them on their way - Paige almost managed to get out of this helltown, but now she's back, and Alison still can't admit what she wants (or what the show decided she wanted all along, because if she didn't, all of this would fall apart). Fingers crossed Paige McCullers is the one who gets away, but it isn't looking good for her. Imagine almost making it out alive and then coming back to have that same old argument about what specific thing ruined your entire relationship again, with Alison looming over all of it. 

I'm trying to imagine a way out at this point, for Spencer who is trying to make sense of her entire life (with Toby in hospital waiting on the bedside of his severely injured fiance - Toby never wanted to leave, but then he did, and got punished for it). The mother who's love she's always doubted was never her biological mother to begin with (which explains A LOT about Mrs Hastings). She still tries to win games that she shouldn't even be playing. Alison is pregnant (and Emily's eggs have disappeared...). Aria is planning to get married to Ezra Fitz. 

Maybe we have to put our hope in Hanna (of course we should), who in a stark contrast to Spencer's instinct, tries to stick a knife in the thing that is tormenting them to see what is inside, instead of just accepting being dealt a few manipulative tricks here and there. It should be the message, that trying to play the game that has incomprehensible rules that were never made for you is never a good idea. I've thought a lot about Hanna after the episode, and the way that her course in life fluctuates between Caleb and Mona. Like - Caleb's love for her is deep, but it wasn't unconditional, because the way he phrases it now, her ambition ruined them. She wanted something, something that was far, far away from Rosewood, and he couldn't deal with it. Which is fair game for both of them - Caleb wanted her to be around more, she wanted a relationship that supported her ambition. But then there's Mona Vanderwaal, who's reaction to seeing Hanna's ambition is throwing every single thing at her disposal (which is a lot) towards it, to make the impossible happen in that genius way she has. And (not so secretly, I guess) this has always made the show work for me, the way it started with how sad Mona Vanderwaal was that the girl she loved most in the world was abandoning her for someone else. Hanna isn't defined by how much these two opposite people love her (it's not toxic, like with Aria, and it doesn't require her being a selfless hero, the way it does of Emily), but she has made herself so strong not just around all the terrible, horrible, fucked-up things that have happened to all the Liars, but also around the love and support.

I have a hard time imagining the ending of this show much differently than the way Sunnydale ended, a crater in the ground (and I've been trying to figure out how that whole "sharing powers" thing would work in a Rosewood context, rewriting the rules, but also at the same time in a problematic way because once again, they apply to people who didn't really have a choice in the matter). I don't think that anyone can win this game if they play by the rules, as much as Spencer will try her best. I'd like this season to be about Rosewood, and it should be, considering that the town has literally been turned into a centrepiece. Every cop is corrupt. Ezra Fitz is a respected writer. Mr Hastings got away with this shit for years. Radley kept the indiscretions and secrets of the town locked up for decades, and wreaked havoc on the lives and minds of its patients. There is no outside anymore. 

Random thoughts: 

• Haha, it's literally a game. 
• I really want to believe that Holden is back solely to deconstruct Aria and Ezra from the sidelines, but I guess there are no coincidences in Rosewood, especially not during Endgame times. Who else is missing from the picture? Melissa, Lucas, Jason, Wren...
• Emily and Alison... I just. I know exactly where they are going, and I hate it with every fibre of my being. The same way that there isn't a world outside Rosewood anymore - we will see how literal this is, but my guess is maybe nobody will venture to Philadelphia this season - there is no outside of Alison for Emily. Every single serious relationship she has had has had this spectre floating over it. Her entire life is shaped this way. It's not the same kind of toxic that Ezra and Aria are, but it's close. In a way I'm even impressed by how eloquently of an exploration this is into the very complex notion of two people being meant for each other. 

The 'Pretty Little Liars' will grow stronger in the broken places

The Liars escaped the doll house, but in a way, that only worked as a reminder that it was only a metaphor for what their lives have been like this whole time. There is a reason why A chose to trap them in versions of their own rooms: they have lived in a world created by A this whole time, not just since being trapped in the bunker. They’ve been forced to react to his moves, to design their lives around A’s ploys. Pretty Little Liars is the brilliant, exciting show that it is because it knows that the only way the girls can survive in this environment is by sticking together. Mutual self-help, friendship, love is what makes them stronger than A will ever be. At the same time, the question of who A is almost becomes a distraction from the main thing, which is that everything is A – it is one of the central mysteries of the show, the why and who of A, but it doesn’t take away from the main point that Aria, Hanna, Spencer and Emily (and every other woman in Rosewood) are trapped in a whole world that looks down on and hates girls and women. It’s in the police force that is never trustworthy, never a source of support, in the adult men who prey on teenage girls for their own gratification. 

Their strength and their agency come from supporting each other and combining their skills to form a stronger unit. And each of them has grown so much in the process. 

This is why A’s strategy is so heinous: he pits them against each other in a series of experiments (modelled on Milgram’s), forcing them to be cruel against each other, to make choices that will hurt each other. In all his scheming, all his detailed planning, A has discovered that the way that he can do the most harm is not by hurting the Liars, but by making them hurt each other. They emerge profoundly traumatized, but then, they’ve always been traumatized, and this is a fiercer, more explicit expression of something that has also always happened: the patriarchy attempting to pit girls against each other to prevent them from finding strategies of resistance. 

After this, Aria decides to stop writing because A has shaped it into a tool against her (and she has outgrown Ezra a hundredfold), Hanna rips up her room because she fiercely insists that she be allowed to determine what home is and looks like, Spencer struggles against her mother trying to control her recovery, and Emily, of course, picks up a gun so she can protect everyone she loves. 

Pretty Little Liars is eloquent in its darkness, and beautiful in its deep faith in the girls’ love for each other. They will survive this; they will grow stronger in the broken places. 

Random notes: 

Sara was down there for years

The way the show portrays what happened in the doll house and during the experiments is haunting in how non-explicit it is – the horror comes from not quite knowing, not from seeing the violence. Something to keep in mind whenever violence against women is explicitly shown on TV. 

Caleb runs circles around all the others. And Aria rages against Ezra’s attempt to shape her reaction to the doll house (I still have hope that the show will eventually be as eloquent with Aria and Ezra as it has been in other areas).

EMILY FIELDS. Trying to protect everyone and telling the girl she loves to stay away because that’s the only way she knows to protect her. 

MONA?!

Pretty Little Liars Goes Down the Rabbit Hole in ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’

When I was about eleven years old, one of my aunts gave me a book for Christmas or my birthday: House of Stairs, by William Sleator. As far as dystopian YA fiction goes, this one is particularly terrifying. A group of sixteen year old orphans wake up in a seemingly endless construction made entirely of stairs, and a weird machine with lights gives them food if they perform increasingly elaborate dances. As times goes by, they start to torture each other, a behaviour that the weird, unseen system seems to encourage. It was a story about a control state, about the things that people are willing to do to each other under duress, the terrible group dynamics of being trapped with no way out, and about how quickly random rules develop incredible power when hunger is used to discipline and control. I later found Cube (which adds to the horror by removing the raison d’être of its house of stairs: it is because it is, because it can be) so fascinating exactly because I had House of Stairs in the back of my mind, and arguably, Hunger Games follows some very similar patterns, even if it is much more optimistic about the ability of people (teenagers) stuck in a seemingly impossible situation to still follow a moral code and ultimately meaningfully voice their opposition. 

I’d never really thought of that book before in connection to Pretty Little Liars, but it provides some interesting parallels. The most obvious one, in Welcome to the Dollhouse, the fifth season finale, is that the four main characters of the show find themselves trapped in a very similar prison – even though the stairs are replaced by rooms eerily resembling their own, the disembodied airport voice uses the same method of arbitrary rules and severe punishment to force compliance. Four chimes means it’s game time. Follow the lights. If the siren sounds, run back to your room. If you don’t make it back in time, it keeps you trapped in the hallway, tortures you with noise, and starves you. 

But, back to the beginning. Hanna, Emily, Spencer and Aria have just been arrested as accessories to Alison DiLaurentis, now convicted of the murder of Mona Vanderwaal. They are on their way to prison. Something attacks the van, overwhelms the guards, uses poison gas to put the girls to sleep and carries them off to its lair. They awake, one by one, and one by one, they realize that they are not in their homes, but in a an eerie prison; the details are, very likely intentionally, wrong, their personal touches are missing, picture frames come with the shop place holder, the art on the walls is rudimentary, wrong. Hanna calls for her mum and tries to use the phone, Emily calls for the others, Aria discovers that the books are fake, Spencer tries to escape through a window only to discover a solid wall, no outside. When they stumble outside and find each other, they find someone in a mask, playing the piano – the mask is of Alison, but the girl underneath isn’t, she’s Mona Vanderwaal. 

Mona? I know it’s been a while but I haven’t changed that much, have I? You guys, it’s me: Alison!

Pretty Little Liars started with a missing girl who had left a whole town scarred in so many ways. The missing girl later became a discovered body that was torn apart, piece by piece, and toyed with, disappearing and re-appearing. Then, the girl came back – the ultimate twist. What if Laura Palmer hadn’t died? What if Lilly Kane wasn’t just a ghost, haunting everyone from the grave? Alison came back and struggled to get her place back, but there were people already where she had been before, who were very hesitant to give up their spot. And there were mechanizations in place against her, trying to kill her off a second time, or in a different, perhaps more effective way (taking away any kind of social standing – Mona’s idea was, what if she came back but nobody remembered her and she didn’t recognize the place anymore?). 

The four girls realize that Mona Vanderwaal thinks that she is Alison DiLaurentis. She has her hair, she knows her inside out, well enough to copy her behaviour (she sits by Emily and touches her knee – as Alison would – while Hanna is the one most affected by Mona not being dead). This is what the person running the doll house wanted her to do. Being Alison was encouraged. Being Mona was punished. Except of course – for the same reason that Mona Vanderwaal could not have been dead – Mona Vanderwaal could not have been brainwashed. She created herself out of the ashes of Alison DiLaurentis (and she created Alison, created the dead Alison by telling her to leave, so that space would be free for her to fill – they made each other). She spent two seasons becoming a supervillain because she felt she was losing the most important relationship in her life. She was planning to fake her own death only to finally be rid of Alison for good, the only way that it would stick (not death, but complete social exile). 

The doll house in this episode of Pretty Little Liars has always existed. It is a literal expression of something that has been happening to the girls ever since Alison disappeared. A – A in all his forms, whoever he may be (I still insist that his ultimate identity doesn’t matter, that his function is more elementary, but some people do watch for the mystery), A in his function as the all-knowing, ever-present creature, has attempted to build a metaphorical doll house around these girls for years now. His rules are arbitrary in the sense that no behaviour, no compliance, will ever stop his attempts to control them. He is interested in control, in power itself, not in any particular outcome. The girls can never do the right thing (when they keep things secret, the secrets are used against them, when they make things open, it is twisted against them, when they trust others, their trust is betrayed, when they don’t trust others, they lose possible allies), because A is only interested in keeping them constantly under his control. The only way to do that is to not have a fixed game, a written set of rules. The only rule is: A is watching, and A knows. 

But here is why Pretty Little Liars is the more important and more interesting story. In spite of this, the girls constantly win. They win, because unlike the kids in the house of stairs (greedy scientists watching them, taking notes), they have effectively and successfully refused to be pitted against each other, to allow anything or anyone to divide them. As all-powerful and all-knowing A seems to be, the girls continue to fight, and they do so together, because the way A antagonizes and alienates them is what unites them, and more than that, their friendship and their love for each other makes them an unbreakable unit. Even before they awake in the doll house, when they believe that their future is being in prison, they are unshakable in their belief in and love of each other. 

Spencer: You guys, they can take everything from us but they can’t take us from each other. I don’t care how far apart from you guys I am, I will still be with you.
Aria: Me too.
Emily: Same here.
Hanna: I love you guys.
Aria: Love you.

If the Liars vs A is a metaphor for the way that society treats women, all the time, then the way that the Liars constantly win that fight, and win it without any meaningful help from the outside (the police are useless, the boyfriends and girlfriend only occasionally aren’t, the parents are absent at best and liabilities at their worst with their own secrets) is revolutionary. Hanna, Emily, Spencer and Aria have been threatened, have had their deepest secrets revealed, have lost loved ones, been poisoned, put into caskets, have been blackmailed about every aspect of their personal lives, have suffered a million other abuses and transgressions, and yet they are still fighting. When they find themselves trapped in that horrible doll house, they don’t resign for a second. Instead, Spencer and Mona’s combined knowledge and all of their ability to act, and their realization that A wants to be flattered allows them to find a way out. 

This whole season has been very much determined by questions about the future, because in spite of being haunted and hunted, all four of them are struggling to build something beyond high school, outside of Rosewood. They are all trying to imagine a future in which they are not constantly in the cross-hairs of a sinister presence, where they can make decisions freely without worrying in what way they will come back to haunt them. Beyond Pretty Little Liars being a mystery show about teenagers, an argument could be made that this is always the constant reality of women, particularly – it may not be an evil presence like A, but being observed, constantly judged, not being able to take your rights for granted is a reality (does it not sometimes terrify you how recent many of them are, how fresh in human history the idea of equality even is, and how angrily and violently every little aspect of it is still contested?). 

So of course, being outside the doll house does not mean that they are out of the confining walls. There are layers and layers of them, and each of them will require a fight.

Random notes: 

And how perfect that A would choose to trap them in their childhood homes, presumably preserving them in a state of being denied the agency of adulthood forever (also in a show with so many male characters creepily fascinated and attracted by teenage women – a show in which Ezra fucking Fitz with his stash of stalker files is still a feasible boyfriend for Aria Montgomery).

And also – this is very likely not intentional – the irony of Ezra being able to say now, how good that I have stalked your every move for years rather than actually helping you gain more agency, because now my superior knowledge of your life helps me help you and makes me seem like a good guy. And nobody ever calls me out on it!

This whole episode is about resourcefulness and teamwork, about self-help, while every source that you would task with keeping the four girls and Mona safe – their parents, the police, this bloody town – fails them utterly. 

Hanna: You’re not here alone anymore. There are five of us. And one of him, her, it, bitch.

As I have mentioned before in relation to the show, to me, it is about potential, and a show living up to its potential (its darkness, its depth) – and this episode is everything that I ever wanted Pretty Little Liars to be AND everything that I ever thought it could be. It also feels like a tabula rasa of sorts, because it is hard to imagine how they could go from here back to the way things were before. 

Part of that is the fact that the most horrible part of this whole story was unseen: it’s Mona, entirely on her own, battling against A without any outside help, somehow managing to remain herself and still be strong enough to formulate an exit strategy. 

As far as theories go: Charles DiLaurentis, brother or twin (or neither), the Campbell farm (Andrew’s last name is Campbell), parent-less characters with a very vague past (Wren), the Hastings being involved in some way, the fact that it was Melissa and Ian’s prom that he replayed (from 2004? Or from seven years ago?), toying with the book’s twin theme (which might mean that it’s NOT a twin – PLL seems to have much more fun playing with it as an idea of mirrors, masks etc. than literally). 

If it is about the “why” more than the “who”, things to consider: 

The way those exact high school tropes of prom and prom queen and dating and popularity are so important to A – and the fact that he “casts” the Liars in those roles, maybe it’s not important who they are, they are interchangeable to him 

The absolute vital role that family played in the construction of the doll house, including a reference to the 1950s nuclear family – which might be the idea of an intact traditional family way pre-dating A’s birth, hinting that his trauma is connected to that conservative idea falling apart – and also reminiscent of Mona’s story about wanting a watch to stop time and control people? (and probably a lot of hints in all the personal pictures and drawings and toys).

People missing: Noel, Melissa (for the most part), Wren, Lucas, Jenna, Cece Drake, various parental units but that is not news, one Paige McCullers.

The girl in the video

Mona Vanderwaal lives in a normal house, in a normal teenage girl room, decorated with too many dolls to count. She had a very normal mother, who baked cookies in case that one friend her daughter made would ever come around - Hanna Marin's favourite cookies, she remembered. And Mona Vanderwaal could play this game better than almost everyone else save maybe one person, be two different people, change from one moment to the next, the daughter to her mother and the weaponized, perfected reaction to what Rosewood does to teenage girls: someone equipped with the ability to strike back, to take control of her life, to observe those who always miss the important things and gather the information that would give her power over others, over herself. Save one person. 

There are many parallels between Pretty Little Liars and Twin Peaks: Both shows follow their own rules, which make sense in the context of the show but wouldn't, anywhere else. Birds providing vital clues for murder investigations, the importance and significance of dreams, dead girls haunting in memories and videos, doppelgangers showing up, then the girls themselves - but one of the greatest parallel is the idea that teenagers, and specifically teenage girls, always need to have more than one face to survive. Both shows map what happens because of that necessity. Alison DiLaurentis, whatever else she might be (and whatever else she might need to be, now that the show doesn't have a definite end, now that the show doesn't seem to be mapped out definitively), is the perfect example of someone evolving to be adjusted to her environment. Rosewood is filled with people (with men) hunting teenage girls, at best just trying to shape them into what they want them to be, at worst, taking control of them entirely. Alison recruited a safety net for herself, and she did it with what she had in her possession, being able to look at the girls surrounding her, seeing their weaknesses and using them, but at the same time, and as much as it helped her, giving the girls the tools to battle their weaknesses (but also making sure that bits and pieces would remain, so she could continue to control them). Mona Vanderwaal watched from the sidelines, tortured by the names Alison gave her, by the role she forced her to play, and she learned, she studied, and she became Alison's best student, up to the point where she tried to take control herself, and succeeded to an extent. Mona Vanderwaal made herself, with Alison's help, and she made Alison (that new, strange version of Alison, that disappeared and reappeared, with whatever happened inbetween), and then she made Hanna Marin too, who was eager to be shaped, and later, desperate to recover what she had buried so deeply, trying to find herself again (which is amazing because what has become of Hanna is so amazing, someone growing into all those empty spaces, learning all those skills she never had naturally, just excelling at everything, all the time). 

Rosewood is what shapes them, a town where cops, meant to protect them, are at best incompetent but most of the time, part of the problem; where fathers know exactly what their daughters ought to be, exactly the opposite of the women (and college girls, and high school girls) they are cheating with. Another parallel to Twin Peaks: a more important question than "who killed Laura Palmer", which those who made the show never wanted to answer anyway, is, how could this happen? What kind of environment made Laura Palmer into the person that she was, someone who was thought to be something entirely different than she actually was, to the extent that the difference between the two so severely breaks many other characters on the show (Bobby, who, in a way, looked into that darkness and barely survived, James, always too simple to understand even a bit of it, clinging to what he thinks is easier until it grows beyond his grasp).

Both shows are about the power of secrets, the destructiveness of keeping them for yourself and keeping them for others, but also the potency of having a secret self in a town that is so restrictive in terms of what teenage girls can be. Alison DiLaurentis was a good girl, and Alison DiLaurentis was a terrible girl, terrible enough to almost have an army assembled against her. Laura Palmer was a good girl, until her secret life is revealed during the investigation of her death, but the way that she wasn't good was a reaction to the town itself, the horrors of secrets hidden in suburbia. 

The difference between the shows is that Twin Peaks, while being able to explore the violence in much more drastic terms (because it isn't on ABC Family), offers an outside perspective, a naive but competent FBI agent entering and revealing. In Pretty Little Liars, there is no outside. Everyone who matters, everyone whose perspective matters, has been there since their childhood. There is no real outside, 'out of town' is at best mysterious and temporary (or doomed to failure). Terror does start at home, even if the show can never truly explore the horrors of it (Ezra Fitz was always going to be redeemed for his wrongdoings, there will always be a limit to how truly the worst Byron Montgomery could be). But maybe that limitation makes the show even more horrible than Twin Peaks: Audrey Horne's discovery of how truly awful her father is knows no limits, she realizes so quickly that she is expected to be a certain way because she is his daughter, while he has entirely different expectations into girls her age, going to the same school, but less economically and socially protected. All the terrible things that ever happened to Laura Palmer pale in comparison to the years of abuse she suffered at the hands of the person she was meant to be able to trust the most. And yet, the true horror of PLL lies in the fact that characters like Ezra Fitz can seemingly be redeemed, even after abusing every trust put in them, every expectations you might have in adults who are responsible for children disappointed and worse - the fact that Byron can come back into the Montgomery household and dispel fatherly advice, after everything that happened. 

One of the most horrible moments, in a show that has literal jewellery made out of bones, characters trapped in boxes with dead bodies, loved ones buried alive and dead in suburban backyards, happened a couple of episodes ago, because Mona Vanderwaal met someone more prepared than she was: Hanna Marin was confronted with an impossible situation, realizing that one of her best friend's mum's future husbands was a horrible person, another grown-up abusing his position of power, and nobody believed her. Her skirt was too short, she was too drunk, she got into his car. She was asking for it. And these accusations didn't come from strangers: in a show built and circling around the faithfulness and compassion the four main characters have for each other, the unfaltering support they provide for each other, that promise of true, unconditional friendship, was utterly broken. It was a shocking moment for the show, because barely anything ever grazed that friendship, in the face of all the shockwaves and drama - and yet, a very eloquent choice, because this is how deeply misogyny is rooted, that a teenage girl would be blamed for the transgressions of an adult man, even by her own friends. The show recognized how utterly horrific victim blaming is, that it cuts to the strongest bonds even. The bonds were restored later, with much regret and apologies, but the wounds remain. 

The thing about Mona Vanderwaal is that she shaped herself into a weapon out of love for her best friend, and she somehow acquired superpowers because of how much she loved her best friend, Hanna Marin, because of how much losing that best friend to others hurt. If her death should be permanent - which, considering how well-developed and loved and acted her character is, I will not believe until the show is over - it will be truly a tragic loss, in part because we know her motives, while Alison's still remain hidden. In a way, Alison loves power because the very system she operates in denies her power just based on who she is, a teenage girl. Her desire to regain that power at any cost comes from wanting to defy that system, or at least wanting to live within it with as much grace as she can muster, whatever the cost (and the cost is always other people's integrity - it's not even like she is using them out of spite, it's a natural instinct, as true to her nature as anything else). Mona Vanderwaal just wanted her only friend back, the one her mum is still baking cookies for, because she knows how unbearable this world is when you have to face it alone. 

Pretty Little Liars (2010-), starring Troian Bellisario, Shay Mitchell, Ashley Benson, Lucy Hale, Sasha Pieterse, Janel Parrish, Lindsey Shaw. 

Twin Peaks (1990-1991), starring Sheryl Lee, Sherilyn Fenn, Lara Flynn Boyle, Mädchen Amick, Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Ontkean, Dana Ashbrook, Richard Beymer, Warren Frost, James Marshall, Peggy Lipton, Joan Chen, Michael Horse, Piper Laurie, Harry Goaz, Ray Wise. 

Some thoughts on 'Shadow Play'

Pretty Little Liars: 4x19 Shadow Play. 

• It's all about secrets again - Spencer keeping it a secret that she has developed a mind-altering dependency on drugs, Aria keeping it a secret that she is dating Ezra Fitz, again, all of the other Liars keeping it a secret from Aria that Ezra is probably A (probably not really A, but I thoroughly dread the moment when the shows inevitably starts backtracking on this). 
• PLL is the sort of show that constantly writes its own rule-book, which is of course the reason why an episode like Shadow Play completely works - and why nobody bats an eyelash at essential information coming from a literal bird - but it is a show that has rules. With the secrets, it's that the Liars, when they are keeping them from each other, never do it with bad intentions, because the friendship at the centre of the show is the beating heart of it (which is important considering how dark it sometimes gets, if you really think about it, in terms of parental abuse, abandonment, creepy stalking guys, adults behaving completely inappropriately constantly and that's not even mentioning the murder and the necklace made from human teeth). Spencer keeps her addiction a secret because it's all tied up in her fear of losing her own mind, all those residual feelings about having been to Radley (I think her father dangling the possibility in front of her nose that Radley could get shut down equally opened old wounds and gave her hope that was ultimately disappointed). The Liars keep their knowledge about Ezra a secret because they've already been through suspecting each other's love interest so many times (remember Caleb? Toby? Paige?) that they know they'll need solid proof to be taken seriously, especially because this is Aria and Fitz. Aria's secret has an edge to it, because the biggest threat that the show can possibly come up with is to endanger the central friendship, and Ezra asking her to keep a secret from her friends, and saying things like "maybe this is a sign that you are growing up" clearly falls into that category. 
• The 1940s noir backdrop works - aesthetically, it's beautiful - but it made me wonder if this is the lens through which Spencer usually views their struggle against A. In many ways, it would more naturally seem to be Aria's, considering that she is the one who is so interested in the genre (and I'm not sure how it would be for the other Liars - I think for Emily, it's a horror film - that fits best into getting attacked by a school - and for Hanna, it's ever changing, but currently probably like the books that she's been reading and that are shaping her understanding of things, the questions she asks, the brilliant plans she comes up with). It's kind of interesting to consider that Spencer has fallen into Aria's inner world (the conversation she has with Ezra in the car, about how she isn't sure about villains and heroes anymore, fits as well), since the entire episode is about Spencer trying to figure out Ezra, trying to figure out what happened to the diary was lost in Ezra's cabin and found again in Ezra's desk, and struggling with the question of whether they should tell Aria or not. I kind of like the idea that she'd be navigating all these question in a terrain that seems more appropriate for Aria. 
• As far as being Spencer's dream, it works perfectly - it's Spencer's version of her friends, Spencer's version of Toby (or Toby as a guide, reflecting her own high expectations of herself, calling her out more than anyone else does), Spencer's version of Ali (more of a rival than for anyone else, someone who threatens her friendship with the others by bringing up the idea that Spencer is replacing her - just imagine what Hanna's, or Emily's version of Ali would have been), and definitely Spencer's version of Mona (again, Hanna's would likely have been very different). 
• To be more specific: Spencer's Hanna is the Hanna of late, who is brilliant, resourceful, and because Spencer loves her, sort of owning her recent romantic abandonment in the greatest way (because Ashley Benson is the greatest in the episode). Spencer's Aria is... hard to grasp, I suppose, but in danger, and explaining herself to Paige of all people in a very coded conversation that seems to be about secrets and identity and what happens when you grow up (do you make yourself, or live up to other people's expectations, there are many ways to interpret that scene). 
• Spencer's Emily is... so Spencer would be very aware of the specific conditions of the 1940s, the limitations of it, so in the world that she has created in her head, the most tragic thing is that the scene between Hanna and Emily, back in the day, has not taken place. Hanna has not realized that Emily is gay, and proven to be the most supportive friend, because in that world, that conversation wasn't allowed to happen (it's acknowledged in a side-comment that this conversation didn't and couldn't happen). So Emily and Paige are trapped in a world in which every stranger's glare is potentially hostile and dangerous, where they can't share their secrets, except in coded conversations, and still - amongst all the characters that inhabit Spencer's inner world, they are the ones with the outstandingly romantic scenes, if anything, they represent the very idea of romantic love in the episode, between Aria in constant danger from Ezra's intentions, Hanna being bitter (MEN!), and Toby not acting in the function of Spencer's romantic love interest. It's almost like this is something that Spencer yearns for, or maybe it's just a sign of how much she cares about Emily's happiness, that even in a world in which she knows that relationship is next to impossible, she so fiercely insists that they can be happy. 
• It fits right into that moment straight after Emily and Paige escaped from Nathan, Paige stepping back because she understood that Emily needed to comfort Hanna, and Spencer finally getting it. Now she's involved enough that she imagines what that world would have done to someone like Paige McCullers. 
• (also just on a meta level, it's interesting considering that there are likely a hundred rules about how a sex scene on ABC Family can look like, and depressingly but likely a couple of extra rules about how a sex scene between two girls can look like, so having it take place in an era that is so restrictive and requires so much coding is a commentary in itself, although maybe not necessarily an intentional one). 
• Perhaps also not necessarily intentional, but interesting that Mona isn't really an actual threat to Hanna, in Spencer's head. She is of course, multi-faceted (what a perfect 1940s translation of "hyper-adrenalized reality", the many mirrors), but she hasn't hurt a hair on Hanna's head. 
• You don't pay attention for a tiny moment and there's a massive portrait of your dead or not dead former best friend on the wall, seeing everything that is going on - it's a perfect symbol for what Ali is in all their lives. I bet if she'd tried to take it down it would have just reappeared a moment later (and that is immortality, indeed). 
• And again, with secrets: are they essential and important? Do they give others power over you? Do they hurt, or save? Does Spencer's Ali threaten or protect when she almost forces them to tell Aria? 
• (and also, what a beautiful idea for a show like this, to make everyone an aspect of Spencer, as in, mirrors reflecting things back). 

Theories after the Pretty Little Liars Summer finale

Spoilers for The Ladykiller, obviously.

• "Oh what a surprise, it was Nate," SAID ABSOLUTELY NO ONE (I realize some people still did suspect Paige, but still...) The episode actually had me wondering if making the red herring that obvious (The music? The brilliant suspicous camera work? The fact that Paige's finger just happened to cover up the most important part of that message she received?) was intentional, because the effect it had on me was almost screaming at the screen in frustration when Emily told everyone she was going to a cabin in the woods with Nate. This is also one of the few complaints that I have, because I thought the previous episode made it fairly obvious that both Emily and Hanna realized that something was off with him and even without suspecting foul play, there's just no way that Emily would hang out with Nate in a freaking cabin after what happened between the two. I get that this was necessary for the plot but... they could have just not made his creepiness that obvious in the previous episode which perhaps would have retained some doubt as to who actually stalked and killed Maya before the finale. Hanna, friends don't let friends go away into the woods with creepy stalkers alone! 
• One of the reasons why I was so sure it couldn't be Paige is the sheer amount of effort the writers have put into creating this massive redemption arc for her character. I don't think she was meant to play such an important part in later seasons originally, so they had to come up with a compelling backstory and a solid explanation for her anger management issues - and they did. Paige works much better as a sort of mirror image of Mona (if there's a spectrum of possible reactions to being bullied by  Alison DiLaurentis), someone for whom it would have made a lot of sense to join the A team but who didn't. But I'm not going to lie - I'm pretty sure Lindsey Shaw could play a spectacular villain, but she'll also make a brilliant addition to the Liars, now that Paige knows as much as Caleb does. 
• And before I get back to Paige, because obviously that's unavoidable, isn't it interesting that between the love interests, Ezra is the one who knows the least, which coincides with the fact that Aria has been established as the one among them who is really good at lying to the people she loves? It's almost suspicous how little Ezra Fitz knows. 
• So... Paige. Both Nate and Paige happened to promise that they were probably willing to kill, and Paige said "there's nothing I wouldn't do to keep you safe" here - and Emily's original reaction to both of them was... a mixture of "you don't know how serious it can actually get" and "Violence is A's forte, and I'd rather not get you mixed up in any of that". Considering that Paige's backstory is about how she reacted to being bullied with physical violence (and maybe harmed herself, even though there was only a hint of that in the previous episode), the way this played out here was beautiful. Paige's contribution to Emily's safety is... subtly nodding when Emily is about to run away from Nate, telling her it's okay, even though it might mean being alone with him and getting killed, and then running interference with the police so that Emily can go off and comfort Hanna, because she understands how important Emily's friends are to her. And even then, even after all the cruel things Spencer has said to her, she is still trying to make a point to gain their trust (and I need more scenes between Lindsey Shaw and Troian Bellisario because the amount of emotion and meaning both of them can convey with only a look is ridiculous). But on to the other grand reveal...
• Is Toby one of the monsters Alison created? There are two options here. Either Toby has been part of the A team from the beginning, which still wouldn't mean necessarily that he doesn't care about Spencer (as I said before, we know very little about the motivations of the A team as a whole and Mona hinted that each of the members has their very own personal reason for being there). He could have been recruited right after Alison's body was found (at least it would have made sense for A to approach him then, considering how involved Spencer was in the whole thing). OR, and that's the more likely option in my opinion, Toby's gone undercover to destroy A from the inside. This sounds like something Toby would do, doesn't it (just like it was very Caleb to bring Chekhov's freaking gun to a showdown and get himself shot)? 
• The Caleb-gun thing was also a really interesting reminder of the fact that there are some unspoken rules in the "game" that he doesn't know but the Liars instinctually do? I don't know, something about this was really peculiar. It's the same thing with how the Liars are dealing with Jenna, they know that they are on opposite sides of something, even though they're not entirely sure what, and still, they go to school together and occasionally talk to her and Aria presumably recently played a concert with her. For some reason, despite everything, A isn't the kind of villain you aim a gun at (and maybe that was one of the points the show made with Nate, because that was a completely different story). 
• There are a few things that I'm fairly certain of: Toby won't be on the same team as Jenna unless it's for undercover spying reasons, and Toby wasn't the one who MADE THE NECKLACE OUT OF ALISON'S TEETH AND SENT IT TO EMILY. I think Toby built the new lair (because why recruit a teenage carpenter if you're not gonna use him?). There are a couple of open questions about how many members of the A team we've seen (in full A costume) - has Mona broken out of Radley before, or was it just for the special occasion of framing Paige for the murder? If the episode was vaguely chronological, then someone was following Paige, realized she wouldn't make it to the cemetery because Nate kidnapped her, and called Mona to find out what the new plan was (The original plan was to send Paige to the cemetery, have the Liars meet her there and then call Maya's phone) - except Toby was with Spencer throughout the day. There must have been at least one more person. 
• A wanted Emily out of harm's way because the Liars need to be alive for the game to play out. It's chilling to believe that Toby would have just walked away and left Paige there to die though. 
• Mona just walking out of Radley was awesome. She got all the best music this episode, too, especially The Hawk in Paris' Freaks was perfect. "Boys and the girls and the freaks in the middle". I hope we get a lot more Mona in the second half of the season.
• JENNA. I've always interpreted The First Secret, the title, referring not just to the original secret that Alison had (the story she tells in the beginning of the episode, of the two sisters), but also the first secret shared between the original members of the A team. I might be very wrong about this, but to me, the episode depicts the moment when A is conceived. Mona decides to fight back. Jenna comes to town and instead of accepting Alison DiLaurentis' proposal, she decides to choose her own friends. Lucas was part of it too, somehow. But we don't really know Jenna's role yet. She somehow bridges the distance between the NAT club and the A team (also it would make a lot of sense if Mona had to leave Radley because they were one person short, considering Jenna left Rosewood in the last episode to run away from Nate). 
• "WITH A PINK FURRY LAMP, HANNA?"
• It constantly surprises me how fond I am of Caleb. I hope he's okay (of course he is but still)
• It seemed like Spencer was a bit outside the group in the final scene, the fall-out of all of this will be interesting. 
• Sometimes the show reminds us of how terrible her family is; because even though Aria's dad is the absolute worst, Ella makes up for most of his awfulness, but the Hastings are just really, really painfully miserable all around. "After almost being murdered in the woods, perhaps it will make all of you feel better to know that I've freed Garrett Reynolds, so he can go back to the people who've been torturing you for months. Yay, lawyers!!"
• Poor Maya though. It's so sad that we only found out more about her after her death. 
• Werewolf Toby, scurrying off into the night... 

Theories for the Pretty Little Liars Summer finale

Mostly speculation, maybe spoilers (from the Canadian promo)...

• I don't think that Maya's death had anything to do with A. She was killed by her stalker. My money is on Nate - he certainly isn't Maya's cousin (the creepy way he said she was "fluid" to Emily sealed the deal). He's aggressive, possessive, and the way he approached Hanna after Emily told him they should just be friends definitely set off my stalker alert. The maybe-not: A's threat that someone would die if the Liars didn't comply in the second season finale and the fact that Mona's timer apparently went off right when Maya's body was found (but maybe A just made sure that the police would find her, she'd been dead for a while at that point).
• It's pretty clear that Jenna is referring to Nate, not Paige, when she comes by Emily's. She warns her of a "friend". Jenna wouldn't have hesitated to call Paige Emily's girlfriend, and she's seen them together multiple times. Twice, Emily was present when Nate tried to intimitate her. My theory is that Jenna saw something happen and only put the pieces together when Nate threatened her ("I know you saw me").  
• In the promo, A calls Emily and tells her to run away. If I'm right about Nate, then he is somehow putting Emily in danger and A is looking out for her. 
• A is a team. That's not a theory, Mona confirmed as much with Spencer in the car (so the A-tag in yesterday's episode shouldn't have been a surprise for anyone). I think what's also important and hasn't really been adressed is that Mona sort of gave Spencer the opportunity to join the team, so the question is: who else they approached about this, and who might have said yes?
• Who is the A team - not just "who is part of it" but "why and when"? Alison was a confirmed victim (this also makes me wonder how much of her cruelty was actually her doing and if some of her actions were the result of A blackmailing her - there's a hint of the latter when she walks away from Paige after picking up her love letter to Emily, but that might have been something else). 
• A isn't actually about destroying people; he's about control and power. It feels significant that a group of Rosewood teens is regularly assembling in the Kahn cabin to play games - that are all about control and power / truth and lies. I wonder what part Alison played, considering she was friends with someone who was practically raised in that environment (CeCe). On the other hand, the kind of skills that are honed there seem to be specifically designed to help whoever takes part battle someone like Alison DiLaurentis (or become her). Maybe Jenna's "mutually assured destruction" comment quite literally comes from a long history of cold war between two parties (and how does the even creepier NAT club fit into all of this?). 
• Lucas is part of it. He would have had plenty of reasons to join AFTER HANNA WHACKED HIM OVER THE HEAD AND LEFT HIM TO DROWN (which nobody seems to remember and yet "drowning" is usually the first thing that comes up when a different character is discussed...), or maybe he's being blackmailed. 
• Spencer's slowly going crazy and I kind of want someone to notice. 
• I thought it was interesting that Spencer was the one who jumped so quickly at CeCe's story about Paige: not just because Spencer always needs someone to focus on and she's just lost Garrett, but also because she seems to be the one who has spent the least time dealing with what kind of person Alison was (Hanna has befriended Lucas and Mona and learned what it meant to be the victim of the kind of cruelty Alison reserved for people she didn't care about, Emily's struggle with Alison was more severe than anyone else's because it's so tangled up in her identity, and Aria... well, I guess Aria has impersonated her when she assumed one of her secret identities?). 
• Aria's comment that CeCe never left high school also seems important - it's not clear if CeCe was a kind of mentor to Alison, but she defnitely knows how to play power games, and what is she doing hanging out with a bunch of high school students? 
• It's interesting to see how Pretty Little Liars, a show on ABC family, addresses serious issues without explicitly naming them. Alison's comment about the bumps on Paige's thigh only make sense after Paige explaining that she used to harm herself; and did Ashley actually tell Hanna that Officer Wilden raped her when she was drunk? (She clearly stated that she was too drunk to give consent, and the show has dealt with the finer points of enthusiastic informed consent before.)
• Paige McCullers though. The way the episode dealt with the fall-out of the kiss between Emily and Nate was beautiful. Paige waited (sort of passive-aggressively, but still) for Emily to tell her, then provided a theory that proved she'd been thinking about the issue for a while, and at some point managed to put her feelings jealousy and being hurt aside. They talked about it and it didn't become a major conflict, and this played especially well because I think everyone was expecting a major fight, because of Paige's history and EVERY OTHER TELEVISION SHOW ABOUT TEENAGERS IN RELATIONSHIPS EVER. Emily (probably frustrated that she can't share the other overbearing fact about her life) can't help but be completely honest about this. Paige has grown so much that's she's managed to do something most people don't ever learn: how to be understanding and supportive even after being angry enough to throw away perfectly good Chinese food.
• “Why are your friends talking about me instead of to me?” 
• Nate, regardless of whether he did kill Maya or not, is a creep (and has been from the beginning) and Hanna calling him out on it was validating. 
• Book spoiler: We don't really know much about Alison's motives, and I think that a lot of it is related to something that the show hasn't revealed yet. If Alison really does have a twin, and one of the two is dead, then A might be connected to whatever struggle took place between the two. /
• Is this the first time ever that the Liars are genuinely pitted against each other since the show began (with the exception of Hanna almost revealing Aria's relationship to Ella, but that didn't feel as serious as Spencer's "A may also go by the name Paige" does)- did CeCe manage to do something that A has been failing at for more than a year? 
• Where's Jason DiLaurentis?

Pretty Little Liars

Emotional rambling and possible spoilers up to 3x08, so proceed with caution. 

A couple of days ago I was trying to compile a lists of things I genuinely look forward to, pop culturally wise, in a week, and it just so happened that Pretty Little Liars somehow made it to the top of that list. Not that Breaking  Bad isn't enjoyable, as the point in time when Skyler White kills Walter (that's how it ends, right? It must!) draws nearer. Not that Leverage isn't one of the most loveable shows lightning up horribly hot and lamentably humid summers. Not that Warehouse 13's return didn't excite me because that's one show always ending its season in a surprisingly shocking and emotionally devastating fashion, pointing towards its potential. But it's August now, and the one thing I most look forward to is getting up on a Wednesday morning to watch a new episode of Pretty Little Liars, and one of the things that I dread most is the unavoidable moment at the end of August when the shows goes on hiatus until next year, even though I recognize that two hiatuses are better than one horribly long one. 

So what happened? What happened between the first time I saw the pilot and decided that a show about the death of a cruel high school queen bee and her best friends, who only came together because of Alison and are now drawn back together because of her loss, wasn't for me, and the moment that I realized it absolutely was for me?

I just want to mention right now that something about the show made me read all of the books, so I'm eternally grateful to the show runner (for several reasons, but also for this one) that the show is "based on" the books, but doesn't strictly follow them. There's probably one major spoiler in the books that I assume will eventually be realized on screen, and people who are aware of the original story will be waiting for it to happen, while people who aren't have been given enough hints to guess it, I think. I'd argue that Pretty Little Liars' strength does not lie in the major of its mystery, even though the whodunit may draw in viewers - it's the why that's much more interesting than the who, which is the reason why PLL can get away with explaining the impossibility of an all-knowing, all-seeing antagonist with a "perpetual state of hyperreality". It doesn't really matter how Mona knew what she knew and was able to do what she did; it's much more interesting to consider her reasons, her motivation, for haunting the Liars, and it's even more interesting to consider what A's endgame is, because sometimes his agenda seems to be more about forcing the Liars to realize their own power and potential than to destroy them (which is of course also what Alison did to them, and the precise reason why they all, despite all the flashback about how horrible Alison was as a friend and as a human being, they all insist that she was their best friend - and, in the case of Emily, the person they loved). 

This is one of the reasons why I find this show so compelling; apart from the fact that it portrays a group of friends that is so tightly knit that they can't even stay mad at each other for more than one and a half episodes, that they prioritize each other's well being over everything else, the way the show handles the relationship between the Liars and their eternal antagonist, A, is incredibly fascinating. Each of the four Liars grows because of A, because of the specific way A challenges them. Emily is forced to come out (and falls on her face, sure), but it's almost like A reveals their individual weaknesses and then helps them to overcome them,  and they all grow stronger in the process. Aria realizes all the things she wouldn't have about the way her father tries to control her sexuality. Spencer deals with her incredibly fucked up family instead of becoming like them. Hanna - probably my favourite amongst them, and who would have seen that one coming, goes from being incredibly conscious of her social station and willing to do anything to defend it to being the most compassionate characters of the show, the one amongst them who always knows when making amends is in order, when saying "I am sorry" is the right thing to do. It's magical, because the most interesting question the show poses isn't "who is A" (or, maybe more accurately, "who are A"), but "who will the Liars become in the course of this conflict". 

I appreciate that A could be every- and anyone. At this point, I wouldn't even put it beyond the show to make one of the Liars part of the A team (if one of them is revealed to be playing the long game at the end of six seasons and a movie, all the more power to them, to be honest). What brings me back with bated breath every week are the meaningful relationships, the character development, the incredible love these these characters have for each other. The biggest lie ever told about high school is that the only thing that can come out of the horrible and quite inescapable insecurities is competition, that people are doomed to tear each other apart in order to showcase what makes them special. A unites the Liars, and they are all the stronger for it. 

Random notes: 

•  Mona! I'm intrigued by all the complex relationships the show has, especially Alison/Everyone (why Spencer still refers to Alison as "her best friend" and brings up the fact that Emily was in love with Alison in a conversation), but Mona and Hanna have a special place in my heart. 
• Paige McCullers and how she falls over her own feet trying to run away from the one thing she desperately needs + Lindsey Shaw has a face, help. 
• The weird way in which the show manages to weed out all the character I don't find so compelling (mostly by killing them off) and ends up with an adorable group of supporting hobbits + helpful computer website page hackers. 
• The moms. 
• The moms. 
• NO REALLY, THE MOMS ARE SO GREAT. 
• Lolita and "the only reason Ezra/Aria doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth is because Ian Harding is so adorable", let's just replay that "slowly running towards each other in the rain" sequence a million times and write about it in our diary. 
• (but just the literary references in general, and the feedback the show seems to get from interacting with fans and prominent reviewers, see "Radley Sanatorium".) 
• It's almost like people who were involved in Popular split up 50/50 between Glee and PLL and one of the two got the better deal in the bargain. 
• tbc