Notes On “Pretty Little Liars”

Editorial Assistant and pop culture expert Amy Condren reminisces the popular TV show, Pretty Little Liars, discussing the show’s hits and misses.

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT! If you have not watched the show, read at your own risk. 

Some things are at the perfect level of ridiculous where, if you squint, they become fabulous! At least, that is what I tell myself. Growing up with an endless stream of weekly episodes from the late 2000’s to early 2010’s golden era of teen TV, I confess Pretty Little Liars (“PLL”) is my go-to comfort show against all my better judgement. In recent years, I have learned I am not alone in my enduring love-hate relationship with this diabolical relic of 2010’s TV vapidity. 

For those who have never seen the show, PLL is what you would get if Mean Girls, Twin Peaks, Scream, and Gossip Girl had a baby. A very messy baby. The show follows high school girls Aria, Spencer, Emily, and Hanna as they start receiving threats from an anonymous stalker called “-A” a year after their (high-key evil) queen bee best friend Alison mysteriously disappeared. Aria loves literature, lying to people, and making out with her English teacher. Spencer is all about winning, serving in a tweed blazer, and abusing stimulants. Emily’s whole thing is swimming, the moral high ground, and generally looking concerned. Hana is a sucker for a rash decision, a statement necklace, and a five-finger-discount. Suffice to say, the show was never “good” in any high-brow sense of the term. It was, however, occasionally clever, consistently fun, and the aesthetic embodiment of the 2010’s era. In that way, it was kind of great. 

Throughout the ensuing seven seasons, PLL fell victim to the fate of many other much-loved, long-running series: bad writing. (For those interested in the show but unwilling to sacrifice too many brain cells, Mike’s Mic has a brilliant series called “An appropriately unhinged recap of Pretty Little Liars” on Youtube that is almost as entertaining as the show itself.) Like most of the show's many cult followers, I will not defend the showrunners' numerous transgressions against the general public (we’ll get to them shortly). In defence of me and my frontal lobe (most certainly absent when this show wormed its way into my mental real estate)—this show is just so camp! Some of PLL’s most iconic contributions to society include:   

• The disappearance of Alison Dilaurentis and the single busiest night anyone has ever had (literally ever) while wearing a frilly yellow top. The way the entire plot continuously thickens around this nasty, nasty, 15 year old girl is somehow both nonsensical and the only thing about the show that actually checks out. Alison really is just that level of menace, but be warned—her character is a victim of some of the show's worst writing (and wardrobe) in later seasons. 

• “Cashmere sweater vests…?” I really cannot bring myself to spoil the delightfully absurd reveal of -A’s identity in Season 2. It is arguably the best reveal of the entire show, so this is the only clue you are going to get from me. When a string of carefully sprinkled, seemingly unimportant details come together to incriminate this absolute legend, history was made. I will take no criticisms of this particular iteration of -A. (Is it obvious who my favourite character is?)

• Among the countless hilarious -A texts, you will find the best text ever sent in the history of the mobile phone: “Call off your techno-boy-toy or I tell the cops what your mom keeps in the lasagna box -A”. I could provide you with context, but I won’t.  

• The most lovingly crafted Halloween specials; they added a jumpscare to the usual intro to warn you greatness was coming. I fear PLL invented the concept of “Fall”. Also, they did not need to have Adam Lambert (playing himself) perform not just one, but two songs on the Ghost Train in Season 4. They did that for us.

• Tippi the Bird. The trouble the writers went to to integrate him into the plot just to deliver one clue epitomises what made this show great. Spanning across episodes, you think this parrot, which belonged to Alison's grandma, is just singing a tune—it turns out he’s mimicking a phone number! Whose phone number? Obviously it’s the psychic house mother with the ghostly blue eyes from the secret panic room in the sorority house a few suburbs over who happened to save Alison from being buried alive. Real.  

I’ll leave the praise there and pivot 180 degrees to address the more pressing issue: this show was beyond problematic. I started watching this show when I was eleven, and rewatching it now with mature critical thinking skills is a very different experience. In particular, I would like to condemn it for its depictions of predatory relationships between adult men and underage girls. I have a serious bone to pick with the showrunners for the overuse and underplaying of these insidious tropes. Not only did failing to address the predatory nature of these relationships and their consequences undermine any hope the show had of being more than a soapy teen drama; failing to punish (and romanticising) the perpetrators on screen was beyond irresponsible given how strategically this show was marketed to teens. Rather than handling these tropes with a conscience, PLL actively made excuses for them.  

Speaking of indictable offences, here are some of the ways I would fix the show once and for all so everyone could see the potential I see in it: 

Ezra should have gone to jail (or died, expeditiously): This show was rife with extremely inappropriate relationships with underage girls, but none was more abhorrent than the enduring teacher-student relationship between Aria and Ezra. He was killed off very early in the books, so why not the show? His constant presence kept Aria’s character development flatter than the other girls, and he made my stomach turn. The greatest contribution he could have made to the show would have been being incarcerated. On my watch, no creep would go unpunished. Dr Wren Kingston—you’re next.

PLL should have ended at 5 seasons (if I am being generous): As most loose TV adaptations of book series do, PLL well and truly lost its way the further it strayed from its (equally scandalous but far more carefully planned and executed) source material. When it comes to the mystery genre, there’s no substitute for a satisfying conclusion. Veering further and further off the tracks into a veritable trainwreck (in my professional opinion), the situation became irretrievable around Season 5. 

Paige should have never made it out of the friendzone: She tried to drown Emily and she’s bad at karaoke (I know I’m not the only one who cannot handle that scene). As one of the few examples of queer romance in a teen TV show at the time of PLL’s release, I just think they could have not done Emily quite so dirty. I would have preferred to have seen her with almost anyone else, particularly given her unfortunate track record (RIP Maya). 

Toby should never have worn a durag: That’s all I have to say for this one.  

Aria should have been -A (post Season 2): Around Season 4 this particular theory gained a lot of traction with the fans, and for good reason. The seeds were sewn. The signs were there: “Miss Aria You're A Killer Not Ezra's Wife.” Even Lucy Hale, the actress who played her, said she thought Aria was -A and played the character with that suspicion in mind. One of the worst things about the show was the way it grasped at straws to draw in new villains with dubious motives, particularly towards the end. So, with Ezra in jail or dead nice and early on, suddenly Aria has some free time to kill… Just like that, the conspiracy theories become even more feasible, and we have our Season 5 big reveal sorted. Aria becomes a much more dimensional character and I am saved from looking jobless for connecting all these imaginary dots back in 2014.