Board 8 > I have watched every episode of Pretty Little Liars before the series finale AMA

(+) Yeah! (+)

It finally ends on Tuesday.

I started to watch it on Netflix when Season 6 was happening. I kept up with it weekly during the second half of Season 7, the final season.

I'll go ahead and set the tone for this topic: No, it wasn't worth it. But I got in too deep and I have to see it through.
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Favourite character?


Hottest character?

(If they're the same...so be it!)
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Pokewars posted...

Favourite character?


Hottest character?

(If they're the same...so be it!)

Are we talking only the Liars? Then Spencer. And hottest is also Spencer.

But if we're talking overall, easily Mona for favorite character.
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Eww Mona.

Good call on Spencer though :3
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I watched Season 1 of this a few years ago

I really liked it

Just lots of shows to watch and life is busy, so I never continued

Spencer is my favourite <3

Pokewars posted...

Eww Mona.

Good call on Spencer though :3

I actually have no idea how anyone can not like Mona. She has the best actress playing her and she's literally the only competent character in the entire series and you can feel bad for her, unlike the main Liars.

Delseban posted...

I watched Season 1 of this a few years ago

I really liked it

Just lots of shows to watch and life is busy, so I never continued

Spencer is my favourite <3

I thought Season 1 was a struggle at first. The first four episodes were really, really rough. They didn't seem like they really understood how to make a cohesive episode of TV yet. Season 1 was interesting though, and I actually enjoyed it too.
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This topic probably got as many posts as it deserves.
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:(
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Sorry. I wish I had more to say.

I also liked Hanna's mom.

why
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Delseban posted...

Sorry. I wish I had more to say.

I also liked Hanna's mom.

Hanna's mom is like, the only active parent in this entire series. The rest of them don't seem like they care about their kids at all. Like how detached from your children's lives do you have to be to not notice any of this A shit going on?

LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

why

I had a female friend who said that I would like it since I'm into mystery stuff. And I actually enjoy young adult literature and actually aspire to write it some day. She did warn me it's pretty girly.

So I started to watch it and it... wasn't great to begin with. But then it got better and it seemed competent enough. So I continued to watch and I'm just like "I just wanna know who A is." And my friend told me just get to the end of season 2. So I did. Satisfied with it. I didn't notice The Pretty Little Liars Filler Formula yet.

Then I started watching Season 3 and it wasn't good enough to keep my interest, so I stopped. But then I had a whole week off of work because I had vacation time to kill. I was going to play a couple video games and then spend a bulk of it back home hanging out with friends. And then I get nailed with the flu super fucking hard. And I said "What's a show where I won't be mad at myself if I pass in and out while watching?" So I watched Pretty Little Liars again.

The show was decent for a while until I noticed The Pretty Little Liars Filler Formula and I began to hate it. They started to make all the characters unlikable, they began to make them do very little actual investigation anymore. There was a season where they were mandated to have one extended makeout/sex session every episode. It was bad. And by the time they got to the reveal of the new A, it was bad and very clear they planned NOTHING. The showrunner is a damn idiot and I began to do research from all the pissed off fans who also had the same notion.

But they did a time skip. I said "Okay, fucking fine. I'll watch your time skip. You gave us a teaser and it seemed mildly interesting and these kids have to be adults now." They all graduated college and came back and are terrorized again. Fine, right? NOPE! They act just as dumb and immature as they were in college, they go out of their way to make everyone's lives literally the same as before, and it's the same formula as before.

It's a very bad show that had promise before. I would never watch it weekly if it wasn't the last six episodes when I caught up.
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My wife and I named our daughter Troian after Troian Bellisario (Spencer) because of this show! It has really lost a lot in my eyes though, especially after watching the awesomeness that is Orphan Black.

As far as questions go, do you think Mona will ever get the respect she deserves from the rest of the liars? Yeah, she was terrible a long time ago, but look at how many times she's saved their asses, or put herself at risk to protect them without getting any respect. It seemed like they might have finally realized she's on their side after the end of last weeks episode, but I'm not sure.

Edit: Also, Janel Parrish is amazing. Forgot to mention that!
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Since Mona is the only one in the series who isn't an idiot, I say she probably sacrifices herself for them, and only then do they actually forgive her. Because the girls are all terrible people now, except for Hanna when they decide she shouldn't be for the sake of the plot.

Honestly, I doubt we get a very satisfying reveal. The only reason the Uber A reveal was so good was because of the acting. Every single other thing was terrible and hilarious. Literally a futuristic space room as Uber A's lair.

But the only way it's satisfying is if it's Ezra. Because he's a skeezy piece of shit and if he's the one then it's justifying all of his awful and creepy behavior. What we'll likely get is like the Uber A reveal where it's someone we haven't seen for a very long time, thus having no actual impact. And honestly, these girls entirely gave up on doing actual investigation and research except for Caleb, who is the actual hero of the story for being the only one to try stopping things.

There's also the Spencer Twin theory to look forward too which will probably also be bad.

But Troion is an awesome name and she's a very cool person. Her social media is really enjoyable to follow, especially since she takes the show as seriously as it should be at this point.
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My wife told me about the Spencer Twin theory, and while it seems like it could be interesting and the evidence supporting it does make sense, there are so many holes that are still there that would need to be filled in. With the writing and structure of the show it wouldn't surprise me if they still went that way, but I hope they don't. I have to agree that there's not a lot they can do at this point to make the big reveal stick at this point.
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They do not care at all about any plotholes. Lol they're just going to write whatever. It's very clear at this point.

Oh, and we get to figure out who is the father of Emily and Ali's ayyggs baby. That's going to be just... Thrilling. Btw, Emily and Ali is the worst thing in the show.

But the main thing that would fix a lot of this show's ending is if AD ends up going "Yeah, so I just wanted you all to realize you're still the same awful little girls you've always been. That's why I orchestrated you all losing your jobs, living in this shit town, and hooking back up with all of your high school boyfriends and your crush. You haven't changed at all, and this proves it with how easily you slipped back into it."

That is the only way it justifies them going in reverse character development, and would actually be a cool reveal. But I really doubt it, sadly.

It's also worth noting that in interviews with the show runner lately, she's been getting facts about the show she wrote wrong and they have to have someone like Ali's actress there to correct her and help her out. That's how bad this woman is.
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RaidenZeroX posted...

the awesomeness that is Orphan Black

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I guess I need to watch Orphan Black soon. Is it on Hulu or Netflix?
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Last I checked it was on Amazon Instant Video, but that was about 3 years ago. I got hooked after the first 3 minutes and ended up buying the first 2 seasons on iTunes. Haven't looked back since.
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This is the final day until game over... Forever. It's honestly super relieving to me. Usually I'm sad when a show ends but this time it's just straight relief. I can finally not dedicate any more of my time to this show!
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And I need to have a confession.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrwSUNQzBVQ

The intro for Pretty Little Liars is actually really strong. If there's anything that kept me from immediately turning off each episode, it's that theme song playing that kind of puts me in a state to be capable of sitting through it for 40 minutes.
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It begins. :( The beginning of the end of my suffering.
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I could not stop laughing.

This show is so dumb, but at least it made for an entertaining finale, even if there was absolutely nothing satisfying about it.
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So if anyone wants to know the quality of this show it can be summed up in this ridiculous reveal:

The person behind it all was an evil British twin of one of the main characters.

There is nothing more creatively bankrupt or cliche.
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Well, based on everything you said, I guess I probably wouldn't want to watch the rest of the series anyway. I'm behind on dozens of other shows and Pretty Little Liars, as much as I liked the first season, probably isn't something I have time for in my life anymore. Maybe I should just look up the ending, haha. Evil british twin. Wow.

Ehhh... I probably wouldn't recommend it unless you're really into the genre. There are much better shows.

And man, you can look up the ending, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the entire series except for the past season and a half. There was nothing even revealing this character until the past three episodes, and even then they were just so subtle and nothing that it did not matter at all.

Basically, it breaks down like this:

Season 1-2 have a definitive story.

Season 3-6 1/2 build on that story.

Season 6 1/2-7 is a totally different story that has nothing to do with anything.

It's just... man. If I even get into the way that they actually solved who was behind it all, it will blow your fucking mind even more. It's literally everything you should never do with a mystery story.
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I looked around at the wiki a bit to see how it ended.

Maybe I'll watch season 2 someday? If season 2 is the last one that was still good.

How did they get to the final twin reveal? I'm curious, so might as well tell me.

Well, you see this is the thing with Pretty Little Liars.

They do half-assed investigation throughout the seasons. They have maybe 3 episode arcs where they are SO SURE that this is the person ruining their lives. They then do all this investigation for the person they are investigating to say "No, I wasn't really A." And then what happens is that they repeat that process. So if you know what's happening, you know that nobody they actually try to investigate is actually A, so you can completely check out and know that all of their investigation is totally worthless. And all they do is basically narrow down a list of suspects.

For Season 2, this actually works because they actually do end up doing the research and finding out who it is. But for all subsequent seasons... no, absolutely not. And since Season 3 to halfway through Season 6 is all trying to find out who the new A is, you have three and a half full-length seasons going through this process and by the time you get to the end, they reveal A... is somebody who hasn't been been seen in 23 episodes and has not so much as been talked about in that amount of time. So they basically stumble into solving the mystery by finding the SECRET BASE of A and then you get an entire episode of this person telling everyone exactly why she was A and why she did what she did. But there's absolutely nothing hinting at that and no amount of research would have ever let the girls figure this out for themselves.

Move on to the second half of Season 6 and Season 7 which is the same formula, only with a time skip to make things more interesting. And absolutely not a single episode matters or even alludes to the existence of this character. Not a second. So everything that happens is totally worthless and the only significant part of the twin thing is that she pretended to be the real thing in like three short scenes that, again, were meaningless. So this reveal comes out of nowhere, there's no way they could solve this mystery, and it's a pretty ridiculous excuse for why she's torturing these girls and it brings up more obvious questions.

The way it's found out is...

The blind girl, Jenna, says that Spencer smells different. So she calls Toby and tells him. He goes to the group who is doing worthless research that doesn't matter to find out where the kidnapped Ezra is and he goes "Hey, so Jenna said that Spencer smelled different, and Spencer's horse had a freak out earlier, and Spencer gave me this book that she didn't write in. And also twins run in her family. And also if she had a twin, that twin would probably hate us and want to ruin us." And then everyone goes "YEAH YOU KNOW THAT SOUNDS RIGHT AND NOT TOTALLY BATSHIT CRAZY. LET'S GO WITH THAT!" Like what the hell, these girls have utterly failed to notice hints at all of their investigation in front of their nose and they all take literally one minute to discuss it. 54 seconds (someone timed it) to go from "who is stalker" to "stalker must be evil twin of friend."

It is truly, truly awful and the worst writing. And I would argue that the first three seasons are good, but if you're going to watch Season 3, you're already partly through the second story already, so I'd just stop after Season 2.
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