I enjoy a good mystery series in the summer. I’m the one guy that watched “Hidden Palms” a few summers ago. I watched “Happy Town” this summer up until ABC canceled it. I tried watching AMC’s “Rubicon,” too, and would’ve succeeded except that the first half hour of the series bored me to tears — and the delete button.
It may sound like I’m trading class for trash, but ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars” is actually the best TV mystery in a while. And while I’m more interested in the journey than how it wraps up, I know a lot of viewers are obsessed with how a story ends. If that’s you, you can take comfort in knowing that it’s a hit show, so it will likely have an ending. (Unfortunately, with the exception of the latest episode, “Pretty Little Liars” isn’t on the web; hopefully that will change before the next season begins so late arrivals can catch up.)
The plot of “Pretty Little Liars” is similar to “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” Alison (Sasha Pieterse), one of a group of five high school girl friends, goes missing after a wild night of drinking (at a cabin in the woods, natch), and she’s presumed dead. A year later, the other four start getting scary notes that feature intimate secrets about their lives; this being 2010, the notes come in the form of text messages, Facebook posts and tweets in addition to old standbys like lipstick scrawled on a mirror. But while that is all you need for a movie, it’s not enough to sustain a TV show. Luckily, “Pretty Little Liars” has a great cast of characters and many compelling relationships. You might assume that these four girls would be selfish, unlikable, popular snobs, but that’s not the case.
Interestingly, Lucy Hale, who plays Aria, pulled off the same trick of being a popular girl worth rooting for on “Privileged.” “Pretty Little Liars” also features Shay Mitchell, a star in the making, as somewhat shy swimmer Emily; Troian Bellisario as Spencer, the academic star from a driven, demanding family; and Hanna Marin as Ashley, the former chubby girl — cruel Alison called her “Hefty Hanna” — who is awkwardly trying to reinvent herself in her late friend’s image.
All four get involved in relationships that would be controversial if word got out:
- Aria is dating her English teacher. While this is a clichéd TV conflict — it happened on “Swingtown” and “Friday Night Lights” in recent years, to cite two examples — it works quite well here. I think the key is that Ezra and Aria meet at a bar before the school year starts; there’s no reason for him to think she’s in high school, and every reason to think she isn’t.
- Emily kisses a girl, Maya. On a side note, Maya is played by Bianca Lawson, who has now played a teenager in three different decades — on “Buffy” in the ’90s, “Dawson’s Creek” in the ’00s and “Pretty Little Liars” in the ’10s. That’s an impressive feat, and Lawson does indeed pass for a high schooler even though she’s 31. I got through several episodes before I realized I was watching the former Kendra the Vampire Slayer.
- Spencer falls for her sister’s fiancé. But you can’t blame her, what with he having a sexy British accent and being a nice guy … oh, and the sister being a rather nasty person.
- And Hanna kinda likes the nerdy yearbook photographer, although she is devoted to her longtime beau, a member of the school’s abstinence club.
These girls fail miserably at being Mean Girls now that Alison’s gone. Sure, they are still the types that shy, geeky guys would find unapproachable in the hallways and lunchroom. And, yeah, they kind of fit the gossipy teen girl stereotype (although, come on, they totally have a valid excuse). However, once we get to know them, we find they aren’t all that different than the rest of us, other than being better looking.
The especially problematic budding relationship is Emily taking a shine to science lab partner Toby, one of those types who listens to The Smiths and reads “The Catcher in the Rye” in coffee shops. (We know this because he says he likes The Smiths and we see him reading “The Catcher in the Rye” in a coffee shop.) Naturally, he’s a prime suspect for being the mysterious “A” who sends those spy notes. Also naturally, there’s no way at all he could actually be “A.” It’s way too obvious.
Another suspect is Toby’s stepsister, Jenna, but the problem with that scenario is that she’s blind. (Or is she? In one scene, she puts on lipstick in front of an elevator mirror, something that might or might not be a coincidence.) But again, she’s mentioned far too often as a suspect to actually be a legitimate suspect.
The way these girls get notes could be easily parodied; in one scene, a piece of paper blows to them on a breeze in the park. In other, they get personalized fortune cookies. It’s entirely possible that when “A” is revealed, we’ll say, “Hey, there’s no way he/she could’ve really delivered all those notes.”
But if you’re the type that likes mysteries for the journey, you might get into “Pretty Little Liars.”
For those who caught the first 10 episodes, what did you think? And what is your theory on the identity of “A” and/or Alison’s killer?