Yeah, this mid-season finale felt incredibly rushed and underwhelming.
I felt that the reveal would've been more interesting if it was someone that the girls knew and trusted, since I thought it was said that it was someone that was introduced during the first season, the first episode even. But apparently that was false advertising. I kept wanting someone like Wren to be "A" with Melissa being Red Coat/Black Widow, or someone else close to the girls that they either thought they trusted and wouldn't have suspected as being involved somehow. Someone unexpected.
(I still maintain the theory that Lucas is Uber "A", while Jenna and some others like Melissa have always been kind of in the shadows of his schemes)
While I liked how we saw the events from her perspective and how it all unfolded, and I rather enjoyed the performance of the actress a lot in those flashbacks and her explanations, a lot of things felt incredibly retconned for this to work. Some of it made sense, but other things didn't, and so many things were left unanswered. While I would love there to be a transgender storyline, which had been theorized for a bit that Charles may have transitioned at some point, it kind of felt incomplete of an explanation of everything that happened over the course of the seasons. Like, as you said, it didn't feel earned enough to just explain away that the reason why all of this happened was because of it since it felt like such a sudden thing to spring on us in such a short amount of time, and never mind that it leads to some rather unfortunate negativity with the representation of transgender issues being connected with a sociopath who wanted to play with people like they were dolls for the sake of revenge and being addicted to tormenting people.
(It doesn't help that Marlene King seems to be blaming the negative reviews of the episode with transphobia. Which, while I have seen some people make transphobic remarks in light of the reveal, that's not why most fans are complaining about the finale.)
The pacing and editing of the episode as well seem so off, especially towards the end where it seemed like they just threw in random clips. Like suddenly they're on the roof then the girls are leaving town and then it's a preview for five years later? Like? None of it seemed like a proper payoff after everything that they've been through, there was very little conclusion on many things. It was like they were in a hurry to close the whole "A" case to start the new chapter, which if that were the case then they shouldn't have lagged on for episodes and instead focused on the bigger plot points. I mean, why was Sarah even involved if she was only going to be revealed as someone who was working with Cece? Why did the show insist on pushing this faux relationship when it was literally going nowhere to fake us out? Just, it was so random and it felt really uneven, and overall it was a disappointing, lackluster of a mid-season finale. I kind of feel cheated, in a way.
They should have executed this better. Granted, considering all the fan theories that have been floating around for years, many of which were too brilliant for this show, any final reveal would've felt lackluster.
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rosecarmine
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-13 03:56 am (UTC)I felt that the reveal would've been more interesting if it was someone that the girls knew and trusted, since I thought it was said that it was someone that was introduced during the first season, the first episode even. But apparently that was false advertising. I kept wanting someone like Wren to be "A" with Melissa being Red Coat/Black Widow, or someone else close to the girls that they either thought they trusted and wouldn't have suspected as being involved somehow. Someone unexpected.
(I still maintain the theory that Lucas is Uber "A", while Jenna and some others like Melissa have always been kind of in the shadows of his schemes)
While I liked how we saw the events from her perspective and how it all unfolded, and I rather enjoyed the performance of the actress a lot in those flashbacks and her explanations, a lot of things felt incredibly retconned for this to work. Some of it made sense, but other things didn't, and so many things were left unanswered. While I would love there to be a transgender storyline, which had been theorized for a bit that Charles may have transitioned at some point, it kind of felt incomplete of an explanation of everything that happened over the course of the seasons. Like, as you said, it didn't feel earned enough to just explain away that the reason why all of this happened was because of it since it felt like such a sudden thing to spring on us in such a short amount of time, and never mind that it leads to some rather unfortunate negativity with the representation of transgender issues being connected with a sociopath who wanted to play with people like they were dolls for the sake of revenge and being addicted to tormenting people.
(It doesn't help that Marlene King seems to be blaming the negative reviews of the episode with transphobia. Which, while I have seen some people make transphobic remarks in light of the reveal, that's not why most fans are complaining about the finale.)
The pacing and editing of the episode as well seem so off, especially towards the end where it seemed like they just threw in random clips. Like suddenly they're on the roof then the girls are leaving town and then it's a preview for five years later? Like? None of it seemed like a proper payoff after everything that they've been through, there was very little conclusion on many things. It was like they were in a hurry to close the whole "A" case to start the new chapter, which if that were the case then they shouldn't have lagged on for episodes and instead focused on the bigger plot points. I mean, why was Sarah even involved if she was only going to be revealed as someone who was working with Cece? Why did the show insist on pushing this faux relationship when it was literally going nowhere to fake us out? Just, it was so random and it felt really uneven, and overall it was a disappointing, lackluster of a mid-season finale. I kind of feel cheated, in a way.
They should have executed this better. Granted, considering all the fan theories that have been floating around for years, many of which were too brilliant for this show, any final reveal would've felt lackluster.