I think there was some confusion with A being there from the pilot, because apparently Marlene said that back in season 2 when she was talking about Mona, but fan lore spread that it was a more recent interview that referred to Big A, whereas Marlene was always more vague about whether Charles might be a character that we've seen before or not. (The clue that she couldn't believe that people didn't pick up on in the first 20 minutes of the pilot was Mona's hand being underneath the desk when Aria receives her first text).
And yeah, there were so many red herrings like Melissa, Lucas, Noel, Jenna etc that they never really dealt with, even though there were so many hints about A being a team of people working together. To have it just be CeCe with Sara helping her seemed so underwhelming when Sara was only introduced for that, and was made to seem sketchy from the beginning ETA I guess that was the shows attempt to have one of the four main liars feel really betrayed, by having red coat be Emily's latest love interest, but literally who cared about Sara and was invested in that relationship? It felt like a poor attempt to have the kind of shock reveal and emotional impact that viewers had been hoping for with characters like Ezra and Toby, but it fell really flat to try and go for emotional impact with CeCe and Sara when both were newish characters that had been introduced as clearly shady. It still worked to an extent with CeCe because of Ali's friendship with her, but not with Sara at all, and certainly none of the four main liars had any real reason to care that much that it made sense for them to plead with 'A' not to jump. They must have already known how screwed up A was as a person, I don't see why knowing about CeCe's sad childhood should have made a difference when they were kidnapped and tortured by her
And I didn't realise that Marlene was connecting the negative response to transphobia, most of the responses I've seen addressing that issue are more disappointment with the show because of villainising a transgender character, so it's rather unfortunate that Marlene seems to feel really proud and that they did something very progressive in making CeCe transgender, yet fails to recognise that it was not a flattering portrayal. I guess she felt that it was very sympathetic because of the childhood flashbacks, like the one on the roof with Bethany? But they made A so twisted in how the girls were treated as dolls and playthings (I mean heck Allison herself was framed for murder by the sister that supposedly loves her!), so it's hard to separate all of that from CeCe's childhood
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rosecarmine
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Date: 2015-08-13 04:48 am (UTC)And yeah, there were so many red herrings like Melissa, Lucas, Noel, Jenna etc that they never really dealt with, even though there were so many hints about A being a team of people working together. To have it just be CeCe with Sara helping her seemed so underwhelming when Sara was only introduced for that, and was made to seem sketchy from the beginning ETA I guess that was the shows attempt to have one of the four main liars feel really betrayed, by having red coat be Emily's latest love interest, but literally who cared about Sara and was invested in that relationship? It felt like a poor attempt to have the kind of shock reveal and emotional impact that viewers had been hoping for with characters like Ezra and Toby, but it fell really flat to try and go for emotional impact with CeCe and Sara when both were newish characters that had been introduced as clearly shady. It still worked to an extent with CeCe because of Ali's friendship with her, but not with Sara at all, and certainly none of the four main liars had any real reason to care that much that it made sense for them to plead with 'A' not to jump. They must have already known how screwed up A was as a person, I don't see why knowing about CeCe's sad childhood should have made a difference when they were kidnapped and tortured by her
And I didn't realise that Marlene was connecting the negative response to transphobia, most of the responses I've seen addressing that issue are more disappointment with the show because of villainising a transgender character, so it's rather unfortunate that Marlene seems to feel really proud and that they did something very progressive in making CeCe transgender, yet fails to recognise that it was not a flattering portrayal. I guess she felt that it was very sympathetic because of the childhood flashbacks, like the one on the roof with Bethany? But they made A so twisted in how the girls were treated as dolls and playthings (I mean heck Allison herself was framed for murder by the sister that supposedly loves her!), so it's hard to separate all of that from CeCe's childhood