frelling_tralk | Pretty Little Liars

CeCe being A really didn't feel earned to me, it wasn't anywhere near as emotionally devastating as I'd been hoping for (I was rooting for a really shocking reveal like Toby, someone that the girls knew and trusted). CeCe was a pretty random choice for A as she barely had a connection with the main four, only with Allison really. But then the whole twist of her really being Allison's sister was tied together pretty well in the end I guess. I'm not sure that it really was planned since season 3, it seems more like something that they started laying hints for in season 5 with Allison's return leading to all of the flashbacks with her and Mrs D and the hints of there being another little blonde girl? It seems so obvious in retrospect that Charles was transgender when you think back to moments like the Xmas episode and the two dresses that Allison was warned not to tell her father about, so that was well planned I guess. I think that everything was more or less tied together, but there were some major plotholes too, like Charles/CeCe witnessing Bethany killing Toby's mother as a young girl, even though Toby's mother didn't die until Toby was a teenager? The timelines on this show have always been a mess though lol. (And are they ever going to let the poor Mom's out! :P I don't know why they bothered showing them trapped in the previously's when they did nothing with it in the episode itself)

I wasn't really sold on trying to make CeCe sympathetic. Fair enough that she had reason to hate her father, but her motives were basically 'oh Mona said that Allison's friends were happy that she was gone', and that was enough for her to spend months tormenting them? I buy that Allison would have been touched by CeCe's story, especially as they were already close and acted like sisters, but the other girls appealing for CeCe not to jump because they know her story was pretty lame. They barely knew CeCe, and who would really want to save someone who had kept you locked up in a dollhouse and subjected you to months of trauma? It seemed like the writers wanted to start pushing 'A has a soul' and giving CeCe a tragic backstory, just because they were panicking about the reveal of A being a pretty minor character in the show and having no emotional payoff? A's actions against the girls always felt so personal, i.e recreating the night that Ali went missing and giving Aria back her old haircut with the pink streaks, so it didn't work for me to have CeCe have such impersonal motives and just talking about getting addicted to the game. It only really made sense for her to be obsessed with Allison and her family, not Allison's friends, and having her claim that she hated them because they didn't mourn Allison enough felt like such an afterthought

Sara being red coat AND black widow was incredibly underwhelming, wtf the character was only introduced this season??? They should have just had be CeCe black widow as well as being A, it ruins the impact of those scenes for me completely now to know who was really underneath that veil. I don't get what Sara's motives were at all, they never really explained that. I did cheer when Emily punched her though lol. But yeah, everything was so rushed that they should have just made the finale two hours long

And to change topics for a moment to talk about the flashforward, it's interesting making Allison a teacher, but lately I'm feeling like the writers aren't sure what to do with Allison since she's reformed? Her flashbacks were always so much fun when she was playing the ~mean girl~, and then season 5 also kept things interesting as everything about her was so ambiguous with the girls unsure of whether they could trust her or not, and she was clearly fighting against her worst instincts when it came to dealing with Mona and slapping her back. But since the show has made it clear that she has genuinely reformed and changed for the better, something about her seems really subdued compared to how she used to be, the writers even seem to present her as much older than her real age when it comes to her personal style. I guess her appearing older than her years makes sense with everything that she's been through, but I wish that they would give her some of her old spark back...

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Aww I'm sorry you were spoiled, I figured that it would be hard to avoid once the big A reveal came out! To be fair the reveal might draw you in more when you're watching the episode, as opposed to just reading my bitching about it lol. It was interesting in a way to link CeCe to Charles and the Delerantis family, and Allison's reactions were reasonably emotionally effective as she and CeCe had been close, I was mainly disappointed that it was such a non-character in the other girls life's and that her moties in targeting them hadn't been thought through more. Literally her only motive apparently was Mona claiming to CeCe that the girls were happy that Allison was dead, but that wasn't even true? There were some conflicted emotions maybe, but they were clearly the people who were closest to Allison, they were all obsessed with looking into Allison's disappearance and obviously loved her, so CeCe just had no reason to start tormenting them for years to get ~revenge~ for Allison?

I think that most people are bummed because they were hoping for some really shocking reveal that would have an impact on the girls (I was rooting for Toby!), but CeCe was basically pegged as shady from the beginning. True most fans didn't guess that she would be A, but most of the speculation was that she was Red Coat or involved in some way, so it wasn't enough of a wow moment to have 4 seasons lead up to that reveal. I feel like the writers were counting on Charles being transgender to be a big enough twist to blow people away anyway, but it just wasn't

Let me know what you think when you do catch up :)

Edited 2015-08-13 19:12 (UTC)

Cece was only ever really close to Allison. No link to the other girls, like you said. And never were the girls happy for Ally's disappearance so I don't get where Mona saying so comes from.

I was always under the impression that "A" was this huge team of people. Mainly because Mona was the first and she seemed to answer to someone else at some point.

I loved Mona as "A". And having Toby follow in later and such... that group meeting of people bullied by Allison made a lot more sense, too.

Basically, that illusion fooled the most ârt of fandom since Cece seemed to only be working with Sara. So... what? Two different groups for two completely different reasons? I mean, everyone was shady around the girls anyway.

Charles being transgender would have had a much bigger impact if it hadn't been linked to the big "A" reveal. Like Willow turning gay for Tara. That wasn't mixed with something else just as big or bigger... That was done perfectly. Marlene should have taken notes on that *laughs*

They explained away Mona answering to someone else as her being so drugged up when she first arrived at Radley that she thought that CeCe was Allison. She mistook CeCe in a red dressing gown for being Allison in a red coat when she said that 'I did everything that you told me', but in fact the original A of the first two seasons was always just Mona. CeCe takes over and steals the game from her in season 3

And exactly, I think that people got their hopes up because of previous shocking reveals like Toby being on the A team, or Ezra apparently being A. The writers always backtracked obviously, but there was still that expectation for this reveal to be a really major one this time to finally find out which character hated the liars that much, so a lot of us were left feeling like 'is that it'... I feel like they could have pulled some more characters in and had least have Black Widow as someone really intriguing (Jenna or Melissa would have been cool!), instead of basically only introducing Sara this year as being behind everything with CeCe. And they never even gave Sara any motive for that, so it's hard to feel like oh wow, that's who was in the red coat, that's who was underneath the veil

Major let down, really. And to think Marlene King sounded sooooo excited about the reveal, that everyone would be blown out of their seats and everything. She failed and she blames it on the transgender thing...

Anyway, I'm still going to enjoy the show and I still wanna buy the seasons on DVD.

Oh same, I'm still interested in what they're going to do with the time jump :)

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