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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Honestly I was hoping that they might be planning for a twist with Toby, after introducing and then dismissing the possibility of him as A in season 3, I thought that would have been so much fun if he has been A all along and managed to convince Spencer thst he only joined the A team for her. Keegan's many recent interviews on how exciting the A reveal was also made me wonder. (And huh at some of the stuff he said, like A being there since the pilot and how it's going to come together as so obvious when you go back and watch every episode?)

It's stupid for the writers to be that afraid of backlash, I believe that Troian has spoken about the network stepping in as well. For example when Spencer was briefly on the A team at the end of season 3, they originally wanted to have that last much longer, but the network objected to her working against the girls in cases audiences turned on Spencer. They don't seem to get that the audiences watch the show partly because they want to be knocked back by the big reveal, not have it just be random characters introduced specifically to be shady, why else would the Aria as A possibility be so popular! Toby or Ezra would have been such daring choices, and it would have been so much more fun to go back and rewatch with thst knowledge in your minds, whereas CeCe's character was barely even there as recurring most of the time after her episodes in season 3. I am reasonably happy with her backstory with Allison, but it is a big let-down that they couldn't do more with her motives for targeting the other girls

And yes Sara was just completely lame, it totally felt last-minute to make her both Red Coat and Black Widow, and not playing fair either as she wasn't even a character in the show when we were trying to guess who those characters could be. Nor was it even well-done, nearly everyone was wondering why we spending so much time with her and why they were forcing her romance with Emily

At first I was happy with how much Allison had grown, but during the romance with that police officer I did start thinking about how she's an entirely different character now. I wish that they could have kept some ambiguity about her as Sasha was always so good at playing the more vivacious and charming Allison, but from the flashforward it doesn't look like Allison as a teacher is going to be all that different from today? She seems to have been aged up way too much, ironic considering that she's the only one of the main actresses who actually is still a teenager

Toby would've been an excellent choice. He had plenty of reasons to dislike Alison/the girls, even if he eventually fell for Spencer. And it would've been much more emotionally devastating and the consequences would've been more long-lasting. Like...poor Spencer would never date again :) But I knew they'd never go there. Even if the show-runners wanted to, the network would've never allowed it.

I don't know what they did with Sasha's makeup in that flash-forward but Alison looked ridiculous. I hope they do a better job of trying to make her look older when we get to 6B. Spencer looked odd too but I think that was more clothing/hairstyle choice than makeup.

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