Pretty Little Liars

[frelling_tralk]

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...

Comments

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

I'm still wondering about plot lines from just this last season, like why did we spend about five or six episodes on the mystery of who was in the barrel when Mona wasn't even dead?

Oh yeah, especially since it seemed that Tanner knew something was inside of it, but it was never talked about again after the fact?

One of the main problems this show has is introducing so many little subplots and storylines into the seasonal and main arc, spending so much time on it for some episodes, even half the season, only for it to be left behind as a trivial thing. At this point, the show has become so convoluted with unsolved and incomplete storylines and questions that I sometimes feel like it's deliberate to confuse the viewers that once it's time for any "big reveals" we would feel compelled to just accept anything they give us just to move things along. I mean, I really had to think back throughout the seasons to pinpoint exactly how the timeline went again, and for something of a mystery show it shouldn't be that complicated.

I still don't understand why CeCe went to all that trouble with the dollhouse when it had literally knowing to do with her explained motives of wanting to keep Allison with her.

Exactly, that dollhouse was so elaborate and deliberate, everything that "A" has done has always centered around Alison and her friends, about revealing their secrets. If Cece was all about seeing her family again, why go through all that trouble? Why was she so angry with the girls? Just because they weren't exactly happy with the way Alison had treated them? Cece knew what Alison was capable of with her mean girl status, they hung out together and did mean things to others together. Cece was practically like a mentor for Alison, in a way, as I recall a lot of the flashbacks in previous seasons. And remember "The First Secret"? Alison had been getting threatening messages since Halloween. Someone was intentionally threatening her, so much that she tried tracking down who was sending her those messages. If Cece was the one doing that, why? She was already friends with Alison at that time. I mean, none of it really makes sense, even with the familial connection.

And why was A sending Allison notes claiming responsibility for killing her Mother?

Yeah, that also doesn't make sense, either. Remember the picture/video that Alison received of her mother being buried? Why would Cece torment Alison like that if she truly loved Alison and their mother? None of it makes any logical sense given the information dump the finale gave us. It further proves that Marlene and the writers don't think these things through, and just do whatever they think people may buy.

(I'm not normally this pessimistic about this show. I acknowledge that it's ridiculous and nonsensical at times, but it has been mostly enjoyable for me throughout the seasons, and despite people being tired of the "A" guessing game I liked the ongoing mystery of it all and have been entertained by what we got....until now, that is. It's one of those moments where I wished they had kept with the book reveal instead. With all that build-up, all that anticipation, they could have done much, much better.)

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Honestly I think that they wanted to do something similar to Allison's twin from the books, and assumed that the sister in this case being transgender and telling us all to look out for a male character called Charles would be a shocking enough twist to impress everyone with the A reveal, but one big twist just isn't enough when you've spend nearly 4 seasons building up to that mystery. I think that they were banking a lot on Charles really being a female character being enough to induce huge gasps and get talked about as being something that nobody saw coming. But then the episode just felt like such an exposition dump with the writers straining to reach for emotional pathos. I mean I've brought it up a couple of times now lol, but it was a big let-down to give us no interesting motive for CeCe targeting the main characters. It seemed like they should have been incidental in her goal to establish a connection with Allison and Jason, yet she spend way more time on her sisters friends for some reason, apparently she didn't even know that Allison was still alive until the season 3 finale!

To defend the show for a moment though, wasn't it Mona who was the original A from the Halloween flashback, sending the notes on it being my turn to torture you? As far as I'm aware A was just supposed to be Mona for the first two seasons, hence the irony in Mona convincing Allison to run away for protection when she was A all along. They only introduced the new A mystery in season 3, they just made it seem in the season 2 finale that there was an uber A that Mona was taking orders from. That was another slightly disappointing reveal though to just hand wave it as oh Mona was really drugged up at the time and didn't know what she was saying , although I suppose it was a good twist that makes sense in retrospect that she believed that she was really talking to Allison when it was actually CeCe.

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

To defend the show for a moment though, wasn't it Mona who was the original A from the Halloween flashback, sending the notes on it being my turn to torture you? As far as I'm aware A was just supposed to be Mona for the first two seasons, hence the irony in Mona convincing Allison to run away for protection when she was A all along.

Hmmm, I'm not entirely sure. It's highly probable and it makes sense, though the confirmation about that has been rather vague.

Although, it begs to question who had been stalking Alison during her time in hiding? Was it Cece basically wanting her to come out of hiding? Unless that is the Uber "A" that has been said will happen at some point. There's just a lot of unanswered questions about the series of events throughout the timeline who "A" tormenting them all, from Alison to the rest of the girls. Some of it was Mona, then it was Cece, but then there were other instances that I'm just scratching my head about.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that it was all Mona sending Allison the notes originally, and then Allison ran away convinced that she was in danger after the whole being buried alive ~misunderstanding~. But hmm I'm not sure who was stalking Allison after that, it couldn't have been CeCe as she still believed that Allison was dead until the season 3 finale, right? Could that all have been paranoia on Allison's behalf after her being so shaken at what had happened to her? Or I guess that it could still have been Mona, she did know that Allison was still alive all along, and obviously had motive in wanting her to stay gone

When I have time I'm going to try rewatching from season 3 I think, and see how many clues or nitpicks I pick up on this time around *g*