MY OVERALL REVIEW OF PLL ORIGINAL SIN
I want to begin this post by celebrating the nostalgia of being on Tumblr back when the original show was airing, when I genuinely thought Aria was A and wanted her to be, when I hated Ezra and Ezria with a deep passion, when I was right about Cece Drake. It’s been incredible to come back on here and theorise once again because I forgot just how much I enjoy that. If you’ve been here since the beginning, Thank you.
When I first heard about PLL Original Sin my expectations were extremely low. How could I put myself through another Marlene King show? Even worse, how could I watch something else by the creator of Riverdale. Haven’t I learned?.. I decided to just watch it in satire, fully expecting to hate it as far as reboots usually go. However, those feelings were quickly derailed when introduced to these loveable - bad ass girls. I was instantly attached to Imogen above all. Something about Bailee’s acting just hit the nail on the head for me and there are SO many moments where I wanted to shout GIVE THIS GIRL AN EMMY OR SOMETHING, SOME KIND OF AWARD. She is such an underrated actress who I believe deserves so much MORE praise. She really blew me away this season. I loved her friendship with Tabby and I was silently rooting for them to become more than friends. Although, I’m not disappointed by the lack of sapphic reveal between them. They have such GOOD chemistry and a special bond that’s shared between best friends and that’s good enough for me. So many heartwarming moments between them such as when they share their trauma and figure out that maybe their sexual assaults are connected and then how they come together and confront Chip, that entire scene broke my heart. The way Imogen confesses to being hurt, the way Tabby tells him that she doesn’t feel safe in the world, that he stole from her. This scene was done so beautifully. Although, I was mad that Chip was let out on bail but then that quickly changed when Archie escaped the hospital to possibly murder him. On the topic of Archie, I don’t think we’ve met him yet. Unless, he is Wes. Wes is my only suspect for Archie. If not Wes, we haven’t met Archie yet which I kind of like that concept because it opens the door to Season 2 which HBO needs to green light NOW. My hopes for the potential next season is for us to be revealed Archie, to know more about who he is and why he has “a face only a mother could love.” I want to know what became of Rose Waters, I want to know how the whole Tom and Chip Thing plays out in the end. My head is empty for what mysteries could take place next because I’m still shaking from that incredible episode.
I’d say Marlene learned her lesson. This reveal made so much sense and it left no room for plot holes unlike Charlotte Drake and Alex. The original truly has so many plot holes and I was expecting such a lacklustre reveal for this one but it just MADE SENSE. I’m not questioning anything other than WHAT DOES ARCHIE LOOK LIKE. A revenge plot is very slasher movie style and I love how they weren’t afraid to go there with this show. The old show just wasn’t dark enough until we get to the dollhouse. Can we appreciate the game A set up for them to punish their bullies?! It was very dollhouse era and I was CHEERING.
Ugh, I could’ve done without the Ezra and Aria adopting Imogen’s baby situation. I don’t want to personally hear about them, I’m still mad they got the big wedding and Ezra suffered no consequences for stalking and grooming an underage girl. Tell me about Spencer and Toby or Hanna and Caleb instead. Still, Aria wanted a baby and she deserved to have one, even if it just had to be with Ezra. I got stuck here, that anger just bubbled back to the surface and the potential murder of Chip and Tom having to pay for his crimes really doesn’t make up for that. Another thing I could’ve done without was merging Riverdale and Pretty Little Liars into the same universe typically because Riverdale is a crack dream and I’m 99.9% sure the show runners and writers are on shrooms when they create episodes so let’s not forget this show exists in the same universe as parallel universes, ghosts and witchcraft. And somehow our world is also connected to this - a comment made about Cole Sprouse. Blissfully, I’m going to ignore this and treat it as a throw in for the Riverdale fans.
I saw a few people not liking the teen pregnancy storyline for Imogen and I typically don’t care for that trope as a whole because all my favourite shows seem to do it and it’s just not interesting to me personally. However, the way it was done just made sense. Imogen took risks and put herself under severe stress because she was raped and she’d also lost her mother in that small space of time. It wouldn’t be uncommon for her to not show that she cares about herself (that’s that on trauma). Did the pregnancy add anything to the over all show? Not really. But am I mad about the storyline and the way it was executed? Not at all. In fact, she was so BAD ASS in the fight to the death scene with Archie, the way he lifts her up and strangled her and she kicks him. She truly floored him while in labour with her baby. We need to just rave about that scene in general, it was very old horror movie. I love how they showed the accuracy of human survival in a very Laurie/Sidney way, the body can endure all of that and the person will get up again and again to fight for survival. I personally enjoy that in horror movies.
Let’s cover my recent theories and what I was right about this time around. I speculated that Kelly and Karen did an early twin swap and that the born Karen was murdered and Kelly took her name back. The twin swap did not play out, Kelly is Kelly. In theory, this all made much more sense with a Cassie and Lexi sister shadow concept. We can see that Tom favoured Karen and even went as far to say that he would rather Karen was alive instead if it had to be one of them. Everyone seemed to favour Karen from the dance teacher, to her parents to the kids at school. It’s no wonder Kelly tried to fill her shoes when she died while being in pain that she lost her twin sister. I speculated that Chip was the one who raped both Tabby and Imogen. He was too nice in the beginning until his character started to become creepy and give off incel vibes. That’s when I was like, girls stop looking at the football team and look to the ‘nice guy.’ you trusted. This was such a powerful scene, the courage Tabby and Imogen had to confront him and ask him why he betrayed them like that. It was beautiful and we got to see A’s motives clearly when he spared them and ran after Chip. So let’s talk about A and his motives and Angela Waters.
I speculated that Wes was Angela’s brother who was doing all the heavy work to get revenge for his sisters suicide. I thought that his intentions were purely to avenge Angela and hurt all the people who hurt her. I couldn’t think of anything that the mums could’ve done past generally being awful friends to Angela that we can see in their treatment of her (I.e the Halloween thing, the drugs thing). And I thought she was raped by Tom and then gave birth to his baby before the Y2K party and that baby was Chip who did the A work, the brains of the operation. We now know that Tom did in fact rape Angela but she wasn’t pregnant with his baby. Her high emotions at the Y2K party were a byproduct of the bullying from the moms of which was the result of Angela’s rape confession. It broke my heart the way these girls got an entire school to ghost another student, one who is supposed to be their friend, to make her feel invisible. That would drive anyone crazy. My heart broke for Angela that night. We also found out that Principal Clayton is the brains behind A and Angela’s father and that she has a secret brother called Archie who we don’t get to see (‘a face only a mother could love.’). They were both avenging the daughter/sister they lost and taking it upon themselves to punish bullies (which the moms were). This entire reveals leaves no room for plot holes, it just makes sense. I didn’t see the Angela and Mouse’s mom relationship coming, but I suppose it makes sense why she goes to the group for missing kids. She’s projecting her guilt into a bigger cause. I love that Imogen could acknowledge the mother who bullied and drove Angela to suicide and her own image of who her mother became. In this cancel culture society (of which I don’t take part in) it’s refreshing to see a young person being able to see the duality of a human being, being able to know that her mother was an awful teenager but she was also a loving mother and still choosing to love her and miss her.
Now let’s talk about the parallels. First of all, Archie is a very Mona type A. His motive aligns with the Mona terminology. Mona walked so Archie could run with a knife. Of course the brilliantly done party scenes where someone dies (I.e Angela’s suicide and Karen’s’ murder). Angela going down for Noa’s moms drugs and Noa going down for her mothers drugs. Tom raping Angela and Chip raping Tabby and Imogen. Twin jealousy (Spencer and Alex, Karen and Kelly). Secret sibling who torments the girls (Charlotte and Archie).
Now let’s talk about the casting and diversity. The casting is absolutely perfect because out of our main girls only one of them is white. PLL was a very white centric show and most of the POC characters were killed off. Whereas in this one, we haven’t yet had a POC death and we have multiple characters. I will say, there wasn’t enough LGBTQ+ like sure we have Mouse’s mothers and we later find out that Angela also lands on that spectrum but that’s not obvious, it wasn’t obvious to me that she was in a secret relationship. In the original we had Emily and Alison, Maya and Emily.. Emily and more girls. Why couldn’t one of the main girls be bi or lesbian? My money was on Tabby and I hope they explore that in season 2.
Karen was such a lacklustre mean girl. She wouldn’t survive in a room with Alison and Mona. Even the mums were more convincing mean girls than Karen. Twins are hard to do well, and I don’t think the actress was the best at it in comparison to Lindsey Lohan in the parent trap (But tbh Troian was worse at it). That was until her scenes in the final episodes. I loved Kelly in the end.Maia (Noa) gave me such Hailey Kiyiko acting vibes which I loved. I wasn’t fully convinced by Mouses’s actress in the beginning. And of course our queen, the standing ovation goes to Miss Bailee Madison. She was truly the stand out for me and reminds me of a young Drew Barrymore. I need more things with Bailee in. Everything she’s done, she’s done it well, even as a child.
Overall, I loved the show and found it very bingeable. I look forward to a possible second season. Although, I don’t know what other direction this could go other than Archie’s face reveal.
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