CW: Reference to teacher/student grooming and SA, the Montgomeries, reference of horrific crimes committed against babies
Okay, so, I might have suggested this before, but I'll say it again anyways. If PLL has to go making the protagonists' families into mini-soaps, I have some ideas that I think would make it a better watch. I would like to see Ezrella play out, and Byron- wallowing in self-pity- stumbles into Ashley Marin's arms; they bond over being separated from their partners or whatever. They develop a romance, we see Byron steamroll over Ashley a few times before he starts crossing boundaries with Hanna and inserting himself in places he shouldn't be, and Ashley finally tells him off. He ends up going to therapy and not making much of an appearance until later. They end up getting divorced and it stays that way, but maybe they could reconcile and become friends later. Meanwhile, on the Ezrella side, Aria is mad into Ezra and he uses this to leverage information from her about Alison's disappearance. I want a couple of scenes where it's blatantly obvious to the audience that he's doing this. Her crush on Ezra could affect her romance with an appropriate suitor (I still like the idea of Shawn/Aria, but Noel could also be a long-standing love interest) or keep her from developing one. Obviously, Ella would find out about the book and kick Ezra's ass out- because in this version of the story, Ella has standards. The showrunners could use the divorce to characterize Aria through her relationship with her brother (I think maybe this was what they were trying to do but it wasn't successful); I desperately want to see some narrative self-awareness on the show that Aria is being parentified and is vulnerable to abuse outside the home. They successfully manage to tell the story of how the systematic emotional abuse of a teenager left her vulnerable to the grooming and predation of an authority figure who pretends to care about her for his own personal gain- Ezra actually very closely matches the predatory teacher personality as documented by the people who study these kinds of things, as does his storyline (the practice of sending teachers to another district after they have been reported for sexual misconduct is a documented phenomenon known as "lemon passing" or "passing the trash"), to the point that I wonder if the writers did it this way as a covert joke on Marlene. However, in spite of the fact that Aria is a textbook victim and Ezra is a textbook predator, the writers seem completely unaware of what they wrote. Aria's family problems and completely inappropriate relationship are always treated like separate, disconnected things; Ezra is supposed to be her "true love" so their relationship isn't even meant to look like a problem that needs a cause and any family problems that are acknowledged aren't handled adequately.
Alright, I have spent far too much time on the Montgomery family, so it's time to move on. I want to talk about how queerness is treated in this show (and most others). This show in particular focuses super heavily on giving their lesbian character an unrealistically robust dating life, even at the expense of her characterization and the story, itself. Emily Fields is a character whose portrayal is designed by a lesbian and acted by a woman who chooses not to label her sexuality and she still reads like a lesbian as written and portrayed by cishets who have no experience in the queer community (except maybe their gay best friend). I'm not saying she's a bad character or even a poor rep, please enjoy my opinion with all the nuance it requires, I'm saying there are things about being queer that aren't directly related to your dating life and would make positive representation. For example, if you're the lone LGBTQ+ in your friend group (*and you usually are not, one friend coming out usually sends a shockwave of friends coming out around you), no matter how good your cishet friends are, you're going to want to find other queer people to share experiences with. Being accepted- even supported and encouraged- doesn't fill the need for a shared community. There's a lot you could do by including queer characters in the story who aren't love interests for Emily (or whatever was going on with Jenna, not to mention CeCe was trans). She is still the first lesbian to come out at her school and her role as a gay rep shouldn't be tied up in having a dating life that goes non-stop. It could have been cool to see the LGBTQ+ of Rosewood through Emily, maybe use her storyline to introduce the audience to some queer issues or represent even more marginalized identities (lesbians absolutely do need to be represented, especially as characters who actually survive the story, but at least anyone you talk to knows what a lesbian is; there are queer identities some people don't even know about, like aromantic and/or asexual, non-binary, gender-noncomforming- this show desperately needs more GNC folks- and although not all intersex people see themselves as queer and should not be forced to take the label, there is room for them in our community if they want to be included). I get that the story isn't meant to be educational, necessarily, but I feel like having an arc where Emily gets involved at that group where she met Samara and gets to know some people and learn more about the community she belongs to would have been a more satisfying watch than most of the filler they put on-screen, and it's not like we never see the other characters with other friends outside the group. We get to see Hanna with Lucas and Aria with Holden. They don't need to be heavy-handed with it, even just having a scene where she uses they/them or even neo-pronouns to refer to someone would be cool. And, being that she's apparently the first gay person to come out at a school where they apparently don't have a support group or alliance, she could very easily end up being someone that the baby queers of Rosewood High go to for advice ("How did you figure it out?" "Do you ever think maybe you should have been a boy?" "What does it feel like to get a crush?" etc). That's something they could do that would increase representation, characterize Emily, and allow them to take a few steps back from putting her in a bunch of meaningless, thoughtless relationships because they felt like they couldn't leave their queer character single for a few episodes. Her storyline and characterization could have benefitted by giving her, and us, time to sit with the trauma and grief of losing both of her first loves the same way in a span of two years. Getting to know some other wlw (specifically) could also help us glean insight into Alison as well.
Speaking of Alison, this season did some very weird stuff with her characterization that somehow goes...nowhere?? They just throw in a bunch of weird stuff she did that seems super disjointed and somehow tells us nothing about her. Why- and how- is she involved in so many relationships? Who is Duncan (to her)? Did he mean anything to her? Why was she taking pictures of Aria while she slept? I want to know more about "Vivian" as a character she made up (*probably with some help from Cece, whom I wish had been introduced by now), I want to know more about her fling with Ian, and they give me "randomly took pictures of Aria, specifically, while she was sleeping." What is this shit? What does it mean? I think they just wanted to throw in something a little creepy and ominous and didn't know what to do with it after to make it a twist (because this story can't just be a story, it has to have a bunch of twists that ultimately add up to nothing) so they decided to attribute it to Alison because she's the one known character no one can ask, right now, and also because she's supposed to be a little mysterious and unpredictable and they figured having her do weird, out of character shit with no hint at her motivation would develop the mystery behind her character. And frankly, I am throwing tomatoes at them.
If any of the characters could have been benefitted by focusing on their family, it's Alison- a character whose backstory we are meant to be interested in by design- because she isn't on screen to develop herself. Strangely, we see very little of them, and almost nothing as it relates to Alison. They develop a little sibling rivalry between Jason and Alison and emphasize it to make him credible as a red herring, but once you figure out that Jason has nothing to do with it, those flashbacks don't amount to much. All siblings have a little rivalry between them. They spend time early in this season on this teenage fashion show Alison was supposed to be really into, they could have done way more with that. I would also like to get a glimpse into Dilaurentis family life, both before and after the disappearance. I'd like to see some sign of the family dynamics that made it possible for Alison to establish a completely different identity in another town and go on flying trips with a teenage pilot. I'd like to see more of Jason getting loaded, or maybe even some drug-related scenes with Alison that could make her a little more complex- like finding and hiding his stash of cocaine and also stealing his alcohol. I also want to see more of what's going on with her parents, I don't even think I've heard her father's name by now. We could get some insight into her character by seeing what's going on with her family, and I desperately want them to show us something "off" with them- especially Jessica, whom we are later supposed to believe is a baby-killing psychopath. Give me something about her that seems insincere, something that seems put-on, something that's cold and callous. Let me hear her talking shit about her dead daughter and drug-addicted son.
Also, let me see Jason and Spencer going head-to-head, because they bring this up like it's common knowledge and it isn't.
I also wish they had done more to develop Alison's relationship with each of the girls. I'm no fan of flashback sequences, especially when there are already so many that you could make a whole season with them- and I don't know if just starting the story that far back in time would work, because we need the context of the disappearance and mystery to be invested in seeing that play out. I guess I wouldn't mind having some flashbacks that occur in the context of one character reminiscing about their friendship- like, making the funeral its own episode or even a two-parter where the characters talk about her, or giving us an episode completely dedicated to the memorial and showing us some scenes there. The stories don't always have to come with dramatic reenactments, though. They could just talk about her with the other members of the group or with other people. Something to give their friendships more depth. So far, I think Emily is the only one whose had flashbacks that show Alison in a genuinely positive light, and that's even debatable because we know Alison was kind of leading Emily on (I'm not sure if that's exactly the right phrase, but I think it works). I want to see more of her complexity realized, and I want to see any social pressures that might have made some of the girls feel obligated to stick it out with a "friend" who was always down to blackmail them for no reason (straight up, usually blackmail is used for leverage or control but this shit gets brought up out of nowhere). I want to see some backing for the phrase "I made you. I made all of you," because that line...I don't know, it definitely has a cheesey daytime drama vibe but part of me thinks it's cool- but it would carry more weight if we got to see it.
Now, last but not least, now that Mona has been unmasked, I want to talk about her diagnosis. First of all, I think giving her a fictitious psychiatric condition is a fantastic idea to avoid further stigmatizing an existing condition (one of the reasons I am thankful that Mona is never explicitly said to be autistic even though she's coded that way- hopefully the people who can pick up on those tendencies in her character won't be as likely to conclude that autistic people are inherently villainous and criminal in real life). However, narratively speaking, it's also a really bold move; your audience doesn't have a real-world context for what you've created, which can damage any empathetic connection we have with the character if not handled adequately. And what did the PLL writers handle adequately? I still go to sleep at night sometimes wondering what the fuck was in that barrel. This is a problem, especially because I don't think Mona is supposed to be the only one of our villains afflicted with it- both Mona and Cece admit to getting "addicted to the game" and Alex apparently came up with the idea to do this very weird and specific thing all on her own. All of their storylines include stalking, both Mona and Alex were replacement stalkers in particular. Alison might have had a variant of it, which would have been cool to explore.
If you're going to create a disorder, you have to create the disorder. Is it genetic? Inherited? Trauma-based? Maybe it's a little-known condition that hasn't gained much traction in the world of psychiatry and hasn't been studied enough to determine the cause. What are the symptoms? What is the onset? I think we could have really benefitted by having an episode focusing on Dr. Sullivan putting the pieces together Criminal Minds-style over the diagnosis, or splicing in some scenes like that in her reveal episode. We could also benefit from spending time in the perspective of these characters- not just seeing what they're doing for a few seconds at the end of an episode, but seeing how this all looks to them.
This mental health diagnosis only seems to exist as-needed for the plot and, to be honest, I don't know what the point of it was. "A state of hyper-reality" isn't even really needed to explain how Mona knew everything that was happening; a lot of what she knew, she learned through Ali's diary, and what she couldn't have learned from there she could probably have learned from her informants- especially since they all have very personal, supposedly secret conversations out loud in very public spaces all the time. She has her own motive. And I really can't imagine setting up something like a fictitious psychiatric condition, you could have a lot of creative freedom with that, and just doing fuck all with it.
It occurs to me now that a lot of what I said may have been repeated, but I'm not too pressed about it. If anything, at least I'm consistent.
