TW: Weight stigma/trauma talk, talk of medications in a mental health context, ED talk
I guess Dr. Sullivan just has a completely open schedule. I don't know of any therapist that does walk-ins like this.
Jenna just sitting in the car, eating cherries and lining up the pits. Okay.
"No wonder I didn't recognize you! You've got a salad in front of you, I've never seen you eat anything green before!" and we're just gonna stroll right passed how fucking rude this is? People making constant unwarranted comments about your dietary choices is a huge part of why weight stigma is so traumatic. Everything from "Are you really gonna eat all that?" to "I bet if you ate more of those, you wouldn't look like that." Please stop using childhood fatness as a tragic backstory if you don't have any idea why it's tragic, you just drop the casual familial bullying into the story like a bomb as if it were nothing. Fuck you for implying that my body type is a punishment for not eating enough vegetables.
Nothing is wrong with Mike having medication...can we not present the concept of antidepressants to a pre-teen and teenage audience like this? It's irresponsible. I would be okay with it if there was some correction for it somewhere in the narrative but there isn't. Antidepressant don't "bury your feelings," they help you regulate them- emotional numbness as a side effect is actually considered a cause for concern from a psychiatric perspective, and medications can make talk therapy more effective. This is already a pervasive social stigma that prevents people from getting the proper treatment for mental health concerns of all kinds, and that keeps parents from truly exploring the possibility for their teenagers. I have seen parents intentionally prevent their teenage kids from getting psychiatric treatment because of this belief, even when their teenagers were in crisis and desperately wanted the medication for themselves. If you're going to bring it up, the only good reason is to debunk it. The treatment for mental health conditions should not be controversial.
Also, I am going to SCREAM if they don't get this horrible family off my fucking screen.
Your grandmother is right behind you, listening to you talk about Caleb's wetsuit. Who the fuck is this old woman?
I despise the entire Montgomery family. Can we blow their house up and kill them? Now Ella's trying to get Aria to lie for her.
The Marin Family Drama is at least marginally more interesting than the Montgomery Family Drama but it's still a waste of fucking time.
To be fair, if we saw nothing of our main characters' families, I would complain that it was unrealistic- but some of these sequences just go overboard. The Montgomery Family Drama has been going on since Season 1. They could have their own fucking spin-off. I'm at a loss for how to give critiques for these storybeats. Maybe by the end of this season I'll be able to articulate it better.
The curtains are closed, how would the people in the DiLaurentis house be watching you?
These writers sure think I want to see selfish, aggressive men throwing temper tantrums a whole lot more than I do. Byron and Peter need to be put in a ring and made to fight to the death. The winner will be shot.
What is this restaurant? Is it a seafood restaurant? It doesn't look like the kind of place that would have Calamari. Wait a second. Isn't Maya allergic to seafood???
I also don't understand why Mike would be so resentful of Aria. She was there for him during the parental separation.
Love how they decided to give Hanna an alcohol problem rather than connect her weight loss to the ED she was originally written with. It's almost like they don't want to imply that sometimes thinness isn't the best option, like when you have to starve yourself or purge your calories to attain and maintain it. We gotta make sure we continuously reinforce the narrative that fat people are deficient in some way. Love it.
Spencer should absolutely not be sorry she ran away from her dad, wtf?? He was raging, threatening her boyfriend, screaming at them both and hitting Toby's car. He didn't seem entirely sober. Leaving that situation was self-preservation. That was textbook intimidation, and definitely child abuse in this context.
Dr. Sullivan is a better detective than the actual detectives in this case. Love her, though. I wish they had done more into this Criminal Minds-esque view.
Kate is not a good villain at a time when we have established villains like Jenna Marshall who are more effective in the story.
