Pretty Little Liars Season One
After two gorgeous and intriguing vids and years of 
rivkat's dedicated recruitment efforts, I finally watched the first season of Pretty Little Liars.
Fortunately,
prozacpark has saved me the effort of writing up the show:
So, friendslist, tired of watching tv shows with not enough women, interaction between women, women of color, lesbian women? I know I am. And what's keeping me happy, while becoming increasingly disappointed in other shows for failing me on these fronts, is "Pretty Little Liars."....
The premise of "Pretty Little Liars" is nothing new. It revolves around the tragic death of a beautiful young girl, and the focus is on the unraveling of the community that comes from this death. But while my beloved "Twin Peaks" gave me this premise and left the secrets to be uncovered primarily by a male detective, "Pretty Little Liars" is firmly focused on women to such a degree that it takes this problematic premise and turns it into one of the most positive portrayals of women on television in the recent years....
Women are not only the center of this story, but they are also at the center of each and every meaningful relationship in this show. And no relationship between women is one-dimensional. This show consistently takes women who were introduced as antagonists and turns them into unwilling allies and eventually friends. [more]
I should warn you that the show makes heavy use of the trope of the sinister disabled person. At least in the first season, it derives a sense of threat and danger from the spookiness of a blind character and her knowledge of things she can't see. Some of this threat comes from her entirely justified grudge against the show's OT4 protagonists, but some of it is depicted as the indicators of blindness -- sunglasses, cane -- being innately spooky. The first few episodes of Season Two indicate that this character will be complicated considerably, but it's been a long stretch of disablist imagery.
Brief notes
cups brewed at DW
rivkat's dedicated recruitment efforts, I finally watched the first season of Pretty Little Liars.
Fortunately,
prozacpark has saved me the effort of writing up the show:
So, friendslist, tired of watching tv shows with not enough women, interaction between women, women of color, lesbian women? I know I am. And what's keeping me happy, while becoming increasingly disappointed in other shows for failing me on these fronts, is "Pretty Little Liars."....
The premise of "Pretty Little Liars" is nothing new. It revolves around the tragic death of a beautiful young girl, and the focus is on the unraveling of the community that comes from this death. But while my beloved "Twin Peaks" gave me this premise and left the secrets to be uncovered primarily by a male detective, "Pretty Little Liars" is firmly focused on women to such a degree that it takes this problematic premise and turns it into one of the most positive portrayals of women on television in the recent years....
Women are not only the center of this story, but they are also at the center of each and every meaningful relationship in this show. And no relationship between women is one-dimensional. This show consistently takes women who were introduced as antagonists and turns them into unwilling allies and eventually friends. [more]
I should warn you that the show makes heavy use of the trope of the sinister disabled person. At least in the first season, it derives a sense of threat and danger from the spookiness of a blind character and her knowledge of things she can't see. Some of this threat comes from her entirely justified grudge against the show's OT4 protagonists, but some of it is depicted as the indicators of blindness -- sunglasses, cane -- being innately spooky. The first few episodes of Season Two indicate that this character will be complicated considerably, but it's been a long stretch of disablist imagery.
Brief notes
- I would have expected Spencer to be my favorite (she is certainly the most like me, or most like I was in high school), but in fact it's Hanna. I love all the girls, though, with the possible exception of Aria, who is the weakest actor and burdened with a plotline I deeply hate.
- I hate Aria/Ezra so much that I got a lot of laundry folding and dish washing done this weekend, just so that I didn't have to look at the TV during their scenes.
- I hate Ezra particularly much. I hate him more than Alison's (current presumed) murderer.
- I don't like Caleb, either, but that is because he is a stock Troubled Bad Boy, not because he is a high school teacher in his twenties dating one of his students and favoring/disfavoring her and other students based on the state of their relationship.
- I have not seen so many floppy-haired boys in one place since 80s teen movies. Do you think the hairstyle is making a comeback?
- I don't see how they will be able to come up with a nonsupernatural explanation for A, although I have to admit I don't expect a lot of plot coherence on this point.
- I love that so much attention is focused not just on the girls' friendships with each other, but their friendships with other people (Mona!) and on their relationships with their parents, especially their mothers.
- I love that this show is filled with morally ambiguous women who are not condemned for it. Even Alison, who is frequently manipulative and cruel, has a real charm and a real affection for her friends. The show doesn't flinch from showing her cruelties to her friends or her even greater cruelties to people she dislikes, but this isn't treated as her only defining characteristic, or a reason for her friends to deny the pleasures of her friendship.
- I love that the post-Alison OT4 looks like my high school friendships in a way that most TV depictions don't. When there's a group of girls in US media, generally it's the setup the girls had when Alison was alive: there's a Queen Bee or a ruler and a set of subordinate girls desperate for her favor. This rigid hierarchy bears no resemblance whatsoever to how my friends group interacted in high school or college. After Alison's death, though, the quarter are a much more egalitarian group, with no one person taking the lead in dictating social activities, or even in searching for Alison's murderer. Who instigates or leads the search shifts from person on person depending on interest and expertise. And this is a lot more like my experience.
cups brewed at DW