Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Pretty Little Liars - She's Better Now


Pretty Little Liars, ABC Family's show about a quartet of teens terrorized by the mysterious individual (who turned out to be one of their own), and haunted by the disappearance and murder of the group's former leader (Sasha Pieterse), returns with the fallout of Halloween night and murder of Garrett (Yani Gellman), and with Mona's (Janel Parrish) release from the Radley Sanitarium and return to Rosewood High School looking for a fresh start with the people she's spent the better part of her time on the show tormenting as the mysterious "A."

While Hanna (Ashley Benson) is open to giving Mona a second chance, Aria (Lucy Hale) is less forgiving, of course she's also distracted by the arrival of Meredith (Amanda Schull) at Rosewood High as a longterm substitute teacher and keeping her boyfriend Ezra (Ian Harding) in the dark about the existence of his son. And Spencer (Troian Bellisario) lets her distrust of Mona start to come between her relationship with Toby (Keegan Allen).


After Emily (Shay Mitchell) escapes house arrest enforced by her overprotective father (Eric Steinberg), she joins Hanna, Aria, and Spencer in using the opportunity the school's 10K charity race offers to sneak into the high school to do some snooping. This leads Aria to believe her worst fears involving Alison and her father (Chad Lowe) may be true. That isn't the only event to take place during the run as Meredith is injured in a fire by the real "A" which was made to look like an accident deliberately caused by Aria and her friends.

I'll admit ABC Family's weird guilty pleasure mix of murder mystery and teen soap opera has its moments (although realism isn't usually among them). Although I hadn't seen a full episode of the series before I was quickly able to grasp the characters and relationships of the series. I may have missed some of the offhand references. I do have to wonder with all these attacks and murders surrounding the high school where the local police are and if there are any "normal" people to be found in this town? With my regular shows slowly returning, I'm not sure how long I'll stay with the show, but there's enough here I'd consider checking back in to see where the story goes from here.

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