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Post by Tim on Aug 25, 2016 16:37:23 GMT -5
Sounds like a complicated storyline in the books.
The TV show should have stayed with it. I think the PLL fans would have liked that.
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Post by BettyNewbie on Aug 25, 2016 17:41:02 GMT -5
Yeah, at this point, I think most fans would've preferred the show going with the book storyline. When Mona was revealed as A back in Season 2, it looked the the show was indeed going in that direction, but everything went completely off the rails after that.
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Post by BettyNewbie on Jun 30, 2017 1:25:43 GMT -5
Well, it's over. The final episode aired on Tuesday, but I needed a couple of days to process what I watched.
To say that the finale was a letdown would be an understatement. More than half the episode was devoted to boring shipping stuff (including making sure these girls were all married with kids by the ripe old age of 25), and the rest of it was a confusing exposition dump involving the evil twin of one of the main characters that didn't tie in to anything from before the time jump and barely addressed any of the series' many plot holes and unanswered questions. It didn't even feel like a series finale, and I certainly didn't finish the episode with a feeling of closure. Not exactly the ending I was hoping for after devoting 7 years of my life to this show.
Still, I'll miss PLL, or more specifically, PLL as it was in the first 2 or 3 seasons. The show may have went off the rails in its later years, but I'll always stand by the early seasons as enjoyable, immersive fluff.
RIP PLL 2010-2017
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Post by Tim on Jun 30, 2017 13:05:03 GMT -5
The 1950's called. Said they want their values back.
Sounds more like a bad soap opera.
Didn't Marlene King talk about a feature film that would be the real ending. That still happening?
Not the first that that a good show went off track in its later seasons. And it won't be the last.
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Post by BettyNewbie on Jun 30, 2017 13:57:41 GMT -5
Thinking about it some more, my biggest problem with this finale is that it ultimately felt more like a season finale rather than a series finale. It really only addressed the plots of late Season 6 and Season 7 without tying anything back to past seasons when it easily could've. A good series finale needs to be able to tie up the ENTIRE SERIES and not just the final 1-2 seasons. The episode I just watched had practically no connection or relevance to the show I first started watching in 2010.
The writers clearly prioritized giving closure to the ships (which made up over half the episode), even more aggravating when you realize how completely toxic and ruined all of them were by the end of the show. Of the two ships that actually were healthy and enjoyable, one was soiled by a love triangle and marital issues (Hanna/Caleb), while the other (Emily/Paige) was tossed into the waste bin to pave the way for Emily ending up with a girl who had bullied and manipulated her while she was still struggling with her sexuality (Alison). Meanwhile, Aria's still ending up with a statutory rapist who stalked her and her friends to write a book and dated her while he was her teacher (Ezra), while Spencer's still ending up with the guy who's past betrayal of her had driven her into a mental institution and later dumped her after she had a pregnancy scare in college (Toby).
Like far too many shows, PLL had the potential to be something far better than it was. It could've been an amazing mystery filled with commentary on high school bullying and the increasing role of technology in teenagers' lives. PLL could've been smart and subversive, and it upsets me that it was never allowed to become that and instead unraveled into being yet another trashy teen soap.
Like I've said a million times over the last few years, this show was renewed for too many seasons. It's painfully obvious that the writers initially only planned for a 4 or 5 season run and had to make shit up as the show kept getting renewed over and over again. This "finale" did nothing but prove to me that Seasons 6 and 7 really were a waste of time and should've never happened.
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Post by Tim on Jun 30, 2017 17:28:39 GMT -5
So they just covered the stuff that happened after the time jump, but ignored what came before? What kind of series finale is that!?
Geez, what the hell? Sounds like these ladies would have all be better off if they had ended the show single.
And now we have Rubbishdale to fill that role.
I get a vision of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys doing their song: "Padding, padding, padding. Padding, padding, padding..."
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Post by BettyNewbie on Jun 30, 2017 19:18:58 GMT -5
You know it's bad when even the rabid Twitter fans who usually kissed Marlene's butt and only cared about the ships think the finale was bullshit. They've turned on Marlene HARD and are now sending her death threats. I hate the finale, but that's just overkill. Stuff like this is a big reason why I've probably started to drift away from TV fandom. TV shows are often a "high risk, low reward" deal. Either a show gets cut short before it has a chance to grow, or it gets dragged out long past its due date and degrades into a pile of crap. Very rarely does a show run for the exact length of time it's supposed to without ever Jumping the Shark. PLL's finale was a definite Fail, but to be honest, most of the other shows I've liked also had crap finales.
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Post by Tim on Jun 30, 2017 23:26:22 GMT -5
That is going way too far. You don't like the finale, fine, but sending death threats!? It's just a show, people, chill.
I feel the same way. The rubbish finales of Enterprise and Charmed come to mind here. Both let down the fans of those shows. Looks like you can place PLL under the same Failed Series Finale files.
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Post by BettyNewbie on Jul 1, 2017 18:12:44 GMT -5
PLL was a major victim of the Chris Carter Effect: As the show kept getting renewed, Marlene & Co. had to keep extending the storyline and adding new mysteries and questions, and the show became a bloated, inconsistent mess. A story that was only intended to last 4 or 5 seasons got dragged out for 7.
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Post by Tim on Jul 1, 2017 23:20:48 GMT -5
Yeah, I heard about that. Many thought that Chris Caster had this huge storyline mapped out for the X-Files, when, in fact, he was making it up as he went along. When he finally admitted that, the fans turned on him like rabid dogs.
Marlene King should have let PLL end when it was originally meant to have done. Why she didn't do this, I don't know. Did she have any control over when the show would end or not. Some Executive Producers have that power (like when Tina Fey decided that seven seasons was enough for 30 Rock), but not all.
Perhaps Marlene had no say in the matter. Do you know, Betty?
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Post by Melinda Halliwell on Jul 2, 2017 4:50:57 GMT -5
This is like Supernatural that's in the same boat here in terms of originally having a 5 year storyline mapped out which then has branched off beyond that and just had something put in each year it's come back and this shows lasted longer than PLL's which i do love don't get me wrong but prefer the first 5 seasons more of obviously.
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Post by Tim on Jul 2, 2017 11:02:00 GMT -5
Yeah, and SPN had lasted nearly twice as long as PLL.
Sometimes I have to feel sorry for those poor producers. If you ask me, they should get to decide when a show ends.
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Post by BettyNewbie on Jul 2, 2017 12:14:29 GMT -5
It's difficult to say how much control Marlene King really had. ABC Family/Freeform certainly played a role in meddling with the show and screwing up storylines. It's well-known that they forced the show to backtrack on the "Toby is A" reveal in Season 3, as they didn't want any of the Liars' love interests to be villains, and it's also likely that they similarly forced the show to cop-out on the "Ezra is A" reveal from the following season.
The network may have also been responsible for the increased focus on romance storylines, especially after the Freeform rebrand (which happened midway through Season 6). You see a noticeable shift in the way the couples were portrayed going from 6A to 6B, and it's one that can't entirely be chalked up to the 5 year time skip. There were far more sex scenes, and we also started seeing love triangle storylines (the worst of which was Hanna/Caleb/Spencer). It wouldn't shock me if Freeform demanded that PLL go "hotter and sexier" to help promote its own image as a "hotter and sexier" version of ABC Family.
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Post by Tim on Jul 2, 2017 18:25:07 GMT -5
Executive Meddling strikes again. Seriously, for over fifty years now, ever since Newton Minow gave them the power, network execs have done nothing but screw up one show after another. PLL is not the first show for this to happen to. No wonder so many are defecting to cable and the Internet. Show runners have fare more freedom there. One has to wonder how PLL would have fared, had it been on Netflix, or something like that.
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Post by Tim on Oct 30, 2017 11:15:10 GMT -5
What happened to PLL is a prime example of when a show is serialized to death.
Sometimes a show just reaches its natural conclusion and should end. However, ABC Family was not going to let Marlene King end this show when she wanted too. It was too much of a cash cow.
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