I watched the series premiere of "Pretty Little Liars", the new show on ABC Family. In doing so, I wasted an hour of my life.
ABC Family had the chance to challenge girls, to empower and encourage them. But they didn't. Like most netowrks, the writers sunk to the lowest level possible when targeting teen girls. The storyline started off bad and just got worse. Here's the basic storyline a nutshell:
Girls get together in a barn. Girls drink together. Girls tell secrets. Girls fall asleep. Girls wake up. Girls find one of their friends missing. Flashforward one year. Girls are no longer friends. They've moved away. Moved apart. Made other friends. Live with the questions surrounding the disppearance of their friend.
If the basis of the show was how the girls deal with loss, with relationships, with questions, I'd be OK with it. But it seems that the writers wanted to put every possible source of teenage angst in the first episode. Here's the rundown:
Girls smoke marijuana together.
Girl makes out with boy she met ten minutes ago, only to find out the guy is her new English teacher.
Girl sees her dad kissing another women and the two (dad and daughter) share that secret.
Girls almost kiss each other (or did they? Good question....).
Girls shoplift. Girl gets caught shoplifting. Girl gets busted. Mom gets girl's charges dropped by sleeping with the arresting officer.
Those are just the scenes I remember. I thought about watching it one more time to give you more details but decided you could get the idea. The show's main characters are oversexualized and over adult-ized. When the show first started, I couldn't even tell whether the characters were actually in high school or college. (Can you tell based on the picture included in this post?)
Once again, culture presents adolescent girls a drab picture of their lives. They are doomed to be a bunch of mean girls, confused girls, rebellious girls, oversexed girls. Girls with no vision, no future, no purpose beyond their senior year or beyond their myopic perspective.
If there's a redeeming quality of this TV show, I haven't found one. But I'm not wasting another hour of my life trying to find out.
Great post! I just discovered this blog today so I have a lot of catching up to do. After reading this, I feel convicted about the now four hours I have wasted on this show. I was trying to look past the behavior you described because of the intriguing suspense. Your post has reminded me that the show does not have any moral commentary. Whenever other characters comment on these behaviors, they only condone them. I am a college student at home for the summer and I have gotten lazy with what I've been watching. I need to keep my guard up!