tldryolo

Oh right, I noticed that while watching but forgot by the time I commented. Very thrifty. The show has had its ups and downs, but I would definitely read the book about the making of-- if these are just the things we notice, they must do all sorts of crazy stuff to stretch their budget and I'd be very interested. As it is, up until this year they used the High Yellow/Vi's Pies as a set for almost everything... which the pandemic makes infeasible, but instead they're just recycling the same three sets over and over anyway.

It was already renewed for season 6, this isn't the end. But you could definitely see the writers moving the chess pieces to account for their budget. 1) No way could Queen Sugar afford the extras and staging of a mass march, so it's cancelled on account of a permit issue. 2) Characters are having nightmares/reminiscing, so great reason to use clips from earlier episodes. 3) If Micah is gone for a few episodes-- or, heck, the rest of the season-- we don't have to pay the actor. Enjoy Minneapolis! 4) Also Calvin's daughter is a guest star expense we don't need, bye! 5) They don't actually show Davis answering the call, just showing us his picture on Charlie's phone is basically free. This wasn't a great episode, but I am impressed by the MacGyver ingenuity on shooting it on what must be close to zero dollars, then saving money in future episodes.

Coupled with what she said in 2X10, the entire story is pretty crazy here and someone could write a prequel novel or something. So she and Davis met in college, got accidentally pregnant, got married, then were estranged for a year? And this would all be more or less public knowledge or at least gossip since Davis was at least a little bit famous as an elite college basketball player. No surprise the university accommodated her request for graduate student housing, D1 athletes get a lot of perks.

With respect, I disagree and have bolded the crux of my disagreement. It's okay if there's some things open to interpretation that don't seem to quite fit, or even some minor things they have to flat out retcon because they made a mistake. It's quite another if every attempt by the audience to figure out the mystery was utterly futile because they were making it up as they go and discard previously established facts. That's not a mystery-- that's a universe where random things happen for no reason. The amount of handwaving to justify CeCe being the prom queen of a high school she never attended, Mrs. D relating the anecdote about CeCe/Ali to the liars for seemingly no reason, the shifting timeline of the death of Toby's mother, etc. means that they could have put the name of every character in a hat, pulled it out, and made that person Charlie/Charlotte. Heck, I always considered the "Aria is secretly A" theory too ludicrous to entertain, but they should have just gone for it if they don't care about plausibility. It's just as plausible as the CeCe reveal and fits some of the evidence. Sure, you have to disregard some things-- such as A trying to kill Aria on the Halloween train-- but then you also have to disregard A turning CeCe into the police and several other things for the "actual" answer to work, so why not? This is like Lost Jr., in that the mystery was never as intriguing, but (amazingly) the reveal is less disappointing. For all of PLL's flaws, we're not in "magic light in haunted cave" territory.

Too many, and yet not enough. It's another Rosewood paradox.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the whole Maya thing is yet another example of how they're making this up as they go. Remember Mona's Radley riddles, where they pulled out the first letter of each of Mona's words? "Miss Aria You Are Killer Not Ezra's WIfe" Back in the old days on TWOP, the "MAYA KNEW" clue drove lots of speculation. If Mona was being truthful, then what the hell is it that Maya knew (or Mona thought she knew)? If Mona was lying, then for what purpose and why didn't they ever follow up once Mona was out and nominally on their side? There are, as usual, no good answers.

I am agnostic on whether this is transphobic, but I can imagine why it would be very frustrating to be a trans person and have the only person on the show who is trans be the big bad (in addition to being an all around shitty person). My aforementioned ex-girlfriend, who is black, is also a bit frustrated that two of the only black characters turned out to be a killer (Nate) and an unconnected-to-A-but-still-crazy-person (Shauna). That is somewhat ameliorated by the presence of Clark, I guess, but still-- if all your characters with characteristic X are bad people, then perhaps you should either reconsider whether characteristic X is really necessary or add more non-villains with characteristic X. With that being said, this is pretty much just how PLL rolls. We are seriously one Caleb away from there being no positive depictions of men on this show, and they tried to ship him off to Ravenswood. I don't think it's so much a question of any intentional bias against trans people as yet another artifact of the show being poorly written. ... speaking of Clark, I guess we'll never find out why he was meeting with that red herring from the whatever foundation. So it goes, I guess.

This is completely wrong because dialogue also establishes that the rooftop scene is hopelessly out of sequence... unless the intent of this is that the characters on the roof were actually teenagers but didn't appear as such because... no I'm not trying to rationalize this.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

It's too late for us, but get out now and save yourself. Trust me, you want no part of this mAdness.

Reddit has a plot hole super thread which is absolutely devastating: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrettyLittleLiars/comments/3gogy0/plot_hole_super_thread_spoilers_for_finale/ My favorite part: The below clip with Mrs. D relating an Ali/CeCe anecdote is completely inexplicable, whether or not it's true, because all it would have done (and did) is send the PLL's chasing after CeCe Drake at Radley... which is the last thing she would have wanted. So as of 4x10 they didn't know it was CeCe.

That is the tip of the PLL iceberg when it comes to dimensional shifting. Mona is the tiniest person on the show, yet the season 1-2 A (most notably in the nursery) looms large over the actors. And the person Jenna thought she'd never see again had a white hand and turned out to be the black Shana. It is quite clear they are making this up as they go.

I agree completely. There should have been fewer seasons, less filler, and a commitment to making Ezra the big bad from the start. Yes, a lot of people would have seen it coming... but a lot of people *wouldn't* have. To some extent, being unpredictable and crafting a good mystery are incompatible. They should have accepted that and gone with a better ending that would have been less twist-y. I didn't see CeCe coming, but only because of how illogical the reveal is. That's not really a point in their favor. Ezra being the big bad and having the PLL's uncover it, rather than have a non sequitir passively explained to them, would have been much better.

DigitalCount, I think you're misreading the Ezra/Toby people. Nobody is saying, I don't think, that they should have been Charles. They are saying that Charles is a concept that never existed. Even if the online crowd was suspicious of Ezra from day one, it would have been far better story-wise if it was revealed he was A and got obsessed with the liars in the course of writing his book. From the moment they burned Toby and Ezra as viable suspects it was very unlikely that they could come up with a satisfactory resolution and once they introduced the concept of Charles it became impossible-- it would either be a character who wouldn't fit or it would be someone we haven't seen before.

Thank you! I really appreciate you and others mentioning their ages. I am a 32 year old man and an ex got me into this ridiculous show. The romance faded, but the Addiction remained. When we dated, it was season 2 and I was calling EzrA. Since then, we broke up, and then the ex in question (i) got married, (ii) had a child, and (iii) is pregnant with a second child. We were texting our disappointment to each other last night in this reveal. Her husband thinks it's really strange we watch this show and still talk about it, and I am forced to concur. But at least I know I'm not the only weirdo.