Chinspinner
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Posts posted by Chinspinner
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11 hours ago, AftermathTV said:
None of the Liars are A, I'm just chuckling at anyone thinking along the lines that silly. Take this a little more seriously, even if the series is a joke.
Aria's current plot is just dopey fanservice for all those years of people screaming for her to be A.
A will be a recurring character. Hopefully linked to a main Liar this time, unlike CeCe and her abysmally developed relationship with Alison.
Why? The show is a joke. It is so full of retcons, plotholes, deus ex-machina and plain godawful writing that it literally could be anyone. Admittedly since the second half of this season they seem to be leaning towards the Spencer(twin/ sister, whatever) plotline.
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My money, since quite early on, was on Emily, but unfortunately I think the CeCe transgender furore means they are unlikely to go with another minority character (which is why Paige is also unlikely).
Therefore, Hanna's Mother.
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12 minutes ago, Chairperson Meow said:
This needs to be the series explanation.
Indeed. And when I say juvenile, they are dealing with adult themes, but in a juvenile manner. And the (supposedly) adult liars are behaving like children, constantly. Aargh, started two sentences with "and", horrible writing.
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2 hours ago, insubordination said:
I am really balking at finishing this show, even though there is only a handful of eps left. I was hoping for more scares, but bits and pieces popping out of a board game and Aria's 'scary' video calls are not cutting it. I also didn't like Hanna being tortured in her underwear earlier in the season or this whole 'eggs' nonsense.
I watched the first two minutes of this episode and pressed 'stop'. It is just too frustrating. I really should have stopped watching a long time ago or at least at the CeCe/Charles crap.
My thoughts at the first two minutes:
1. Why didn't Spencer have a lawyer present for questioning? Hanna and Ali have both been to prison and Spencer has been in shit with the law before. Best she says nothing. Call one of you mother's friends for your own self-protection. I know Spencer appears to be smart, but is usually does dumb things and is often wrong, so it is in character. But please, please no Twincer!
2. Why is Furey allowed to be involved in this case when he's sexually involved with Spencer? (I know...I know addressed above. Rosewood PD MO). "I'm throwing you a rope" sounded ominous - not like a salvation from quicksand (oh the dialogue!).
The annoying thing is that both actors seem competent and try to rise above the spurious (sounds like a 'ship name) material. I will try to watch the rest of the episode, but it sounds like too much Ezria from the comments. I can barely even remember who Nicole is. Did 'A' orchestrate the Colombian kidnapping too?
The 'A'-come-lately really sucks. Is there going to be an Uber alles 'A' who has been bankrolling this all along? The high school principal and his secret men's society who has dirt on everyone and blackmails them into torturing young girls? Ezra's mother in an oedipal thing. Surely there is someone better pulling the strings. I just can't see how this show can end in a satisfying and logical way because this 'A' is too lame. Twin Peaks makes much more sense than this show.
I guess I will try to force myself through this ep and the next few. I have developed much resilience due to watching the final season of 'Dexter' and surely the PLL finale can't be worse than that one, can it?
My arse made a cameo in the last show. I assume you tuned in for that?
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2 hours ago, Perfect Xero said:
Doesn't she already have one new show and another one in the works?
Seriously? I suppose she must deliver it on time and budget. It is really more the writers...
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1 hour ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:
Ugh, the problem with having everyone miked is that you get lame people like Marlene King making lame comments while the other people are talking. It would be one thing if she were saying anything interesting, but she is just making annoying mom comments and overtalking. I wish the sound person had turned down the levels on her mic so I could hear what the girls were saying instead of her comments! At the end, Troian talks about Ashley playing what ended up becoming the show's theme song for the first time. For some reason, I thought there was some story about Lucy being the one who brought the song to Marlene but according to the girls it was actually Ashley!
To be fair, it is probably the last of her time in the limelight, so let her talk. I really can't see anyone employing her as showrunner following this mess.
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8 minutes ago, Spencer Hastings said:
Melissa is probably AD because she'd be the easiest to explain away. Out of sight, out of mind, so it's less complicated. You haven't seen Melissa because she was the puppet master! Surprise! Look at all the stuff she did off screen! Black swan! NAT Club! Wren! IanGarrettWilden!
But seriously, homegirl had the biggest pile of bodies around her and no ones even mentioned them in awhile. She's the last red herring it could be. I don't know if I'd be angry or stupified.
If it is not one of the main five (no twins allowed), then I'll be disappointed. If it's Emily I'll give them a begrudging pass.
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2 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:
With Mona making inroads in the game, Emily reluctantly teams up with her to investigate. Ashley returns to Rosewood to check on Hanna after learning some frightening information and asks Caleb what his intentions are with her daughter. Meanwhile, Spencer's family reels from A.D.'s latest taunt, leaving Spencer more confused than ever about who to trust. Ezra notices Aria's change in attitude and fears he may have lost her; and A.D.'s machinations cause Aria to have a terrifying nightmare.
TLDR: Mona has the only interesting scene; everything else is juvenile, angsty tedium, as usual.
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1 hour ago, Danielg342 said:
Well, few people are smarter than me. :P
I would disagree that a weakness is needed for likeability. "Likeability" is very subjective, and, ultimately, it rests upon the hero having a compelling story.
I would argue that what is needed is a weakness the hero needs to fight through to succeed, because someone who overcomes their challenges is ultimately compelling. Furthermore, you want a villain who can exploit that weakness for their own gain and make the hero's task even harder. It's one thing to have a villain who keeps the heroes on their toes, but it's another thing if those villains know exactly how to do that.
It's that latter part where this show failed.
When you write a character, one of the first things you do is write their flaws, because the flaws and the failures before the success are what make a character compelling. If you don't, you have a Mary-Sue. The funny thing with this show is that the writer's seemed to attempt to write a bunch of Mary-Sue's, but failed because they had to force plot-induced stupidity on them... both of which suggest terrible writers.
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21 minutes ago, RHJunkie said:
At this point, I wouldn't mind if not all of the Liars survive by the end and I really hope it's Aria that bites the dust. *snip*
There are a few things this show lacks, for example, any consistency or coherence, and any talent in the writers or showrunner. But one of the other things this show lacks is any actual stakes. Even if people die, the death is not permanent. If people commit crimes, the crimes are forgotten. If people are arrested, they are immediately released. When there are no stakes, then nothing matters! Nothing, not one bit of this intricately mangled plot. So I agree, kill one of the protagonists, permanently. It is a bit late now, but at least give the final few episodes some stakes.
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Is that still Spencer? Are they all their own twins yet? Spencer is as unlikeable as the rest of them, but at least the actress (unlike everyone else on the show) has enough talent to play her with some nuance and pathos.
I don't understand what is going on with this Alison/ Emily thing. I find it an uncomfortable storyline and poorly handled (not that I was expecting anything else from this show). It all feels rushed and relies on gratuitous and tone-deaf circumstances written by brash and ignorant people. I don't understand why anyone gives Alison the time of day, other than through sympathy. I mean, all of the main characters are unpleasant, but Alison is unpleasant in the extreme.
I don't care about Ezra and his book. I certainly don't care about the strange manipulative, passive-aggressive, unhealthy relationship between Ezra and Aria. Neither do I like either of them.
How many times has Lucas been used as a red herring now? Five, Ten? It became tedious several seasons ago.
Why do we keep going back to these love triangles/ rectangles/ circles? Who cares? I mean, really, does anyone give a shit about any of this? Or this stupid magical, indestructible board game?
Mona, as always, was the only interesting part of the show and not in it enough.
A dropped earring... what is this? Murder She Wrote? Jesus!
Given the constant retcons, dropped plotlines, plotholes, red herrings and McGuffins, why are we even supposed to care about the central mystery anymore? Whoever is AD it won't make sense, it won't have a set-up and pay-off, it will just be another random brain-fart from the moronic creators of this show.
In conclusion, this show truly is an irreparable bag of shit.
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9 hours ago, Danielg342 said:
∆ This. You want your hero/heroine to be effective, and that means being generally smarter than the bad guys. I'm simply not going to root for someone who gets beat all the time or just gets lucky- what's the fun in that?
Ultimately, that's where Hannah Wells failed. We never truly saw her as capable, since she was almost always beaten (sometimes literally) and often failed because she didn't think of something obvious (like not sending her files to Hookstraten from her phone).
More often than not, Wells failed because the plot needed her to fail- not because she was genuinely outsmarted. Ultimately, that's why she failed as a character.
Plot induced stupidity is true for all the characters.
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They're all dead, and the town is purgatory.
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I finally got around to watching it.
- The Aria face was amusing.
- It was nice to have Mona back
- Everything else bored me.
The problem is that I simply don't like any of the characters. Even ignoring the astonishingly awful writing and all the other problems the show has; if you dislike the main characters it is hard to care what happens to them. This issue is becoming worse, because this season, not only are they unlikable, they are also incredibly dull.
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5 hours ago, Ceindreadh said:
Regarding the keys being left in the bomb van. Weren't they trying to set up Hannah as the bomber (plans in her apartment etc). On the off chance that the FBI might have disarmed the bomb in time, it would have damaged the narrative if she hadn't the keys with her. Granted, if the bomb had gone off, the lack of keys wouldn't have been an issue.
If you needed to have the keys in/ near the van so as to implicate Hannah, you would not leave them where they are easily found, just stick them in the footwell under the chair or something, or, more likely, down a nearby drain (i.e. she disposed of them to prevent anyone driving the van). But, more importantly, the entire plotline doesn't make sense.
Being harsh, the scene was only thrown in there to fill the action quotient, and presumably occurred immediately before the first ad-break/ straddled the ad-break? (I dunno, watched it on Netflix). The reason the keys were in the van is because the scene did not fit into the narrative and was a poorly written afterthought thrown in there only to stop people flicking channels during adverts.
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3 hours ago, Perfect Xero said:
I think that people may have an unrealistic expectation of the influence a director has on a TV episode.
In a film it's supposed to be the Director's vision with everyone else acting in service of the director's vision, they can freely change anything in the script as they see fit.
In TV the director is acting in service of the writer's vision. Their job is to take what is in the script and put it on the screen. A TV director is there to set up shots, keep things moving along on schedule, and to give feedback and suggestions on the acting choices being made to try to realize the scene as it is written. If a TV director does try to influence or change the meaning of a scene it still has to go through the editing process, which, again, will be done in service of the head writer's vision.
I agree. A director on a TV show is more there to set up shots, ensure the actors are interpreting the text correctly and keep to schedule. They don't supplant the show runner or writers (and lets be honest, they are the biggest problem with this show).
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8 minutes ago, TheGreenWave said:
I totally agree. I liked the angsty-ness of these types of situations. The exploration of what would be the reaction if this happened? Instead, they stone-skipped over these plot lines for the FLOTUS gun control faux pas and legislation for the arts. It's too bad...and boring.
Exactly, this should have been the entire sub-plot to the first series - the real threat of existing people in power refusing to recognise his authority and threatening to split the country - and it would have been resolved by virtue of the main plot concluding i.e. uncovering the terrorist group would have allowed the president to unite the country. How much better would that have been as an overall arc?
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2 hours ago, waving feather said:
Especially this. I'm not opposed to bad shows, I watch bad shows all the time but for goodness sake, get rid of the holier-than-thou speeches. And make politicians morally grey, which they are in real life! Stop with the black/white nonsense like making the Montana guy a complete asshole and team Kirkman as a bunch of saints.
I think Scandal is better at writing internal political conflict.
It was slightly better than Aaron was around because at least he is a little shady. Without him around, team Kirkman has the most boring group think.
They got rid of all the interesting characters (the ones that could have created conflict and, as a result, drama), and replaced them with these morally superior dullards. Sorry I am bad with names, but: -
- That general at the beginning (they realised their mistake and bought him back).
- The guy you mentioned.
- The woman potential vice president who got downgraded to secretary for education.
- The governor who was threatening to break away at the start of the series.
- The male VP with ambiguous motives.
Almost every antagonist was just dealt with too swiftly and all the interesting drama that might stem from them was removed from the show, and we're just left with the tedious "yes men"- not a recipe for good drama. This is why they started relying on crap like the French vetoing a down-scaling of nuclear arsenals, or a music grant getting cut, for drama... who cares about that (in the context of the show)?
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5 hours ago, Artsda said:
Trailer for Lucy's 'Life Sentence'
So the plot is that she spent 8 years with cancer, which is then cured? Was it the AD variety of cancer?
If this avoids smulch, and has a lot more of the darker comedy, which is lightly sprinkled into the trailer, then it might be decent.
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A few things this show needs to do in Season 2: -
1) Stop with the one-woman action hero nonsense. Let the FBI act like the FBI; let them plan and carry out operations. This will deal with many of the tonal inconsistencies between the investigation and the politics.
2) Get rid of the coincidences (character's running into characters, or keys left in vans, or home-made keycards allowing entry into secure buildings) and actually write a plot and arc for the season.
3) Get rid of the shoe-horned action sequences and random cliffhangers that have no purpose other than to provide two minutes of excitement before an advert break. Instead, actually write a plot and arc for the season.
4) Get rid of the kids again.
5) Stop with the soap-boxing and preaching during every political scene. It is irritating and tedious, and makes Jack Bauer sound like a conceited, holier-than-thou prat. Have some realistic exchanges rather than this juvenile, grade school political debate. If you must explore moral dilemmas, give them some depth and some dilemma.
6) Never again repeat that NATO embarrassment, it was just cringe inducing.
7) I might have said this a few times, but most importantly; write a plot and arc for the season, ahead of time. Don't just throw tropes at the show like shit at a wall, hoping some of it sticks.
They are my thoughts.
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55 minutes ago, Danielg342 said:
CM probably wasn't the first either. I figure it's likely been done so many times that it's a trope right now.
Pretty much- I've seen the -bomb driven to safe area before timer runs out- on multiple shows. Admittedly, the way it was used in this show was so random, it was just thrown in there and bore no relation to anything (other than some metric telling the writers it was time for an action sequence)... it was just strange.
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Why did they leave the keys in the van? That was convenient. The bomb sequence and the fight sequence felt like shoe-horned action; as usual the two halves of this show (the politics and the investigation) are so tonally different that they fight each other.
34 minutes ago, Biggie B said:I agree that Kirkman's speech was hokey yet decent. but provided absolutely no details. If I were an average citizen sitting at home watching the speech, I'd be screaming for more info! A bunch of domestic nutjobs tried to overthrow the US government?? Ay yi yi!!! Tell me more!! I guess I have to imagine that all the facts will be spelled out for the public in due course. Perhaps the President will grant an exclusive to Abe Leonard.
Haha, if I was watching this speech at home, I would be asking if I had missed the first twenty episodes. The worst flag-waving excesses of this show, and the soap-boxing by the show-writers during the political scenes become incredibly tedious, and were summed up in this speech- it might just be that this stuff does not sell outside America, it only results in eye-rolls.
The message also feels incredibly out of date, since the show's enemy, the terrorist movement, as it is described in the show, won the last election, and the politics espoused by the protagonists, lost.
The cliffhanger left me thinking that if they are all that inept at their jobs, they deserve whatever they get.
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On 5/11/2017 at 5:26 AM, dwmckim said:
True, but regardless of the writing of the episode, as director, Troian has creative license to present it in whatever frame and interpretation she chooses. If she gets a scene that she feels is garbage or bs, she can go to town with how it's screened and plays out.
I wonder how much freedom she was given... it strikes me as more of a courtesy, a step above an executive producer credit. I'm sure if she were given full creative freedom, her disdain for the plotting and writing would shine through strongly.
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This show badly needs some direction. It feels like every episode is written on the fly, and the writer's room are scratching about for ideas to fill the next forty minutes. This rudderless, writing-by-committee is something I often dislike about US drama, you can almost see the increasingly desperate and derivative suggestions getting thrown in the "ideas box".
The central mystery was horribly over-blown and required a huge suspension of disbelief. However, it had the potential to be interesting until it became convoluted, confused and incoherent.
The moral dilemma du jour, and political drama is tedious, juvenile and pedestrian compared to the state of real world politics. For me, this is actually the weakest part of the show, and tonally feels incredibly out of place.
I am enjoying this as car crash TV, but I am shocked it got renewed because it is a mess.
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S07.E17: Driving Miss Crazy
in Pretty Little Liars [V]
· Edited by Chinspinner
I am used to plot induced stupidity being the driving force of these characters, but when I can list twenty potential responses to every plot point that are better than the one chosen by the Liar's, you really do start to lose all interest in the show. Especially when the response they inexplicably choose is so mind-numbingly dull.
This show is like some comedy of errors. No, worse; it is the dramatic equivalent of "Mr Bean"; with five Mr Bean's in drag as the main character's all fighting their own ineptitude as they fumble through situations that regular people would resolve with one phonecall. The omniscience of AD only exacerbates this sense of slap-stick, since he keeps placing up-turned rakes wherever the Pretty Mr Bean's place their foot.
I must admit that I am really struggling to sit through these final episodes.
Onto the specifics of this episode: -
The Aria/ Ezra nonsense is so thoroughly tedious, but only marginally more tedious than all the other couplings... I was equally as bored by Hanna and Caleb this week. The only vaguely entertaining characters are Mona and the (passably competent) cop whose name I forget.
That back-of-car jump scare was laugh-out-loud funny; haha- the Batman voice she put on, when she said "drive!".
A nightmare? A nightmare? PLL really are scraping the bottom of the barrel for drama now.
And this week, Mona is the red-herring- AGAIN, for the 300th time, except for the time when she was actually A, and not a red-herring. This show is so bereft of new ideas, everything in it is such vacuous nonsense. It is so crap!