S01.E10: Chapter Ten: Final Girls

[peachmangosteen]

Season finale. Airs August 18th.

[skotnikov]

Wow, they really did move into the trash horror category towards the end. Well done. 

Spoiler

But it obviously was series finale. There's no way they can continue with another season after that ending. 

Edited August 18, 2022 by skotnikov

[Aileen]

Sure 🤷🏻‍♀️

[peachmangosteen]

I think this was probably the worst show I have ever watched and I’ve watched a lot of trash lol.

Bailee Madison is an atrocious actor. I mean most of them were but she was the lead and they really should have reconsidered that.

On 8/18/2022 at 8:52 AM, skotnikov said:

But it obviously was series finale. There's no way they can continue with another season after that ending. 

With A being alive and escaping it was pretty obvious to me they wanted to set up the possibility to continue. And the writers did say that ‘series finale’ promo was a mistake. I don’t think a final decision has been made yet but I think odds are it’ll be canceled.

[TattleTeeny]

How many coats do these people have? I thought I was a bit excessive with 5 or 6 (especially for a person who hates winter!), but these chicks each must have 65!

[skotnikov]

1 hour ago, peachmangosteen said:

I think this was probably the worst show I have ever watched and I’ve watched a lot of trash lol.

Bailee Madison is an atrocious actor. I mean most of them were but she was the lead and they really should have reconsidered that.

With A being alive and escaping it was pretty obvious to me they wanted to set up the possibility to continue. And the writers did say that ‘series finale’ promo was a mistake. I don’t think a final decision has been made yet but I think odds are it’ll be canceled.

I thought those last minutes were an homage to 1980s slashers, which almost always end like this. I don't think this A can harass the girls again.

And yes it was beyond bad.    

35 minutes ago, TattleTeeny said:

How many coats do these people have? I thought I was a bit excessive with 5 or 6 (especially for a person who hates winter!), but these chicks each must have 65!

As many as ZARA gives them. 

[Aileen]

I do think things were nicely explained…except for Crazy Joe. Was he working with A? Why was he trying to kill Imogen in the Waters house? Was he there to try and kill Archie? WTF, show?

The corpse in the bed…that was Rose, right? I’m reading so many articles saying that was Angela, but I don’t see how that could be since the police found Angela’s body. I doubt Archie stole it.

[TattleTeeny]

I may be dumb, but why was Angela all messed up when she got to the rave? She left her house with mascara tears, but what made her look as if she'd crawled through the woods (or whatever Tabby's mom said)?

[Aileen]

15 minutes ago, TattleTeeny said:

I may be dumb, but why was Angela all messed up when she got to the rave? She left her house with mascara tears, but what made her look as if she'd crawled through the woods (or whatever Tabby's mom said)?

Good question. It was a rave at an abandoned warehouse. Maybe it was hard to get to?

[peachmangosteen]

3 hours ago, skotnikov said:

I thought those last minutes were an homage to 1980s slashers, which almost always end like this. I don't think this A can harass the girls again.

Then they'd just do another A. They obviously planned on doing more seasons.

[TattleTeeny]

36 minutes ago, Aileen said:

Good question. It was a rave at an abandoned warehouse. Maybe it was hard to get to?

Maybe? But then wouldn't it not be worth mentioning because everyone would have looked like they came through the woods? Surely I just missed it and the did not leave out something like that!

[Aileen]

3 hours ago, TattleTeeny said:

Maybe? But then wouldn't it not be worth mentioning because everyone would have looked like they came through the woods? Surely I just missed it and the did not leave out something like that!

The cool kids knew the best way to get there ;)

for real though, I had thought her attack happened that night when we saw her arrival in the first episode.

[RedInk]

The true horror is that another child predator is adopting that doomed baby. Here I thought they were trying to undo the atrocious Aria/Ezra romance when the power imbalance with with film student/theater manager was highlighted…but no. Student/teacher love story prevails. 
this series was a pile of shit. Attempted feminist take on horror that failed on all counts. Not even getting into the trauma Davie inflicted on her own daughter. Bad female archetypes abound AND a fairytale ending for an abusive Ezra, living his best life. 

Edited August 20, 2022 by RedInk

[Fellaway]

22 hours ago, TattleTeeny said:

How many coats do these people have? I thought I was a bit excessive with 5 or 6 (especially for a person who hates winter!), but these chicks each must have 65!

Hee! I wondered the same. And is this the way teen girls are dressing these days? Because these girls generally looked like they got their clothes from a rag bin.

18 hours ago, TattleTeeny said:

I may be dumb, but why was Angela all messed up when she got to the rave? She left her house with mascara tears, but what made her look as if she'd crawled through the woods (or whatever Tabby's mom said)?

I, too, thought from the scene early in the series that this was when the rape occurred, but, no, she just had an argument with her mom. 'Mkay. I could buy it if all of the trauma this girl had been through finally just crushed her in that moment, but, if that's what they were trying to play, it fell flat. And, seriously, how naive was Angela? Time and again, these girls proved she couldn't trust them, but she just kept coming back. Surely there were nicer girls in that school she could've become friends with. We're not all cut out for the "cool" squad, thank goodness. It's very hard for me to believe that Teen Davie turned into Perfect Mom Davie. Teen Davie seemed to have no conscience whatsoever.

22 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Bailee Madison is an atrocious actor. I mean most of them were but she was the lead and they really should have reconsidered that.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought she was awful. She's not the worst I've ever seen, but she's just so self-conscious onscreen that I don't see the character, I see the actor.

Okay, Chip is dead. Beasley is dead. A is alive and on the loose. What about Clanton? Did he die from that clobber Tabby gave him? If he was dead or arrested, I missed it.

[calliope1975]

I barely know any of the girls' names. But when Bailee said the adoptive couple was in Rosewood, I got excited to maybe see an OG character and then they said Aria and Ezra and I wanted to throw something at my TV. 

Yeah, this was bad bad. I did enjoy identifying all the horror movie homages but the story made no sense and so many plot points were dropped into a well, never to be seen again. I'm that gif of the lady trying to do the math with regards to the principal's age. And did he die? I still don't know if Karen or Kelly died. Why did A seemingly help the girls the entire time and then go after Bailee? What rundown podunk high school has a full ballet program? I could go on and on.

Oh wait, one more thing - why the hell was no one completely freaking out that Mouse was role playing with a dude in a hotel room whose daughter was dead? Her moms and boyfriend were like, oh, okay, cool. And did that dude pay her? 

I would like to watch a show explaining this show. 

Edited August 20, 2022 by calliope1975

[RedInk]

37 minutes ago, calliope1975 said:

Oh wait, one more thing - why the hell was no one completely freaking out that Mouse was role playing with a dude in a hotel room who's daughter was dead? Her moms and boyfriend were like, oh, okay, cool. And did that dude pay her? 

I would like to watch a show explaining this show. 

Yes!!! WTF w Mouse?! How did that even begin? Are there chat rooms for this? Those moms are too afraid for her to even leave the house at Halloween, but they handwave that whole enterprise. Are we sure he’s not a serial killer? 
And I forgot to mention this show’s obsession with secret twins. It would have been smarter (well…soapy & stupid, but a better twist, and at least a bookend to the pregnancy storyline) to have made the killer Angela’s secret baby who’s now a teenager. We knew she had been attacked and was tormented, but there were zero clues to a sibling. Lazy and infuriating and dumb.  

Edited August 20, 2022 by RedInk

[calliope1975]

25 minutes ago, RedInk said:

And I forgot to mention this show’s obsession with secret twins.

I was waiting for Angry Sheriff to have a twin, especially since he had twins, but that didn't happen. 

[gesundheit]

On 8/19/2022 at 5:30 PM, TattleTeeny said:

I may be dumb, but why was Angela all messed up when she got to the rave? She left her house with mascara tears, but what made her look as if she'd crawled through the woods (or whatever Tabby's mom said)?

You're not at all dumb. It made no sense. The two big questions were what happened to Angela right before her appearance at the rave, and whether her fall was really suicide, and the big reveals were, "Nothing, she just had a hard time getting there" and "Yeah, it really was." (Oh wait, and also the "Did Imogen's mom really commit suicide?" question from the first episode and the answer was, "Yeah, even though she loved her daughter more than anything, she felt so guilty when she looked at a flyer that she offed herself in a gruesome manner while her daughter and a friend were down the hall." Ohhhkay.)

Yikes. Way to botch the landing entirely.

Also the Principal and Archie both seemed to be pro-bullying the bullies, so what was their problem with the Liars in the first place? The only bullying they did was of Karen, who P&A had already marked for death for being a bully!
"You all chose mercy so we're murdering all of you to hurt your moms, the ones we're really punishing." Okay.

And even some of the folks involved in the show were retweeting compliments about how it undid (or at least tried to counterbalance) some of the gross predator-glorifying of the original, and yet at the end we're meant be charmed that Whatshername gave her baby to Ezra, a repeat offender in the stalking-teenage-girls category? 

I thought everyone else did just fine but Bailee Madison -- well, it's interesting because she was the only one I'd ever seen before in the main cast, but yeah, she was not good. Keep your head still every once in a while when you're talking, woman!

Edited August 20, 2022 by gesundheit

[Ambrosefolly]

7 hours ago, Fellaway said:

Hee! I wondered the same. And is this the way teen girls are dressing these days? Because these girls generally looked like they got their clothes from a rag bin.

I, too, thought from the scene early in the series that this was when the rape occurred, but, no, she just had an argument with her mom. 'Mkay. I could buy it if all of the trauma this girl had been through finally just crushed her in that moment, but, if that's what they were trying to play, it fell flat. And, seriously, how naive was Angela? Time and again, these girls proved she couldn't trust them, but she just kept coming back. Surely there were nicer girls in that school she could've become friends with. We're not all cut out for the "cool" squad, thank goodness. It's very hard for me to believe that Teen Davie turned into Perfect Mom Davie. Teen Davie seemed to have no conscience whatsoever.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought she was awful. She's not the worst I've ever seen, but she's just so self-conscious onscreen that I don't see the character, I see the actor.

Okay, Chip is dead. Beasley is dead. A is alive and on the loose. What about Clanton? Did he die from that clobber Tabby gave him? If he was dead or arrested, I missed it.

I thought season 1 of Scream Queens did these storylines better. Their Final Girls were supposed to be unlikable

I get that Angela was super sheltered with a crazy mom, but these girls were such assholes time and again, after maybe the second or third time, she should have tried to make amends with the one true friends and seek out less popular, but nicer girls. Even in the Heathers or Mean Girls, as awful the popular girls were, they were at least civil to Veronica and Cady on a day to day basis. It was Veronica and Cady plotting against them. So I guess the show subverted that trope?

I hate to say this about Bailee Madison, because I liked her as a kid, but she was a bit mannered. I too was pissed off they gave Baby Adams to Ezra and Aria, but mostly Ezra. This would have worked better for me we found out she gave her baby to a recently divorced Aria.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Ambrosefolly

[Chanandler Bong]

On 8/20/2022 at 2:53 PM, gesundheit said:

(Oh wait, and also the "Did Imogen's mom really commit suicide?" question from the first episode and the answer was, "Yeah, even though she loved her daughter more than anything, she felt so guilty when she looked at a flyer that she offed herself in a gruesome manner while her daughter and a friend were down the hall." Ohhhkay.)

Right?! It made NO sense whatsoever. She’s lived with this for years then literally minutes after receiving the flyer, she can’t handle it anymore and leaves her pregnant teenage daughter?? Also, she wrote ‘A’ in the wall in blood before dying? What???

The Waters house — are we to assume that Archie (strange name choice given that they had a Riverdale tie in, but whatever) was developmentally disabled and Rose kept him in a cage as a child and tied him to the bed because she didn’t know what to do with him…or something? And the only reason Archie is ‘A’ is because his dad is taking advantage of his intellectual disability? Or am I reading too much into this? The bed/cage thing…I just really need answers.

So, Joe’s death was a staged suicide by principal whatshisname? But what was Joe’s involvement and whose corpse was on the bed?

I also have questions about Angela arriving to the rave in such disarray, but that’s so far down the list of plot holes, I guess I’ll just chalk it up to the fight with her mom.

I feel like there should have been more backstory with Davie and why she was such a monster in HS. I just have a hard time believing someone that unbelievably cruel would do a total 180.

And, lastly, the baby is going to Ezra and Aria *eyeroll*. I was surprised she was still giving the baby up for adoption after spending so much time with her. That would be gutting to say the least.

As trash TV goes, I didn’t think this was that bad (until the end) and I guess I’m in the minority thinking that Bailee Madison is a good actress. I kind of enjoyed the series up until this last episode, but they did an atrocious job tying up all the loose ends.

[Miss Bones]

I guess I'm just a simp, because I enjoyed it.  Didn't think the acting was awful either, but if I had to pick the worst one, it wasn't Bailee Madison, it was the Tabby actress.  And it didn't help that almost everything that came out of her mouth was a movie reference.  Overall, the show fit my bill for a fun teen horror show, and I would watch another season.

[DigitalCount]

Will also say I liked Bailee's choices as Imogen, but I wanted to like her ever since OUaT.

[Fellaway]

Overall, I did enjoy the show. I'd watch another season, but it's definitely not the kind of show to think on too much. Or at all. It's truly mindless entertainment.

But, of course, I did think about it, so...

Why, and how, did that school have a ballet program? It looked like an abandoned warehouse on the wrong side of town. They never even noticed their janitor had been killed, but they're on the ball enough to have an elite ballet program? Sure, I buy that. Did Crazy Joe kill himself or was he murdered? He obviously knew the bad guys, and was even helping them to a degree - Wasn't he bringing groceries or some such to the Waters house? - so what did he do to earn death by Archie, or did he drink the same kool-aid Davie did that means instant guilt and suicide? Nobody in town noticed Clanton and Archie kidnapping eight people, hauling in a corpse, and lighting up the high school like a Christmas tree for their shenanigans? And Clanton. All the time he's watching his daughter being tortured, he couldn't have a principal to student talk with her or send her off to a counsellor to get some help, instead of wailing "But my daughter!" years later and torturing the torturers?

As a horror movie fan, I enjoyed all the homages sprinkled throughout, especially the theater showing Black Christmas over the holiday. (Better be the original version, Orpheum, or I take back my like.) I'm sure I missed many, though, so it might be fun to rewatch just to find ones I'm missing. I also enjoyed the "Is she Karen? Is she Kelly?" back and forth, and think it might've been more fun to leave that unresolved, y'know, just spend the whole series wondering who the heck she is.

I read an interview with the co-creators (Why Those Characters Had to Die) where they said they hadn't decided till about the middle of the season who it was who raped Angela, and I think that explains a lot about all the questions left hanging. I mean, you have only ten episodes to wrap up the bulk of your story, and you haven't got all your ducks in a row before you start? That way lies madness.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Fellaway

[tennisgurl]

I went into this knowing it would probably be trash, but wow was that some seriously high level trash. Sometimes it was fun trash, like the horror movie homages, but a lot of it was just trashy trash. The dialogue was really bad, it very much sounded like middle aged writers desperately trying to sound like teenagers and failing, and so many of their attempts at sounding empowered sounded so clunky and awkward. 

The mystery is seemingly solved, but there are so many questions left and so many weird things that are just hanging in the breeze. Why was Mouse in some kind of weird role play with this creepy guy pretending to be his daughter? Why did her bio dad shove her out the door when he seemed to want to find her when she was a kid? What changed? Why did the principle just let his daughter be tormented when she was a teenager and wait this long to get revenge? Why was Archie being kept in a cage as a baby? Was the principle just using his apparent disability as his hitman or did he actually understand what he was doing? Why did Angela look like she had been crawling through mud when she got to the party when she looked fine when we saw her leaving her house? I assumed that she was assaulted before the party, but we know that she was assaulted before, or that Davie did something to her, which she apparently hadn't.  Why couldn't Imogine's dad be a part of her life? Why did Angela keep giving these obviously awful girls chances? What did Crazy Joe have to do with anything? Why does this shitty school have its own ballet studio? 

All of the moms were pretty awful, except for Tabby's mom for the most part. I find it pretty fair fetched that Davie went from a truly horrible mean girl to a perfect saintly mom. Way to check out the second someone reminds you of what an asshole you were while leaving your pregnant teenage daughter to find your corpse and deal with the fallout, Davie. 

So after this show spent a whole season lecturing us on the evils of sexual abuse and calling out Tabby's creepy adult co-workers for hitting on her, we end up giving Imogine's baby to Ezra of all people? Seriously? I mostly found this show to be amusingly confusing, but that just full on pissed me off, I cant believe that the show is still acting like that asshole is some kind of good guy who deserves a happy ending, especially after they made a big deal about undoing the sleazy Aria/Ezra romance. 

I thought the acting was at least solid, and for the first half of the season I was pretty into it, but holy crap did they not stick the landing. 

Edited August 29, 2022 by tennisgurl