S07.E20: 'Til DeAth Do Us Part

[marinaalexis]

I recently forced myself to rewatch, and what really struck me this time is that all of the Liars, aside from Spencer, essentially do nothing in the second half of the episode. While Spencer's trapped underground, discovering who A.D. is, the other girls' very last plotline ever is all centered around wondering where Ezra is and worrying about his and Aria's wedding. It's so depressing. Why did Toby and Ezra get to play such essential roles in the finale while almost all of the actual Liars just stood around in the background? 

[WhosThatGirl]

5 hours ago, marinaalexis said:

I recently forced myself to rewatch, and what really struck me this time is that all of the Liars, aside from Spencer, essentially do nothing in the second half of the episode. While Spencer's trapped underground, discovering who A.D. is, the other girls' very last plotline ever is all centered around wondering where Ezra is and worrying about his and Aria's wedding. It's so depressing. Why did Toby and Ezra get to play such essential roles in the finale while almost all of the actual Liars just stood around in the background? 

This. I said it the night this all happened in this thread that the fact that finale centered on Spencer solely and then somehow Ezra got a big role in the final act(which would have been awesome if he was actually AD but he wasn't) and then... somehow Toby is the main catalyst  for Alex Drakes revenge scheme? What? Seriously.. what? My favorite thing was the girls friendships in this show and there was hardly any of that in the finale. And the final moment with the five of them makes me mad, because I never considered Ali one of the main four. 

[marinaalexis]

3 hours ago, WhosThatGirl said:

And the final moment with the five of them makes me mad, because I never considered Ali one of the main four. 

Don't even get me started. I think I mentioned this much earlier in this thread, but it makes me so mad that we didn't get even one scene of just the four core Liars. Ali did so many horrible things to these girls and has never even apologized. In no way does she deserve to be included in their lovey-dovey friendship scenes. The bond between the girls feels totally off and unnatural whenever she's around.

Edited August 10, 2017 by marinaalexis

[Lebanna]

So, not to get political at all - I'm talking socially - but I just binged this whole show on Netflix and I have to say, to me it says something about where America is right now as a society that a show about 'strong girls/women' ends with them all moving back to their tiny rural town and four out of five of them married (to their high school sweethearts), church going (literally all of them in the last episode), and mothers (or aspiring mothers). At the age of just 23.

There you go, girls. That's all you can ever hope for, if you want to be 'happy', you must also be seen to be choose the same life you could have expected to lead in 1953, or 1853 for that matter. While they broke the rules of what a woman 'should be' and how a woman 'should act' they were all punished by an omniscient being and their lives made miserable, right up until they chose the path of righteousness according to traditional gender roles.

It just strikes me as totally unsurprising, but somewhat problematic.

[Pindrop]

On 21/10/2017 at 5:29 PM, Lebanna said:

So, not to get political at all - I'm talking socially - but I just binged this whole show on Netflix and I have to say, to me it says something about where America is right now as a society that a show about 'strong girls/women' ends with them all moving back to their tiny rural town and four out of five of them married (to their high school sweethearts), church going (literally all of them in the last episode), and mothers (or aspiring mothers). At the age of just 23.

There you go, girls. That's all you can ever hope for, if you want to be 'happy', you must also be seen to be choose the same life you could have expected to lead in 1953, or 1853 for that matter. While they broke the rules of what a woman 'should be' and how a woman 'should act' they were all punished by an omniscient being and their lives made miserable, right up until they chose the path of righteousness according to traditional gender roles.

It just strikes me as totally unsurprising, but somewhat problematic.

I get the impression that they had become so lost in the labyrinthine incoherent mess they had created that the only choice they had was to revert back to the only few plotlines that were a constant throughout the seven seasons (although they did add the twin reveal which was pure horseshit). 

With regard to the social issues, I have no problem if Marlene (or whoever else) wishes to tell a story where happiness is found in traditional gender roles, just as I have no problem if someone wishes to tell a story that rails against traditional gender roles, or a story where (please God) this simply isn't an issue. I certainly would not seek to impose my views on either party, and I wish more people would refrain from doing so.  

Personally, my larger concern was the justification of the teacher/ student abuse of power in a show aimed for a generally young, female demographic. 

Edited October 25, 2017 by Pindrop

[marinaalexis]

On 10/21/2017 at 0:29 PM, Lebanna said:

So, not to get political at all - I'm talking socially - but I just binged this whole show on Netflix and I have to say, to me it says something about where America is right now as a society that a show about 'strong girls/women' ends with them all moving back to their tiny rural town and four out of five of them married (to their high school sweethearts), church going (literally all of them in the last episode), and mothers (or aspiring mothers). At the age of just 23.

There you go, girls. That's all you can ever hope for, if you want to be 'happy', you must also be seen to be choose the same life you could have expected to lead in 1953, or 1853 for that matter. While they broke the rules of what a woman 'should be' and how a woman 'should act' they were all punished by an omniscient being and their lives made miserable, right up until they chose the path of righteousness according to traditional gender roles.

It just strikes me as totally unsurprising, but somewhat problematic.

I very much agree with this. There's nothing wrong at all with getting married and having babies at 24 years old (which is how old they would have been in the finale), but the problem I had with it was that it was the only message the show sent. The last scene gave Spencer one tiny little mention about law school, but aside from that all five girls were purely focused on relationships, and marriages, and having babies. Again, that's not an issue, that's a totally fine path for a twenty-four year old woman to go down. The issue is that the show seemed to (even unintentionally) promote the idea that it's the only path. They should have focused the majority of Spencer's dialogue on working at her parents' law firm and going to law school instead of talking all about her relationship with Toby, give Ali and Emily the kids and maybe keep the pregnancy storyline for Aria, and have Hanna focus on rebuilding her fashion career instead of desperately trying to get pregnant. I'm sure this wasn't all done intentionally, but imo it sent a very icky message to young girls.

[WhosThatGirl]

The thing is, I fully expected them all to end back with the people they were with in high school because that’s kind of typical for a show that started in high school. What bothered me was the baby thing. Aside from Spencer, all the others had babies on the mind and none of them in great places to start a family. I mean.. Emisons story is gross but whatever. Aria and Ezra JUST got married and already are like planning to adopt and Hanna and Caleb are having a baby and we saw how their marriage was not working out great. So yeah. I didn’t like that part of the ending.

[DigitalCount]

I think it was especially weird to me because Hanna and Caleb were explicitly in the middle of a rough patch, and Hanna was openly trying to get pregnant while ignoring her spouse's concerns. That made it worse, because it would be one thing if all of them were in healthy relationships, but basically none of them were...?

[SadieT]

I think the girls' endings all revolving around their significant others was due largely to fan pressure and certain characters/ships being too popular to ignore/piss off. Marlene wanted to keep everyone on twitter happy and that kind of handcuffed the writers a bit. And despite sacrificing the characters to make all the endgames possible and please the fans, Marlene still managed to piss off a large chunk of the shipping fandom because Spoby fans felt they got the short-end of the stick in comparison to other ships since their endgame was open-ended. 

In addition to general pressure from fans on social media, Marlene also mentioned that Ashley Benson wanted Hanna to have a baby with Caleb and said she decided to give Ashley what she wanted and thus Hanna and Caleb desperately needing to have a baby at 24 despite not being on solid ground in their marriage. Apparently, Ashley also really wanted Hanna to have twins and Marlene likely would have given in on that too because she's close to Ashley but thankfully we didn't get that far. 

As for Aria suddenly freaking out over babies, that was just a product of bad writing method. Marlene mentioned in a post-show interview that they needed a reason for Ezra to walk out on Aria right before the wedding so that she would suspect he got cold feet on the wedding day and not that he had been kidnapped, so she said they needed a conflict and because the writers are hacks the conflict they came up with was Aria not telling Ezra that she possibly couldn't have kids because when in doubt go with pregnancy I guess. Essentially they just plugged in a random source of conflict in Ezria's storyline to create the outcome they wanted and didn't care how they got from point A to point B. 

Edited October 31, 2017 by SadieT

[WhosThatGirl]

As I’ve said, I have no problem with the ships as it’s inevitable that high school shows started in high school are more than 98% going to end up with the person they were with in high-school. Save for a few exceptions.  

My real problem is the fact that all these girls were so gone on having a baby. Like the Emison situation is gross, Hannah and Caleb were fighting and think a baby’s a logical step, and Aria.. I get why babies were on her mind, she thought she was pregnant and then found she couldn’t have kids but the fact that she and Ezra already made appointments at adoption agencies for right after the honeymoon.. slow down, enjoy your first year of marriage. 

As I said I fully expected before this season starters that all ships were going to go back to each other. The only ship I legit have a big problem with in this show has and always will be Emison. It will always bother me and make me feel really uncomfortable. Especially given in this episode where Emily continues to talk to the younger teens about Alison 2.0 and how she’s awful and they heed to break away from her, and yet she’s marrying her bully. So it doesn’t add up. Did Ali change? I’m not sure. There are times where she started acted like a manipulative person.

[Bort]

22 minutes ago, WhosThatGirl said:

Aria.. I get why babies were on her mind, she thought she was pregnant and then found she couldn’t have kids but the fact that she and Ezra already made appointments at adoption agencies for right after the honeymoon.. slow down, enjoy your first year of marriage. 

It would probably be at least a year before they'd get to adopt anyway, the waiting lists can be staggeringly huge, so it makes sense for them to get a jump on it.

[WhosThatGirl]

50 minutes ago, kariyaki said:

It would probably be at least a year before they'd get to adopt anyway, the waiting lists can be staggeringly huge, so it makes sense for them to get a jump on it.

Yeah.. it just seems like they were up

all in baby fever. Except for Spencer. Like Emison didn’t have a choice with their baby situation.. which is still one of the grossest things ever and ugh.. Listen the show was dead set on a Emison being a thing, fine but there had to have been better ways for them to go about it than what they did. And it seems like the show did act right about how violated it was and then.. stopped acting that way about it because yay now Emily and Alison could be together because of this terrible situation. Like.. okay? 

[marinaalexis]

2 hours ago, WhosThatGirl said:

As I said I fully expected before this season starters that all ships were going to go back to each other. The only ship I legit have a big problem with in this show has and always will be Emison. It will always bother me and make me feel really uncomfortable. Especially given in this episode where Emily continues to talk to the younger teens about Alison 2.0 and how she’s awful and they heed to break away from her, and yet she’s marrying her bully. So it doesn’t add up. Did Ali change? I’m not sure. There are times where she started acted like a manipulative person.

This drives me insane. I get what they were (maybe?) going for with the whole Alison/Addison comparison, but it just seemed so ironic to me. Here's Emily running around trying to convince all of these high school girls that they shouldn't be friends with Addison because she's a bully and a terrible person who won't change, but then she turns right around and marries the person who treated her exactly the same way in high school? That storyline should have ended with Emily either realizing that Addison could very well become a better person the way Alison supposedly did and trying to help her, or realizing that Ali is just a grown-up mean girl herself and that she doesn't need to be with someone like that.

And I agree with the bolded in particular. Ali was extremely manipulative in the later seasons, she was just better at hiding it behind her new "good girl" persona. Compare this Ali with the person she was pre-disappearance and of course she's going to come across as a saint. But if you really look at a lot of her behavior, she ended the show just as selfish and manipulative as she was early on, just in a different way.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

13 hours ago, marinaalexis said:

And I agree with the bolded in particular. Ali was extremely manipulative in the later seasons, she was just better at hiding it behind her new "good girl" persona. Compare this Ali with the person she was pre-disappearance and of course she's going to come across as a saint. But if you really look at a lot of her behavior, she ended the show just as selfish and manipulative as she was early on, just in a different way.

ITA - she just realized that being a blatant bitch wasn't going to get her what she wanted anymore so she started being sneakier about how manipulative she was.

[WhosThatGirl]

Yup. I think we’re supposed to believe she changed, but she didn’t. Part of the problem was that the season when she initially came back from the dead, the show wrote the character a certain way because I don’t think they even knew where they were going with it. The Thanksgiving episode and Ali’s behavior in that entire episode makes no sense in hindsight. I really think at times the show didn’t know where they were taking the story. And the actors can only do so much. It also doesn’t help that Sasha in my opinion has always been better at mean Ali. 

I knew Emily and Alison were endgame though. Shay was always pushing then hard core(the social media T-shirt’s she and Sasha did) and talking about them as if they were some great romance. I mean.. none of the romantic relationships were good but aside from Ezra and Stia, Emison is pretty bad. 

[marinaalexis]

4 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

ITA - she just realized that being a blatant bitch wasn't going to get her what she wanted anymore so she started being sneakier about how manipulative she was.

Exactly. I think 6x11 in particular makes that pretty clear. All of her teary-eyed, "I just want a family again" BS when she was trying to convince them to advocate for Charlotte's release was such subtle manipulation, and then that little text about "good news!" she sent all of them - including Aria - after the testimony was incredibly mean-spirited. I don't know how the Liars could even stand to look at her after all of that.

I was hoping that the spinoff would explore that side of Alison again, maybe reveal that she's not quite the reformed little angel the ending of PLL led us to believe, but since Marlene has already taken great pains to reassure the shippers that Emison is happy and thriving, I have a feeling the new Ali is here to stay.

[AfterwardsTV]

Here's the real series finale