Television shows are rarely without their imperfections, but tonight’s episode of Pretty Little Liars seemed to have more than its fair share. As much as it pains me to say, for an established and highly-rated teen drama, Gamma Zeta Die was more of an hour-long faux pas than it was must watch television.
Season four started off strong, but if this episode is anything more than a fluke, things are going to go downhill fast. Pretty Little Liars has compelling storylines, potentially great actors, and a fanbase that rivals any other in its target demographic. Yet, somehow this episode managed to throw any semblance of common sense and semantics right out of the window, and epitomize the word flawed.
Let’s start with Aria’s (Lucy Hale) mother giving the class a pep talk before college visits. Keep in mind that these visits are taking place on the weekend. How many universities have regularly scheduled weekend classes? A handful of them, at best. On top of that, college visit weekends are usually packed with lots of hopeful incoming freshman. Of those handful of classes that might be scheduled for a Saturday morning at the occasional university or college, how many are large enough to accommodate students simply stopping by to audit the class for one session? Even fewer, I’d imagine.
Not long after Ms. Montgomery gives this somewhat bland statement of expectations to her students, she ends up the victim of a bee attack – in her own car. I understand the instinct would naturally be to panic, but wouldn’t that include maybe reaching for the door handle or down window button? Anything besides flailing your arms around would have been a good start.
‘A’ instantly claimed responsibility for this act of terror, no surprise there. What threw me was not that she would do something relatively violent like that, but how she worded her text message. If you were going to make a wordplay on ‘venom,’ would it not be more effective to have used wasps instead of bees? Is it common knowledge that bees eject venom? I think I would have connected the mental dots much faster if I had seen wasps which are known for being more aggressive. Did anything about that experience bother you?
Our mysterious super-villain isn’t the only one making questionable choices though. Hannah’s mom is stumbling over them these days. How many bedroom closets have locks on them? And does anyone actually believe that Hannah could manage to fumble around with a bobby pin for a few minutes until she unlocked it? The last question aside, this entire situation is making Ms. Marin (Laura Leighton) look completely incompetent. I forgave her when she hid the stolen money in the pasta box in season one, but she apparently hasn’t learned her lesson yet. With a daughter as curious as Hannah, she could at least pretend to be discreet.
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