Things Just Went from Worse to Worser

I came to the realization during this batch of Pretty Little Liars episodes that the show definitely has deep ebbs and flows. The show started on a high with the guiltiest guilty pleasure of four girls being tormented by a mad texter that may or may not have been tied to their friend who was brutally murdered. But after a season, things started to drag on until the second half of season two when they finally were building up to the big reveal of who “A” was. But when the show came back for the current third season it seemed to drag along once again even when they tried to force some manufactured drama with the “BetrAyal”.

Of course these episodes drug on for the same reason most episodes of the show drag on: the writers continue to think that Erza and Aria have some grand love affair, not a creepy, statutory relationship they do. And even though Ezra has been blacklisted from getting any job in the greater Rosewood area because his extra-curricular activities with a student, he has not only stuck around, but the writers doubled down on the creepiness by making him a father. But for some reason, despite the crazy family that has enough money to make you disappear overnight and a baby mama (hello Alex Mack), Aria for some reason has stayed by her man even though it cannot be that hard for her to find someone better than Ezra. At this point even Hermy the Hermaphrodite would be an upgrade.

As for the BetrAyal that the promo monkeys had been pushing for the past month, all signs leading up to this episode pointed to Paige which meant there was no way she would be the betrAyer. By the end of the finale it looked like Nate, or whatever his name is, was going to BetrAy Emily. So dude killed Maya, was annoyed that she love Emily so he returned to Rosewood to get back at Emily by poising as Maya’s cousin, tried to hook up with Jenna even though she may or may not have seen him with Maya, then tried to make out with Emily, and then when all else failed decided to just kill Paige instead while Emily watched. Wait, what? And did he also dig up Allison? I think I missed something. It does not help that I did not care about Nate from the beginning and his evil turn was so bad it looked like he watched Leighton Meester in The Roommate for inspiration (should have gone old school and went with Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female instead).

Speaking of painfully bad acting, just when you thought Nate was going to the BetrAyer, it turns out Toby also has a stash of black hoodies. Except I could not stop laughing at his turn at the camera at the end followed by some sort of weird mad dash around corner. And I thought nothing was going to be more awkward than the least sexy sex scene ever put to film. What is worse is that he makes no sense as a member of The A Team which I always assumed included Jenna (along with Hermy). So I guess if Toby is in and Jenna is out.. But even though the summer finale went out with a resounding whimper (alright the staging in the lighthouse looked cool), I have to say the Halloween special looks pretty coo. And keep in mind the last Halloween special is when the show found its footing again, so hopefully this year’s episode will put it on an ebb upwards again.

Pretty Little Liars 3.x (Summer) gets a on my Terror Alert Scale. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Pretty Little Liars on iTunes.