Last week on the podcast the group discussed their guilty pleasures that many people may not share. While I had already written my post for that week by the time the podcast aired, I wanted to get in on this discussion.

I have a strange addiction to Pretty Little Liars.

I will start by saying I enjoy the television show, not the books. I understand the Young Adult book series is still very popular long after the initial mystery was solved several times over (this occurs on the show also, but a bit more discretely). But the storylines are written so terribly while constant product placement is thrown in every other paragraph that I made it through listening to the first four books and decided I couldn’t fight my way through the others.

Now for the show. The story involves four teens – Aria, Spencer, Emily, and Hannah. After a slumber party on a stormy night in the garage with the leader of their group, Alison, the girls wake up to discover Alison is missing. A year later, after believing Alison to be dead, the girls begin receiving mysterious threatening texts from “A” with information only Alison would know. A few days later Alison’s body is discovered in the walls of her old house.

For the first 3 or 4 seasons the mystery of who is “A” is progressively uncovered with each episode, asking whether the culprit is Alison herself, Mona (bullied by Alison), Ezra (the girl’s new English teacher and new “boyfriend” to one of the girls (I won’t reveal who – this is a bit creepy when you think about it, but ridiculous when you find out where it leads)), the boyfriend/girlfriend/sister/ neighbors/parents/exes and even more of the main four.

The basis of the story itself is the aftermath for the Plastics or the Heathers if Regina George or Heather Chandler were murdered. While the girls are relatively kind in the series, it shows flashbacks of their time with Alison when they were quieted by her leadership and criticism of the world. These scenes may be a bit disconcerting but provide clues to the ongoing mystery.
What hooked me on the show initially was the bizarre murder mystery that enveloped the pilot episode. Who killed Alison? I realized then, as much as I realize now, that this show was made for teen girls, but I really didn’t care. Especially when many of my friends on Facebook were soon posting within the next few seasons about the show and the evolving mysteries.

I don’t care that the events of the show would never happen in real life, or even in the literary world. Toby would never be allowed to become a cop. Ezra would have been fired immediately and never permitted to work in his profession ever again. No cop as dirty as those who live in Gotham could be discovered by a 15-year-old and yet still have all their extracurriculars ignored by the department. I realize the absurdity of the entire 7-season and counting series and continue to watch live whenever it is on TV.