Pretty Little Liars Is Way More Than Just a Pretty Little Teenage Drama

The Pretty Little Liars season premiere is tonight, which makes today the perfect day to deconstruct my love for it in a blog post.

How can anyone not love those pretty little smiling faces?

Don't let the marketing of this show fool you. Almost every official picture I've seen for this show makes it look like your typical teenage drama where the girls are witches with a capital B. It took me way longer than it should have to find a picture of the four main characters in which they actually looked like friends. But, the friendship between these four girls is the backbone of the entire show. It's what keeps them together when A (the mysterious texting entity out to get them) threatens to tear them and their whole lives apart.

I feel like the way the show is marketed is detrimental to how it's perceived in the television spectrum. It's dropped into the "guilty pleasure teen soap opera" basket by viewers who then go watch Mad Men while scorning the people who actually enjoy it. I don't have enough fingers to count the number of scoffs I've gotten from people when I tell them Pretty Little Liars is one of my favorite shows. It's a tad annoying.

Felix is having none of your television elitist crap.

Sure, Pretty Little Liars has the tendency to be a little campy and over the top, but so did Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and there are college classes about how brilliant that show was.

The main thing that puts Pretty Little Liars at the top of its class is the impenetrable friendship the four girls share. I've only read the first book of the series the show is based on, and I couldn't bring myself to read the rest of them. In the book series, the girls aren't friends. They're thrown together by A torturing them, and that's the only bond they really share. Boy, am I glad that was changed for the TV show. Their friendship defies the stereotypes of teenage girldom, both in the show and out. The people of Rosewood assume that the girls are attention-seeking liars, while the people of the real world assume they are shallow and stuck-up. These characters break out of those boxes again and again.

This show also has one of the best portrayals of queer women I've ever seen. Queer women as in plural. As in several ladies who love ladies (and also sometimes boys because bisexuality is a thing that exists despite its erasure in the media) with distinct personalities and multi-faceted characterization which makes them essential characters instead of just ploys to get ratings.

In conclusion, Pretty Little Liars is a thing you should watch. You should probably start from the beginning, though. This show is twisty and complicated in the best way ever.

To further convince you, here's some more of their gorgeous faces.

Contrary to Popular Belief, Television Will Not Rot Your Brain and Here's Why

So, how many of us have heard over and over through the years that TV will rot your brain and that you should read a book instead?

Thought so.

Now, don't get me wrong. Books are incredibly important. I'm an English major, so clearly I think books are pretty snazzy. I just don't think there should be a polar binary between books and television in which books are endless pools of knowledge and imagination while TV shows are evil, nasty brain suckers.

The main thing that this cliche glosses over is that there is good and bad in both mediums. Actually, good and bad is a, well, bad way to put this. There are books and TV shows that stimulate the mind and get our brain juices going, and that's awesome. There are also books and TV shows that are mindless fun, and that's also awesome. The point is that neither is all good or all bad.

STAHP

Another thing that tends to be glossed over is that books and television actually function in very similar ways. They are both portals into worlds and experiences we would never have access to in our own lives. They both tell stories that we can invest in and learn from. And, most importantly, we can see ourselves reflected in them.

Here's another question. How many of us have felt connected to a fictional character presented either in print or on a screen because you related to their experiences?

Again, thought so.

If you have never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, please skip over the following paragraphs until the bolded lettering so as to avoid spoiling yourself, proceed to the nearest television, and watch it immediately. It's for your own good.

When I was sixteen, I was starting to figure out that I maybe, kind of liked girls in a friend way and also a more-than-friend way. The main catalyst of this was that I was sort of in complete puppy love with a girl who was sort of one of my best friends.To make matters worse, I lived in a one stoplight, bible-thumping, everybody-knows-everybody's-business town where I felt I needed to stay deeply closeted for my own good. Yikes.

Me at this point in my life

This was when I watched my first ever episode of Buffy. Unfortunately, it was the episode where Tara dies. Even though I had jumped into the middle of the story and had seen only that episode, I was so emotionally affected by it that I couldn't really function for a good hour afterwards.

Accurate representation

Even after this emotional scarring, I was hooked. I started watching the show from the beginning and fell in love. The first few seasons of the show were amazing, but I waited with bated breath for the introduction of Tara. The brief glimpse I had gotten into the relationship between her and Willow was the first time I'd seen my feelings reflected at me in a way that reassured me that they weren't wrong.

Seriously emotional just looking at them

When Tara finally turned up in the fourth season, I marathoned like nobody's business, locked away in my basement with the remote at the ready to turn the TV off should anyone come downstairs. I lived vicariously through their relationship, with all of its ups and downs, until the bitter, tragic end. Even after it was all over, I felt complete in the knowledge that I wasn't alone. I wasn't the only person who had these feelings, and my feelings were okay. A television show helped me accept myself and gave me the courage to come out.

IF YOU STOPPED READING EARLIER YOU CAN START AGAIN NOW.

Books have that power as well. I've read Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters at least four times for the same reason I've rewatched every episode of Buffy at least twice (and any episode involving Willow and Tara together in any capacity more than that). I still connect with the characters in them on an emotional level. Books and television are both incredibly powerful mediums that, in my opinion, can work in tandem very well and change our society for the better. They can live together in peace and harmony.

Yes, I'm ending this post with an Avatar reference