I’d never seen Pretty Little Liars before and thought, it’s on Netflix, why not give it a try, maybe there’s some stuff I need to know before I just jump into the 3rd season of the show. It seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.

The show airs on ABC Family, that should have been my first warning sign, but it wasn’t. So first season begins and the Abercrombie and Fitch crowd of Pretty Little Liars kicks it off in the usual ABC Family style; drinking, shop lifting, a sixteen year old starting an intimate relationship with a grown male teacher at her school. Okay, so forget the fact that she didn’t know he was her teacher and that he didn’t know she was underage (or don’t). In any case I omitted my marathon run of the show and just jumped right into the 3rd season.

From what I gleaned of the first few episodes of the first season, the queen bee of their little group of bff’s has been murdered. The rest of the cast go their separate ways, but come back together again a year later where everything has changed. No sooner do they get reacquainted they all start receiving text messages, hand written notes, and even start to see things as an elusive character named A come into the picture to reveal all of their secrets, and boy do they have a lot. This is pretty much the start of the 3rd season.

The girls are living in relative harmony after the reveal of, and possibly sudden death of, A when all of a sudden strange things begin to happen. A is back in the picture. What!!!? Not only that, memory lapses, accusations, even more undiscovered secrets become a threat.

The show is interesting, just not to me. The demographic here is the aimless teen whose only real concern is fashion, trendy music, and good looking actors and actresses (which is left up to the eye of the beholder). Other then that the show is basically throwing everything it can at the hormone addled youth. Sex, drugs, music, fashion, drama. It’s all in there like one of those glossy poster ads at the jeans shops at the mall. It’s pretty, on a grand scale, but at its core preying on the adolescent confusion of teenagers who think rebellion is recklessness.

Kudos on the sometimes crafty mystery behind the show, but too bad it’s only motivation is to lead the characters into the same old, same old situations that have been selling jeans, rock music, and keeping the Hot Topic open for the past three decades. Pass.