“Pretty Little Liars” Premiere is Big, Ugly Disappointment; Review

The ABC Family audience has consistently proven that quality is not its priority when selecting shows to sample. Evidence is in the fact that the fresh, critically-acclaimed “Greek,” which many television analysts and a cult of fans feel more accurately captures teen/college life than any soap on television, simply cannot find an audience while the cliched, innocuous duo of “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” and “Make It or Break It” continues to pay dividends for the network.

That reality, combined with a fan following from the book series and an aggressive, lengthy publicity campaign, might be enough to turn “Pretty Little Liars” into a summer hit, but from a creative standpoint, it is hard to identify an audience segment that will not be disappointed.

Fans of guilty pleasure teen series can find more edginess on The CW, more light-heartedness on Nickelodeon and Disney and more generic sentiment on the cable network’s existing series. Fans of the book series might celebrate the idea of a television adaptation, but they will instantly be annoyed by changes in the characters, explanations and story sequencing that seem unnecessary and cannot simply be written off as the inevitable translation when moving from print to screen. Fans of mysteries might be mildly intrigued by the concept, but the premiere does nothing to peak that interest, and it, in fact, portrays the characters so shallowly and generically that one will care less about their fate after an hourlong introduction than he did after seeing 30 second commercial spots.

Save for a few bright spots, the pilot, on all levels, works to undermine what could have been a very hot concept for a youth-skewing summer television series.

Opening with an uninformative, undramatic flashback, a group of four friends–Aria (Lucy Hale), Hanna (Ashley Benson), Spencer (Troian Bellisario) and Emily (Shay Mitchell)–now older and wiser, has grown distant following the disappearance of the overbearing Alison (Sasha Pieterse), a former member of the clique. And, right off the bat, the show starts to struggle.

Instead of developing the characters and creating some mystery about why the group grew distant and why the four girls truly need each other, the premiere thrusts the girls into absurd, soap opera 101 situations. Despite being sixteen, one character inexplicably ends up at a bar and hooks up with the recent college graduate that turns out to be her high school teacher. Another awkwardly shoplifts a pair of sunglasses, angering a mother (Laura Leighton) who is committed to buying her daughter whatever it takes to be popular (and later literally doing whatever it takes to keep her daughter out of harm’s way). One smokes weed and develops a lesbian crush on the new girl Maya (Bianca Lawson), while another lusts after her sister’s boyfriend (who shares the glances).

In fairness, there is some thin explanation offered for their rebellion and discomfort. Aria caught her father (Chad Lowe) cheating on her mother (Holly Marie Combs), Hanna struggles from body image issues and an emotionally-scarring relationship with her mother and Spencer and Emily deal with the insecurity and pain of possessing secrets. But the explanations are all tangential and fleeting, doing nothing to connect the characters and situate them within the same emotional universe. Characters experience similar personal problems–and partake in similar acts of rebellion and secrecy–on every teen soap in existence; nothing is done to establish why these girls are affected uniquely emotionally and why these girls need to come together for more than just the central mystery plot. They are girls with problems, they are not characters with any sort of meaningful connections.

The flashbacks, which normally provide a shortcut for crafting personalities and dialing viewers into the storylines, offer absolutely no help. They actually do a decent job of highlighting who Alison was as a person, but they completely miss the mark in establishing any sort of identity for the other girls or unveiling any chemistry they once had with each other. There is just no empahsis on depth or explanation; instead of connecting a scene or incident in the past with behavior in the present, they simply tell you about something that happened (with even less characterization than the awful present-day scenes offer in explaining what is happening now).

An example includes a shallow jump to when Mona (Janel Parrish), the current queen bee, used to be the subject of the girls’ teasing. Yes, high school in general is shallow, but even the worst primetime soaps would have done a better job of contextualizing that hierarchy change and explaining why it will impact the group (especially Hanna, who is now Mona’s insincerely-confident buddy). Otherwise, why not save that development for a later episode and use the flashback time to better clarify the identities of the four central characters?

What the show ultimately fails to understand is that the mystery–in this case, a mysterious individual named “A” starts texting the girls, having both an omniscient awareness of through what the girls are currently going and knowledge of past secrets only they and Alison should know–is only a piece of the puzzle. What makes people care about the revelations, what makes them start tracking clues and making guesses and what makes them understand the characters’ plight is believable character development and legitimate chemistry. This show offers neither. It has a few stereotypical teen soap opera girls with personal problems and ambiguous secrets (such as “the Jenna thing”), but it does not portray former friends who, following a tragic event and a resulting separation, now are internally struggling to either reunite or stay separated. Worse, it does not portray girls for whom the exposing of secrets would appear particularly tragic or heartbreaking.

When the girls come together for the funeral following the discovery of Alison’s dead body, their reuniting simply does not feel ‘real.’ They express only photographic horror at the “A” texts they have all received, and they demonstrate neither the sadness nor potential optimism one would expect a group of former friends to express as circumstance brings them back together. Their connection in receiving the texts seems no more profound than the connection the “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” kids had in receiving the golden tickets; they are just individuals experiencing something similar.

Forget a ridiculous comparison to “Lost,” even NBC’s mediocre new “Persons Unknown” did a better job of connecting the characters in the pilot; and, on that show, they were SUPPOSED to be strangers. This is a show about former best friends being brought back together and dealing with a mystery, but that vibe is established neither in the flashbacks nor in the present.

Adding to the creative flaws is poor casting. Charming “American Juniors” alum Lucy Hale, who started to get the creative opportunity she deserves on “Privileged,” is a bright spot of the girls, but she still comes off as a bit too plain and innocent for a lead role. While sassy and edgy is not the writers’ intention for Aria, she is too far on the other extreme, playing the part with too much timidity to make some of her actions–including an encounter with a male character late in the episode–seem believable. Ashley Benson is passable, but she too plays her character with excessive restraint–there is not even a glimpse of comparison to, say, a Leighton Meester or AnnaLynne McCord.

In her brief scenes, Sasha Pieterse also does reasonable service to the Alison role, and at least these three look like high schoolers.

On the brutally disappointing end of the casting spectrum is Troian Bellisario, who simply does not look the part. It is not that she is technically too old for high school on television, but sometimes casting has to be done with reliance on the visual rather than on the birth certificate. Bellisario looks more fitting to double for Nia Portokalos in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” than for a high school part; at 24, she looks considerably more out of place than even Amber Lancaster (30) and Trevor Donovan (31) do on “The Hard Times of RJ Berger” and “90210,” respectively. The aesthetic matters, as any difficulty one has in believing these characters have chemistry is exacerbated by the feeling that Lucy Hale and Ashley Benson are hanging out with their mom or aunt.

Shay Mitchell, meanwhile, partakes in some of the worst-acted sequences ever on ABC Family (which is saying quite a bit). She and Bianca Lawson have decent looks and some natural charisma, but they just strike out in some ridiculous, totally unbelievable scenes. It becomes nearly impossible to take their story progression seriously.

As with many contemporary series, the parents seem cast more for their B-level recognizable names and faces than for their addition to the show. Laura Leighton is solid in her scenes, but Chad Lowe and Holly Marie Combs offer nothing particularly unique or compelling. The other characters, young and old, are unremarkable at best.

With an appealing premise, the connection to the book series, cute, likable cast members in Hale and Benson and the uncompetitive summer television environment, one should not write off “Pretty Little Liars” just yet. And given that attractive premise, it is certainly plausible that the show will savage itself in later episodes and turn this into an intriguing mystery series.

But act one is a dud, bombarding viewers with scenes and information that only detract from the successful work the commercial spots did in highlighting the appeal of the central mystery storyline. The charisma-free, intrigue-free, depth-free opener to “Pretty Little Liars” is a big, ugly disappointment.

“Pretty Little Liars” premieres Tuesday at 8PM.