The truth about pretty liars
The truth about pretty liars
The truth about pretty liars
Good liars often) raise the emotional stakes. "The best liars are natural manipulators," says Sgt. Yarbrough. He cites as a perfect example the scene in Basic Instinct where Sharon Stone is brought to the cop station for questioning and winds up flashing everyone a glimpse of her Lesser Antilles. "She was turning them on," Yarbrough explains, "and that's a form of manipulation using sexual or emotional arousal to distract the interviewer."Liars, about a group of high-scholars trapped in a mystery surrounding their best friend's death, is unabashed in its attempts to be mindless entertainment. In fact, the response to the show seemed to catch even the network by surprise. Two weeks ago, after the third episode hit a series high of 2.7 million viewers for comparison's sake, the season finale of Gossip Girl drew about 1.9 million ABC Family announced an order of 12 additional episodes of the series, more than doubling the Season 1 total from 10 to 22 episodes.
When people hear that I'm writing an article about deception, they're quick to tell me how to catch a liar. Liars always look to the left, several friends say; liars always cover their mouths, says a man sitting next to me on a plane. Beliefs about how lying looks are plentiful and often contradictory: depending on whom you choose to believe, liars can be detected because they fidget a lot, hold very still, cross their legs, cross their arms, look up, look down, make eye contact or fail to make eye contact.
Network name aside, Liars isn't very family-friendly at all. The show, based on a book series of the same name by Sara Shepard, centres on four 16-year-old girls and starts one year after their best friend, Alison, disappeared; at the end of the premiere, Alison's body is discovered. The twist: The girls start receiving nasty messages from someone claiming to know all their secrets, who signs each message "A."
Thus the story begins, as the friends not only try to find out who is threatening to ruin their lives: is it Alison (Sasha Pieterse), as the "A" would imply? But . . . she's dead! Cue freakout but also deal with the dirty laundry of their secrets. For Aria (Lucy Hale), it's a torrid romance with her much older English teacher, Mr. Fitz (Ian Harding). Hanna (Ashley Benson) grapples with an eating disorder and shoplifting habit. Emily (Shay Mitchell) has a boyfriend but harbours a crush on her female neighbour. And Spencer (Troian Bellisario) hooked up with her sister's fianc.
The plot, however, is the element that sets Liars apart from its fellow teen soaps, such as Gossip Girl and 90210. Other such shows run through plot lines at breakneck speeds or don't pay much attention to story consistency. Many times, it seems as if the writers are too busy trying to make one teen character do something completely outrageous for his age, or top the previous episode's craziest outfit. With Liars, the story unravels slowly, but carefully, and doesn't sacrifice credibility in order to create a water-cooler moment.
Another Gossip Girl-type misstep that Watch Pretty Little Liars Episode 6: There's No Place Like Homecoming Online, avoids is letting the grown-up characters become too involved in the show. Sure, the adults in Liars have problems (boy, do they ever). Hanna's mom (Laura Leighton) is sleeping with a police officer so her daughter won't face shoplifting charges, and Aria's college professor dad (Chad Lowe) got busted for having an affair with his former student. Each issue, however, is seen through the eyes of the teen characters, and only in the context of how it will affect them.
The fifth episodes aired Tuesday night and it appears the show will just get creepier. The girls delved further into the mystery surrounding "A's" identity, and also faced the consequences of their biggest secret of all: what happened the night they all played a prank on a classmate, only to accidentally injure his sister when the joke went awry.
But even when the subject matter gets dark, Liars doesn't take itself too seriously. And for those who eagerly but shamefully add it to the DVR every week, it looks like the mystery will continue through the fall, and beyond.
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