It's October, AKA spooky season, and until a couple of years ago Halloween month meant gearing up for the ultimate episode of Pretty Little Liars. PPL and October are inextricably linked, so we wouldn't blame you if your fingers were itching to get it up on Netflix and start the series from the start (there are 160 episodes so you'll be busy for a while.)
If you do rewatch it, you might be taken aback by quite how problematic the teen favourite was. But then, let's be honest, that might have been why we loved it.
Anyway, without any further ado, let's relive the most brilliant, bonkers and occasionally problematic parts of Pretty Little Liars.
Aria and Ezra
So this is the big Daddy of inappropriate. When they meet, Aria is 16 and Ezra is 23. It's not statutory rape because the age of consent in Pennsylvania is 16, but one state over it would be, which isn't the ideal starting point for a romantic relationship. Unfortunately for them both, after they hook up it turns out that he's actually her English teacher.
Rather than being a sensible, law-abiding adult and calling the whole thing off, Ezra keeps seeing Aria (and presumably grading her work) and they eventually get married. After his fiance goes missing in South America, presumed dead and then is found alive.
Told you this show is a lot.
Detective Wilden
Hanna got caught shoplifting some sunglasses, so her mum had sex with the policeman who caught her. Perfectly logical reaction.
Ezra and Allison
So it's not his fault that Ezra didn't know Aria was a teenager and all that, but he also had a fling with the on and off dead Alison before she was fake murdered. Two teenage girls is quite a lot of teenage girls, Ezra
When they all went to prison for, like, one episode
Despite not being 18, all four of the girls got sentenced to a prison sentence. Weirdly quickly, as well. On the upside they were in prison for being accessories to Mona's murder, a charge that went away once it turned out that Mona was not in fact dead.
PSA: Basically no-one who died on PLL was actually dead.
Shana's death
She falls off a stage and dies. In a show where people get shot or burned and are fine in the next episode. Fine.
That one episode with the ghost
Please stop putting ghosts in perfectly good non-ghost-based teen dramas. Watching Hanna get haunted for a one episode arc was not a highlight.
Noel Khan
Oh look, it's a realistic prospect for who could be A. Shame he cuts his OWN HEAD OFF WITH AN AXE.
Ceecee being transgender
More trans characters in TV is a good thing in terms of diversity and representation. But Ceecee was clearly not written as a trans character. It kind of looks like at the end of a long Friday of trying to stitch together various glitchy plot points, someone poured another cup of coffee, looked at the clock and said: 'I guess maybe the secret brother could be trans?'
Ceecee in general, tbh.
Dated her brother. Buried her mum in the garden. Was (at least some of the time) A. She was a lot.
Alex the Evil Twin
If you thought the Ceecee meeting yielded some lazy ideas, the secret evil twin pay-off after SEVEN YEARS of PLL was quite a ballsy offering. If you didn't watch the show to completion, Spencer's evil twin Alex, who grew up in the UK, was Uber A for the final series. It would have been more credible to make the whole thing a dream.
The upside was that we got to see Spencer aka Troian Bellisario doing a very bad English accent.
The liars not having extreme PTSD
Waking up in a bodybag with a dead policeman. Being trapped in a coffin. Being stuck on a conveyor belt heading towards a circular saw. Waking up after a dentist appointment and finding a note inside your tooth. Not exactly the usual trials and tribulations of being a teenager. Yet Spencer, Aria, Emily and Hanna get on with their life in a way that kind of smacks of repression.
Suffice to say, PLL was one of the most extraordinary shows on television, gloriously unburdened by making any narrative sense at all.