Max’s Pretty Little Liars: Summer School Should Leave the Original Behind

Max’s Pretty Little Liars reboot/revival has swept viewers away to explore the story of another small Pennsylvanian town, Millwood, where secrets hide in the shadows and five girls—Imogen (Bailee Madison), Tabby (Chandler Kinney), Noa (Maia Reficco), Mouse (Malia Pyles), and Faran (Zaria)—are forced to face the consequences for actions set in stone long before they were ever even thought of. Though the series has left Rosewood behind, it continues to include nods to the original, either in the form of Rosewood mentions or brief allusions to and/or appearances from existing characters. But, as Season 2 makes particularly clear, the series would be better off if it forgot about the original completely.

If Max’s continuation left Freeform’s Pretty Little Liars alone, this series would be so much stronger. The concept of this show is already incredible, proving itself from the get-go as a separate entity from not only the flagship series, but all other Pretty Little Liars spinoffs by embracing the slasher genre, upping the stakes in a way we hadn’t seen before, and heightening the threat of the vindictive “A” even more than Charlotte’s dollhouse did with the OG Liars.

As we’ve seen thus far, the aspects of this story that are created or included purposefully to tie this show to what came before, whether large or small, have been some of the series’ weakest elements throughout both seasons thus far.

First came Imogen and Tabby’s road trip to Rosewood and the Radley Hotel, formerly Radley Sanitarium, and the inclusion of Eddie Lamb. As fans know, Eddie disappeared during Pretty Little Liars Season 5, never to be seen again. He knew things he shouldn’t, but it’s unclear what exactly happened to him. In addition to recasting the character, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin ignores that aspect of the canon, saying that Eddie continued working at the sanitarium and then continued working for the hotel. It’s not a huge issue, but it’s just glaring enough that it was wholly unnecessary and didn’t “honor” the flagship series as intended.

However, the more prevalent issue in the first season was Imogen implying that Aria (Lucy Hale) and Ezra (Ian Harding) would be adopting her baby—something that, thankfully, didn’t happen (as we learn early on in Season 2). This nod to the original faced immediate flashback due to the nature of the relationship on the original show, and how this series was already handling its more sensitive storylines. 

Given Original Sin‘s particular focus on exploring the imbalance of power between men and women—specifically sexual violence and how that played into Imogen, Tabby, and Angela Waters’ (Gabriella Pizzolo) stories—it was baffling to end the season with a nod to Aria and Ezra, one of modern television’s most egregious examples of inappropriate relationships, with Aria having ended the series marrying her high school English teacher. In comparison to the delicate touch taken with the series’ other storylines surrounding this sensitive subject, the nostalgic way Aria and Ezra’s relationship was lauded in that first season felt poorly considered. 

Dropping in Aria and Ezra, with Imogen calling them the “perfect” couple, inadvertently weakened the important messages captured in the episodes prior, from Tabby’s much older boss Wes (Derek Klena) attempting to groom her with inappropriate passes and comments to the outright depiction of monsters like Chip (Carson Rowland) and Tom Beasley (Eric Johnson). If the show hadn’t tried so hard to include callbacks to the original, this clumsy mixed-messaging would have been avoided.

In Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, we’re witnessing an even larger issue. After nearly being murdered by Archie Waters and stalked by his father, the five Liars have been interacting with Dr. Anne Sullivan (Annabeth Gish)—who also counseled the original Liars after Ian (Ryan Merriman) attempted to murder Spencer (Troian Bellisario) in the Season 1 finale and his body disappeared from the bell tower.

While it was a fun little nod at first, and I eagerly embraced Dr. Sullivan’s role on this show given the help she tried (yet failed) to give the OG Liars, what Summer School has done with her can be summed up in one word: messy. Turning around and making her an antagonist for these Liars, particularly after she was the one person on the outside who consistently tried to help the original Liars, does a disservice to the character and the original show, again weakening this otherwise strong and very different story with this unnecessary tie-in. 

Those in charge have all but said this is the same Dr. Sullivan that we saw in Rosewood (and not some multiverse situation), but it’s not. You can’t fundamentally change characters from the original material like Dr. Sullivan and/or ignore what came before like with Eddie Lamb and simultaneously claim this exists in the same universe. So, they should have just created a character of their own to do Sullivan’s arc with, as the Sullivan we know and adore would never betray these Liars in such a horrible way. Plus, to essentially repeat the Pretty Little Liars Season 4 arc of Ezra writing a book about the girls’ trauma with Sullivan writing a book of her own feels lazy.

Altogether, the reboot trying to connect itself to the original drags it down. This series should take note from The CW’s 90210 reboot, which had the same problems in the first two seasons, with weak callbacks and the inclusion of characters from the flagship series. Then, in the third season, it cut all ties and embraced what made it stronger, what made it different, what separated it from what came before—and it was better off for it. 

In many ways, Max’s Pretty Little Liars has the potential to learn from the original’s mistakes and outshine it. So, let’s move on, forget about what came before, and focus on what this show has been doing best.

Jay Snow is a freelance writer. He has published many places on the internet. For more of his thoughts on television and to see his other work (or to simply watch him gush again and again over his love for the original Charmed) follow him @snowyjay.

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