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10.02.2014

The Thing About Pretty Little Liars

Senior year, during Channel One News (Anyone remember that?) there were advertisements for Pretty Little Liars. That dates me in some way, whether up or down... Frankly, the show didn't seem too bad. My best friends and I decided to watch it together. It was our first show we decided to watch as a group.

We got to season 2 or so and we had to quit.

Eventually stuff gets to be too much. Like that show.

I've started watching it again, though, out of sheer boredom. I don't have How I Met Your Mother anymore, and Bachelor isn't on for a few more months. All I have is America's Next Top Model, and that's only once a week. The thing about me is that I can't focus entirely on one task. Either my attention is slightly divided or it's not there at all. It's far better for me to have some background nonsense show going on while I do my work. Pretty Little Liars is one of those shows that loses you real quick but this is an ok way to watch it, I think. I'm not getting needlessly frustrated by the show, but I have a general idea of what's going on. "Oh this guy broke up with this girl and it turns out HE WAS A and she went crazy but then I guess they're back together now, or he's dead or something." I get by. Joe knows more about what's going on than I do because when it plays I don't think he can focus on anything else. Sorry Joe. I'll be in the room folding laundry while he's in the living room doing work and he says "WAIT what did she just say?!" It makes me laugh.

Despite my low attentiveness to this show, I'm still able to get entirely frustrated over it. Let me articulate what frustrates me.

50% of the entire show is just people walking up to something, whether it's a door, a hospital room, a grave stone, a car... anything. They walk up to it, then stand there and stare at it. No body talks. No body moves their feet. They're always standing shoulder to shoulder, looking alarmed. Sometimes they look at each other and then back to the object of their initial interest. Then after standing there for a miniature forever, they finally move and do something. It's like they're having a stroke or something, they just quit for a while. They literally can't even. Last night I timed such an event. It was 54 seconds long. Of people just standing there while the music crescendo-ed. It was hilarious. Like it was a joke or something. Nope. Just shoddy film making!

These people aren't very good at Good-Better-Best or Bad-Worse-Worst. Bad would be getting in trouble for underage drinking. But worse than that is being accused of murder. So many times they find themselves without an alibi because they were doing something pretty illegal but NOT AS ILLEGAL AS MURDER. However, because they don't want to get in trouble for the minor, they are constantly putting themselves at risk of getting in trouble for the major.

How old are these people. They're definitely not high schoolers. And I think they're never in school, or they live in a town where you only go to school once a week, or they live in a town that has redefined the conventional calendar and the weekends are now the majority of the week, so people never have to go to school or work. That being said, they have amazing grades, somehow, and an endless supply of money. One time one of them baby sat a kid for 3 hours, and maybe they got paid a couple million dollars for that. One of them works in a coffee shop. None of the other ones work. But they have endless money. To buy all the things. And go all the places. They complain sometimes about money being tight but that has yet to manifest in the lives of the people. And they boss around their parents in minor ways. "Oh mom, I thought I'd swing by your work during lunch today (because I can leave school campus on a whim to go to your work and go to lunch all within the 30 minute lunch times schools typically allow) and you will take me to lunch!" And the mom is like "That sounds fun!" That wasn't ok, to demand that my mom take me to lunch as a kid, and now I'm an adult, and it's still not ok. Adults don't tell other adults when to take them to lunch, without asking for their opinion or anything. That's not ok.

Everyone owns all the clothes. Something peculiar about this town is that they have like... 7 Halloweens every year. Add on top of that the random costume parties they have. They always have the exact thing to wear, something that is an incredibly elaborate, expensive costume that fits the theme exactly. Even if they are on an adventure hours away from home and find out about some party they NEED TO GO TO out there that they didn't know about before, they've got the clothes to wear to it. Hanging out in the trunk of the car or something. Or maybe they're magic. Maybe that's the whole thing.

People keep dying. I think the nice thing about this town is that it's small. Isn't that kinda the premise? It's a small town. It's not like LA or NY or something. It's small. But people are dying all the time, and it's people that are in close contact with the four girls. People keep making sly remarks about how that's suspicious but no one does anything. And the girls don't ever notify the police when they find out that someone is probably going to die. They only time the police really do anything is when someone new dies. It's ridiculous how many people have died in this town yet nobody has done anything. Maybe that's Obama's fault. If I were president, I'd marshal law that town and shut down the town. But life goes on as normal. With someone getting murdered every few months. Whatever

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