Pretty Little Liars

So, last week I visited my best friend in Atlanta.  We had a great time.  I hadn't seen her in over a year, since we went to see the Beat Freaks at Monster's of HipHop in Orlando.
Anyway, we spent most of the week just catching up on things and hanging out.  We also watched TV and a couple movies.  Yes, my fair readers, my friend got me hooked on yet another show. Thankfully, this obsession isn't too bad, since the show actually just had its mid-season finale and won't be back until January or something like that.  Anyway, this new show was Pretty Little Liars (yes, I realize that is obvious from the blog title, but ya know, just in case).

Shay Mitchell plays Emily Fields

Yes, PLL is that show about a bunch of teenagers who all have secrets that is on ABC Family.  I'd seen previews for it before and it really never interested me.  It looked dumb actually.  I should have known.  I have a tendency to actually like those shows, especially when they have characters whose sexuality is ambiguous and have both boyfriends and girlfriends in the span of half a season.

Emily Fields is one of the main four girls the show is about.  I'm not going to go too much into the plot, it is very well done, especially the art directing, plays a lot more like a series of movies then a bunch of episodes.  Anyway, Emily is the daughter of an Army solider and both her parents are described as being very conservative.  At the beginning of the series, Emily is dating Ben, but she meets the new girl in town, Maya St. Germain, played by Bianca Lawson (yes, Kendra from season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and yes, she is a 31 year old playing a 16 year old).  This is when things get interesting.  The two girls immediately start flirting and giving each other googly eyes.

Emily Fields and Maya St. Germain

Near the end of the first half, Emily and Maya go out on a date, dinner and a movie, and are seen making out like the teenagers they play.  I heard about this scene even before I watched the show.  I was still skeptic.  How many of you watched South of Nowhere, waiting for Spencer and Ashley to make out, only to get a five second kiss where their bodies form a triangle, because of course nothing other than their lips could possibly be touching.  PLL is not like that.  Emily and Maya were all up in each other.  There was no triangle.  The Emily/Maya kiss got just as much screentime (and intensity) as their fellow straight couples, if not more.

There are a ton of other actors on PLL that you may recognize.  Lucy Hale, of Wizards of Waverly Place and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants fame, plays Aria, another one of the four main characters.  Holly Marie Combs of Charmed plays her mother and Chad Lowe, Rob Lowe's brother, plays her father.  Troian Bellisario, daughter of Donald Bellisario, producer of NCIS, plays Spencer, the third main character, and you may recognize her as Sarah McGee, Tim McGee's little sister, on her father's show.  There are quite a few soap opera stars, includingTammin Sursok from The Young and the Restless as Jenna Marshall/Cavanaugh along with fellow tYtR actress Nia Peeples who plays Emily's mother and Ashley Benson from Days of Our Lives, who plays the fourth and final main character, Hanna.  Melrose Place's (the original) Laura Leighton plays Hanna's mother.  Sasha Pieterse, the Ice Princess from Sharkboy and Lavagirl, plays Alison, the girl who goes missing and is found dead a year later in the first episode, and appears in flashbacks through the show.  Also on the show is Bryce Johnson, Josh Ford from Popular, as a local police detective investigating Alison's death.