As Pretty Little Liars Returns, It’s Better To Have A Really Good Lie!

Visiting Hannah - Adam Rose

ABC Family’s teen soap Pretty Little Liars [Monday, 8/7C] returns with the aftermath of the nearly fatal attack on Hannah – and secrets come a tumbling down.

Pretty Little Liars returns from its holiday season hiatus with an episode, Moments Later, that finds Hannah [Ashley Benson] in the hospital with a broken leg and ankle and doped to the gills with good painkillers – which means that she can’t be entirely certain as to what’s real and what’s not – a kiss on the forehead; a visit from dead besty, Alison [Sasha Pieterse]; or even who left her a cryptic message.

Spencer [Troian Bellisario] finds that evidence of Alison’s relationship with Ian has been destroyed; her sister [Torrey DeVitto] has done something uncharacteristically impulsive, and learns that A is not who she thinks it is; Aria [Lucy Hale] learns that someone close has discovered her relationship with Mr. Fitz [Ian Harding] and Emily faces pressure from her father [Eric Steinberg] about what’s bothering her – and feels frustration at not being able to visit Toby [Keegan Allen], in jail.

In a great soap – and make no mistake, Pretty Little Liars is a great soap – even the most trivial events can be blown up to extraordinary proportions. In Moments Later, all of the above revelations come in ways that magnify their importance – the possibly hallucinatory visit by Alison, for example, includes a revelation about A that gives an important clue to A’s identity – or turns it sideways [Aria is confronted by the person who saw wrote ‘I see you’ on Mr. Fitz’s car – but has the wrong idea about why she was there in the first place].

Structurally, writer Joseph Dougherty weaves together everyone’s arcs in such a way that when the action skips from arc to another, there is always some kind of cliffhanger/hook to keep us involved. In each case, the choice of hook varies from action to emotional punch to comic moment to poignant bit. All the while, he maintains the heightened reality that is crucial to any soap, but especially to a teen soap.

Norman Buckley does a better job than most directors in timing the beats of each scene change and act out – he never hangs on a beat too long, and he always ends each sequence on a different kind of shot. As a result, we never get the feeling that we’re seeing something we’ve seen before. As well, Buckley has the individual rhythms of the characters down cold, and matches his pacing to their rhythms in a way that keeps the episode’s flow without sacrificing character beats.

There are some twists that maybe could’ve been held back for later [Lucas’ adoration of Hannah, for example], but overall, Moments Later is a fun, smart, sexy and just ever so slightly sleazy ride. It shows why Pretty Little Liars is the best series on ABC Family.

Final Grade: B+

Photo by Adam Rose/Courtesy of ABC Family

Updated: January 2, 2011 — 10:31 pm