Op-Ed: Hitchcock, Hot Moms, and Other Reasons I'm Obsessed with 'Pretty Little Liars'

Tonight we welcome back Emily, Spencer, Hanna and Aria for three more months and I can't freaking wait. If you don’t know who those four characters are then you are obviously not one of the many adults obsessed with, and perhaps in the closet about ABC Family’s soapy thriller Pretty Little Liars. The show revolves around a clique of girls whose queen bee is murdered, leaving the girls vulnerable to the machinations of a team of hooded, tech-savvy blackmailers, extortionists and would-be killers who work under the name “A.”

Full disclosure – well, partial disclosure. I am a woman of… let’s call it a “certain age. That is to say that I am not PLL’s target audience—or am I?  To provide some context, when I was in high school, like the teen characters in this part-Nancy Drew/part-Hitchcock series, kids were dying their hair pink, blue, or whatever shade of Manic Panic they could grab, and getting earnestly maudlin listening to The Smiths -- kind of like they are now, but without the irony. 

I share my obsession with Pretty Little Liars with my 15-year-old niece, who lives near Atlanta. During premieres and finales we Facebook each other about it. “Happy A Day,” or “Happy BetrAyal Day” we write to each other. She’s a high school freshman on the cheer squad. I’m an often-curmudgeonly editor of a lesbian website who’s too tired to cheer about much of anything most of the time, yet we share our love of PLL. Last year my friend at Warner Brothers got the show’s stars Shay Mitchell, Troian Bellisario, Ashley Benson, and Lucy Hale to autograph two cast photos. One was to my niece, the other was to me (my friend surprised me with the pic. I'm not that much of a crazy fan girl and yet I'm waxing on about the show). The photo is tacked to the wall of my office, and yes, I display it with some irony. But mostly, I’m as sincere about my love for PLL as I can be about anything.

As an avowed shipper of PLL I’m well aware of the show’s many attributes, but when pressed to explain to my colleagues why I’m posting another PLL clip, story, spoiler or Shot Of The Day of its stars, I feel some degree of shame—although, down deep, I know I shouldn’t. The series, based on the young adult novels by Sara Shepard, is the only destination television that I currently watch other than The Good Wife. On Tuesday night I’m on the couch, remote in hand, ready to promptly rewind if I miss a beat, a nod or a clue to the mystery of A. But I’m also hard-pressed to explain how a knotty soap about a clique of unrealistically easy-on-the-eyes (they’re not called Homely Little Liars after all), high school-aged fashion icons is one of the smartest shows on television, wrapping up themes of friendship, loyalty, first-love, cyber-bullying, and coming out in a package that includes unabashed, thoughtful homages to some of cinema’s greatest works.

A few months back, Entertainment Weekly ran a cover story on PLL and it’s social networking prowess entitled “The Surprising Power of Pretty Little Liars: How this Twisty, Over-the-Top Teen Mystery is Changing TV.” Relieved when I saw the article I tweeted, “Thank God for this. Proof I'm not just an old weirdo obsessed with a teen show. It really does have more going on than meets the eye!”

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