‘Pretty Little Liars: Summer School’ Belongs in Detention

There have been five—count ‘em, five!—entries in the Pretty Little Liars franchise since the pulpy teen drama, based on the popular book series, premiered in 2010. That’s 14 years, more than 150 episodes, and countless actors calling their parents to tell them that they got their big break, only for their respective series to get canceled before their SAG card could even arrive in the mail. All of the spinoffs and continuations of Pretty Little Liars have been unsuccessful, failing to generate even an iota of the massive buzz that teenagers heaped onto the franchise’s first televised iteration in the 2010s.

In 2022, it looked as though the curse plaguing Pretty Little Liars had lifted. A new reboot, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, came in swinging, looking to rectify the mistakes that old spinoffs had fallen prey to. Original Sin was edgier, meaner, and filled to the brim with cursing and bloody violence, two things that the franchise was always missing due to the constraints of its home on network television. This new Pretty Little Liars was streaming on Max, and there, the show could go wild. Any restrictions that had previously hindered the franchises’ ambitions were removed, helping the reboot—which fashioned itself as a teen horror slasher—feel more innovative than any of the franchise’s previous spinoffs. A cast of talented young actors, some brilliantly written twists, and a devoted fan base that will follow PLL wherever it goes helped on that front, too.

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Original Sin’s supreme quality makes the show’s new, inferior continuation (with an equally substandard subtitle), Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, all the more disappointing. Where Season 1 of this new PLL was saucy and surprisingly brutal, Season 2 is trite and unambitious. Anyone exhausted by horror that uses grief and trauma as the basis for their frightening imagery will be completely drained by Summer School. This season takes that weary allegory and plops it on top of the events of Original Sin, hoping the two will eventually coalesce into something watchable. But despite some decently cheeky attempts at expanding the story and its characters, keeping up with Pretty Little Liars: Summer School feels more like homework than a vacation.

Granted, it can be tough to figure out how to make watching five deeply traumatized teenage girls “fun.” Imogen (Bailee Madison), Noa (Maia Reficco), Faran (Zaria), Tabby (Chandler Kinney), and Mouse (Malia Pyles) are still reeling when we get reacquainted with them in the season premiere. At the end of Original Sin, the group—our titular Liars—just narrowly escaped the knife of “A,” a masked killer who turned out to be avenging the rape and suicide of his sister, Angela, decades prior. The Liars’ mothers spent their high school years bullying Angela, and “A” was intent on making both the mothers and their adolescent daughters suffer.

“A” was caught in the Season 1 finale, before escaping police custody and going on another rampage in the episode’s concluding scenes. Season 2 picks up from there, but quickly makes it clear to viewers that the show has no intention of continuing with “A” as its main killer. Instead, we’re introduced to Bloody Rose Waters—the apparent ghost of Angela’s mother—a Pamela Vorhees-like masked mama murderer, hunting down Rosewood residents. The way that the show ties up its loose ends from the first season (which I am forbidden from telling you here, per an air-tight spoiler list) is both extremely literal and delightfully fresh, the kind of tongue-in-cheek humor that more horror media could stand to adopt. The joke recalls how the Scream franchise has continually reinvented itself without losing its core tenets and suspense. But this inventive bit of storytelling isn’t enough to keep Pretty Little Liars: Summer School from coasting on the fumes of its first season. Before long, the playful premiere distends into total listlessness, a far cry from how tight and focused the show was just two years ago.

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Scenes of the girls working out their trauma by throwing out banalities during group sessions with their therapist, Dr. Sullivan (Annabeth Gish), get tiring fast, especially when Dr. Sullivan’s suggestions directly contradict everything the Liars tell her. There is clearly something more sinister going on here, and the fact that all of the Liars don’t immediately realize that is frustrating, given that Original Sin repeatedly told viewers how sly and perceptive they are. Or, at least, as perceptive as any teenage girl—concerned with not dying as much as she is scoring well on the PSATs and getting a boyfriend—can be.

The girls are also consumed by new matters, specifically a play on the user-generated horror story website, Creepypasta, which is a big part of this season’s storyline. The existence of a parody site, “Spooky Spaghetti,” goes perfectly with a new set of opening credits made to look like Unfriended-style digital horror. Meanwhile, visual and sonic homages directly reference the ’80s. Suzanne Vega and ‘Til Tuesday needle drops, along with random, vintage soda cans adorning restaurant tables, suggest that this season is meant to feel like a sticky summertime slasher in 1985. The combination of old and new creates irksome dissonance, because these period allusions are far too underbaked to be interesting—an unfortunate tedium mirrored throughout the season.

While Summer School maintains some of the wanton nastiness that Original Sin was teeming with (a little homophobia and slut-shaming in a teen drama, hallelujah!), the new season dials back the filth. In its absence, there is also strangely little horror for a horror television show, at least in the first five episodes that were provided for review. (There will be eight episodes this season). There are occasional homages to classic scary movies, but most of the references are relegated to film buff Tabby’s encyclopedic knowledge of the horror genre, which she quotes incessantly.

Those citations could be arduous in Season 1; in Season 2, they’re downright insufferable. I thought, “To quote Jordan Peele, ‘Nope!’” would be the word offender here, until a later episode included the line: “That was some final-girl-energy, Laurie Strode realness there.” When Imogen responds, “I’m so sorry I’m having a psychotic break during our hot girl summer,” it feels like the show is trying to appeal to a broader audience, but is confused about exactly which demographics it should aim for.

This uncertainty, which muddles the first half of Season 2, can happen when a series changes hands. Season 1 was penned by the reboot’s co-creators Lindsay Calhoon Bring and Roberto Aguierre-Sacasa, along with co-writer Sara Shepard, who all brought a proprietary mixture of laughs and ludicrous kills to their skillful character writing. In Season 2, the reins are given to staff writer Alyson Weaver Nicholas, who seems like she was handed a show bible to study four hours before turning the script for the first episode. A Devil Wears Prada-esque twist like this is the only decent explanation for the show’s reduction in quality. Had Summer School remained in the capable hands of Aguierre-Sacasa, Bring, and Shephard, our long-awaited reunion with the Liars might not have felt like such a slog.

Pretty Little Liars: Summer School is deeply mangled by whatever changes have gone on behind the scenes, however minimal they may be. The season is disordered and bloated, focused too much on new characters and love interests when it could be fleshing out the fascinating Liars that viewers got to know and love last season. What’s worse: There’s no overarching concept for this season to cling to. Beyond the seasonal nod to the Friday the 13th franchise (summer school/summer camp), a series that once felt like a celebration of mainstream horror now feels crushed by the deluge of references it can pick from.

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Like actual summer school, Season 2 of this Pretty Little Liars reboot isn’t a total waste, despite how laborious it can sometimes feel. Tabby and Imogen’s best friendship is a series high point, and watching them grow closer and bond through their mutual trauma is as lovely to watch this time around as it was in Season 1. And even when the dialogue is insipid or just plain maddening—like those damn movie references—it’s still more fun to watch Pretty Little Liars: Summer School work out what is and isn’t funny in real-time than it is to endure most of the drivel that ends up on streaming.

But that’s a low bar, and it’s tough to see a once-promising drama fall so far, so fast. Hopefully, now that the Liars are knee-deep in their remedial studies, the second half of Season 2 will see them getting better marks. “A” isn’t just your attempted murderer, girls, it’s also the grade you should be shooting for!

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