Ravenswood -- And So It Begins
The writers forget why Caleb came to Ravenswood
Not to mention a few other minor details. Like the weird siren going off signaling all the town's folks to go and worship at the sacred angel statue in the graveyard.
In the mid season finale for Pretty Little Liars, Hanna called Caleb and told them about the strange lair they found in Ravenswood filled with computers she couldn't get access to. So he hopped on the bus to see if he could hack into the computers and see what he could find out about A. However in the pseudo Halloween episode for Pretty Little Liars that reason was all but forgotten and Hanna asked Caleb to stay behind to look after some chick she knew for two seconds and who furthermore didn't even tell her Caleb was in town looking for Hanna.
In retrospect it may be good the real reason Caleb came to Ravenswood is gone and forgotten. Now maybe both shows can separate and Pretty Little Liars can stop being used as a commercial to promote Ravenswood. ABC Family seems to want to sell this show badly. There replayed it three times in one night. That kinds of wreaks of desperation.
Anyway, on the bus to Ravenswood, Caleb meets Miranda who is also headed there to see her uncle, the local mortician. She tries to steal a creepy passengers chips and when she changes her mind about going to Ravenswood, said creepy partner makes to get off at the same stop convincing her to stay on the bus.
When she and Caleb arrive, he heads to the cemetery looking for Hanna, while Miranda heads to her uncle's house. She finds Hanna locked in a phone booth inside the house and lets her out, but fails to mention to her that Caleb is in town looking for her.
The moment that most likely earned the character of Miranda some ire as well as Ravenswood when the scene they thought would be proof of their theory that Ali has a twin turned out to be a Miranda flashback. An early screen cap was released of a child standing between two caskets and onliners assumed it was Ali and that the two caskets were children's caskets. The truth was the two caskets held Miranda's parents.
Anyway, when Caleb and Hanna finally reunited, she insisted Caleb must stay in town to look after and protect this stranger she's known for two seconds. Considering Hanna feels Ravenswood is dangerous and her number one priority has always been keeping Caleb safe, that made no sense. But in retrospect since Caleb's reason had nothing to do with Pretty Little Liars hopefully now the two shows can separate and become two separate entities.
Both Caleb and Miranda see gravestones with pictures that look just like them. Meanwhile other graveyard shenanigans include Luke and Olivia's mother trying to scrub Black Widow off her dead husband's tombstone. Seems he was murdered and the town thinks she did it. Luke later confesses to Olivia he also believes it's true.
Ravenswood seems like a mean little town. Olivia is in the parade as the parade queen it seems and someone in the crowd throws red paint all over her [or is it blood?] Remy is into Luke big time but her father doesn't want her hanging around with him, Apparently the kids are being judged guilty by association.
Remy's mom has just returned from Afghanistan and she says she shouldn't have survived. Remy says this happened in the past when a war hero returned and it lead to five local teens being killed. And it seems history is about to repeat itself.
When Caleb, Miranda, Olivia, Luke and Remy are driving in a car together they drive off the local bridge. A dark figure with a face that looks like Linda Blair in the Exorcist was standing in the middle of the road and they swerved to miss her.
Once the car is submerged in water the teens find it's like it's hermetically sealed or something as they can't get out. They begin screaming as the car fills up with water.
I noticed the show has a few similarities to Pretty Little Liars. Both Emily and Remy have a parent in the service who just returned from Afghanistan. There's a teacher named Benjamin Price who just screams Ezra Fitz. Hopefully there won't be another teacher/student romance. And both shows started out with a murder. Only in this case we don't even know anything about how the man died.
Unfortunately, it lacks the charm of Pretty Little Liars. All the hokey supernatural stuff doesn't help. There was the angel statue crying blood and a shower curtain trying to drown Caleb while he was in the tub. None of it is very scary or convincing.
And a lot of elements they introduced about Ravenswood in Pretty Little Liars has been changed in the actual show. As previously mentioned there's no siren summoning people to worship at the angel statue like a pack of zombies. And Grunwald who seemed the Queen Bee of Ravenswood is just a lowly housekeeper for the town mortician.
Personally, I don't think at this point that this show is going to make it no matter how many times ABC Family re-shows it to shove it down everyone's throats. Maybe it'll get better as it goes alone. I'll give it a shot for a few episodes and see if it becomes anymore engaging than the pilot was. So far none of the characters were particularly engaging and neither is this whole story of Caleb and Miranda being look-a-likes for the teens that died years ago. Let me guess? Are the other three twins involved in the car crash also doppelgangers for the teens that died years before.
Supposedly one of the teens will die in the crash but still be hanging around so they'll have four lead teens as the stars of the show with a dead teen that still hangs around showing up even though they're dead. Sounds about like a B version of Pretty Little Liars, doesn't it?