Drama
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf
‘The Terminal List: Dark Wolf’ provides more context for the events in ‘The Terminal List.’ It also expands on the original show’s violence and profanity.
Teen-and-youth dystopias can get pretty bleak these days.
Some poor, fictional youth are forced to participate in Fortnite-like killfests where the odds aren’t ever in their favor. Sometimes they’re being chased by cyborg spiders or battling evil scientists or locked in underground cities. Sure, everyone in those worlds may be suspiciously attractive and all, but that never seems to make up for all the unrelenting angst and looming death they must face.
But as we all know—especially if we’re familiar with these dystopian worlds—there are fates worse than death. And if these fictional youth are particularly unlucky, they’ll be thrown into the world of the Pretty Little Liar franchise.
Woe. Woe to them.
No, the world of PLL doesn’t look exactly like a telegenic version of Mad Max: Fury Road. At first glance, the world looks much like our own.
Ah, but as many a character in the franchise knows, looks can be deceiving.
This television franchise (loosely based on a series of novels by Sara Shepard) began un-innocently enough with the apparent death of mean girl Alison DiLaurentis and the related apparent scheming of her four apparent friends. Somehow, Freeform managed to stretch this trashy, soapy mystery into seven long seasons loaded with sex and love and death and fashion, until finally the show—like first-season Alison—was duly buried.
But the series—like fourth-season Alison—has shown a surprising level of after-death exuberance. In fact, the Pretty Little Liars franchise has risen from its heavily-lipsticked grave to haunt television screens once again—this time as Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists. And here’s an irony for you: Alison seems to be the only member of PLL’s original five to survive.
The reformed mean girl now works as a literature teacher at Beacon Heights University, an incredibly prestigious, wildly competitive institution that also believes Agatha Christie novels are the height of prestige literature. (Next semester: the graphic novel version of Moby Dick!) Alison quickly realizes that the school is a dumpster fire of youthful passion, intrigue and betrayal, which you’d think would make the young teacher feel right at home.
The wealthy Hotchkiss family seems to stand at the center of it all—even though its members are dropping like flies. Oh, the family matriarch, Clair, seems to be faring reasonably well thus far, funneling her outrageous fortune into the school and using its high-tech security system to spy on anyone she pleases. But her daughter, Taylor, apparently killed herself a short time ago; and her seemingly slimy son, Nolan, was recently found impaled on an iron barricade. (Nolan was a member of the crew team, but perhaps he should’ve tried for a scholarship in fence-ing!)
‘Course, this being a Pretty Little Liars story, death is rarely fatal. In fact, Taylor popped back to life before the end of the first episode. Nolan seems truly dead for the moment, though, and three of his (ahem) friends may have had something to do with it: Ava, a Kardashian-wanna-be (and Nolan’s former girlfriend); Caitlin, a senator in the making (and Nolan’s former girlfriend); and Dylan, a high-strung cellist (get it?) who’d cheat for Nolan and, truth be told, cheated with him, too. (Nolan clearly got around.)
I called the original Pretty Little Liars a “high-gloss, low-IQ drama,” and that still feels about right. But frankly, this new iteration of the series makes the old one feel like prestige TV.
In terms of its content, The Perfectionists is anything but perfect. If the show was a student at Beacon Heights, it’d major in prurience. (Perhaps the school itself specializes in the libertine arts?) Various characters make out and wake up naked in various beds. And whatever plumbing the students come equipped with doesn’t seem to matter with regard to whom they couple with. Some have estimated that perhaps 5% of the population of the United States identifies as LGBT: In this little corner of Oregon, it seems to be about 10 times that percentage—give or take, depending on the plot’s requirements, the mood of the participants and, perhaps, the barometric pressure.
Violence and death are all part of the class load, too, with blood threatening to ooze out many a natural orifice or unnatural puncture wound at the least provocation.
But, let’s face it, this show’s just dumb: Aggressively so, unapologetically so. And while The Perfectionists seems to be fully aware that it’s trash, it doesn’t even have the self-effacing humor that made the original ironically watchable.
Perhaps the characters themselves don’t necessarily feel as if they’re living in a horrific dystopian world. But I do when I watch it.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Alison DiLaurentis arrives on the campus of Beacon Heights University as a new English literature teaching assistant. But she quickly finds herself enmeshed in a whole new kettle of intrigue, most of which seems to center on pampered playboy Nolan Hotchkiss. And when Nolan is found impaled on a fence toward the end of the episode, Beacon Heights has no shortage of suspects.
Nolan has sex with at least three different people during the episode: First with his girlfriend, Ava, as they swim in a pool. (They make out there, and we see Nolan begin to remove Ava’s swimsuit.) Then, in what looks to be a concerted effort to break up with Ava, he has sex with a model. (Ava walks in on both of them, both clearly naked. We see the model from the back, and part of her rear is visible.) “It was just about the sex for me, and I’m bored of you,” Nolan tells Ava as he dresses. In flashback, we see Nolan and Dylan get into it, as well: The two guys kiss roughly, and Nolan strips off both his shirt and Dylan’s before throwing Dylan onto a nearby bed.
Dylan, incidentally, already has a boyfriend, and we see the two of them kiss and touch each other tenderly. (He talks about growing up in a small down where you “weren’t allowed to be … different.”) Caitlin, another one of Nolan’s old flames, is shown with her new beau: She’s clearly unclothed in his bed (lying on her stomach, her breasts barely covered) as he walks about the place shirtless. We learn that Caitlin has two mothers, though Nolan has pictures of one of them in a compromising position with a man. (We see a shot of the two kissing.) Alison, who’s also a lesbian, is apparently taking a break from her girlfriend, Emily, as well as the children that the two are seemingly raising together. Characters wear formfitting and cleavage-revealing outfits.
The camera spends lots of time lingering over Nolan’s dead body, where we see iron spears bloodily jut through the guy’s torso and a bit of blood trickle from his mouth. Before the apparent murder, Dylan, Ava and Caitlin fantasize together about how they’d do Nolan in—including a scenario that plays out just exactly the way things apparently happened.
Elsewhere, Dylan plays his cello so fiercely that one of his fingers bleeds. Someone brandishes a knife.
We hear references to testicles. A character seems to drink whiskey, and champagne is served at a school function. We learn that Ava’s father embezzled lots of cash—money that Ava still has hidden away. Characters lie and say “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n” and “h—.” Jesus’ name is abused once.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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