The timeline


So, I'm new to the show (discovered it on Netflix and binged it over December). But as I got towards the A reveal it occurred to me that the timeline for seasons 3-5 not only take place in one year, but the bulk of it (from 'that night' in the graveyard to Mona's 'death') all take place between labor day and Thanksgiving. That's absolutely ridiculous. Especially since they went to the trouble of putting in a Halloween episode in S3. It makes it look like everything that happened between the Halloween train and Mona's death happened in what? A month?

Does anyone else think it would've been better if they'd made Alison go missing the weekend before they started their freshman year, had her missing for the 9th grade and spread this stuff out over 3 years? Have Mona's A tenure being grade 10, the return of A/the Maya stuff/redcoat being 11th grade and the return of Alison being their senior year?

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Does anyone else think it would've been better if they'd made Alison go missing the weekend before they started their freshman year, had her missing for the 9th grade and spread this stuff out over 3 years? Have Mona's A tenure being grade 10, the return of A/the Maya stuff/redcoat being 11th grade and the return of Alison being their senior year?


Short answer: yes. PLL pretty much exists outside of actual time. They don't have an actual timeline and when inconsistencies are brought to their attention they find some weak explanation i.e. the Halloween episode in season 4 didn't occur on Halloween then season has a Christmas episode much later etc.

"When life gives you lemons"
Jessica D: sleep with their fathers and have secret lemon childrenĀ 

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The worst thing is Marlene acknowledged this without actually acknowledging it. Even an "Ooops, we really dropped the ball" thing would have been acceptable but instead we get LOL IN ROSEWOOD TIME IS MAGICAL!

The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters.

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Yep! USE YOUR BRAIN IT"S DREAM LOGIC. The Toby flashback explanation is still the worst: We may have possibly made a mistake. Umm I think when 2 million people say you fudged up just admit it and be done with it.

"When life gives you lemons"
Jessica D: sleep with their fathers and have secret lemon childrenĀ 

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'there are no holes in our story'
-things Marlene says

the whole 'tiem has a magical element' in rosewood thing drives me insane. she says it like its something they purposely experimented with 'the writers and i love to play with it' you can hear her sweating as she says this.

maddening.

i dont even mine the scrunching of the timeline, plenty of shows have done it, i mean how i met your mother fit an entire season into one day. but even at one episod ebeing roughly one day they had too many episodes for the halloween to thanksgiving 3 seasons/.


*when life gives you lemons*
Sara: are you a sour lemon?

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Yeah it's just headache inducing for me. I think they realized magical time around the first time they used the ghost girls and brought Ravenswood into the fold so it became their go to explanation/lie for inconsistencies completely ignoring that PLL is not a supernatural show.

"When life gives you lemons"
Jessica D: sleep with their fathers and have secret lemon childrenĀ 

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the ghost girl never sat well with me. others didnt seem to mind as much... if only we knew just how far this would go.


*when life gives you lemons*
Sara: are you a sour lemon?

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Even though there are so many other things that should probably bug me more, the skewampus timeline is the thing that bugs me the most. There was someone who replied to a thread a while back that made a list of things that happened between the beginning of their senior year and Thanksgiving and how much of it happened in the much narrower window between Halloween and Thanksgiving. It was crazy. Pretty much everything that happened from season 3 episode 13 to season 5 episode 13 apparently happened in like 3 and a half weeks. It's ridiculous.

Once upon a time there was a magical place where it never rained. The end.

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Yeah for some reason timelines really bug me haha. I can suspend my disbelief over things like the plot...if they didn't fudge reality then it wouldn't be interesting. And if they didn't have holiday specific episodes, it probably wouldn't bug me as much either. Like when they had the Halloween flashback episode in season 2, that was fine, but the Halloween train places them in a timeline. So we now have what? Wildens disappearance/death, Mona ring released, Spencer's breakdown, the lodge fire, ezra discovering (and then finding out the truth about) his kid, Hannah's mom going to jail, emily's injury, Emily having to move into Alison's house, the whole Ravenswood disaster of a storyline, Spencer's addiction and sobriety, Ezra's book, the whole NY debacle culminating in Mona's death. What an eventful 3 weeks! Haha

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Hellish Eternal November

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Let's not forget how the characters mentioned that certain events took place a few weeks or months ago even though they're still in November which was when that event took place.

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And then as if to make it seem worse, they then jump a few months after Mona's death. Use that time! Fill out your year a bit haha

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Yeah, like why couldn't Mona's death take place a week before Christmas instead of on Thanksgiving? I could buy 2 months rather than 1.

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