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The Perfectionists, based on the book series written by Pretty Little Liars author Sara Shepard, takes place in Beacon Heights, Oregon.
Welcome to Beacon Heights University. A place where excellence is not an option, it's a requirement. Students are the best and the brightest. Getting in is hard, but keeping up is even harder. Students at BHU will do anything to stay on top. They thrive on pressure and strive for perfection, but no one's perfect. Watch out, the pressure is building to a breaking point. Someone is about to snap and kill.
Alison DiLaurentis has left Rosewood behind to join the faculty at BHU as a teaching assistant. Alison is settling into her new house when Mona suddenly appears behind her holding a large knife and a pie.
Last time we saw Mona, she was in France keeping Mary and Alex Drake hostage in a Paris doll shop. “Yeah, that was great for a while. But eventually, the reasons I was there… escaped me,” she explains. Would love to see a flashback showing how Mary and Alex escaped!
After Paris, Mona did game design for Hotchkiss Industries. Now Mona works at BHU helping with recruitment and admissions. Mona was the one who hired Alison for BHU. She didn't tell Alison, knowing she wouldn't have come.
Once arch enemies, it now seems that Mona and Alison have some common ground. Mona needed a fresh start. "It's a lot easier to earn people's trust when you haven't already given them reasons not to trust you," she tells Alison.
Alison can relate, which is bad news for Emison fans. When we last saw Emison, they were engaged and raising twin girls (Lily and Grace). Alison and Emily aren't a happy couple anymore, though. "Emily loved me, she just can't get past the past," Alison says. "We're happy, and then we're not. It all comes back to trust."
Alison doesn't want to be the same mean girl that she was in high school. She really wants to help the students at BHU.
When Alison leaves the room, Mona stares at herself in the mirror. "Alison's as determined as she ever was, don't you think?" Mona creepily asks.
The next day Mona and Alison take a tour of the campus. We learn that BHU was built by the Hotchkiss family. Peter and Claire Hotchkiss had a daughter, Taylor, who killed herself a year ago. Her brother, Nolan Hotchkiss, is in Alison's class. Coincidentally, Alison is living in Taylor's house.
Alison DiLaurentis starts off her English Literature class by discussing And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. We meet the new characters, who are all in Alison's class.
Ava Jalali (Sofia Carson) is a YouTuber trying to grow her channel. She wants to make a name for herself in the fashion world. She doesn't want to be associated with her father's crimes. Apparently, her father embezzled millions of dollars from his clients. Then Ava's mother and father took off. Her father left Ava with the house and a bag of cash.
Dylan Walker (Eli Brown) is a gifted cellist who attends BHU on a music scholarship. Music was his way out of the small town he grew up in.
Caitlin Park-Lewis (Sydney Park) is a driven student who plans on taking her mother's Senate seat after her mom runs for president.
Nolan Hotchkiss (Chris Mason) comes from a rich, powerful family. It looks like he has the perfect life, but all is not what it seems.
Nolan's done his research on Alison. He tells Alison that she knows all about payback. He also cryptically tells Alison "My mother's gonna say to you that you're here because you remind them of my sister. It's more than that."
Nolan is used to getting what he wants. After class, Nolan insists that Caitlin come to his house for dinner. He hates being alone with his parents.
Nolan also demands that Dylan to write his and Ava's English papers, just like he did last year. Dylan initially says that he doesn't have time to write Ava's papers. He's trying out for symphony chair. Nolan insists that Dylan figure out a way to juggle it all.
Caitlin isn't happy with Nolan's attitude. She thought he'd be different after Taylor's death. Dylan points out that Nolan didn’t cry at Taylor's funeral. Caitlin suspects that Nolan is blackmailing Dylan and offers to help.
"We're his fake friends, all right? We just hang out to make it look like he has the perfect posse," Dylan says.
Alison angrily confronts Mona about Nolan Hotchkiss, accusing her of telling him about her background. Mona insists that she didn’t tell anyone, especially not Nolan. He's super smart, but dangerous. Mona warns Alison to stay away from him.
It won't be easy for Alison to stay away from Nolan's drama, though. While grading English assignments, Alison notices the similarities between Dylan, Nolan and Ava's papers.
Meanwhile, Dylan's boyfriend Andrew confronts him about the papers. He doesn’t want Dylan to get expelled. And he has no idea why Dylan hangs out with a douche like Nolan.
We also meet Caitlin's British boyfriend Jeremy. Jeremy isn't okay with Caitlin pretending to be Nolan's girlfriend. Turns out Nolan is blackmailing her with photos of her mother cheating on her other mother. Caitlin's mother is going to run for president. Those pictures would ruin her political career.
Nolan needs everyone to think he is dating Caitlin, so he can hide his secret relationship with Ava. Nolan's mother, Claire (Kelly Rutherford), has high expectations. She wants him to be captain of the crew team, even though he wants more time to study. She also wants him to date Caitlin. She doesn't approve of Ava because of her father's criminal past. Nolan will do whatever it takes to pretend to be the perfect son.
Claire seems to suspect that Nolan is keeping secrets. She requests active surveillance on Nolan. She's got complete access the Beacon Guard, the campus security system.
Claire Hotchkiss throws a back to school party for both the faculty and students. Alison finally gets to meet Claire at the party. Claire was impressed by Alison's scholarship application. She was inspired by Alison's journey from mean girl to mentor. Alison reminds Claire of Taylor. Taylor was also a teacher. And Alison and Taylor bear a striking resemblance to each other.
Nolan leaves party in a hurry. He goes to a place in the woods that is out of the Beacon Guard's range. Nolan already knows that his mom ordered surveillance on him and Ava. He needs to meet with the person on the other end of the phone.
Back on campus, Alison confronts Dylan about the plagiarized papers. She knows Dylan has a music scholarship. He'll be expelled if she reports him.
Dylan can't tell Alison the truth because Nolan is blackmailing him. Dylan cheated on Andrew with Nolan. Nolan's been using that to force Dylan to write the English papers.
Alison gives Dylan 24 hours to tell the truth. If he doesn't come clean, she'll report the plagiarism.
Meanwhile, Ava walks in on Nolan and another woman having sex. Ava wants to talk and move past it, but Nolan says that he's bored of her. Devastated, Ava tells him to get out. "Get a gripe. Desperate isn't a good look on you," he tells her. Clearly something else is going on, though. He obviously meant for her to catch him cheating.
Nolan drives to a cabin in the woods, but he doesn't notice a car following him. Turns out Nolan's sister Taylor isn't dead after all. She faked her death and has been hiding out in the cabin in the woods.
Nolan says that he broke up with Ava to protect her, but he knows she'll never believe anything he says. Taylor offers to talk to Ava when everything is over.
Taylor and Nolan are trying to uncover the truth about the Beacon Guard surveillance. They know Beacon Guard is being used to spy on a select group of students, but they don't know why. They need help, but who can they trust?
Ava, Caitlin and Dylan meet at the safe zone in the woods. Nolan took them all to that spot before. The three of them are fed up with Nolan's threats and blackmail. They all fantasize about Nolan dying. Dylan wants to see Nolan drown in his pool. Ava wants him to have a heart attack in the middle of sex. And Caitlin says they should all push Nolan off the roof, letting him get impaled by the spiked fence below.
Alison notices a tear in the wallpaper in Taylor's house has suddenly been fixed. Alison peels away the wallpaper and finds the message THEY'RE WATCHING. (Does this remind you of the threatening messages the Liars always got from "A" in PLL?)
Nolan meets with a mystery person on the roof. It's a safe zone where they aren't monitored by Beacon Guard. Nolan apologizes for being such an asshole. He says time is running out. He tells the mystery person that Taylor is alive. He asks for help, but the mystery person pushes Nolan off the roof. Nolan is impaled on the spikes of a gate.
A crowd looks on in horror. Dylan says Nolan's death was exactly like Caitlin's fantasy. Ava breaks down when she sees Nolan's body.
Mona storms into a bathroom and stares at the mirror. "What the hell just happened? Was this our fault? Answer me, damn it!" she demands. Turns out Mona isn't crazy. She's communicating with people in a control room filled with surveillance screens.
A mystery woman orders Mona to go to her safe space.
Thoughts:
First off, how awesome was the theme song for The Perfectionists? Pretty Little Liars fans will immediately recognize the lyrics "two can keep a secret if one of them is dead" from the song "Secret" by The Pierces. The theme song for The Perfectionists is a remixed version of the song by Denmark + Winter. Work by Denmark + Winter was also used in Pretty Little Liars. Denmark + Winter's "Stand by Me" was used for the Haleb wedding in the last season of PLL.
The premise of the show is intriguing and having Mona and Alison is an added bonus. The premiere left us with a lot of questions. Why did Taylor fake her own death? What is the sinister purpose behind Beacon Guard? Who killed Nolan? It must have been someone he trusted. And who is Mona working with?
The parallels to Pretty Little Liars are also interesting. A blonde doppelgänger of Alison fakes her own death, much like Alison did in PLL. Everyone has secrets and someone is always watching. And a group of friends is being blackmailed with those secrets.
Hopefully it will last longer than the short-lived Pretty Little Liars spinoff Ravenswood. The Perfectionists is off to a rough start. Only 0.457 million viewers tuned in for the premiere. By comparison, the Pretty Little Liars series premiere had 2.47 million viewers and the Ravenswood premiere had 2.116 million viewers. On the plus side, The Perfectionists has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment.
Hopefully more viewers will tune in next Wednesday at 8PM on Freeform to find out what happens next.
What did you think of The Perfectionists series premiere? Was it everything you wanted it to be? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!
perfectionists is better than the original pretty little liars
ReplyDeleteThe Perfectionists does feel a bit more darker and edgier than Pretty Little Liars. Loving the spinoff so far!
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