Beyond Selidor

Yeah, I was not a fan of the five-years-later story, and I think they should have found a way to end the series when the girls finished secondary school.

You're absolutely right about the way US teen shows (and films) portray the teenage experience — I suppose it is realistic that they're all driving, but it's also helpful from a narrative perspective if all teenage characters have a way to get quickly to whatever random locations the plot demands of them. And there's a sort of aspirational undertone, with everyone being comfortably upper middle class, with huge suburban houses, expensive wardrobes, and so on.

They chickened out when it came to the reveal with Ezra, because they'd already decided that he was Aria's designated endgame love interest, and so they had to walk back anything that painted him in too negative a light — even though what he had done was really awful. Weirdly, though, the fact that they chickened out when it came to the reveal with Toby annoyed me much more, and I remember writing really ranty things about that either here or on Tumblr at some point. [I dug back through my tags and found it here, although I think my thoughts have changed somewhat since 2013!) I couldn't stand Toby, and I hated that the narrative excused and explained away the things he did.