I'm finally feeling for Hanna (Ashley Benson). Granted, whenever we see the flashbacks where she is supposed to be fat, I get annoyed because frankly Alison (Sasha Pieterse) is a bigger girl than she is. Neither of them are at all fat, and 16 year olds watching this have enough body image issues. But just because Hanna is now skinny (ie not wearing baggy clothes) doesn't mean those issues have disappeared. Her boyfriend doesn't want to sleep with her. Whatever his issues are, she's taking that to mean that he doesn't care about her, likely because she's still not physically perfect enough.
And what's worse is that she, at 16, feels that she should be having sex because otherwise her relationship is not valid. If sex is all your relationship is about, it's not valid either!
Emily (Shay Mitchell) is having the complete opposite boyfriend troubles. Ben (Steven Krueger) was pushing her to go places that she wasn't comfortable with, and when she said no, he didn't stop. I don't actually know how often this sort of thing takes place in real life, but in television there are a lot of boys who get sexually frustrated and violent when they are getting mixed physical signals. You have to wonder how much of that is due to the raging hormones, and therefore to what extent do they really have control over their actions? I'm not justifying it in any way, but how much of this problem is because society isn't acknowledging this sort of behaviour as typical and therefore creating more preventative measures that those "date-rape is wrong" videos they play in grade school?
Lucky for Emily, someone was there to help her out, but in the context of the show, the guy's got just the wrong mix of sweet-creepy for me to think it's not going to cost anything down the line.
Aria (Lucy Hale) continues to be my favourite character. Probably because she's not so caught up in the high school BS. Her issue is that she's far more mature than most 16 year olds and has interests far above that too. If Ezra Fitz (Ian Harding) wasn't her teacher, there really wouldn't be that much standing in the way of the relationship. Now part of that is presentation. Ezra really cares about Aria, and wants to do right by her. He isn't the kind of guy who would pressure her into doing something against her will. Then again, they are both at completely different points in their lives and if he expects her to behave as a 20 year old, therefore cramping her ability to react as a 16 year old will, that could be damaging in the long run.
Regardless, Aria's main problem is her issue with her dad and the bitchy woman he had an affair with who is clearly going after their family. I really wanted Aria to just pitch the drink in the woman's face, but I guess that would have made a scene and she really didn't want that.
Finally, Spencer (Troian Bellisario) is the one I consider in the most trouble at the moment. (Yes, even more so that Hanna after she crashed her boyfriend's car). Wren (Julian Morris) comes across as a nice guy, but he is so obviously a sleaze! Spencer is oblivious to his manipulations, claiming that he fell in love with the wrong sister. Please, he was engaged to her. They were planning their wedding and he decided that maybe he'd rather kiss her baby sister instead? And poor naive Spencer, thinking that he's so sweet and resenting her bitchy sister who is unfairly blaming her. Two people kissed, not one, and even if Spencer had spent the last 6 months trying to seduce him and succeeded, he would have let himself get seduced.
Plus, now she's cheating on her test papers because her life is in shambles so she can't concentrate but the fear of doing poorly is too much for her to simply hand in something half-assed.
So, despite all the complications with Alison's murder, the 4 leads are going through some pretty normal teenage crap. Who do you most relate with?
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