tonight is a night for nerds to post essays

So, I'm watching something like eight shows that are currently on the air that fall into one of two spectrums: generally-enjoy-to-looooooooove or generally-dislike-to-genuine-dislike, except for the total outlier, Pretty Little Liars, which gives me such a plethora of emotion, I can't even. It's a network show featuring a teenage lesbian as a protagonist, which happens exactly never, and she's not tragically single! There are tons of regularly appearing female characters who are the driving actors for the plot! What could be wrong?

( OH RIGHT ALL THAT SUPER PROBLEMATIC SHIT IN THEIR RELATIONSHIPS Seriously, this is an extended discussion of messed up sexual power relationships, which may be triggering. )

* There's also an interesting side discussion here that K and I have had, and that rawles.livejournal.com brought up as well, which is whether the Fields are being coded as white. I haven't read the books and can't comment on how it's done there, but it's particularly interesting with relation to the family's conservativism and military service.