Ravenswood

Watching 'Ravenswood' is like stumbling upon a series nearing its end. The characters and focus are so narrow, you get the feeling you missed important stuff that led us to this point.

So how sad that 'Ravenswood' is only halfway into its first season, and it's taking liberties & shortcuts only long-established shows should be allowed to take.

From the start, 'Ravenswood' makes the assumption that you know & love its characters. Good shows ease into heavy plot, allowing viewers to experience the characters as normal people with real lives/relationships/quirks. Not so with 'Ravenswood'...the show quickly gathers its cast & dumps them into a supernatural mystery.

To make things worse, 'Ravenswood' then makes the assumption that its supernatural mystery payoff is so good...viewers will endure one unexplained supernatural event after another. And that's basically what the show amounts to ("BOO!", 5 minutes later "BOO!", 8 minutes later "BOO!"...tune in next week when..."BOO!"). You are given very little to contextualize what is going on & why, so the show leaves you bored and exhausted.

This was not the original promise of 'Ravenswood'. When the series was first teased on 'Pretty Little Liars'...Ravenswood was presented as a peculiar community inhabited by almost-Amish residents. They seemed to have a unique culture & were fearful of outsiders. You got the sense that whatever their secret was...they were all in-on-it in some way or another. As a viewer, you wanted "in" as well.

But then the series began, and Ravenswood was basically presented like any other podunk town - with mostly boring people, and a couple of creepy weirdos.

I wanted this show to succeed. But as it is executed, I believe it should be quietly brought to an end.

Honestly, some of the people who write reviews for this show are just plain mean. They say "OMG I watched the pilot and it was so freaking horrible, I couldn't go on I had to stop!" blah blah blah blah! So freaking what? A lot of shows don't turn out so perfect at first. I didn't even like Pretty Little Liars when I first watched it but I gave it a shot anyway and now I'm probably one of the biggest fans of the show. Yeah, maybe it's not as good as it could have turned out, but it does get better. The acting might not be as good as Pretty Little Liars, but even they weren't as good as they are now! If you watched the Pilot of the show it was terrible, they had no chemistry and everything! But look at them now, they're just amazing. You have to give them some time to get used to each other. I love Ravenswood after watching the third episode because it really does get interesting. If you really don't like it, then maybe you're not into these type of shows. That's all I can say.

I really liked this series it had a lot of character development potential so i was so sad (and angry) there won't be any more! Nothing got resolved and the characters never got the chance to grow. It had that creepy vibe and the casting was really good (who doesn't love Caleb) and to only give the show 1 season is an outrage!! anyone knows it takes a minimum of 2 seasons to get the ratings up as many viewers has to hear about the show first then fall in love with it. Sad. I am still hoping it can come back (maybe a movie to tie things up like Firefly who is a very loved series who's producers jumped the gun and canceled it!!!) To sum up thing GIVE US A SECOND SEASON!!!!! OR A MOVIE (even if it goes straight to DVD or a TV movie...at this point I will take anything!!!!!!!!!

I just started watching the show. The first 2 episodes where a little short on the plot line, but the third and fourth where great. I personally don't like the way the connection between Pretty Little Liars and Ravenswood was made. It would probably have been a better start for the show if the first episode would actually show how Caleb got to Ravenswood, not making this part be in a special episode on Pretty Little Liars. After all I can just say that this might turn out to be a great show ... even if it is nothing like Pretty Little Liars and it would probably just have been better to keep the shows separatet and not so much connected. Lets wait and see what comes next .. what may the writers have in store for us?

I've barely even heard of PLL, never saw so much as a fragment of a single episode of PLL, so I've got zero "investment" in this series, either positive *or* negative. I'm a blank slate as far as "Ravenswood" is concerned.

That said, I got hooked pretty quickly on it. I was late to the game, hadn't even heard of the show until episode 4-5 was being aired, was curious about it, and viewed several episodes in one sitting. And I liked it, a lot.

I didn't dissect the show and try to make sure it fit neatly into the PLL-universe, I didn't care who's back in PLL-land or what they were doing... I only concerned myself with what was going on in Ravenswood (the town *and* the show).

Maybe the fact that there's "supposed" to be a PLL tie-in is what's polarising people so strongly to either love it or hate it. I don't know, nor do I particularly care. I like *this* show for what it is.

Complaints about "bad acting"? Umm, what kind of acting were you expecting in a show about ghosts and seances and such? We ain't exactly talking "Brian's Song" or even "Gandhi" here.

Things "not making sense" from a PLL perspective? "He wouldn't do that", "She wouldn't do that"... feh. Cut the cord, forget the tie-in, imagine "Ravenswood" as its own series, and rewatch it.

You've got a wonderfully creepy Meg Foster (and I mean that in a good way!), so soft-spoken and genteel but you can't quite guess if she's truly eeee-vil underneath it all and would slip poison in your chamomile tea just for fun. You've also got Steve Cabral playing a taciturn and oh-so-creepy Eddie-Munster-looking undertaker. And of course, you've got a cast of generic good-looking teenagers from pretty much any/every teen-soap-drama-whatever show, all doing their respective things. So what's not to like? I'm disappointed that the show got cancelled, and I hope it's properly wrapped-up within the 10 episodes it has, but even if not, for me it's been a fun ride, at least so far. I might chime in further after I watch the remaining episodes, but I'm hopeful they'll be at least as good as the first few.