SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH SEASON 1 EPISDE 1 SERIES

While the Liars of the original series weren’t necessarily “mean girls,” the series’ flashbacks revealed how they sat idly by as their Queen Bee imposed her will on helpless victims. “Pretty Little Liars” quickly made the point that, even if you weren’t the actual villain or perpetrator of injustices, how you reacted to those things would continue to define you - and would fuel A. The original “Pretty Little Liars” followed a quartet of teen girls who suffered punishment from A as the result of their enabling of the meanest teen girl previously alive, Alison DiLaurentis.

It also makes clear something that differentiates them from both the girls their mothers were and the girls the original series Liars were: These girls are not mean girls. In fact, one of the most impressive things in the series premiere is the way in which “Original Sin” plays each girl’s story as though they are the stars of their own horror movies, not even necessarily the same one. The “original sin” of the mothers (played by a murderer’s row of talent in Carly Pope, Sharon Leal, Lea Salonga, Elena Goode, and Zakiya Young) haunts both them and their daughters, with the latter all capturing the victimhood of a proper Final Girl. Funnily enough, “Original Sin” - despite being a slasher series - is arguably more grounded than the original series. And where the original had a less slasher-focused “I Know What You Did Last Summer” premise to it, “Original Sin” is far more “Scream,” both in terms of Millwood feeling very much like Woodsboro and with the sins of the mother(s) coming back to traumatize the daughter(s). Where the original series saved murders for big moments in premieres and finales, “Original Sin” regularly goes for a body count. So it makes sense that Aguirre-Sacasa would be the one given the reins to this property, alongside Calhoon Bring (a writer on “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”).

Some could even say that “Pretty Little Liars” walked so that “Riverdale” could run right off those murder train rails. Much like “Riverdale,” it was also campy and, for lack of a better term, a wild ride, with characters getting criminal charges for simply holding a shovel, going into blind fugue states, and ending up on murder trains with Adam Lambert. The thing about “Pretty Little Liars,” however, is that it was already dark, moody and mysterious, and sexy in its original iteration - or at least as much as it could be on ABC Family. ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ Trailer Reveals a New Generation Haunted by The Past (Video)

(“New,” because the references in “Original Sin” are more millennial than even the references on the original series were.) It’s difficult to imagine that audiences have even really even been given a chance to miss the original show for long enough before “Riverdale” creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring decided to bring it back in this “new” form. HBO Max’s “Gossip Girl” is a revival, continuing the legacy established by the original series that said farewell less than a decade ago, and now, in the case of “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” (also a “Max Original,” of which five episodes were provided for this review), we’re talking about a series based on something that premiered 12 years ago… and only just ended five years ago. At this point, it’s kind of difficult to say anything new or different about the concept of reboots, reimaginings, and revivals - especially when the particular intellectual property being rebooted, reimagined, or revived hasn’t been off the air that long.

Sabrina the teenage witch season 1 episde 1