If you’d told me 5 years ago that I’d be watching a 39-year-old Rahul Kohli playing the uncle of a teen boy, I’d have looked at you in disbelief. I’ve enjoyed the actor’s performances ever since iZombie, and to think it’s only been a decade since, I’m left wondering how he ended up being reduced to this, but I digress. Over the years, the teen drama space has become so oversaturated that nothing feels authentic or striking anymore. I think the last non-fantasy teen drama I genuinely enjoyed was Dash and Lily. Yes, I may not be a teenager anymore, but I certainly enjoy teen content, and most of these shows have a hint of nostalgia to them to get people reminiscing about their teen years and feeling old. We Were Liars has a pretty interesting premise. A young woman named Cadence wakes up one day and doesn’t remember anything that happened to her the previous summer. When she asks her family what happened, nobody gives her any answers because they’re worried they’ll trigger her PTSD. But what caused this PTSD, and why? What are these precious family secrets that the Sinclairs are trying to keep? And why can’t Cadence remember anything?
The show is based on the bestselling novel of the same name. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t really draw comparisons, but I quite enjoyed the way the story builds and how we’re driven to wonder about the main mystery. Really, rather than Y/A, the show focuses so much of its time on the adults as well that I would consider it more of a family drama, because the whole point is family and how it shapes you as a person. It’s a very character-driven story; however, it feels almost like too much effort is put into making these characters likable, even if they might not be in another context.
Conceptually, I quite enjoyed We Were Liars because it’s a mystery, it allows you to come up with theories about what might have happened, and it takes its time to unravel. There’s more than one subplot, and they’re all somewhat interesting, almost like you want to get in on the neighborhood gossip about these rich people you don’t care about at all. The problem really is the end of the story and how much empathy is expected from us for the rich folk. Yes, it’s true, you’re only a product of your upbringing, but that doesn’t mean you can get away with anything. There’s something very poignant about the message of the show, but it’s decorated by summer, begging you to look the other way and pretend like everything is okay. I mean, I enjoyed the show for what it was until the end, where it completely derails what it’s building up to. To be honest, I did find myself getting slightly emotional in the final act, but I can still, at the same time, say I didn’t like how things concluded.
You can’t talk about a teen show without talking about the cast, because, let’s be real, the whole point is for audiences to form parasocial relationships and feel like they need to know everything about the people who play their favorite or least favorite characters in these shows. You may have forgotten the Gossip Girl reboot, but Emily Alyn Lind, who played Audrey there, plays Cadence, the protagonist of We Were Liars. To be honest, there’s nothing extraordinary about her performance, and it almost feels a little bit dragged out in parts. I somehow felt like she didn’t fit in this role too well, I enjoyed her performance as the proud and unabashed Audrey much more. But this is not to say it was bad or anything; it was just forgettable. The mums are all excellent, and you can’t help but hate them, but I might have to give the crown to the king himself, David Morse, who plays Harris, the granddad. But even his character gets a shade of sympathy, which I really didn’t enjoy.
Shubham Maheshwari is good as Gat, and it’s great to see more South Asian characters in mainstream Hollywood as regular people rather than caricatures. This is also why I’ve always loved everything Rahul Kohli’s been in, because he plays characters with more depth to them than just being Indian. Although in this show there’s definitely some emphasis on that, it’s relevant to the plot, so we can forgive it. I last saw Esther McGregor in Babygirl, and she’s got a magnetic screen presence, always making you look even if she’s not the only blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll in the picture. Joseph Zada plays Johnny, the final liar, and he’s really good, too. I suppose the problem here is that there’s nothing all that relatable about any of the characters except for Gat and Ed, who feel like outsiders in a place they’ve been hanging out at for a decade.
Yes, the mystery of the show is quite intriguing, and I was eager to know what happened right up to the end. I don’t want to give out any spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that, because one wrong word can mess the whole thing up. A big part of the appeal is definitely the thrill of wanting to find out what went wrong, and in that sense, the show does a fantastic job. I just wish the ending lived up to it. I think the show feels like if Outer Banks and The Summer I Turned Pretty had a baby. There are some very pretty dresses to admire and great home decor too. Visually, it feels like any other luxurious, rich people drama, the kind that you feel distant enough from not to care what happens. There’s some profanity, sex, and violence in the show. I’d give We Were Liars 3 out of 5 stars, because despite the heavily disappointing ending, I quite enjoyed the journey there.
