For me, all of this brought to mind the purposeful irrationality of surrealist film and the writings of Luis Buñuel about his collaborations with Salvador Dalí: “Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis."

As is fitting for psychoanalysis, my most profound interaction with PLL came in a dream. At the end of the second season, a girl at the Liars' high school is unmasked as A. But since it was renewed, another A picked up where the first left off, continuing to torment the Liars and raising the stakes. In Season 6, yet another A is unmasked. Then she is killed, and a new A immediately takes her place. It makes no sense. Why would these girls constantly be faced with shadowy, almost omniscient tormentors, one after another? One night, after bingeing episodes, I dreamt that the Liars were all living in a computer simulation, and A wasn’t a person at all -- A was a virus.

I’m not saying that this is the interpretation intended by the writers. But when I woke up, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much PLL resembled the real world. Much of the violence in our world is structural. Police brutality doesn’t occur because “bad apple” police officers all happen to coincidentally kill unarmed black people. Police brutality against people of color is a symptom, and the virus is racism. Violence in PLL is not dependent on one independent actor. When one A dies, another takes her place. A is the virus. The individual A's are just the symptom. On Pretty Little Liars, as in our world, violence is systemic.

Over the seasons, as the Liars try to discover one A identity after another, the show has become famous for its red herrings. The girls follow logical leads, leading them to suspect various characters, but, while they uncover secrets about their town and learn some A identities, their central mysteries remain. In an era where many shows are defined by the success of the main character, there is something fascinating and subversive about a show where the characters never have the answers.

While many procedurals cater to a post-truth environment where Sherlock Holmes knockoffs are always right, Pretty Little Liars is the exact opposite. We watch as these intelligent girls follow all of the leads only to see the answers evaporate again and again. It begins to feel like a post-modern critique of certainty -- a reminder of how difficult it is to ever see the whole picture. Instead of being in a reality set up to ensure that they are always right, the Liars' reality demands that they question everything. Certainty is off the table, and all possibilities must be considered.