The Lying Game Lives Up to Its Name

The Lying Game premiered Monday night on the ABC Family channel, and it was surprisingly a very good show. When I first saw the ads for it, I really didn’t know what to think, but when I saw the show I thought it was entertaining. The story is about two teenage girls, Emma and Sutton, both played by Alexandra Chando. The girls are twins who reunited recently. Emma lived in a dysfunctional foster home, and Sutton was taken in by a rich family. The girls met online and kept in touch through internet chat. One day, Emma runs away from home, and she takes a bus all the way to Arizona, where Sutton lives.

When Sutton meets her at the bus station, Sutton drags her to the bathroom, where she informs Emma of her new plan. She tells her that she has a lead and that she plans on going to California, where she thinks their biological parents are. Then Sutton informs Emma that she will have to take Sutton’s place at home and assume her idenity. Emma, of course, is very confused and doesn’t know what to make of it, and she asks Sutton a bunch of questions regarding the sudden plan.  They switch clothes, and Sutton gives her brief details and promises to keep Emma posted with further information. Sutton also tells Emma about her car and how she can find her way back “home.”

Sutton then leaves for the bus, and Emma takes the car and drives to Sutton’s house, where she sees a large house (the home she will be living in) and suddenly gets a little excited. The previously shown scenes of Sutton’s family life implied she is kind of a brat and doesn’t get along with her parents or sister. So imagine the surprise of Sutton’s family when Emma comes in. She looks just like their daughter, but she has a nicer and more helpful attitude, something everyone notices but doesn’t really think much of. She finds out through Laurel (Sutton’s younger sister, who is the biological child of their parents) that she has to go to a party at her friend’s house. Emma goes up to Sutton’s room and notices a message on the computer that tells her to wear a certain bikini. She turns around and notices that it’s hanging on the closet door, which is near the mirror. Emma goes there and takes a look at the swimsuit before she stands in front of the mirror and rehearses what she thinks she should say. That’s when Laurel peaks her head into the door to remind her sister about Char’s party.

Just as they are leaving the house, Emma tells her “sister” that she can drive the car. Of course Laurel is surprised! When they finally get to the party, Emma meets Sutton’s boyfriend, or who she thinks is Sutton’s boyfriend, Luke. Of course, Emma doesn’t really know what to make of it, and she has to go along with it. Later on at the party, another girl named Nisha comes by to tell people about her party coming up in a few days, and she invites them.

Nisha challenges “Sutton” to a game of tennis, so they play doubles with Luke and Garrett (the mysterious guy who’s been watching Emma). Everyone seemed amazed that Sutton did so well at tennis and beat Nisha at the game. Later on, Emma goes to meet Laurel in the parking lot so they can go home, but her sister tells her that she forgot her gym bag and to go back and get it. When Emma goes back to the tennis court, she sees Luke and Nisha kissing on the courts, and, of course, it upsets her.

When Emma goes to Nisha’s party with her sister and two friends, Luke confronts her about not coming to the party with him, and she tells him that she saw him kiss Nisha on the court. He tells her that it was a mistake, but then Nisha pushed him away and tells Emma to her face that Luke has no interest in her. Then Nisha calls her a poser whose biological mom didn’t even want her, and Sutton hits her before running away from the party. She gets into the car and discovers that Garrett is sitting next to her. He leans over and kisses her, then declares that she isn’t Sutton. Emma stays true to her word and says she is Sutton, then leaves to meet her twin at an abandoned house. She walks inside and calls out for her sister, but all she finds is a necklace. Garrett followed her, and he found her inside the house. Emma confessed who she really was and why she was pretending the be Sutton, and Garrett agreed that they will keep her real idenity a secret until the real Sutton came back, if she ever did. When Emma/Sutton got home, her house was broken into, and the police were there asking her questions.  That was when she discovered that her laptop was stolen. The last scene of the episode features the real Sutton sitting in her car at night, staring at the bright lights of a ferris wheel at the Santa Monica pier, with someone’s about to get into her car.

I am surprised by just how good this show was, judging by the first episode. There is a lot of drama and surprises. I think what really impressed me about this episode is that it was much more family friendly (at least for now) than some of the shows featured on ABC Family.

Did you like last night’s episode as much as I did?