Line #39 YMMV/LittleWhiteLie


1	* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Many fans believe that Tanya is the real hero as she persecutes Sami for mostly unselfish reasons, whereas Sami is only concerned with her own goals and keeping the truth hidden.
2	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: "It's Over Now."
3	* CultClassic: The series was created in hopes of attracting industry attention and serving as a pilot for a full-length cable TV series -- a plan that, bluntly, failed miserably. Even the backup plan of securing sponsorship for another season as a short-form web series failed. When ''Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical'' was a surprise hit, Eric Kahn Gale describes ''begging'' Matt and Nick Lang to rerelease ''Little White Lie'' on their channel just so someone would see it and it wouldn't be AllForNothing. Lo and behold, the show has acquired a dedicated following among hardcore Starkid fans, with the cast expressing awe that there's now Little White Lie fanfiction and [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments huge cheers for the Little White Lie medley]] at live shows. Gale describes LWL's second life as tremendously gratifying, even if his response to requests for a Season 2 is [[RunningGag "It's over now"]].
4	* DesignatedHero: Sami, who despite being the protagonist, continuously lies and takes credit for Kevin's work.
5	* DesignatedVillain: Despite being incredibly cruel to those around her, Tanya honestly cares about Kevin's welfare, is raising money to pay for his hospital bills and her only real "evil" acts are trying to uncover the truth that Sami stole Kevin's music. [[spoiler: Granted, her main reason for caring about Kevin is because of guilt over hitting him with her car and putting him in the hospital in the first place, but she does feel genuine remorse.]]
6	* FridgeBrilliance: The S2 synopsis reveals that all of Kevin's songs were inspired by his hopeless crush on Sami. In that light, the lyrics of "It's Over Now", his most recent song and the one Little White Lie steals to be their BreakthroughHit, is a song about ''giving up'' on chasing Sami and striking out for success on his own terms. He was likely ''just about to'' get up the courage to release his music publicly, if not for Sami's audition poster convincing him to try to get close to her one last time. And then a freak car accident changed everything...
7	* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments: The "Duder the spy" song.
8	-->''Duder's a spyyyyyyyyy, Duder's a spyyyyyyyyy (Duder! Duder! Duder!)''
9	* HarsherInHindsight: The co-composer of the music on the show, Grant Anderson, was involved in a near-fatal car accident during filming, and ended up in a coma and suffering serious brain damage. Eric Kahn Gale describes being nearly floored by the irony of how the real-life situation mirrored the plot he'd written for the show.
10	** TearJerker: Anderson recuperated enough to attend the premiere of the show in a wheelchair, but his memory was damaged enough that he didn't actually remember any of the work he did on it. (This ''also'' mirrors the planned plot for Season 2, where Kevin initially suffers from amnesia before hearing his music jogs his memory.)
11	* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments:
12	** Say what you will about the band-obsessed student body, but they're certainly not transphobic. When Tanya starts a rumor that Sami is a trans man who's soon going in for affirmation surgery, what's the response of every single person who hears it? Whole-hearted support. By the time the rumor has spread to the whole WildTeenParty, Tanya is the only one who finds the notion at all funny, and Sami is publicly congratulated. When Sami is nonetheless humiliated and upset, everyone confronts Tanya about how disrespectful it is, not just to Sami by spreading lies about her, but also to ''actual'' trans people by making a joke out of them. It's all very open-minded for a bunch of rowdy teenagers.
13	*** On a meta level, it's very poignant in light of [=StarKid=] beginning to see one of their own {{Creator Thumbprint}}s as transphobic--they consider their long tradition of casting male actors as comically creepy, shrill, or unattractive women as an OldShame that mocks trans women, especially in light of Creator/JKRowling, to whom they owe the source material for their [[Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical breakout hit]], going public and unwavering in her own deeply-held anti-trans views. Whatever missteps [=StarKid=] may have made which they're now trying to atone for, this shining moment in their very first project together proves they've always had their LGBTFanbase's backs.
14	** Another a meta form of Fridge Heartwarming: This is a show about a couple of frustrated creative young people who find fame and fortune seem totally out of their reach, until fame and fortune suddenly hit them all at once from an unexpected source. That mirrors the real-life journey of Creator/TeamStarKid, who worked incredibly hard on this series only to watch it sink without a trace -- until it suddenly found an audience after their silly [[Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical Harry Potter parody]] went viral.
15	* HilariousInHindsight:
16	** Toby describes Little White Lie's song as [[Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical "Totally Awesome"]]
17	** One scene has Tanya hopping up onto a table which caused many viewers to expect her to start rolling around on it like [[Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical Draco]].
18	** For Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical fans, the simple fact that this show features Harry and Draco in a SlapSlapKiss style romance. (And that Tanya is an archetypal DracoInLeatherPants.)
19	** Duder, [[Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical like Ron]], believes that you shouldn't ever tell girls you like them, because it makes you look like an idiot.
20	** Meredith Stepien as Tanya's rival mean girl, for people who've seen {{Theatre/Firebringer}}.
21	** Kevin's aunt to Tanya:
22	-->[[Film/WeNeedToTalkAboutKevin You should come by for tea some time, so we can talk about Kevin!]]
23	** Ginny's song "Harry" from Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical first appears here as "Sami" (WordOfGod is they ran out of time to write songs and assumed no one would have seen this show). The hilarity comes in with the fact that this song is sung by Darren Criss, Harry's actor, making the two songs when juxtaposed sound like an ironic AllLoveIsUnrequited situation. (Starkid actually did arrange "Harry" and "Sami" into a duet for the 2012 Apocalyptour.)
24	** Zach, played by Brian Holden, [[TechnologyMarchesOn complains about how time consuming it is to burn Little White Lie's promo CDs]]. In real life, Brian and the Langs decided it wasn't worth the effort to burn [=DVDs=] of Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical for the whole cast and decided to just upload the recording to Website/YouTube instead. This random decision is the entire reason Creator/TeamStarkid now exists.
25	** Toby trying to break the ice with Sami backstage by pointing out they're both wearing ties got this reaction from people thanks to Blaine's signature suit-and-tie look on Series/{{Glee}} -- and thanks to the ThrowItIn "Fuck the tie!" moment in Theatre/AVeryPotterSeniorYear.
26	** Having a band and a song named "Love Grenade" was probably originally a reference to Music/TomJones' "Sex Bomb", only for Music/TedNugent to actually drop an album with a title track called "Love Grenade" in 2007 (the same time this show went live).
27	** Tanya's awkward dance moves would later go viral as part of the "I Don't Really Wanna Do the Work Today" dance from Theatre/{{Firebringer}}.
28	** The whole joke with Meredith being InnocentlyInsensitive about the rumor Tanya started that Sami is going to come out as trans became this after Meredith Stepien came out as non-binary in RealLife in 2020.
29	* HoYay: Between Sami and Tanya, especially Tanya laying her hand on Sami's arm and Sami slapping it away with "Don't touch me."
30	* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: DesignatedHero and DesignatedVillain they might be, but the high-stakes race between Sami and Tanya--Sami trying to find and delete Kevin's website before Tanya finds it and discovers his music--is thrilling and full of tension.
31	** Out-of-universe, the SPACE Tour contains an epic moment where Creator/LaurenLopez and Brian Holden teased the possibility of Little White Lie Season 2 coming out in 2012... before definitively stating [[{{Troll}} it was not]] because "Little White Lie is over. It's over now" and then ''immediately'' segueing into [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic "It's Over Now"]].
32	* MoralEventHorizon: If you didn't think Sami's initial decision to steal Kevin's music was this, then she probably crosses it when she '' deletes Kevin's personal website'' just to keep from getting caught. Everything he hosted there other than his music -- blog posts, videos, fanfic -- is now irretrievably gone. Keep in mind she still doesn't know if he'll ever wake up.
33	* NarmCharm: Lauren Lopez's FakeCutie act as Tanya Freemont is exaggerated to the point of absurdity and comes across more as a TomBoy doing a mean impression of a GirlyGirl than realistic acting (even her CreepyHighPitchedVoice is clearly several tones higher than her natural speaking voice). It is, however, hilarious to watch -- Eric Kahn Gale admitted it was nothing like his impression of what an AlphaBitch should be like but rewrote Tanya's lines to fit Lauren's take because he enjoyed it so much. Arguably Tanya's obvious fakeness makes the glimpses we get BeneathTheMask that much stronger, especially Tanya's tearful rant at the end of the show where Lauren speaks in her own voice for the first time.
34	** Tanya's relentlessly artificial persona may now be fully justified with the reveal that she's been following the instructions in Literature/TheBullyBook.
35	* RetroactiveRecognition: Aside from all the members of Creator/TeamStarkid in the cast, there's also the female vocalist for the ThemeTune "Caught in the Lie" and "Duder's a Spy", Michelle Chamuel, who became known nationally as a member of {{Music/Usher}}'s team on the 2013 season of Series/TheVoice.
36	** Most of the future Starkid troupe members that appear here are in named speaking roles, but there's also a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by Dylan Saunders as a random popular kid who yells "Hey, Duder!"
37	* TearJerker:
38	** Duder trying to work up the confidence to talk to girls with the help of Tanya, before admitting his crush on her, only for her to awkwardly leave to find Toby.
39	** The Sami song is also pretty tear jerking.
40	* TheScrappy: Sami. She's an UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: We're not ''supposed'' to like her. Elona Finlay, the actress who played Sami, was very glad that people picked up on this -- in fact, she said many PetTheDog moments for Sami were edited out of the final cut of the series so people would understand how unforgivable her actions are.
41	* {{Wangst}}: The defining trope of The Ex-Boyfriends and their music. A TakeThat to 2000s {{Emo}}.
42	* TheWoobie:
43	** Kevin, so much.
44	** Arguably Duder, he seems like a honestly decent kid who defers to his sister on what they should do, though he would rather quit and be honest more than once. His confession of his feelings for Tanya are heartfelt and sincere that he honestly likes her for who she is, not how popular she is with the "in crowd".

Context YMMV / LittleWhiteLie