Ginny & Georgia, season 1
Mar. 17th, 2021 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleContent notes: spoilers; discussion of self-harm, suicidal ideation, and underage sex
The basic premise of the show is that Georgia, who had Ginny (full name Virginia) when she was fifteen, moves with fifteen-year-old Ginny and nine-year-old Austin to Wellsbury, Massachusetts. Georgia's husband just died, she has promised Ginny and Austin that it will be just the three of them in Wellsbury, and Wellsbury is a wealthy place.
I could not look away from this show, and I'm not sure who it's supposed to be for. It seems like there's too much of the grownups to be a show for teenagers, it seems like there's too much teenage drama to be a show for adults, and there's definitely way too much teenage sex for it to be a family watch together show. There was, frankly, a little too much teenage sex for me. I think it was well done and appropriate to the show, but, uh, apparently I have become an old lady who does not want to watch it.
The teen drama - Ginny makes friends for the first time, starts dating a guy, has a flirtation and sexual relationship with another guy, and briefly becomes very popular - is balanced out by the crime drama question: just how many men has Georgia killed? For Georgia's part of the story, we get flashbacks to her younger years (and just what happened to her husband more recently) interspersed with her life in Wellsbury: she makes friends with the mom across the street, connives her way into a job at the mayor's office, starts dating the mayor, and always gets her way while being sugar sweet (complete with southern accent).
There is a lot going on in the show: one of Ginny's new friends is a very out lesbian with teenage love life drama that's played nicely without it being a big deal that she's a lesbian; Georgia is white, Ginny's dad is Black, and Wellsbury is largely white; the dad across the street is deaf so the whole family signs; the men Georgia kills in her flashbacks are or are showing the potential to be abusive in various ways; there is the requisite teenage Instagram and group chat drama; one of Ginny's new friends has body image issues and her parents are getting divorced; Austin is bullied by the queen bee mom's son while the mom and Georgia keep (politely, of course) going up against each other in the political realm; Georgia's friend at the mayor's office starts dating a guy who turns out to be a private detective investigating Georgia; and so on.
Four things I particularly loved about the show:
Ginny makes friends with three other girls: Max, Abby, and Norah, changing their group name from MAN to MANG. I loved their relationship. It felt realistic to teenage girl friendships without being cringe inducing. They have a call and response farewell they do all the time ("Love you, mean it."/"Hate you, kidding.") that feels like the kind of ritual friend groups develop. They have a dramatic fight, and then snap back to, "Wait, you had sex?" They support each other and keep secrets and hang out.
Ginny dates Hunter, a guy who's supposed to be perfect, but she also has a thing with Marcus, Max's twin brother. She and Marcus have bad sex, then they sext, and then they have much better sex. "I googled some stuff," he tells her. "Not in a creepy way, just research." I really liked that bit of the second sex scene, and the bit afterwards. He tells her he saw her self-harming, and then he tells her that she knows he went through a tough time the year before when his friend died. He says he would be at school and want to scream "Can't you see I need help?" and he thought about dying, and that he's had therapy and medicine and he's doing better, so if she needs to scream that she needs help to someone, she can say it to him. She tells him that she self-harms as a release of pressure. It was such a good, honest, non-preachy conversation about self-harm and depression, and they did a good job with it in that we didn't cut in and out of it to other parts of the story. I was surprised by a similar thing in Bridgerton, so I guess people who make TV - or at least people who make TV for Netflix - are starting to get that viewers want to just watch the characters talk.
Georgia approaches Mayor Paul about a job, telling him that she can get things done. She meets him at the local dining spot, and tells her that Joe, the owner, has a great scam going ("I love a good scam," Georgia says): he has interns run the restaurant for food service credit and other interns run the farm for ag credit. She then meets Cynthia, a mom/realtor/upstanding community member, who makes sure that Georgia will be at the meeting to express their concerns about the lack of organic lunch options for the kids. Georgia shows up at the meeting and presents a solution: Joe has agreed to do that at a reasonable price. Because, as he says to her, she threatened to report him to the labor board for treating interns as employees. Georgia gets the job working for the mayor and then starts dating him. Paul is apparently a really good guy, who talks about wanting to make a difference and is really great with Austin. Then Zion, Ginny's dad, comes to visit and stays with the family. Georgia sleeps with him, and he asks her to come to Boston with him and be a real family. Georgia tells Paul that she slept with Zion, and he asks her, "Did you get it out of your system?" He says he knew as soon as Zion showed up that she was going to sleep with him. They're having a tense conversation, and then he goes into his office, comes back, and slaps an engagement ring down on the desk. He tells her he bought it after their first date, but he knew when she pulled the school lunch stunt that she was like him: they both want power. It was such a good reveal! I genuinely never guessed how much he was into power rather than being the basic good guy he appeared to be.
Through the flashbacks, we learn that Georgia first heard about Wellsbury just after she found out she was pregnant with Ginny. She was at a rest stop when a Wellsbury school field trip stopped there. She chatted with a guy about it who was kind to her - he shared his sandwich, talked to her about his dreams about having horses, and gave her his Ray-Bans - and we get the sense that she's been working her way toward Wellsbury and what it can give her kids (she says more than once in her voiceovers that she will do anything "to protect my kids the way no one ever protected me") ever since. And then we find out the guy is Joe. I have a lot of feelings about this! She told Ginny that the guy who gave her the sunglasses kept her going. The first time we met Joe, I thought, "Ah, the love interest," and then wasn't sure because of Mayor Paul, and then it turned out that they really do have a genuine connection. I love it!
I hope the show gets renewed, because I would easily watch another ten hours of it.
The basic premise of the show is that Georgia, who had Ginny (full name Virginia) when she was fifteen, moves with fifteen-year-old Ginny and nine-year-old Austin to Wellsbury, Massachusetts. Georgia's husband just died, she has promised Ginny and Austin that it will be just the three of them in Wellsbury, and Wellsbury is a wealthy place.
I could not look away from this show, and I'm not sure who it's supposed to be for. It seems like there's too much of the grownups to be a show for teenagers, it seems like there's too much teenage drama to be a show for adults, and there's definitely way too much teenage sex for it to be a family watch together show. There was, frankly, a little too much teenage sex for me. I think it was well done and appropriate to the show, but, uh, apparently I have become an old lady who does not want to watch it.
The teen drama - Ginny makes friends for the first time, starts dating a guy, has a flirtation and sexual relationship with another guy, and briefly becomes very popular - is balanced out by the crime drama question: just how many men has Georgia killed? For Georgia's part of the story, we get flashbacks to her younger years (and just what happened to her husband more recently) interspersed with her life in Wellsbury: she makes friends with the mom across the street, connives her way into a job at the mayor's office, starts dating the mayor, and always gets her way while being sugar sweet (complete with southern accent).
There is a lot going on in the show: one of Ginny's new friends is a very out lesbian with teenage love life drama that's played nicely without it being a big deal that she's a lesbian; Georgia is white, Ginny's dad is Black, and Wellsbury is largely white; the dad across the street is deaf so the whole family signs; the men Georgia kills in her flashbacks are or are showing the potential to be abusive in various ways; there is the requisite teenage Instagram and group chat drama; one of Ginny's new friends has body image issues and her parents are getting divorced; Austin is bullied by the queen bee mom's son while the mom and Georgia keep (politely, of course) going up against each other in the political realm; Georgia's friend at the mayor's office starts dating a guy who turns out to be a private detective investigating Georgia; and so on.
Four things I particularly loved about the show:
Ginny makes friends with three other girls: Max, Abby, and Norah, changing their group name from MAN to MANG. I loved their relationship. It felt realistic to teenage girl friendships without being cringe inducing. They have a call and response farewell they do all the time ("Love you, mean it."/"Hate you, kidding.") that feels like the kind of ritual friend groups develop. They have a dramatic fight, and then snap back to, "Wait, you had sex?" They support each other and keep secrets and hang out.
Ginny dates Hunter, a guy who's supposed to be perfect, but she also has a thing with Marcus, Max's twin brother. She and Marcus have bad sex, then they sext, and then they have much better sex. "I googled some stuff," he tells her. "Not in a creepy way, just research." I really liked that bit of the second sex scene, and the bit afterwards. He tells her he saw her self-harming, and then he tells her that she knows he went through a tough time the year before when his friend died. He says he would be at school and want to scream "Can't you see I need help?" and he thought about dying, and that he's had therapy and medicine and he's doing better, so if she needs to scream that she needs help to someone, she can say it to him. She tells him that she self-harms as a release of pressure. It was such a good, honest, non-preachy conversation about self-harm and depression, and they did a good job with it in that we didn't cut in and out of it to other parts of the story. I was surprised by a similar thing in Bridgerton, so I guess people who make TV - or at least people who make TV for Netflix - are starting to get that viewers want to just watch the characters talk.
Georgia approaches Mayor Paul about a job, telling him that she can get things done. She meets him at the local dining spot, and tells her that Joe, the owner, has a great scam going ("I love a good scam," Georgia says): he has interns run the restaurant for food service credit and other interns run the farm for ag credit. She then meets Cynthia, a mom/realtor/upstanding community member, who makes sure that Georgia will be at the meeting to express their concerns about the lack of organic lunch options for the kids. Georgia shows up at the meeting and presents a solution: Joe has agreed to do that at a reasonable price. Because, as he says to her, she threatened to report him to the labor board for treating interns as employees. Georgia gets the job working for the mayor and then starts dating him. Paul is apparently a really good guy, who talks about wanting to make a difference and is really great with Austin. Then Zion, Ginny's dad, comes to visit and stays with the family. Georgia sleeps with him, and he asks her to come to Boston with him and be a real family. Georgia tells Paul that she slept with Zion, and he asks her, "Did you get it out of your system?" He says he knew as soon as Zion showed up that she was going to sleep with him. They're having a tense conversation, and then he goes into his office, comes back, and slaps an engagement ring down on the desk. He tells her he bought it after their first date, but he knew when she pulled the school lunch stunt that she was like him: they both want power. It was such a good reveal! I genuinely never guessed how much he was into power rather than being the basic good guy he appeared to be.
Through the flashbacks, we learn that Georgia first heard about Wellsbury just after she found out she was pregnant with Ginny. She was at a rest stop when a Wellsbury school field trip stopped there. She chatted with a guy about it who was kind to her - he shared his sandwich, talked to her about his dreams about having horses, and gave her his Ray-Bans - and we get the sense that she's been working her way toward Wellsbury and what it can give her kids (she says more than once in her voiceovers that she will do anything "to protect my kids the way no one ever protected me") ever since. And then we find out the guy is Joe. I have a lot of feelings about this! She told Ginny that the guy who gave her the sunglasses kept her going. The first time we met Joe, I thought, "Ah, the love interest," and then wasn't sure because of Mayor Paul, and then it turned out that they really do have a genuine connection. I love it!
I hope the show gets renewed, because I would easily watch another ten hours of it.