SPOILERS for Good Girls and Star Wars movies!
Read at Your Own Risk!
Good Girls
is Cancelled
Good!
I’ve opined
a bit about Good Girls in my Patreon. But now I feel compelled to make a public
post because it’s been a minute since I’ve posted any musings about shows and
movies in this blog!
Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers
Over the past year, like all of you, I’ve been confined to home and watching way more TV than I do in “real life.” I’ve binge-watched dozens of shows and movies and documentaries. Yes, I’m part of the serial killers and cults watchers or as SNL calls it, “murder shows”. I think I’ve seen almost all the shows as well as conspiracy theories and con artists on most of the streaming services.
Then I
stumbled upon a show called Good Girls on Netflix a couple of months ago. It
was rated very highly in the weekly ratings here in Canada, in the top ten, so
I clicked and was hooked.
That first season blew my socks off. I was invested. I loved the concept of moms clumsily robbing a supermarket, where ONE OF THEM WORKS. Each of the three main characters had a good reason, a compelling reason, to rob a store for money. After all, it’s the States and one of the characters had a child with a health issue and apparently, if you live in the States, you need buckets of cash just to survive, unlike here in Canada, where those same procedures would be covered under the health care act that everyone pays into. (And, no, our taxes actually aren’t higher than the States when you really look at what paying your taxes gets you with regard to social services and such.) If the States health care system wasn’t such a mess, that one character would never have had to rob anyone!
Anyway, the
three housewives rob the store and then get sucked into a gang situation as the
store was controlled by the mob, or so it seemed at the time. However, that
storyline has disappeared, and that’s the issue with Good Girls.
Disappearing
storylines and disappearing characters.
And lack of motivation.
And lack of character
growth.
I watched the first two seasons on Netflix. Then was able to stream the third season and catch up with the fourth. When I had first stumbled upon the show, I didn’t realize it was still going on.
I watched the terrible fourth-season mid-season double episode the other day. Good Girls filming had been disrupted cos of the pandemic, so they were late with the fourth season. They aired a couple of episodes then took a break for something like five weeks. It was back on Thursday for a couple of hours. I had a bit of hope that maybe they had pulled up their socks with all that time to see how the show was sinking because of the lazy writing. It. Was. Terrible.
I think the
TV executives had been waiting for the mid-season show to make a decision about
cancelling the show as it’s been sitting on the chopping block for a couple of
months and then saw that horrible episode and it was easy to decide.
Even huge
fans of the show on Reddit mostly admit the show jumped the shark.
Most of us who understand how stories work agree
when that happened.
Okay, so
the first season was good. Really good. I posted on Patreon that this was my
new favourite show. It’s done by the same people who did Desperate Housewives,
a show I loved and stopped my life for every week for years. Yes, DH was
uneven, especially in later seasons, but it was riveting and always something new
and different. Some of the plot lines didn't work but they always stretched to find new and interesting situations for those housewives to get into. I was so sad when DH ended.
Good Girls
had a bit of that DH feel which I loved. Suburban moms getting into trouble. But
Good Girls is Big Trouble not the travails in DH.
The women
rob that store. The gang dude comes after them. Scary shit happens, you really
feel like life hangs in the balance and that anyone can be murdered at any time
for any reason.
Rio was
scary. So scary that I actually had nightmares about him coming to kill me. The writing and acting were perfect.
I binge-watched
the first two seasons in a couple of days and it was great. I was involved. I
was like, “holy crap, what’s going to happen!”
And then in Season Two last episode, Beth shot Rio and I was cheering, HURRAY!
Jumping the Shark
As much as
I liked being scared of Rio, it was perfect. Beth shot him in the face it seemed, and he would die,
and then whoever Rio answers to would come after the Girls in Season Three. Someone bigger,
badder, and scarier. I was so hooked and ready.
And then
the show jumped the shark.
They made
Rio live as Season Three began.
And then
the show began to drown.
Rio wasn’t
scary anymore.
The stakes
weren’t high anymore.
The plot
was the same old going around in circles. They literally did the exact same plot lines and the women got really stupid and had no reasons to keep doing crimes except they are lazy, greedy, and selfish.
Characters,
like Boomer disappeared. The FBI was on their case and suddenly not. Yes, there
were payoffs and such but come on. You can’t tell me that lady FBI agent would
just drop the case? After all those murders?
So many
loose threads.
Rio tried
to kill Dean, but everyone’s forgotten about that.
No one ever
has consequences for their despicable acts and likely never will.
Season Four
is even worse.
The only
thing I like about season four is Dean “waking up” with his little cult of MLM buddies
who want to go after Beth for screwing with his life. THAT is now the storyline
I’m hoping will be resolved.
The best
way this show, this series, can end is like Seinfeld did. All the assholes go to
jail as we know the writers won’t kill off anyone or they would have by now.
Same Old Issues
This show
was so good but then it fell to what I call the Kylo Ren issue. Yes, it always
comes back to Star Wars, doesn’t it? I guess cos Star Wars is a simple story,
or was, with basic good and evil and consequences. But the Disney versions kind
of screwed up.
The same
reasons. Fan service.
Reylo and Brio
For some
reason, some other viewers of GG weren’t as horrified by Rio as I was. They thought
he was sexy and cute and rooted for Brio. Even though he’s a criminal, a
murderer. He had great potential to be the ultimate evil.
Same with
Kylo Ren. I loved Kylo Ren when I first saw him because he had the potential to be even
more evil than Darth Vader, he had the unpredictable rage of anything can
happen, he had the struggle against his mom and uncle who were Jedis and “good”,
depending on your perspective. He was a mass murderer. JJ Abrams himself said
that that the trough that Kylo kept Darth Vader’s helmet in contained the ashes of those he had murdered. He blew up planets and razed villages. For no reason but power,
the desire to emulate grandaddy Darth Vader, and to rule the galaxy in his own
Kim Jung Un dictatorship fantasy.
Reylo
Yet, somehow along the way, they make the “good” girl, Rey, fall in love with him. Yes, women in real life often fall for the bad boys. But it was stupid. Rey and Finn should have ended up together. It was set up in the beginning and then ignored. I always felt Kylo was intrigued with Rey because he either knew about her as child, perhaps they played as children, and he likely knew that she had been hidden because of her powers and to keep her away from evil like him and now here she was. I felt his intrigue was with her rumoured powers and that she was a relative; a cousin, a sister...and he wanted to figure out how to take her powers for himself.
But then there was pandering of Reylo for the fans. By the third movie, Kylo was just a goofy teen in love. There was no big bad. No one bigger than Kylo controlling him as they killed off Snoke. I refuse to acknowledge the stupid Palpatine-clone shoehorn plot. We all know Rey was supposed to be Kylo’s cousin, Luke’s daughter. The movies are a mess. Partly director ego. Partly fan service. All those fans wanting Kylo and Rey to end up together. WHY??????
Derailed Characters
Kylo never got to be ultimate evil and then the writers threw him away. (But of course, in Star Wars, no one is ever really gone…as Luke says…)
And the
same thing happened in Good Girls.
The fans
liked Rio and Beth together. Brio as they call it.
Once again,
teens love a murderer, a bad boy, and want to see this married mom run off with
him. To what end?
If the
writers had held their ground in both franchises of making the evil more evil
as the shows progress, these could have been amazing vehicles.
Instead,
they created unlikely and ridiculous “love stories” that drag the plot and destroy
character growth and motivation.
In reading Redditt
and other sites, the fans just watch and wait for the next Brio sex scene. They
are hoping those two are together by the end. And maybe Beth and Rio should
just hop in a car and drive off like Bonnie and Clyde.
Maybe all three women should hop in the car and drive off Niagara Falls, the Canadian side, Thelma and Lousie-style since they are shitty moms and shittier human beings.
No Character Development Except for Dean
Back to the
end of season two. When we had that cliff-hanger where Beth shot Rio, I truly
thought he’d be dead. And then a bigger, badder crime lord would appear. And
the girls would be in even deeper shit.
But nope.
Somehow Rio
survived a shot in the face and has no scars.
They tease
us that there might be something more going on with the criminal activities with
Rio’s family but who knows?
With only a
few episodes left this season, this season that has only recreated plots we’ve
seen before, with the exception of Dean’s growth, it’s unlikely we’ll see
anything cool happen.
The season
has already been filmed so whatever will happen will happen. Maybe if the last
few episodes bring the show back to what it used to be, bring back some of the
dozens of loose threads they left hanging, perhaps a streaming service might
consider the show. But as it stands now, I don’t blame anyone for not wanting
to continue this show on their network.
I loved Good
Girls. I still liked the first two seasons, the comedy, the tension, the
mystery.
But no one
has consequences for these horrible things.
The women are complicit in the murder of an innocent girl unless it’s revealed that somehow it was faked that she was killed and she comes back somehow. But that‘s not going to happen.
No One to Root for Except Dean and He's not a Girl!
These are horrible people doing horrible things. And it’s not even entertaining anymore. There’s no one to root for, no one to care about. Except maybe Dean who recognized he was a cheating scumbag and lost sight of his business for a bit (which is what launched Beth's life of crime) but realizes he loves his wife and will do anything for her to make it up emotionally and financially and he does and did. As she gaslights him further, his new friends recognize her narcissistic bullshit and want to help him out so he won't have to rot in jail for crimes he didn't commit. Will they? Who knows! Maybe they are FBI all along?
We don’t even care about any of the kids because a) we don’t know them and b) they never do anything or interact. Don’t all the kids know each other? Aren’t some of them cousins? Why don’t they ever talk about their weirdo parents and all the craziness going on? Like when the house had no furniture?
I live in
Canada and drive to the States all the time. I can’t stand the border crossing episodes,
so unrealistic. They would have been in jail long ago. Yes, I know this is
fiction but come on!
This show began as a strong show about women taking control of their lives. Now it's just silly girls doing stupid stuff and mostly to please men.
Anyway, I
have many more rambling thoughts about this show but that’s it for now.
Let’s rejoice
in the cancellation of Good Girls as it’s too far gone to bring it back to good
writing and character development and it will free up all these amazing actors
to do other shows.
Let's remember those amazing first two seasons and let the last two rest in peace!