**WARNING: SPOILERS**
On Wednesday, February 24, Netflix premiered Ginny & Georgia, a series about a single mom and her children who settle into a bucolic New England town. Imagine Gilmore Girls, except the pretty, young single mother, Georgia (Brianne Howey), is a murderous, thieving liar who destroys the lives of those around her. Georgia believes she has no choice because she lives in a world against women.
Georgia has killed at least two men, had another wrongly imprisoned for a crime she actually committed and is embezzling funds from the next guy to whom she is engaged. She blames patriarchy for the things she does in a voiceover in the final episode.
Georgia: We live in a man’s world. I learned that from a very early age. And it is exhausting to exist in a world not designed for you, a world that doesn’t take you seriously, where you don’t matter. Women are 75% more likely to die in a car crash because all seat belt safety tests are designed for men. What do you do with that? It's not one big thing that crushes a spirit. It's death by a million paper cuts. Men, the space they take up, the room, their entitlement, their voices just louder and more. Men growing up seeing more men. Men at the top. Men in power. They don't see out of their own eyes our vacant stares back at them. Our bottled anger, our wonder at how they got to be so satisfied in their knowledge that the world is made for them.
Technically, seat belt safety is now tested on both male and female crash test dummies so that fact is wrong. Nonetheless, if one wants to have a competition about struggle, there is plenty of data to show the world is complicated for both men and women, with men suffering far higher workplace fatalities and suicide rates, among many other statistics. Pitting men and women against each other in a never-ending power struggle helps neither sex to thrive.
Georgia's 15-year-old daughter, Ginny (Antonia Gentry) does not like her mother, but shares her view of the world as inherently hostile to women. Being biracial, she also perceives the world as hostile to black people. Her first day in AP English class Ginny calls out the teacher for assigning too many white, male authors. English departments across the western world are purging greats from Shakespeare to Chaucer because of such reductive identity politics. Have the leftists ruminating on immutable characteristics ever heard of the concept of universal human experience?
Ginny gets in an "oppression Olympics" fight with her half-Taiwanese boyfriend, Hunter (Mason Temple), after Hunter beats Ginny in an essay contest. Ginny argues that life is harder being half-black than half-Asian. (Ginny must not be aware of who has a better chance of acceptance if she and her equally smart half-Asian boyfriend both apply to the same college.) Hunter says he deserved to win because he followed the teacher's instructions while Ginny created a slam poem.
Hunter: I worked really hard on my essay and I followed the rules.
Ginny: You really think that if I'd followed the rules, I could've possibly won? You don't get it. You are closer to white than I'll ever be!
Hunter: Together we make a whole white person!
Ginny: Your favorite food is cheeseburgers and I know more Mandarin than you do, you’re barely even Asian!
Hunter: Sorry I’m not Chinese enough for you. But I’ve never seen you pound back jerk chicken. Last time I checked, Brody twerks better than you. And I liked your poem, but your bars could use a little more work, homie. So, really, how black are you then?
Ginny: Excuse me?
Hunter: What? Literally, What? Because if we’re gonna play that game, let’s do it. Oppression Olympics. Let’s go.
Hilariously, the Ginny & Georgia team was really proud of that cringe-inducing scene, with the creator saying about shooting it, "we all felt on that day how powerful that was. We were all crying in video village. Toni was crying. Mason was crying. Everyone just felt like it was something really important happening." The show really missed the mark as evidenced by the derision the clip was met with online.
Many of Ginny’s white, wealthy friends do say insensitive things to her about her hair or background and her awkward AP English teacher often refuses to acknowledge her intelligence. She eventually blackmails the teacher into signing a letter of recommendation by threatening to publicly out him as a racist. “I voted for Obama. Twice,” he protests.
Ginny’s best friend is a lesbian who “came out” before puberty. “She came out when she was nine by announcing her love for Barbie’s boobs,” her mother says. Ginny’s other sophomore friends are straight, but they do some performative lesbianism at parties nonetheless, at least when they are not watching porn or publicly simulating sex acts with boys while clothed.
Ginny herself sends her boyfriend and another teen lover across the street a picture of herself in a bra. She also sexts with the guy across the street when she masturbates with an electric toothbrush. In this, Ginny is taking after her mother who, as Ginny says, goes "through men faster than Taylor Swift." (The pop star was less than pleased about this shoutout, calling it "deeply sexist.")
Besides the general sexual hedonism and woke racial politics, the show also has a clueless attitude towards gun ownership. Georgia owns two guns. When one of Ginny’s friends learns that Georgia keeps guns in the house, she is shocked and horrified. “I can’t believe I was in a house with a gun,” she tells her boyfriend. “Yeah, that’s messed up. Doesn’t Ginny have a kid brother?” he agrees.
Millions of families across the nation, from New England to Texas, own guns. We need them for protection. It is not a big deal. The Hollywood writers who wrote that dialogue should get out of their bubble.
Netflix is always a cesspool of toxic original programming. Add this latest series to the list of dreck you should skip on the streaming service.
