The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Ginny & Georgia' Is Not the Next 'Gilmore Girls'

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

Kate Halliwell and Rodger Sherman talk about 'Ginny & Georgia,' a Netflix show that has been billed as the next 'Gilmore Girls' but most definitely is not. Hosts: Kate Halliwell and Rodger Sherman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Peach, I got you a present. Gross. This is the new thing you're doing now, hate all mom? Come on. This isn't us. We're like the Gilmore girls, but with bigger boobs.

My mom had me when she was my age. You're going to like Massachusetts. Perfect for a fresh start. We move a lot, so I'm always the new girl. Who's that? That is Jenny's mom. I know. Um, so just to TV concierge.

Podcast on the ringer.com That helps you navigate the vast streaming. landscape. I'm Kate Hallowell. I host Tea Time over on the Ringer Dish feed, and I'm joined today by Football and Bachelor writer Roger Sherman. Roger, hello. Hey, I, yeah, those are two things that I write about football on The Bachelor. I love bad TV shows and sports. This is one of those two things. That's partially why we're here, yeah. Yes, we're here to talk about Ginny and Georgia, the new teen dromedy on Netflix. It's a 10-episode series starring Brian Howie and Antonio Gentry as the titular mother and daughter duo who moved to a small Massachusetts town and end up bringing some

trouble with them. This show is being billed as modern day Gilmore Girls. And I want to just go into what we're saying here. In the first five minutes of the show and in the first 30 seconds of the trailer, the lead character, Georgia literally says, we are like the Gilmore Girls. That was written into the script. So everyone knows they're like the Gilmore Girls. And she's adds, but with bigger boobs. That pretty much sums up the entire show. And I was looking at when I, we watched probably half this show. We're going to do sort of an entrance survey.

We're going to talk about our initial thoughts, if we're going to finish it, if you should start it. But when I was looking up reviews, be like, you know, how do other people feel about this show? Every single review has Gilmore Girls in the title, which like I know is how search engine optimization works. And I believe that's why you and I were chosen to do this because we are Gilmore girls fans. But I just was amazed at how, I guess, successfully or at least sort of overwhelmingly

Netflix has sold this as the next Gilmore Girls. Well, Netflix has the Gilmore Girls and I've watched all of the Gilmore Girls on Netflix within the last year. And they clearly just wanted another show that is like the Gilmore Girls and literally says, we are like the Gilmore Girls. At one point, they pitched the show and they were like, it's going to be like the Gilmore Girls, but with bigger boobs. And then they were like, like put that shit in the script. We're in. Hell yeah.

First of all, bigger boobs is not a personality trait. It's just a thing that happens to some humans. And I also would not say that that is the defining thing that makes them different from the Gilmore Girls. There are a lot of other things that I would say makes this show worse and weirder than the Gilmore Girls. That's actually the more accurate way to put this is it's like the Gilmore Girls, but worse and weirder. So this show, the main difference or the main similarity I suppose to start with is that Georgia is the mother. She had her daughter, Ginny when she was 15, which means that Georgia is 30 and Ginny is 15. They've moved to this small Massachusetts town where there are some quirky characters.

There's a cafe owner who wears flannels and has some sexual chemistry with Georgia. Again, like this all sounds very familiar. Sort of on paper. It is basically Gilmore Girls in our modern. day times. But yeah, with some huge differences. Obviously, Ginny is biracial, her dad's black, her arms white. They come from sort of an impoverished background that they're running away from that you find out more about. Which is also a little bit Gilmore Girls-esque, that they're in this very rich town, but not of them necessarily. Exactly. And they feel sort of, you know, out of the way

in like this affluent society. But yeah, it's a lot more progressive than Gilmore Girls. I think sort of in recent years, the main criticism of that show is just that it's very, very white. There are a lot of sort of comedic moments that are at the expense of people who are not white. It's very straight. Also, and this show is a lot more progressive and diverse in that way. And I kind of want to get into like sort of some of the characters and their Gilmore girls' counterparts and whether we think, you know, they're better, worse, different. Maybe we should start with Georgia. She's kind of, you know, the matriarch of this of this show.

she's blonde, she's southern, she has a very troubled past. How do we feel as our Lorelei? She's not Lorla. I just want to say that she does significantly more crimes than Norley Gilmore. So we should say this is obviously a spoiler

for the first episode, but obviously it's hugely important to the show. You find out at the end of the first episode that she murdered her husband. She put Wolfsbane into his smooth movie, which is something that Lorelai Gilmore had and would never do. Uh, and she fled town. She took this money, fled town with her daughter. Turns out over the course of the show, again, we have not seen all of it, but I imagine there's more murder to come, more crimes to come.

She like steals weed. Murder's not at one time. No. It's sprinkled in liberally in this show. Um, so yeah, Georgia is, it's just not a good mom, I would say. She tries to be a good person. She loves her daughter. But the biggest difference between Lorelai Gilmore and Georgia, is just like being a functioning member of society, I would say. Yeah, you get this sense that in Gilmore Girls, Lorelei, you know, truly, deeply just wants to make it with her daughter and wants things to work out. Whereas, I mean, this person loves her daughter too, but is also getting there exclusively by robbing people and stealing stuff and continues to do so. after it's not like it's a part of her past it's like she is still constantly and also i feel like they just try a little bit too hard with the edgy mom like there's not a time when she is on

screen where she is not doing something a little bit out there yeah you know and like it just feels a little bit forced i mean in the first like 15 minutes of the show we get weed gun vibrator. Yeah, the Holy Trinity. Yeah, the three things that any woman needs in life. Every girl needs. Yeah, it's so over the top how they're like she's a bad mom but a good person, which I just don't know if I agree.

And it's just hard. It makes it hard to root for her. And it makes it hard to root for her relationship with her daughter because she's so clearly like a manipulative scheming person who's lying to her daughter about so many things. And, you know, I mean, Gilmore Girls, the whole backbone of the show is that Lorelai would do anything for Rory within the confines of the law and their best friends and they trust each other with everything. And it's just like there's such a lack of trust between Ginny and Georgia that it makes it difficult to root for that. Yeah, I hate to keep bringing it back

to Gilmore Girls, but it's like... It's okay. That's why we're here. The thing that Lorela is rebelling against is this extremely stiff, uptight New England's world that her parents live in, that we maybe don't understand and we maybe don't agree with because it's so stiff and uptight and they never do anything differently. Whereas this character is just rebelling against like basic human morals and like the idea that we're all supposed to function together. She steals a lot of money from the school. Of like petty cash.

The school that her daughter goes to. Right. They do like this fundraiser and she's stealing. She's like taping money to her thighs in the fundraiser. And it's just, it is simply too much. It makes it harder to like her because she is going above and beyond. And in ways that don't seem justified to support this family that we're supposed to root for. How about Ginny?

Do you have strong feelings about Jenny? I did find myself rooting for her. I think because her mom is somewhat of an evil person. Yeah. I, Jenny has so much going against her. She, a lot of her storyline has to do with being biracial, you know, not feeling at home with her friends. She's racially profiled when her friends like pure pressure into shoplifting. Her mom doesn't understand her.

People at school don't understand her. And part of my main issue with the show is like, that's enough. You know, like that, she has so many things going on. She's in this like new space. She has all these difficult things going on in her teenage life. She has these two boys, you know, Marcus, who lives next door, is supposed to be like the dean of the show, the bad boy, who keeps climbing in her window.

She has unprotected sex with him in the first episode, like, sure. After never having kissed anyone. Yeah, very fast escalation. That is a home run. She goes straight from first base all the way. All the way around in the first episode. And then she has this other guy, Hunter, who is in a band and is in her class. He's kind of the dean of this.

He's a very bad band. He sings at her a lot. which is something that gives me hives. It's a good band until he becomes the lead singer of it. Yeah, it's not great. But, you know, I mean, she has, teenage lives are so difficult in general. She has so many things going on.

I just, my main issue of the show is just like, just focus on the smaller stakes stuff. You know, like, Ginny's life is difficult. She's struggling through it. She's, you know, very smart, very capable. She doesn't need her mom stealing from her school. She doesn't need her mom killing people. Can we just focus more on the regular issues of her life?

Yeah. I definitely think that it is smart that she's the lead character of this show as opposed to the mom. Because I actually want her to succeed. Right. And one of the things about Gilmore girls, God, should we stop this? Again, that's why we're here. Everyone's comparing it. Let's just commit.

Like you said, low-stakes television. It's in a town where nothing bad has ever happened. And you can just watch it and you've been doing something stressful and you watch it and things are pleasant. It's like the Great British Bake Off as a TV show about like as a scripted TV show. It's that soothing. My favorite genre of television. Yes. And this show has a, it's a very good.

Someone gets killed in the first. There are a lot of violent crimes in this show. So it deviates in that way, and it does not provide that low-stakes environment. The town, I will say the thing that I think is closest between these two shows, in addition to the mother-daughter relationship, when you're watching Gilmore Girls, you feel like you're in this town. And I sort of felt that way about Wellesbury, Massachusetts, which is where this show is set. Yeah, they're so close on some of these.

settings and like the town and the space. I thought, you know, in Joe, the cafe owner is like very much the luke of this. He's got the flannel. The hot cafe owner. So hot. He's so attractive. It's like if you didn't want us to talk about this other show, why does he have to own a cafe like the guy in the other

show? There are so many other jobs people have in towns besides owning cafes. You have to have the cafe. You just have to. But I also think this cafe, first of all, it's huge. It's like a Le Pancourtien, but it's like supposed to be this small town cafe. It's not. This is a chain if I've ever seen one. They serve every meal of the day.

They have a bar. There are parts of this cafe that appear throughout the show where it's like, I've never seen this room before. I don't know how big it is. It's absolutely massive. And like that's, I feel like it's almost like a metaphor for the show is just like they have done too much. Like your cafe can be small. It can be kind of dinky, a little grimy like Luke's. It doesn't have to be this like huge massive space with this guy with perfect hair running it. He can just wear a baseball cap. You know? It really did seem, I remember in the first episode she walks in, and it seems like it's a little place. Right. She just happened upon it. And then every single meal that anyone had, like, people are drinking like wine out of very nice, like big wine glasses,

you know, the type that only like a fancy dinner restaurant would have as opposed to a cute little cafe. Right. And he's like also the bartender. Like, what is happening? And he also owns the or where they make the, where they get the food. I don't understand. The economics of that business are worth another episode. I agree. They also, you know, they have the mayor of the town played by Scott Porter from Friday Night Lights just to sprinkle another. His name is Jason Street.

Please refer to him by his true name of Jason Street. He's basically the same character just like 15 years later. He dates Georgia. He like wants to be the mayor. There's all this like, you know, local politics. but it's like, it's just, he's not that likable. He's kind of like Christopher from Gilmore Girls meets Taylor from Gilmore Girls smushed into the body of a former high school quarterback.

It's just everyone's doing too much, I think, in this setting. And I want to point out, one more Gilmore Girls, I mean, I'm sure we'll do more, but one more big Gilmore Girls comparison. Obviously, Gilmore Girls has all those, like, quirky episode titles, you know, like, boy, with the pigs already and all the, you know, the famous, whatever, episode titles that are yanked from quotes and references from the show. I just want to read off a couple of these episode titles of Ginny and Georgia. First episode, It's a face, not a mask.

Next level, rich people shit. Lydia Bennett is Hondo, a feminist. I'm triggered. Happy Sweet 16, jerk. And finally, the finale of the season one, the worst betrayal since Jordan and Kylie. So I just... There's a little bit of trying too hard there with every aspect of the show.

This is a little bit of joint. And I get, you know, Gilmore Girls had the reference We've modernized those references. Maybe a modern-day Gilmore Girls would have something about Kylie Jenner in an episode title. But I just don't need that in my life, you know? I could do without that. Yeah. It's they, with everything, as with stealing from the school in the town that you've brought your daughter to, you didn't need to do that.

It's slightly too far. And it feels a little bit enough that dick. It does. It's, there's a lot of Riverdale and a lot of 13 reasons why in here. in sort of like the modern day over the top high school with murder. I want to also talk about there's one part of the show that the internet has really highlighted as being too far too much. Please don't, which is a discussion that happens about midway through the show between

Ginny and her boyfriend at the time, Hunter. Hunter is half Asian and Ginny is biracial partly black. And they have a debate about that they call the oppression Olympics, where they are arguing about their respective races and not feeling at home in anywhere, really. And I really can't sum up this scene. How would you describe it? Well, it's a scene about race that you get the sense was written by two white people, maybe? Yes. Because this show is written by two white people.

and they just start hurling racial insults at each other. Ginny is telling Hunter that he's not Asian enough. And then Hunter tells Ginny she's not black enough. And there's no part of this scene that's like defensible or good in any way. It's awful. There's a tweet about it from at Lisa Serena. And right now it has 33,000 retweets, 93,000 faves. So that's not what you want.

Just says, I'm done with Netflix. and it shows the scene. And again, like, as two white people talking about this, like, I recommend that you watch it and, like, make up your own mind. But it just seems like it is so over the top. It is so not well done. And, like, just plays on a lot of harmful stereotypes. But you can tell they really, like, thought they said something with it.

Yeah. You talked about all the things going against Ginny. And number one has to be that she's a biracial character written by people who are not biracial. they are white people. Yeah. And again, like, this show does a lot of very progressive things, certainly more than Gilmore girls. You know,

there's, you know, there's a let her best friend's lesbian, which is great. She gets her own romantic plot lines, regular teen drama, like loved that. Although that character really...

That didn't make it seem, yeah. Yeah. And although the, the girl who plays her really thought she was Lorelai Gilmore and really talks too fast. But... Yes.

She's the character who I, I ended up with the very first time I watched Gilmore girls. I was like, oh, I hate all these characters. And then you end up loving them. That was exactly the way I went through things with Maxine, who talks way too much, but eventually has a very wholesome.

Right. She really grows on you. And she gets some good storylines. It's nice to just see the regular teen drama play out with two girls as opposed to like, you know, the bad boy and the good girl or whatever. Also, Maxine's dad is deaf. He's played by a deaf actor. And so a lot of the conversations in their house,

which is next door to Ginny and Georgia, there's just a lot of like casual, sign language. It's just part of their, you know, dinner time discussions at their house, which I thought was a really just like inclusive way to just add it into the show. It's great that they had a deaf actor playing Chris. And yeah, I mean, I just think, you know, from an inclusion standpoint, there are a lot of improvements on Gilmore Girls, but it's, it's a pretty low bar to clear. It's a very low bar to clear, yes. But yeah, watch that. I can't tell you in good faith to watch that scene for yourself. But if you would like to watch it, it's very easy

to find on Twitter because it's very much viral. Who is your show MVP and your least valuable player so far? The MVP, I've got to say, the neighbor mom, who's played by Jennifer Robertson, who plays Jocelyn on Schitts Creek, wins pretty much every scene that she's in and is just one of those characters that makes the town feel like real and a place you feel a part of. and just I strongly approve of her. Yeah, I think it's hard to do good parents on teen shows like this sometimes. I don't even mean like Georgia.

I mean, it's hard to show parents that like teens want to watch where they're not trying to seem too cool. I remember the Mindy Kaling show that was on Netflix earlier this year. I never have I ever. I remember some of the teachers and some of the parents on that show, we just thought were so unrealistic. We did a TV concierge about it. But it was just like, it's almost like people nowadays don't know how to write dialogue or don't know how to write like these parental characters that seem modern and real to teenagers that are watching the show. And I thought Ellen, who's the neighbor in this case, she's just like appropriately freaked out by some of the things her kids are doing.

She's like appropriately given up on some of the things that her kids are doing. And she's just like a good mix of like stressed out and chill at all time. So yeah, I agree. She was really great too. Just cannot figure out how to find her daughter on Instagram. The search for the Finsta is a relatable struggle for parents these days. Who is your least valuable player? This is easy for me.

This show is called Ginny and Georgia. However, there's a third person of this family, the younger brother, who does not seem to do anything and is just there. Okay. He's just there. I don't know if you got this far. He does stab. He does stabbing. Okay, this is, this goes into our next question on the outline, which is, what is the craziest

slash most unnecessary plot point? Like I said, there's just way too much high stakes drama. And the high stakes drama that I did not need included in this show was, what if my younger brother is a psychopath? Because Austin, who's in kindergarten, stabs a child through the hand with a pencil. Yep. And he specifically, it's not like an active in the moment. He premeditated.

He goes over. He sharpens the pencil as much as he can, which that's where it goes from just being like an impetuous kid to, as you said, oh my God. We should be worried about this child. He inherited some of his mom's worst traits. Yeah. See, that's the big thing. It's like, what did he learn from the other psychopaths in the house?

Yeah, he like sets things on fire. He stabs this child. There's a whole plot line about whether or not send him but therapy. And I'm just like, I, this is worse than anything that has ever happened in Stars Hollow. I did not need this. Ginny and Georgia did not need this. He's not in the title. So like, why are we talking about him?

Ginny is so, like, smart and likable and kind and she's trying her best. And you just don't get any real sense that she's George's daughter. And Austin, I'm starting to get a little bit of a sense that he might be robbing someone's school someday. Yeah, I have some, uh, so again, on to the next question, which is. is will we finish the show or will we look up the ending on Wikipedia? I have a sense

that this may be headed towards a Gilmoreism in that maybe Ginny does inherit some of Georgia's worst qualities maybe towards the end of this show. The betrayal word

in that episode title worries me a little bit. Thoughts? Yeah. I will say I went into this and in the first few minutes of the show

I did not really vibe with it at all, but I think some of it was just like exposition, and I actually do think I'm going to end up watching, watching the rest of the show, because I found myself, like, kind of enjoying the being in that town, being with these people, and, and yeah, it was a little bit more stressful than it needed to be. Yeah. But generally, it did sort of scratch that itch. It does. I mean, it's got the bright colors. It's got the, I mean, even like the Gilmore Girls, like events. There's a Halloween episode. There's a fall festival. You know, there are the costumes and

and, you know, like the seasons and all of that. And so I'm like just a sucker for that. And I know that you are as well. So yeah, even with the murder, even with the petty theft, uh, I might, I might just finish it. I will definitely at least look up the ending on Wikipedia. If a week goes behind, I have not going back to it. I will need to know how what, what betrayal can be worse than Kylie or Jordan. I just have to know. Yeah. Uh, as long as she doesn't get caught for murder. And then there's no season two. That's what I also need to know.

I don't know if there will be a season two. I guess it'll depend on viewership. But I think enough people have viewed that clip on Twitter that maybe they won't view the show. We will see. That is a pretty big turn. If that's all you see of the show, it's just such like stereotypically bad writing about race.

And I can't say it's, they do try to be inclusive. And it's not significantly. better during the rest of the during the rest of the series. Yeah, we'll see. I'm sure they will take note of the reaction to that clip and maybe we'll see a change in writer's room

if there is a second season. Let me know if you finish it, Roger. I look forward to your thoughts. Thank you all for listening to TV concierge. You can find me, Kate Hallowell on the Ringer dish feed, and you can read Roger's work on the NFL and The Bachelor on The Ringer.com, and you can find more TV concierge right here next week.