TV Tuesdays 5: Ginny, Georgia, teen sex, class, and secrets
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Welcome to the fifth installment of TV Tuesdays!
This week has been all about Ginny & Georgia on Netflix. Thus far, the first season is excellent. I’m probably biased in that I’m female, grew up in Alabama, and also longed to leave the deep South for wealthy cities. And I’m bi so the star being a super gorgeous woman doesn’t hurt.
Things I like about the show:
The women are the stars and the men are all undeveloped and one-dimensional. They’re either side characters who move the plot along, manic-pixie-dream-boys, or straight men.
The teen story has strong My So-Called Life vibes.
It manages to be a dark comedy first, but also a fun mystery.
The show is partially set in a wealthy, New England town. I will readily admit to knowing next-to-nothing about wealthy, New England towns. Like, I might not have ever even been to one? Yeah, I cannot think of a single time I’ve been to New England.
I always wonder, to what extent do the writers know of what they speak? Like what dissuaded me from The Righteous Gemstones is that it just felt to me like the writers should have spent more time with the source material. And maybe they did! I’m no expert on televangelists or prosperity gospel either. But I know my experience with Southern Baptist culture. And I remember my mom watching televangelists sometimes. And it felt like HBO writers writing jokes that would appeal to HBO viewers at the expense of everyone with any real connection to that world.
These chasms between people — based on race, class, gender, religion, culture, etc. — are endlessly fascinating to me.
I was especially interested in two scenes in particular. In the first, it feels like Ginny’s boyfriend’s class privilege makes it impossible for him to adequately empathize with something she’s going through.
In the second, a girl finds out one of her friends found a gun in her house. She tells her boyfriend “I can’t believe I was in a house with a gun in it.” And I’m like, “When was I ever in a house that didn’t have a gun in it growing up?”
It reminds me of finally meeting people (as an adult) who had been raised in environments where sex wasn’t this big damn deal. I think even if you’re not biologically programmed towards being obsessed with sex, growing up in churches where pastors are constantly going on about the gays and premarital sex will create some tension there. I thought everyone was secretly super sexually conflicted. But, as it turns out, when sex isn’t stigmatized and you’re not unusually horny, there’s really not that much to obsess over for a lot of people.
It’s something I really like about TV. Without leaving my house I can imagine what it must have been like to grow up in an environment where guns are verboten but teen sex is a fact of life and an opportunity for harm reduction.
Ultimately, I think guns and teen sex are more risk than reward. And ultimately, I think harm reduction is the appropriate choice for individuals when faced with either.
The other thing the show deals with a lot, which is super fascinating to me, is secrets. I come from the “You’re only as sick as your secrets” line of reasoning. But obviously there are times and places where discretion is optimal. It’s interesting to think through what a character should tell another and when and how.
Anyway, it’s a fun show and I’m enjoying it. Hope you’re having a great week, my babies. What are you watching?
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I spent four years of my life in a wealthy New England town, and my mom's family are twelfth generation New Englanders, so I have some authority to say that the official best canonical depiction of New England wealth and culture on television is _Gilmore Girls_. It is to old school New England WASPs what _Silicon Valley_ is to tech bros.