Stars Hollow, like the family relationship around which it revolves, is a fantasy for TV built on a sugar base. This is precisely what the loyal audience of “Gilmore Girls” loved in this little American paradise and loved in Lorelai Gilmore and her daughter Rory. More than just a mother and daughter who loved each other deeply, they were also best friends.
Watch a few minutes of “Ginny and Georgia” and it can be assumed that Ginny Miller (Antonia Gentry) disagrees with this portrait of the mother-daughter bond, despite the best efforts of her mother Georgia (Brianna Howey).
We met them at the moment when Georgia’s husband suddenly dies. Shortly after the funeral, she snatches Ginny and her half brother Austin (Diesel La Torraca) from Houston, Texas, and abruptly moves them to Wellsbury, Massachusetts, a wealthy enclave nestled around a postcard-perfect main street. Ginny accurately describes it “as if Paul Revere boned a pumpkin latte”. But we recognize it as a substitute for somewhere else.
Series creator Sarah Lampert clearly created Ginny and Georgia (Brianna Howey) as a negative version of Rory and Lorelei in a negative film, inserting darkness into their characters where “Gilmore” embraced the light. She even gives the name of that other show in the opening episode she wrote. People who click and expect a hit from that old Gilmore foam may be disappointed that “Ginny & Georgia” is not that show.
The gymnastic dialogue and the unapologetic sweetness of the first one are lacking. In addition to Ginny’s defensive pride in his high academic achievements, writers do not bend to make viewers feel better when watching a maturing drama.
None of this is an argument against “Ginny and Georgia”. I’m simply explaining what you shouldn’t expect from a series that mixes teenage anguish, adult mystery and soap opera twists in 10 episodes, while leaning towards tougher realities rarely or never confronted in Stars Hollow.
The only things Lorelai and Georgia have in common is that each is adorable, easy to root for and fiercely loyal to her daughter. But where Lorelai is pure sunshine, Georgia’s glow is purely cosmetic. Ginny loves her mother and also knows that she is dishonest, curiously silent about her past and probably dangerous. Georgia makes promises that it can’t keep, like assuring its children that it will refrain from dating someone to focus on them. But as soon as she takes a look at Wellsbury Mayor Paul Randolph (Scott Porter from “Friday Night Lights”), that guarantee flies out the window.
Wellsbury is the type of city built for people who look like Georgia, which makes it ripe for conquest. For Ginny, whose father is Black, he is less welcoming. Still, the chameleon Georgia sees the place as it is and does what it has to do, changing its appearance to fit its class-conscious inhabitants.
When she and the children first arrive in the city, Georgia is wearing cropped denim shorts. Not long after putting Ginny and Austin in their schools, Georgia goes to the boutiques and arranges a wardrobe and a suitable explosion to mix with the right people.
At the same time, Ginny is confronted by an English teacher who assumes that she was not made for her advanced placement class based on taking a look at her – and he is not judging his fashion choices. Cutting efficiently the man in front of his class earned him a friend in Maxine (Sara Waisglass), who happens to also live across the street. She also attracts the attention of the popular cool guy Hunter (Mason Temple) and Maxine’s troubled but hot twin brother Marcus (Felix Mallard). There are worse fates for a teenager than having two of the most handsome guys at school vying for affection. And yet, Ginny also has to browse colleagues who want to touch her hair, calling her “exotic” and asking which of her parents is black.
“Ginny and Georgia” could have left out these little assaults instead of inserting them quite accurately into their narrative and having an attractive Netflix show for teenagers to work with.
There are many other reasons why Ginny feels like an outsider, including the classics: she is the new girl in a small town where everyone knows each other. She is the daughter of a single mother with a lush southern accent, built to provoke snobbery, especially in elegant New England.
The fact that writers strive to confront the casual racial politics of places like Wellsbury should earn a little more respect than it can. And he deals with it secretly, for the most part. That clothes shopping spree that Georgia gives up on? Fully realized with a series of small cons. Whereas later on, when Ginny succumbs to peer pressure and tries to fit in by joining them in the theft, she is the one to be caught because she is the only one the owner of the boutique looks for.
Playing with class conflict in a show like this is easy. Leaning into another essential American ugliness while permeating the plot intrigue with black humor and sarcasm is a more challenging fabric.
This show combines all of these emotional colors very well, while ensuring that neither Ginny, Georgia nor anyone else looks one-dimensional. Even Wellsbury’s resident queen bee, Cynthia (Sabrina Grdevich), is not entirely hateful; she may be used to getting what she wants, but she is also being surreptitiously undermined by Georgia, who is all honey, smiles and ambition.
As messy and terrifying as Georgia can be, she is also a fun and exciting person to watch. She is a predator, but less wolf than coyote, a creature whose prey impulse is coded for survival as opposed to dominance. Her personality also earned her a true friend, Max and Marcus’s mother, Ellen (Jennifer Robertson), who may be Wellsbury’s only truly relaxed and receptive person. (No wonder, she is also married to a deaf person, and in all scenes where the family shares the actors, everyone uses sign language while speaking.)
Of course, all of Georgia’s existing problems are aggravated when it begins to set others in motion, further alienating its already suffering children in the process.
Gentry’s sensitive performance carries the weight of “Ginny & Georgia”, and she uses her character’s emotion, hope and pain with a heartbreaking lightness. When we experience the world through Ginny’s eyes, it is as intoxicating and seductive as her mother would have liked it to be, but, as she warns us in her temperamental narrative, to totally believe her mother’s act is foolish.
Ginny also has her secrets. She is also the daughter of a dark woman who lies, steals and cheats to get what she wants, perhaps not expressly to make progress, but definitely to keep a few steps ahead of something she is running from. Howey never lets us hate Georgia completely, but even when we see her making choices to survive here and now, it can make life more difficult for them in the future.
However, as part of a series family that includes and is defined by “Gilmore” at one end of the scale and the stylized nightmare that is “Euphoria” at the other, a show like “Ginny & Georgia” works as an Algorithm product. from Netflix – a little bit of Stars Hollow and some “13 Reasons Why” parts with a touch of “White Oleander” to add some spice. But it just proves that he knows his audience and trusts his awareness of the world we live in now, a place where Stars Hollow looks more unreal than ever. Wellsbury is also fictional, but we know its places and people. Maybe that’s why we can relate more to the Millers, with all their unenviable flaws and the melodrama that mother and daughter create around them.
Healthy people would not dream of wanting to live (or relive) Ginny’s pains or face the threat that Georgia attracts through her actions. But damn if they’re not a good time to see from a safe distance.
“Ginny & Georgia” is now broadcasting on Netflix.