March started, and in a week, we will observe international Women’s Day, and it is a good excuse to just write a review of anything that it’s female-led in television.
There are plenty of shows with a strong female protagonist and luckily, there have been advancements of how they portray women – even though there are still outdated clichés. Personal favorite shows currently on air are Evil, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow and The Blacklist, but there are some who need work.
One example is the Good Girls.
The show I can summarize it as Breaking Bad with housewives.
The plot follows Elizabeth (Christina Hendricks), her sister Anne (Mae Whitman) and friend Ruby (Retta) who get themselves in league with criminal Rio (Manny Montana) after they disrupt his money laundering business. Now, they either help him or will get killed while they deal with the FBI, their partners and some people who became leeches in the worst possible way.
The NBC show has started its third season, but this review only takes the first two seasons as consideration.
Starting the series, Elizabeth has found out her husband Dean (Matthew Lillard) is cheating on her and is mismanaging their car dealership into bankruptcy and probably will lose their home. Anne needs money to hire a lawyer to fight for custody of her son/daughter Ben/Sadie (Isaiah Stannard) – the transgendered role started as a girl but came out as a boy in the second season- .Ruby has it the worst, with she and husband Stanley (Reno Wilson), scrapping by to pay for all the medicals bills of their daughter, who has a kidney disease.
So, what to do? Well, rob the supermarket Anne’s works as a cashier! Everything goes perfect. They stole more than they thought they needed!
Of course, the main problem is that the supermarket was a way Rio’s laundered his money from different criminal enterprises and he has come to collect.
This is where I believe the series either does not know what it wanted to do or tried to evolve the plot but does it slowly. Elizabeth is the leader and we are supposed to believe she is very smart in persuading people. She fools other moms from the PTA and creates an interesting scheme to save their lives and “wash” Rio’s money. The problem is that she keeps being manipulated by him and her husband. She also just keeps complicating things by having multiple opportunities to leave Rio’s employment, but she got a taste for the “exciting criminal life” and does not want to go back to her old self. The character should be clever, but she ends up just reinforcing women’s stereotypes of being seduce by the “bad boy” and becoming too emotional. She is the center of the series but ends up being the weakest character.
Anne fills the trope of the younger sibling who barely can take care of herself. She screws up almost every time and knows she is a failure. The more she tries, the more things fall apart for her. The thing is, she ends being endearing. At least, she is not pretending to be someone she isn’t and has some clever ideas.
Ruby’s story arch is what the show’s biggest sin. Not because it’s bad, but it’s the best element of the show and is handled the worst way – in fact, I could say, pretty stereotypical since as Black family they end up being profiled first.
Ruby and Stanley are the best couple of the show and their motivations to keep breaking the law are the most relatable. They need the money to pay for medicine and then for a kidney transplant. Every crime they commit is to keep the family together. To add to the tragedy, Stanley puts his dream job as a police officer at risk to save Ruby from the FBI investigation. As the only Black family of the series, I find it annoying they are the first to be targeted by the FBI agents. Stereotype much?
The series main problem is how they manage the three characters. There are some interesting supporting characters. Mary Pat and “Boomer” are the worst villains of the series even though they are normal people…they are the characters you will love to hate and the least I say about them, the more you will enjoy getting mad at their sliminess.
The show may be affected being in NBC instead of cable, so it losses some edge. Third season has them with more control of their destiny. I haven’t not seen any episode of season 3 and without telling any spoilers, they are starting over with more money and less pressure.
Give it a try if you want, but honestly, there are better female-centric shows.
If only the show was more about Ruby.
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