The Conservative Critic: Ginny and Georgia

Taking the internet by storm is the Netflix original series, Ginny and Georgia, a story told alternately between the perspectives of daughter and mother respectively as they start a new life again in a small town in Massachusetts. Georgia is a beautiful charmer who gets her way with lipstick, decolletage and a lot of gumption. Ginny is your average teen girl full of righteous indignation and angst but really just is looking to fit in and be liked by cute boys. Joined by little brother, Austin, all is not what it seems in this nomadic family and the show begs the question – what are these women running from? 

Now is the time to ask: “Is it entertaining?” “Does it have intellectual/artistic value” and finally and more importantly “Is it liberal propaganda?” 

The Conservative Critic: Ginny and Georgia meter check: 

Overall Rating: Not Good

From the crimes against southern accents to the ripped off scenarios plus dialog so woke that even gen z mocks it online, Ginny and Georgia is everything wrong with a TV show which seeks depth instead of achieving it by accident. 

Through all its extremely prominent flaws, the show manages to be watchable in a teen soap opera kind of way. Less intriguing than Pretty Little Liars and more down to earth than Riverdale, Ginny and Georgia lives in a YA universe that no one wants or asked for but we don’t mind passing through one Saturday afternoon. 

If not for the surprisingly strong showing from the brand new actor, Atonia Gentry who plays the titular Ginny, the fabulous outfits of Georgia and the much needed comedic professionalism of Jennifer Robertson (Schitt’s Creek) who plays Ellen Baker the neighbor and mom-friend to Georgia – the show would never have made it to post-production. Frankly it’s still surprising it was made at all. 

Is it Entertaining? 

Rating: Watchable 

Extremely female driven, I do not see many men managing to pass time with Ginny and Georgia. That caveat in mind, as a woman its easier than it should be to let the show roll from episode to episode while you do some laundry or ignore some laundry on any given Saturday. 

There is something particularly inviting about the story of teenage Ginny not in any small part due to the performance given by Gentry (I’ll get to it below). Despite her characters’ absolutely ridiculous moments of dialog including grandstanding to teachers, accusing boyfriends of not being Chinese enough and beyond, Gentry’s Ginny has a fairly relatable story about wanting to fit in at the young and painful age of 15. It reminds me of a poorly done Edge of Seventeen (more below on how much of the story is outright stolen) with elements about race that would be more interesting if better written. 

Her youthful trials and tribulations keep you invested where Georgia’s more mysterious and sinister storyline leaves a lot to be desired. However, Georgia’s wardrobe is absolutely beautiful and any fashionista will be interested just to see what she might wear next. Its worth a watch to be “in the know” if you’re bored and have already seen the Mandalorian (We stan Gina Carano). 

Does it have intellectual/artistic value” 

Rating: LOL no

Woof. The show is quite nearly a total career ending disaster for Sarah Lampert, its creator. A millennial white woman, Lampert steals much of her material from other popular sources and then executes it badly. The mom and daughter duo has quick stunted banter stolen straight from the Gilmore Girls archives and refinished with some 2018 too-late-to-be-relevant school guidance counselor version of popular subjects and slang. The picturesque small town setting with a badly conceived southern lead faking a bad accent feels used up by the popular and far more charming, Sweet Magnolias also from Netflix. 

Basically if you take the plot lines of popular female driven fiction in the last five to ten years like Gone Girl, Fried Green Tomatoes, Gilmore Girls, Sweet Magnolias, and anything John Green has written you end up with the tired, seen before, repainted GInny and Georgia. 

The dialog and set up for anything Georgia does is absurd but not to the point of being campy which might have saved it. She makes an unbelievable genius of deceit and is never really developed enough – despite the heavy handed backstory – to understand her motivations for doing basically anything. Georgia’s actor, Brianna Howley, makes a less than valiant effort to create a Georgia who might exist in reality and based on her comically poor southern accent I have to assume Howley has never met someone from south of the Mason Dixon let alone enough southerners to learn the rather extreme differences between a Georgian, Texan, Virginian and Carolinian accent. It’s a poor performance and worse, it’s a sorry attempt. 

Essentially nothing a teenager says or does in this series makes any sense or has any basis in reality but not so far that its fun again like with classic teen dramas like Teen Wolf and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. However, Gentry brings a fresh relatable presence to the character and grounds the entire show (which may have otherwise floated away and disappeared into the trash can of some regretful agent). So familiar does she make herself that I was sure I had seen her in some other show or film but on researching could find no such credits. She is a stunning young girl given absolutely terrible lines and she makes the most of them with everything she has. She makes the bratty, short-sided, overly self-important Ginny someone quite easy to root for. She won me over completely despite her character being introduced by lecturing her 50 year old teacher about how terrible he is despite the unwritten fact that a public school teacher makes a terrible living dedicating his life to education whereas Ginny and her rich friends have done very little if anything at all to contribute to their community. 

Somehow Gentry makes a hero out of this abominable and poorly written girl who does nothing but make terrible, cruel, inexplicable decisions which I believe no teenager is actually capable of making. It will be fun to watch her grow as an actor and land roles more up to her potential. 

I hate seeing Jennifer Robertson in this (she is too good for it) but it’s notable that she is always funny and charming but finally gets a chic haircut. A breath of fresh air in a sea of perfumed trash.

Is it liberal propaganda? 

Rating: So woke it out woked itself 

My god did Lampert want this to be a show “cool with the kids.” The palpable desire to be considered intellectually on par with the youths of today is so pathetic it’s hard to watch as the many cringeworthy and rather dusty political points get dragged helplessly into the story. 

I have to assume, without knowing her, that Sarah Lampert is the worst kind of liberal who does not actually know her own mind or anything about politics, policy or even popular activism based on her incredibly sad attempts to make Ginny and her friends modern political youths. 

At the start, Ginny gets offended because her caricature of an AP english teacher suggests she may not be up to speed in the material and wouldn’t be required to take the pop quiz on the Crucible since it was her first day. Ginny goes on a tirade about how the syllabus features primarily white male authors and she worries about her education with white male influence. The classmates love it. Ginny is a brave hero! 

Putting aside the fact that schools absolutely should include new literary works on their curriculum, Lampert fails to understand several important concepts in writing this embarrassingly contrived scene. First of all, liberals are team teachers. The teachers have the largest union presence in the United States and are the biggest proponents of government lockdowns and force fed liberal curriculum. A good liberal does not come for teachers. Especially ones, like this character, who would have had 0 control over setting the reading list in his classroom thanks to centralized schooling and brainwashing that liberals so readily insist upon. One size must fit all. 

Next Lampert has Ginny is grappling with the issue of her natural hair. This is a real issue for girls of color and Gentry once again tackles it very well. However, it’s a bit done. The woke parade passed the issue of natural hair a few years ago actually starting with another popular black actor, Zendaya who wore braids on the red carpet sparking controversial comments and opening a dialog about hair in 2015. There isn’t an HR department in this country who hasn’t long since added the issue of hair to its yearly required educational program. I personally have been educated on the issue of respecting natural hair since at least 2016. The issue isn’t unimportant, its just a long distance from groundbreaking. It’s also pretty unrealistic that teenagers in liberal Massachusetts would not be familiar with the etiquette rules of natural hair. 

Finally, and most famously per the internet memes, Lampert has Ginny get in a big fight with her Chinese boyfriend about who is more of an oppressed minority. While this scene is not meant to paint Ginny in a good light – it’s a disastrous back and forth of stereotypical slights which once again seem like they’re from an era bygone. Further I think it begs the question of appropriateness for Lampert, not Chinese or Black, to be writing a scene with such loaded intentions around racial justice. White writers should be writing diverse characters, but is there a line where a liberal takes it too far and makes the struggle their own? And inevitably misunderstands it? 

One accidentally wonderful political result of the show was that at one point Ginny says to her mom, Georgia “Why do you care you go through more men than Taylor Swift” which is actually a really lame joke cause Taylor Swift is like 35 now but anyway the real Taylor Swift got really mad about the joke and tried to say that Netflix shouldn’t have allowed it because they also hosted her documentary (which was not as well loved as Joe Exotics). While her twitter mob backed her and launched an offensive attack against poor Antonia Gentry who didn’t write the line, most of the woke media actually condemned Taylor (finally) for over playing her victim card and not taking a very innocent joke which an adult woman should be able to take. 

So the show was so over woke that it caused the woke Princess Taylor to also over woke herself. I love it when the liberals squabble. Delightful.

Lampert was extremely confused as to what the modern liberal talking points for kids are supposed to be but she did try really hard to manipulate and hypnotize her viewers into a woke state of compliance and for this she gets the harsh rating. If you’re going to do propaganda: do it well. 

Conclusion 

Between being basic and poorly written and filled with old references to liberalism of the Obama era, there is no particular reason to watch Ginny and Georgia unless you really have nothing else to do or you’d like to see a young actor come to life.