When ‘Riverdale’ (2017-2023) first premiered on the CW, it was both a hit and a target of mockery. The Archie Comics as a piece of intellectual property sat somewhere below Nancy Drew and Caspar as a piece of 1960s ephemera. Prior to the show’s premiere, the biggest “Archie” shoutout in contemporary media was when the gang threw Homer Simpson out of a car. But the current show, over time, earned its place as one of the few pieces of genuine camp and silliness that just kept lasting. For me, it’s like something warm and delicious that I’ve been eating for years now. Real comfort food.
I’m so upset it has an expiry date.
Many have attempted to explain the phenomenon that is ‘Riverdale’, but I think that it boils down to talented people doing dumb things. The show immediately escalated to serial killers, bear fights, and eventually introduced a servant of the Devil as a principal antagonist. Now it’s going back to the original comics timeline apparently. All done with some of the best deliveries this side of award’s season.
Camilla Mendes can find a million ways to yelp the word “daddy” and every time it hits just a little better.
But the success of something so admittedly silly and often shocking led to a lot of…failed inspiration. RIP Powerpuff Girls. While ‘Riverdale’ earned its self-aware meta jokes about shipping very quickly, most shows struggle to find a balance between the sincere and the sensational. When the ‘Gossip Girl’ reboot attempted to drag reality into its shoddy first half of the first season (all I watched), the show faltered massively. Most of these programs don’t last more than a season or two. ‘Gossip Girl’ 2.0 seemingly surviving the HBO Max culls is surprising, as is the subject of today’s article, but for Netflix.
‘Ginny and Georgia’ is the type of show I want so desperately to enjoy. A soap opera in the style of ‘Desperate Housewives’ (I have seen other shows, I just don’t reference them), this tells the story of a single mother, formerly a teen one, who struggles to maintain appearances in a new town. Her daughter, blossoming into womanhood, struggles and stumbles through being the new girl yet again at another school. There’s also some small town politics at play.
The explicit references to ‘Gilmore Girls’ makes it clear that they have an inspiration in mind that they just aren’t reaching. From what I’ve seen of that show, it manages to be miserable but inviting. ‘Ginny and Georgia’ attempts a similar vibe, but to often parodic results. The small town with darkness underneath, a staple in current teen programming, leads to a lot of unfortunate characterisations that later get softened and adjusted in season two. Peppy mean girls who are allowed to shift into more human-like characters (looking at you, Abby), that still fail to mimic actual people, but are at least more enjoyable to watch. But there’s something very…nostalgic about this kind of falseness. It’s a clean and perfect town that reminds the viewer of something like Buffy. But where Buffy was a fantasy, this is a drama.
The story of the young loner girl who feels like an outsider and struggles to assimilate into a new community isn’t new. This is Jane Austen, this is Mean Girls, this is Twilight. But Ginny Miller takes the Bella Swan special and spices it up by being extremely obnoxious and bitter, at least throughout season one.
If you’re a fan, that statement is likely to hurt. Her pain is evident and supported by what was clearly a traumatic and unstable childhood (written about excellently by Siyyan Inas) . She feels isolated by the constant movement and thus is afraid to put down roots. Her biracial identity makes it hard for her to connect, as she “feels too black for the white kids and too white for the black kids”. This is a girl that lives outside of her own body, and spends most of it trying to understand her own mother.
We know this because the show makes a point of having her explain it to us. Repeatedly. The first season mostly via uncomfortable and cringe inducing monologues. Season two offered the show an opportunity to spell out Ginny’s pain to the audience in dialogue, but the wild swings in characterisation that were fundamental to her season one writing make it a mildly unbelievable shift. Her sudden vulnerability is necessary to where the show is going, but it’s also at odds with the type of sincerity the show allowed her to have originally. She’s less aggressive, less brutal, less explosive. There is no lead in, just just sort of collapses into herself in the first few episodes. Once Georgia knows about her self harm, Ginny is essentially just a supporting act to her mother, which feels at odds with what the show is trying to imply both of them need.
Ginny is the type of character that would mean a lot to a certain brand of unhappy child. For those kids out there, I don’t begrudge them her. If she is annoying, it’s often with an inner confidence they may want to emulate in themselves. Her mind races, and so does her mouth. She explicitly isn’t for me, but my issues are less with content and more with execution. I can connect with characters that aren’t myself, it’s just that I think this one is pretty poorly written. It’s too soapy to be realistic, and too realistic to be good melodrama.
When you’re not plugged into teen angst, what you’re left with is less a character and more an obstacle. The worst stuff in the show, from the jump, is clearly the high school plots. Ginny talks about sex and passion and power in the same way she talks books. Her inner monologue is this dizzying mix of pity, jealousy, and scorn. I understand why season two shifts towards Georgia. Her mother may not be perfect, but the way the show exposes us to their relationship, its undeniable that she’s the more likeable and endearing protagonist. A fault, I want to emphasise again, that was clearly noted in the season two writer’s room.
There was an obvious solution not taken. That audience rejection of Ginny, theoretical easy to empathise with but clearly unlikeable, would probably be softened by removing the voiceovers. Unless you’re incredibly skilled as a writer, monologues are a trap. This is a show that is not being handled by the deftest of hands. We see her be uncomfortable in a setting, and then listen to her explain how her mother is better in social situations.
Again.
And again.
And a third time just for good measure.
The show in season two continues this trend, but improves it somewhat by simply hurrying the character’s evolution along. It’s obvious that they want to get to the “good stuff”. It’s telling that she simply…forgives. The character is suddenly emotionally healthy. The work is mostly off camera. Ginny opens up in incredibly traumatic ways, her parental relationships blossom, and the problems of the back half of season two, going into season three, are all her mother’s.
Georgia Miller (formerly Mary) is better handled due to the fact that she’s given more mystery. The show obviously understands that the southern femme fatale archetype is fascinating. But despite that, the writing surrounding her is still kind of terrible. We don’t get Georgia monologing over footage of her embezzling funds. We clearly don’t need it, seeing as her every move is signposted for the audience via a pair of extremely, overly expressive eyes. It feels like children’s content at times, the way it hammers in plot points.
That might be a performance issue. Or a writing issue. Or a directing issue. Everything kind of melds together in a sea of odd choices.
Returning to ‘Riverdale’, I have to ask myself why that show works and this show doesn’t. It could just be scope, considering how much more ridiculous the plots get in the town of Riverdale. Georgia might be getting credit cards in her children’s names and once joined a gang, but Betty Cooper is a teen detective with multiple serial killer family members and she also joined a gang - via strip tease (why?). This, however, fails to take into account the actual execution of these shows. So, I return to my original premise.
‘Riverdale’ is talented people doing dumb things. The show is as wacky as they come, but the end result is host to surprisingly great and often genuinely touching moments. K.J. Apa might be a fiend on TikTok, but his portrayal of an emotionally scarred soldier trying desperately to reclaim the town he used to feel safe in is extremely well handled in the context of the show – one that involved demons and also he literally dies. The same of Lili Reinhart, who might be living in a cheap horror film within the show but handles it with grace - even as she discovers she’s literally cursed. Monologues are written with intentionally verbose language. The show favours the actor’s talents in a way that often makes the goofy go down easier. Humour flows naturally around these performances.
In contrast, ‘Ginny and Georgia’ clearly thinks of itself as a funny drama and asks the actors to fit into these moulds without considering their talents. Across the board, this means everyone is basically a cartoon. The consistent mugging might have worked if the show was a little more ridiculous, but the writing isn’t actually that interesting. Broad and blunt, but often without flair. Yes, it is clearly a soap opera that is leading to climaxes that are narratively fulfilling, but it’s a bad one with poor execution. Southern charm is meant to be warm and inviting, not psychotic.
For some, this may be their comfort food, but it turned to ashes in my mouth. Ashes I couldn’t stop shovelling in, but ashes nonetheless.
I’ll probably watch season three anyway.
.