"Ginny and Georgia, Season 2": 22 Dads, Moms, Gram-Grams, Pop-Pops, Aunties, Love Interests, Siblings, and Gay Guys at 3 Thanksgivings

 

Ginny and Georgia, a comedy series on Netflix, is about a mother-daughter team, like The Gilmore Girls.   I reviewed the first episode in March 2021, but I don't remember anything about it.  No doubt the three gay characters listed in its Wikipedia page had not yet appeared.  So I'll give Season 2, Episode 1 a shot.

By the way, the Wikipedia page was terrible, fraught with grammatical errors and overuse of the cliched term "love interest."  I fixed a little of it, but then gave up.  I have other things to do today.

Scene 1: Ginny and Georgia, Mom and Daughter, dancing in slow motion, experiencing that intense sort of ecstatsy that you see only on tv commercials when someone has achieved everlasting happiness by purchasing their brand of toothpaste or dishwashing liquid.  Daughter explains that when she was growing up, they were soul mates, so deeply in love that they didn't need anyone else.

Switch to Daughter as a teenager, no longer in love with Mom.  She's reading the Parable of the Sower, when Mom, who looks like she is around 15, comes into her room. "What the heck is this trash that you're reading?  I'm so stupid that I don't know what 'parable' or 'sower' mean."  

"It's about the demise of civilization through facist capitalism." 

 "Oh, I don't know what any of those words mean, so let's make out  We haven't had sex in ages."   Smothering Mother jumps into bed with Daughter/Lover but calling herself "Mommy" turns the girl off.  She refuses sex, so Smothering Mother ttries smothering her with a pillow. 

Scene 2:  Daughter/Lover wakes up.  It was all a nightmare, a metaphor for Mom's smothering. I may have exaggerated the incest subtext -- a little.  But it's still very obvious, and very creepy.

Her hunky Dad (Nathan Mitchell, left) bursts into her room, calls her "Gummy Bear," and asks if she's ok.  So she's left her smothering Mom for Dad.

Scene 3: A prim Southern Belle who looks like Melanie from Gone with the Wind, opens the door and yells "Welcome back, bitches!" to an elderly heterosexual couple.  A blond woman with a man's haircut  admonishes her to not call "Nanna and Pappy" bitches. So, a lesbian couple?

The elderly Nanna and Pappy enter, hug the couple, and ask Football Fan (Chris Kenopic), a middle-aged man, if he's ready for the Pats to lose.  The New England Patriots, so this is the Northeast.  I thought it was the South due to the Southern belle and the Mom named Georgia. Plus Nanna brought "whoopie pies," a Southern dish. 

Nanna asks Man's Haircut where Marcus is.  So both of the woman have heterosexual partners, and they're all living together?  "He'll be down in a bit."

Scene 4: Marcus (Felix Mallard), a rebellious teenager, is in his room, smoking and drawing bugs on the wall.  Southern Belle bursts in to tell him that Nanna and Pappy have arrived.  

"Too bad -- I'm not doing Thanksgiving this year, because it is a celebration of Native American genocide."

Ok, I'm completely lost.  How are these people related?  Wikipedia to the rescue: Southern Belle, who is "openly lesbian" is Marcus's sister, although she looks about 30 years older.  They are children of Man's Haircut, even though she looks younger than them, and Patriots Fan. 

Marcus wants to know if Southern Belle has talked to "her," because she hasn't been to school in a week, and she's stolen his bike.  Oh, great, not another person to fit into this extended family tree.

More note-taking after the break

Scene 5:  Smothering Mom wandering around Daughter/Lover's  room, pawing her stuff, sniffing her clothes, and remembering how they used to be in love.  A hot guy, Paul (Scott Porter, top photo), asks if she's ok.  Wikipedia: Paul is her Love Interest.

"You miss them!" he proclaims. Them?  Oh, great, another person to add to the family tree.  And how are Smothering Mother/Daughter Lover related to Man's Haircut/Patriots Fan wants to make out, but she's busy getting horny about Daughter/Lover, so she threatens him with a frying pan.  

Scene 6:  Flashback to Thanksgiving past.  Daughter/Lover is a preteen, but Smothering Mom is the same age.  She has to work, so Dad Zion will be picking Daughter up to take to Gramm-gramm's house.  But not to worry: on Black Friday, when food is half off, they'll deep-fry a Twinkie.  Do they have Black Friday food sales?  

Cut to the present: teenage Daughter/Lover, trying to find ways to murder Smothering Mother, looks up wolfane.  She recalls that Smothering Mother used wolfbane to kill Kenny, one of her husbands who kept trying to sexually assault Daughter/Lover: "Hey, nobody gets to be her lover but me!" .   

Scene 7: Daughter/Lover discussing dying with her little brother.  Ok, she has a little brother.  That's the "they."   He's angry because Mom never sent Gil any of his letters.  Does he have a boyfriend?  Wikipedia: Gil is his father, in prison. Hunky Dad Zion enters and asks for help: his parents will be arriving for Thanksgiving soon. Oh, no, more characters.

Got it so far? Thanksgiving #1: Man's Haircut/Patriots Fan and their parents and kids.  Thanksgiving #2: Dad Zion, his parents, Smothering Mother, her Love Interest, and her kids.There will be a quiz later.

Scene 8: At the hospital, a middle-aged woman is watching a critically ill patient. She goes home and tells her kid, Zack, that they're not doing Thanksgiving this year, under the circumstances -- husband dying, I guess.

Switch to a downtown coffee shop or deli or something, where Barista Joe is angry at "her" for not showing up to work.  Is "her" Mom or someone else?   

Mom comes in, orders stuffing and a pie, and asks him about his Thanksgiving plans.  He glares at her, but they touch anyway, in a moment of horniness.  Ok, he's Mom's love interest

 Wait - no, the woman with the sick husband is not the same as the woman dating Barista Joe.  Sick Husband comes in to make a last minute order; she decided to do Thanksgiving after all.   Barista Joe's Girlfriend her appearance.  Dying husband, no time for makeup, bitch!   He (Raymond Ablack) gives her two dinners on the house. Girlfriend glares at him.  The lady does not know the meaning of the word "nice."  Or "parable." 

Scene 9: Daddy Zion's parents arrive for Thanksgiving, and complement everyone on how much they've grown -- including Zion.  After an extensive prayer, heronormative Grandma asks Daughter/Lover if she has a boyfriend. Daughter/Lover stares in horror "How dare you assume that I'm straight, bitch?"  Zion tells her to leave Grandma alone.

  If Wikipedia didn't have a list of Daughter's male Love Interests from Season 1, I would swear that she was afraid to come out as a lesbian to the elderly ultra-religious lady.

Meanwhile, Smothering Mom and Love Interest Paul sit down for Thanksgiving dinner at his parents' place.  How many dinners are we going to have to keep track of?  A young adult named Chris (uncredited on IMDB, but maybe Jake Gosden?) won't eat stuffing because of the gross texture, and makes a lame joke. 

We flash between the three dinners.  At all three of them,the men discuss the football game, and the women criticize each other's cooking and choices in men.   Isn't there anyone on this show who isn't a slave to gender stereotypes? 

Still 41 minutes to go, so I'm fast-forwarding to see if we visit the Thanksgiving dinner of the gay guys, PI Gabriel Cordova (Alex Mallari Jr., left) and Nick (Daniel Beirne)

Not Thanksgiving dinner, but at minute 47, PI Gabriel is looking at Smothering Mother's mug shots and marriage certificates on his computer, and finds out "who she really is."  Apparently she has quite a sordid past.

His boyfriend Nick enters and complains about dying from a leftover sandwich.  Gabriel lies, saying that he's working on a lesson plan for his third grade class.  Wait, I thought PI stood for "Private Investigator."  Ginny & Georgia Wiki: He's pretending to be a third-grade teacher while investigating Georgia's involvement in the murder of her second husband, Anthony. (it's Zion, Anthony, Gil, Kenneth, and now Love Interest Paul).

We cut to Daughter/Lover getting naked to take a bath - pervy closeups of various body parts -- if you've got a foot fetish, you've come to the right place.   She tries drowning herself, but it doesn't work, so she settles for lying on her bed, being morose. Marcus, the son of Man's Haircut/Patriots Fan comes in, and they swallow each other's faces. See how two of the families fits together?

 And that's it for the gay guys: chatting from across the room.  But to be fair, this episode contained 20 other speaking parts: And the softcore porn scene of Daughter's body took a lot of time.  I'm surprised they got those few minutes.

My Grade: How the heck are you supposed to keep track of all these characters?  Why do mothers look younger than their daughters?  Why do women in the same plot arc look identical?  And what's with the creepy mother-daughter incest motif?  F