Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Good Girls’, An NBC Dramedy About Desperate Women Taking Control … And Getting In Deep

You saw the ads for Good Girls during the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl. You saw it promoted to the hilt during the Winter Olympics. NBC is really touting the show as their next big hit, aren’t they? Well, who wouldn’t want to see a story where Christina Hendricks, Retta and Mae Whitman rob a supermarket? But does the show live up to the hype?

GOOD GIRLS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We pan down to an external shot of a small but well-appointed suburban home, with a girl’s voiceover talking about how women have shattered the glass ceiling and like the view from there.

The Gist: The house is the home of Beth Boland (Christina Hendricks) who has four kids and a chilly relationship with her car-dealer husband Dean (Matthew Lillard), and we see her getting them all ready for their day. We then see Beth’s sister Annie Marks (Mae Whitman), a single mom who works at a supermarket, drives like a maniac, and whose daughter Sadie (Izzy Stannard) is living as a boy — and getting bullied because of it. We then see Ruby Hill (Retta) and her husband Stan (Reno Wilson) watching her daughter Sara (Lidya Jewett) doing a report where she talks about burning down the patriarchy — while wearing an oxygen tank.

We then see the three of them meet behind the supermarket where Annie works, don ski masks, and charge in yelling that a robbery is in progress. How did they get there? We flash back a few weeks to find out that not only does Beth find out that Dean is cheating on her, but he’s borrowed so much money to fund bad business decisions that they’re going to lose their house. Annie is going to lose Sadie to her ex in a custody trial unless she gets a lawyer. And Ruby’s daughter Sara either needs a kidney or a pricey experimental medication that isn’t covered by insurance.

Annie has been thinking of robbing the supermarket in her head for awhile and knows that the safe has the most money, like 30 grand. But after they rob the place with toy guns and barely get out with the money, they find that they’ve just stolen half a million dollars. Ruby suggests they sit on it, but they all spend some money on what they need to take care of — and Annie buys a Porsche, iPhones and a laptop for Sadie.

They soon find out why the supermarket had so much cash: they were laundering money for a drug dealer named Rio (Manny Montana), and he wants his money back. Two problems: Even after Annie sells the car, they’re short about 60 grand, and Annie’s slimy boss Boomer (David Hornsby) IDed her during the robbery via her tramp stamp. He says he’ll keep quiet in exchange for sexual favors from Annie. Uggh.

Our Take: Good Girls was hyped to the hilt by NBC, mainly because of the presence of Hendricks. But it also benefits from good timing; with the #MeToo movement still going strong, a story about three women taking control of their lives and perhaps breaking bad a little bit was intriguing.

The lead trio is compelling to watch. Hendricks’ cool barely hides Beth’s rage, which comes out as she screams at Boomer to get off Annie when he tries to rape her. Whitman plays a bit against type as a woman who means well and tries to be an open-minded mother to Sadie, but is also immature and is the one most likely to turn to a life of crime. Retta is especially good as Ruby, especially when she watches Sara return to her feisty self after she starts taking the expensive medication.

It would have been refreshing if the pilot showed the trio getting a taste of criminality and liking it, planning more robberies and fighting against their good sides. But when Rio entered the picture, the hope of that was dashed; the show then becomes yet another tale of good people who make a bad decision and get more desperate as they dig themselves out of the hole they made. Also, instead of being in control, the presence of Rio means that the trio is now under the thumb of yet another man. Who the hell wants to see more of that?

The show also seems like it’s not well served by being on a broadcast network. If it was on a streamer or cable network, the scene where Beth screams at Boomer to get off Annie would have had more punch if she was allowed to say something saltier than “Get… the… hell… out of here!”

Sex and Skin: Dean’s face is between the legs of his assistant, but because this is NBC everyone has their clothes on and all he’s doing is kissing her thigh.

Parting Shot: After Boomer realizes Beth is holding a toy gun, he goes to leave, vowing to rat them out to the cops. Beth bashes him with a bottle, there’s a struggle, and Boomer falls into a glass coffee table. Is he dead? “What do we do now?” asks Annie, to which Beth replies, “Well, we’re not going to the police.”

Sleeper Star: After watching Jewett in her first scene as Sara, we want to see a whole show about her.

Most Pilot-y Line: Annie sees a commercial for Dean’s dealership that features the hot, dumb assistant. “Who did she have to blow to get that job?” she asks Beth. See, you can be dirty on NBC!

Our Call: Stream It. Hendricks, Retta and Whitman are fun to watch. But our desire to keep watching won’t last very long if this just becomes yet another show where people have to do whatever they can to not get killed by a neck-tattoo-wearing drug dealer. It feels like that show’s been done, many many times.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch Good Girls on Hulu