Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ginny & Georgia’ Season 2 On Netflix, Where Ginny Has To Deal With The Fact That Her Mom’s A Murderer

When it first premiered, Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia seemed like it was going to be a little more upbeat than it actually turned out to be: A plucky young, single mom relocates her two children to a quaint New England town in search of a better life. But not all was as it seemed, and early on we learned that the mom, Georgia, killed her last husband and moved her kids as far from the crime as possible. In Season 2, teenage daughter Ginny is not just dealing with high school stuff like crushes on sexy neighbors, but she’s also reeling after learning the truth about her mom.

GINNY & GEORGIA SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In a flashback, a young, maybe age 7 or 8, Ginny dances with her mother Georgia. The scene plays out in slow motion and the two are all smiles. This moment, this memory of happiness, is Ginny’s memory of a specific moment in her childhood. Later, this same moment will pop up, only we’ll see it from Georgia’s point of view and it’s far less rosy.

The Gist: At the end of season one, teenage Ginny (Antonia Gentry) and Georgia’s (Brianne Howey) “us against the world” relationship became fractured when Ginny learned that her dead step-father was very likely poisoned by her mother with wolfsbane, a flower whose poison mimics a heart attack. With that seed planted in her head, Ginny, along with her brother Austin (Diesel La Torraca), ran away by stealing her neighbor/crush Marcus’s motorcycle, in order to live with Ginny’s biological dad, Zion (Nathan Mitchell).

Season two picks up at Thanksgiving. Ginny and Austin have been living at Zion’s for two weeks, and while Ginny has told everyone that she needs space from her mother because Georgia has recently become engaged to the mayor, Paul Randolph, she and Georgia both know that it’s actually because Ginny discovered her mother’s murderous secret. Ginny refuses to discuss this with anyone though – she half-smiles through the Thanksgiving meal with her father’s family, the African-American half who love her but talk behind her back about how Georgia doesn’t know the first thing about raising a young, Black woman, but when the meal is over, she retreats to her room to burn herself with a lighter, her secret self-harm is the only thing she seems to have control over.

Her father notices a shift in her since her arrival though, and just when you hope she’s going to confide in him about what her mother did, she has a panic attack and admits that she hurts herself on purpose, and it’s all because of her mother. Zion assumes it’s because Ginny doesn’t like Paul, and Ginny never really corrects him on that because it’s easier than saying “Actually it’s because mom killed a guy,” so instead, she begs Zion to let her live with him. He’s fine with it, but needs to broach the subject with Georgia.

Back in Wellsbury, Georgia spends Thanksgiving with Mayor Paul’s wealthy, WASP-y family, and though she puts on a charm offensive, they are unimpressed, his mother making subtle digs at how many fathers her kids have. Later, Paul’s parents not-so-quietly tell him that Georgia is trash and they forbid him to marry her, she’ll ruin all his future political prospects. (Little do they know, it’s Georgia’s criminal past that would do Paul in if exposed, not her inability to adhere to their puritanical American family values.) Georgia’s able to brush off most of the comments Paul’s mother makes in her direction, but when she mentions that families should be together at Thanksgiving, that’s when Georgia snaps, and back at home she calls Zion and demands that her kids return home for the annual tradition of Fri-yay (Fry-yay?), when the Miller family heats up a vat of oil and fries Twinkies, fruit, and whatever leftovers they can get their hands on, a greasy post-Thanksgiving feast. As dysfunctional as this family is, I’d like a seat at the table for this holiday. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, and to make it worst, this is when Ginny tells Georgia she wants to live with Zion. When he interrupts her to mention to Georgia that Ginny needs therapy to address her self-harm, Ginny won’t let him tell Georgia, so she cuts him off so he can’t say it, and to shut everyone up, she pulls back on her request: Fine, she says, she’ll stay living with her mom if it means keeping her secret safe. But all these secrets are really doing a number on her.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? While the first season of Ginny & Georgia felt like a slightly darker Gilmore Girls, the show has shed a lot of that vibe now that Ginny and Georgia’s relationship has become strained and Georgia’s past more mysterious. The second season focuses more on Georgia’s crimes and her secretive past, and the show’s flashbacks give the show a Firefly Lane vibe and the “mysterious mother always moving around” trope has hints of Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere.

Our Take: Ginny & Georgia feels like it’s developing into a stronger show this season, thanks primarily to Antonia Gentry, who manages to seamlessly blend teen angst and typical high school trauma with the darker, more dangerous aspects of her life in a truthful, believable performance. When she has a panic attack and her father has to talk her down, her internal conflict of which version of the truth to tell him – the fact that she burns herself, or the fact that her mom’s a killer – intensifies the moment. As a teenager, everything seems black and white. If your mom killed someone, of course you’d be conflicted and furious with her. But from Georgia’s point of view, you do what you need to do to survive and preserve your family, and that’s a lesson you might only learn as you age. The show plays up each of these angles, which helps us understand where both characters are coming from.

The first episode is a strong one, setting up plenty of drama to come, there are tons of hints at tension between the girls in the MANG group, a shot of Gabriel continuing his private investigation into Georgia, and Cynthia Fuller, whose husband, now dying, has become a sympathetic character this season rather than an antagonist as Mayor Paul’s chief rival. Where will all of these B-stories lead, and will they finally expose everyone’s secrets? That’s what we hope to find out.

Sex and Skin: None in this episode.

Parting Shot: We flash back to that moment that was depicted in the first scene, where the younger versions of Ginny and her mom are dancing in their apartment. It seemed like a carefree moment in Ginny’s memory, but now we see it from Georgia’s angle, with the volume on. From the window of her apartment, Georgia spots a man getting out of his car and coming to her door. She turns the stereo on full blast, dead-bolts the door, and forces her kids to dance with her to drown out the pounding on the door and his voice as he screams, “I’m going to kill you, Georgia Miller!” Georgia, in the present, shoots awake after remembering this moment in a dream, panicked and gasping for air.

Sleeper Star: I hope Nathan Miller has a larger role this season, as Zion he’s a compassionate dad who is a positive force in Ginny’s life. He seems like one of the only stable people on this show, which helps balance out the otherwise chaotic population of Wellsbury and beyond.

Most Pilot-y Line: “My whole family’s broken. I’m broken,” Ginny tells Marcus when they finally reconcile after she returns home. “Hey,” he says, “I’m broken too.”

Our Call: STREAM IT! With so many characters harboring so many secrets, or in some cases, secret feelings toward each other, the tension is already building in episode one. It’ll be a fun ride watching where this season of Ginny & Georgia goes.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.