‘Good Girls’ is a Cheeky & Sharply Funny Heist Comedy

Pilot Episode Review!

NBC’s new Monday night comedy Good Girls is somewhere between Big Little Lies and Bad Moms. Centered around three overworked, underappreciated, and dare I say it: desperate suburban moms, Good Girls is a contemporary and cheeky heist comedy. But first. By desperate I don’t mean that these are the lusty aging vixen type mothers from say, Desperate Housewives, but that each woman is doing the best she can, but what she needs is STILL out of reach.

Good Girls’s humor is light and bouncy with snappy and zippy dialogue. It has the same rhythm and tone as say, The Mindy Project and to a certain extent, Parks and Rec. Parks alum Rhetta is one of the leading ladies of this show and she kills it on screen. The entire trio of women does, really. Good Girls isn’t a cesspool of  raunchy humor jacked up with shock value. No. The jokes and conversations between the three leads- Ruby and Beth and Annie have a naturalness and unscripted vibe. They’re like the chats I have with my own girl friends. Good Girls is goofy without being too giddy or ridiculous. The bulk of the gags and quips tossed at us as so legit humorous that they stick the landing and are laugh out loud funny.

Single mom Annie (Mae Whitman) was just seventeen when she and her high school sweetheart had their daughter/son*: Sadie. Now she’s a perpetually broke grocery store cashier on the verge of having preteen Sadie (Izzy Stannard) taken away from her by her ex. Despite being unable to the foot the bill for some legit lawyers in what’s sure to be a lengthy and savage custody battle Annie refuses to give in.

Meanwhile her close friend Ruby (Rhetta) toils away at the local diner, often working double and triple shifts. Her honey, Stan (Reno Wilson) is just as hardworking as she is, also pulling repeat shifts at the strip mall where he works as a mall cop. Finances are tight because of their daughter’s extensive medical bills. Elementary-schooler Sara (Lidya Jewett) has failing organs and is hooked up to an oxygen tank that travels with her wherever she goes. A spirited and fiercely feminist little spitfire Sara’s history presentation in the beginning of the Pilot episode is A RIOT.  But unfortunately organ donor lists are miles long and she can’t wait the obligatory 10 or so years. Stating the obvious: Ruby and Sara’s options are limited. Untillllll a new medication can prove to be her saving grace. But here’s the trick. It’s 10 grand out of pocket EVERY single month. Yikes.

Rounding out the trio is Beth (Christina Hendricks) who is Annie’s older sister and also one of Ruby’s closest friends. A stay-at-home mom or four children she puts more time into her grooming habits (hello, bikini wax) and tv watching (first world problem #1, the DVR is SO full!) than actually getting frisky and having sex with her hubs, Dean. Beth is more than a little burnt out from child-rearing and Dean, an inattentive, and bumbling car dealer gets his kicks now when he’s giving head to his coworker at his dealership. YIKES. The obligatory cheating spouse dramedy trope!  The lack of intimacy between the two actually becomes a relief when Beth comes to the startling discovery that Dean’s not just a philandering jerk, but he’s also a gambling fool. After squandering away nearly all of their money and taking out three mortgages, the house can be snatched away from Beth at any moment.

Homelessness is NOT an option for Beth. Sara’s health takes ultimate priority for Ruby. And Sadie, sweet, bright, gender nonconforming Sadie is the almond butter to her/his mom Annie’s jelly, they’re better together. The solution to all of these problems? Money!

Annnnd Annie knows how to rake in the big bucks. She and the girls hatch a plan to rob the supermarket where Annie works and empty out the cash vault. There’s 30 THOUSAND dollars locked away, just enough for all three of them to solve their problems. Well, Annie’s ‘All You Need is Love’ tramp stamp is a total giveaway when the big cheese (and bigger dick) Boomer catches her crouching over the vault, whipping bricks of dollar bills into sacks.

Instead of just walking away with 30k the girls count up the stash and find HALF A MILLION dollars. But it gets better. The moohlah is dirty money. It’s GANG property and the gang wants it back. PRONTO. The only option to get money to replace what they spent from their grocery store heist? Launch ANOTHER heist, obviously!  

Annie, Beth and Ruby’s characters is where Good Girls skyrockets to must-watch status. Each of the girls have distinct personalities and while they may seem a bit tropey at first, by episode two and three we see a more nuanced side of them. Bonus, they’re not solely defined as being mothers! Can we get a hell yes!!!

Buuuut fair warning. This is a bit of a dark side to Good Girls. So many of the men in Good Girls are despicable. They’re aggressive, selfish and disregard the women around them. Take Annie’s oily manager, Boomer (David Hornsby). A man who constantly uses his higher position to try to bully Annie into going on dates with him. His badgering turns to blackmail and then gets cast into an even darker and more disturbing relief when they shift to sexual demands. Gaaah. He’s a vile toad and we get a borderline rape scene to hammer the point home. But I can’t help but question: did we really need to see Annie put into such a traumatized position? Being nearly forced to give him a blow job is discomforting enough. Did the writers really need to jump to this right out the gate? While it’s a bit flimsy to use as a plot device I will say, it’s tastefully done. It’s not played for laughs. It’s a horrific criminal act, not silly and campy fun, there’s not even  a single a split second of confusion between the two.

A heck of a lot less outrageously depicted than that assault is Dean’s (Matthew Lillard) office affair desk oral sex with with Amber, his coworker and commercial co-star  This dim and clueless wannabe actress Amber (Sara Paxton) is nothing more than a trope preening on screen. Petite and blond with shiny white teeth and a cute figure she’s exactly the type of woman other women imagine when they suspect their hubby is cheating. Wildly original? No. But still funny? HECK YES.

The chemistry between Annie, Beth and Ruby is so authentic and effortless! It shines through in their body language, the rhythm of their conversations and the subtle (and not so subtle) facial expressions they shoot one another. The writing is sharp and witty but also very self-aware and the plot is balanced between comic mischief, high stakes, and OMFG that’s DARK. It’s not always easy to avoid being slammed into a cubby hole but Good Girls dodges it!  Together the characters and storyline is heartfelt and although at times, stressful AF all in all it comes together in a a harmony of hilarity.

Soooooo, what are you waiting for?! Good Girls is BRAND new on the cable TV scene- just four episodes have aired so far. You can watch them all on demand or for free right now on the NBC website. New episodes premier Mondays at 10pm.

*Actor Izzy Stannard identifies as male, whereas Sadie is written as female but with a distinctly androgynous look and who is openly gender nonconforming, with a short haircut and a preference for boys clothing.

All images from IMDB
gifs from giphy.