Ginny & Georgia 1×05 “Boo, Bitch” is a very typical middle-of-the-season episode. Stuff happens, but it feels like nothing is actually sticking, or as important as this episode makes it seem. Everything is setup for something bigger coming, and that makes the episode, if not less enjoyable, an easier one to just get over with and continue to the next, especially since Netflix is kind enough to provide us with all at the same time.
And yet, if you’re here, and you’ve stopped your binge at this precise moment, there are still some things to break down from this episode, not just in Ginny and Georgia’s life, but in Austin’s as well.
So let’s go into Ginny & Georgia 1×05 “Boo, Bitch”:
GINNY
“I love scary movies too. My mom’s right. There’s a formula. When you’re moved around your whole life, you like your monsters to follow the rules. I’ll Take Freddy Krueger over having no one to sit with at lunch any day.”
Often the voiceovers give us an idea of where the storyline is going to go, or at least how Ginny is feeling in a particular episode, and in “Boo, Bitch” we go deep into her insecurities about who she is, and where she belongs in the world. This is about as relatable as Ginny has been, because her new-girl insecurities are very familiar to us, and though I can’t specifically relate to Ginny’s struggle as a biracial kid in a town like Wellsbury, we all have our stories of not fitting in that makes her story, even if it’s not ours, interesting.
The Gilmore Girls comparisons have been plenty, and I don’t particularly like them as much, because I think this show is very different from what Gilmore Girls ever was, or even pretended to be. But if you look beyond this show’s much more diverse cast, you’ll see that, in the end, the similarities are not truly about both of them being mother/daughter stories, but about both of them telling the story of a daughter who, in trying so hard to to be her mother, ended up becoming just that.
And we’re not talking about the good parts, either.
Ginny has spent so much of the first half of season 1 of this show doing anything but appreciating what her mother has had to do and sacrifice to be where they are. And she doesn’t even know half of it, she truly doesn’t. We, the viewers, don’t even know, but we suspect much more than Ginny does. And yet Ginny is so caught up in the perfect life she now has – or thinks she has – to notice.
Ironically, Georgia has done a lot to make that life happen, and we’re not under any delusion that Georgia is the perfect woman, but Ginny, a teenager to the core, spends more time thinking about herself and about her issues than trying to understand the decisions that have taken her to where she is right now.
We’re not saying that’s going to come back to bite her except, well …this is TV. And this doesn’t seem like the show to miss that opportunity.
GEORGIA
Now, Georgia isn’t exactly making all the right decisions right now, is she? I mean, maybe it’s just me but I’m still not truly feeling Paul. On paper he seems like a nice guy, maybe even the right guy, but is he anything but a placeholder? There are literally better options around, and we haven’t even had to deal with Zion, who I’ll bet good money is coming back to cause trouble before the season is over.
But Paul and whether that relationship is basic is the least of Georgia’s problems in this episode, as her long lost sister returns to throw her for a loop and to “ruin Ginny’s life,” apparently. Now, Ginny’s obsession with the right appearances aside, Georgia seems legitimately shaken by her sister’s presence, something that’s easy to theorize has to do with a history of abuse. But of course, Ginny doesn’t know that, and that part, I will say, is on Georgia.
It’s easy to chalk it up to her protecting Ginny, and that’s probably the reason Georgia hasn’t told her kid a lot of what she’s been through, but the whole “it’s you and me vs the world, kid” thing feels hollow when the kid doesn’t even know what they’re facing. Ginny is growing, and though she’s not an adult anymore, she can’t really be there for her mom the way Georgia deserves if Georgia doesn’t open up.
And, as we see at the end of the episode, when you bottle things up …well, sometimes they blow up in your face. Or, you blow up on someone else’s face, as it happens with Austin.
Do I blame Austin? No, he’s a kid. He needs to be provided with support and better coping mechanisms. And that, sadly, is on his mom, a mom that has about as much on her mind as his sister does, and who doesn’t always know how to take care of herself, much less everyone else.
Agree? Disagree? What did you think of Ginny & Georgia 1×05 “Boo, Bitch”? Share with us in the comments below!
Ginny & Georgia is available to stream on Netflix.
