It’s easy to see right from the get-go why Ginny & Georgia, the latest hit from Netflix (despite what Taylor thinks), has drawn comparisons to Gilmore Girls. With one unspoken mother-daughter prototype being that it also has a dash of Mermaids thrown in. There are, obviously, many distinctions between the OG GG and this G&G–notably that, in Ginny & Georgia, it’s the daughter, Ginny (Antonia Gentry), who gets more banter-y than Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and more “student surpassing the teacher” than Rory (Alexis Bledel) in Gilmore.
While Ginny’s mother, Georgia (Brianne Howey), has plenty of iconic, over the top character traits to match Lorelai’s equally as larger than life personality, Ginny manages to outshine her more than Rory ever did with Lorelai. One way in which she does that brings us to another major difference between this show and GG, which is that Georgia has another child (à la Mermaids)–a boy named Austin (Diesel La Torraca).
While Ginny’s father, Zion (Nathan Mitchell), is Black and a nomadic photographer, Austin’s is white and in prison. Moving to a town like Wellsbury (a more affluent Stars Hollow sort of place that Ginny likens to “a Crest commercial”) makes Ginny’s biracial background stand out more than usual to her–that is, until she finds friendship with a “Queen Bee”-type named Maxine a.k.a. Max Baker (Sara Weisglass). She also has a twin brother named Marcus (Felix Mallard), who immediately starts making eyes at Ginny from the moment she moves in across the street.
On the drive from Texas to Massachusetts, however, the tone of it all is decidedly Mermaids, with Ginny driving her mom (as Charlotte Flax [Winona Ryder] often would for Rachel [Cher]), looking over at her outfit and saying, “What are you wearing? You look like Vanessa Hudgens at Rydell High.” Georgia retorts, “The fact that your Rizzo is Vanessa and not Stockard is literally everything that’s wrong with your generation.”
As they settle into the new house, Ginny offers the jibe, “I read that stability is crucial for children during their formative years.” It echoes Charlotte’s sentiments toward Rachel about her own constant state of transience. And Georgia, like Rachel, bases all of their moves on whether her romantic relationship status is going well or stale. In Houston, it went full-stop rigor mortis, with her latest husband, Kenny Drexel (Darryl Scheelar), dying of a heart attack. Lucky for Georgia, she’s already been put in the Will, but that doesn’t mean Kenny’s ex-wife isn’t about to go to great lengths to contest it.
In the meantime, she’s already secured a huge house for her new life in Wellsbury, and the image she wants to project along with it. Her youth is an immediate source of jealousy for most of the other mothers, including Cynthia Fuller (Sabrina Grdevich), the resident “runs everything” bitch in town. Lorelai usually only encounters resentment from other mothers in Rory’s realm for her “low-class” standing. Not that Georgia doesn’t get her fair share of looks for that “trashy” Southern accent. The other overt similarity is that Georgia gave birth to Ginny at fifteen and Lorelai gave birth to Rory at sixteen–hence, both mothers’ expectations that they should be best friends with their daughter and that such a rapport isn’t weird or too enmeshed at all. “We’re like the Gilmore Girls, but with bigger boobs,” Georgia says early on, to get ahead of the comparisons with this meta reference. All it does, of course, is attract them all the more.
Rory and Ginny are both “book smarter” than their mothers, with Georgia and Lorelai being more interested in an encyclopedic knowledge of movies instead. To boot, neither mother can believe how prudent their spawns are, with Georgia noting to Ginny, “You’re so responsible, sometimes I can’t believe you came outta me.”
The Luke (Scott Patterson) of the operation is clearly Joe (Raymond Ablack). A guy who serves…joe. At least Gilmore Girls didn’t make it that literal. Like Lorelai, Georgia is deliberately oblivious to Joe’s attraction because some part of her knows that it would ruin a perfectly good dynamic. That, and she has her sights set on someone who can take her higher, specifically Mayor Paul Randolph (Scott Porter). It doesn’t take her long to charm her way into a job working in his office, where she initially bumps heads with his gay campaign manager, Nick (Dan Beirne), who in episode seven, “Happy Sweet Sixteen, Jerk,” proves what Rory said once before: “It’s Avril Lavigne’s world and we’re just living in it.”
The fondness for pop culture references (much to Tay Tay’s chagrin) is manifest in every episode, like when Georgia tells a saleslady at a boutique, “For a second there, I thought we were gonna have a Pretty Woman moment. ‘You work on commission, right?’” “No, I don’t,” the saleslady replies seriously, not getting the reference. It’s definitely something that would happen to Lorelai, always being too clever for anyone but her own progeny to get it.
As they settle in, Ginny realizes, for the first time, she actually cares about being attractive. That’s what a small amount of time will do among the Stepford wives and children (kind of like Rory at Yale/dating Logan Huntzberger [Matt Czuchry]). Thus, in episode two, “It’s A Face, Not A Mask,” the premise is instantly established with Georgia’s voiceover advice to Ginny: “For a woman, life is a battle. And beauty is a goddamn machine gun.” Considering Ginny has never felt beautiful or that she has an innate ability to draw in the eyes of men, she finds herself staring at her friends, putting on their foundation and then awkwardly apologizing that they don’t have the “right shade” for her “unique” skin tone.
This is the first of many Mean Girls moments that occurs with “MAN,” the acronym for Maxine and her clique. It is Max, as the Regina of the outfit, who conferences with Abby and Norah about letting Ginny into the group to make it “MANG.”
Upon being welcomed into the fold, Ginny is invited to more “things.” At Ginny’s first proper “party,” Norah shifts a conversation to ask her, “Hey. What kind of music do you like?” Ginny offers, “Uh, I like Mac DeMarco, Lana Del Rey.” A girl on the outside of “MANG,” Samantha (Romi Shraiter), refutes, “Lana Del Rey got so basic. She’s so mainstream now. She used to be alternative but now she just, like, does whatever society wants her to do.” Norah chimes in, “Okay, but she’s still whimsical.” Samantha doesn’t stop, adding, “You know what else I think? I think Lady Gaga got really basic since A Star Is Born.” See Taylor? You’re not the only pop star the show is “coming for.” Ginny’s subsequent discourse on the varying nuances of different A Star Is Born versions is something one can easily picture Rory being the one to deliver, all thanks to her mother’s tutelage.
Later, Ginny asks, “Mom, is Lana Del Rey basic?” Georgia assures, “Blasphemy! Lana is a goddess of sadness.” Or a Goddess of Tone Deaf Statements. Like Trump saying they don’t make great movies, such as Gone With the Wind, anymore. Speaking of, Georgia’s alias in this episode is Vivien Leigh, a highly specific choice that Ginny sums up with, “She loves Vivien Leigh because her whole life has been making a dress out of curtains. She’s a true chameleon.” Part of that chameleon-like nature means shedding her skin and never looking back in order to believe completely in her new identity.
Equal parts “murder mystery” and teen drama (as evidenced by Marcus crawling through the window like Joey Potter [Katie Holmes] in Dawson’s Creek), Ginny & Georgia is fond of showing the darker side of being a teen, which is one thing Gilmore Girls could never do as a result of the time period it came out and the network it was on. In episode three, “Next Level Rich People Shit,” Abby shows her self-loathing side by taping her thighs to fit into a pair of Harbours (some expensive jeans). As the most tight-lipped and least penetrable character, this moment is of considerable import. Like 13 Reasons Why, the show has no trouble addressing the topic of self-harm. Ginny also suffers from this issue throughout the season.
The underlying jealousy Georgia has over Ginny’s adolescence is also consistently referred to. The teenage years she never got. This, too, is part of the contention in Gilmore Girls, though it was never as candidly mentioned for being the elephant in the room. The plot device of contrasting flashbacks between Ginny’s high school period versus Georgia’s throughout the series is in the same vein as the season three episode of Gilmore Girls called “Dear Emily and Richard.” In it, we’re shown how Lorelai going into labor plays out versus how it does for Christopher’s (David Sutcliffe) fiancée, Sherry (Mädchen Amick), who gets the red carpet treatment and doesn’t have to be alone while she goes through it. In everything Georgia did as a teen, she was alone as well. With no resources other than Zion’s overbearing parents, as meddling and invasive as Emily and Richard Gilmore–especially when they try to claim guardianship of Ginny.
In episode four, “Lydia Bennet Is Hundo A Feminist,” the same themes of the mother wanting “the best” and “more” for her daughter are there, along with the same eventual regrets and resentments that drive a wedge between Lorelai and Rory.
Fortunately, like Rory, Ginny has plenty of interested male parties to keep her distracted from her mother’s drama. Case in point, the Bridgerton “touch yourself” moment that comes in text form when Marcus opens her eyes to the wonderful world of masturbation.
By episode five, “Boo, Bitch,” the tension is really mounting for Georgia as she sees her daughter looking at her less and less as someone to emulate and more as someone to steer clear of. Ginny describes how Georgia “is a total horror movie buff. From classic to camp, she loves them all.” This character detail bears the mark of Lorelai, who would surely make it a tradition to watch both the best and most esoteric horror movies in honor of the holiday, just like Georgia. But, as Ginny remarks, the reason Georgia enjoys scary movies so much (enough for her to be modeled after Casey Becker in the kitchen scenes of Scream) is because there are rules, expected tropes. In her own life, things of a scary nature get far more out of control. This even includes the random reemergence of Zion into her life, the same way Christopher shows up now and again to make Lorelai question the current man she’s dating.
Unlike Rory, Ginny seems to have higher expectations for that when it happens this time around. But before Zion’s return, Ginny seems to realize, like Cady Heron, that she’s the new queen bee. She’s become completely consumed by the cult of Wellsbury, complete with her cable-knit sweater and infinity scarf. So it is that Ginny really owns saying the Regina-patented, “Love you, mean it,” to elicit the group’s response to the call, “Hate you, kidding.”
“Savage. I love you as Regina George,” Max tells Ginny when the latter insists on not texting Sam about their Britney Spears costumes to include her. Ginny ends up in the Britney getup that started it all: the Catholic schoolgirl uniform from “…Baby One More Time.” To this point, Rory also once quipped of her Chilton uniform, “I’m gonna be in a Britney Spears video?” In any event, Ginny’s calculated exclusion of Sam is one of the first forebodings of how her “bitchery” will later come back to haunt her (along with Taylor Swift).
But Georgia still takes the cake on hauntings–like when her long lost sister, Maddie (Kelly McCormack), shows up out of the blue with her son to further expose just how much Georgia has hidden from her children all these years. Among other things, Maddie offers a timely line for the current Dr. Seuss controversy, demanding of Georgia, “Would you stop fittin’ and start sittin’?” Georgia responds, “You sound like a deranged Dr. Seuss.” Some pop culture witticisms in Ginny & Georgia are admittedly better than others. Like when Joe says of Maddie, “She’s a lost soul.” Feeling no pity, Georgia retorts, “Ohhh, alert Ursula.” Lorelai would approve. But would she believe in a world where Google is called huntandsearch.com and a simple typing of “Cordova” pulls up the exact result Georgia wants for Gabriel Cordova (Alex Mallari Jr.)–the private eye who has been doing some serious digging on her past? As if. In this way, Gilmore Girls, of all shows, manages to stay far more grounded in reality and veers less toward the absurd than G&G. One supposes the former is “too white” for such things.
And actually, Wellsbury might be just as white as Stars Hollow. Which must be how it infects Ginny long enough to scream at her mother, “I will not be trash like you,” in a moment that is pure Puta Rory at Yale.
Returning to the Charlotte/Rachel Flax relationship of Mermaids, though, there’s even a slap like the one between Cher and Winona after Rachel seethes, “What’s your major, town tramp?” Charlotte claps back, “No Mom, the town already has one!” That’s when Char gets the literal smackdown. Like Charlotte, Ginny also complains out of fear they’ll have to move again, “I’ve lived in twelve different homes because if something goes south, Georgia doesn’t let the dust settle.”
She can see that urge in Georgia hasn’t left entirely. Or has it merely been reanimated in Ginny, as the finale episode, “The Worst Betrayal Since Jordyn and Kylie” (again, the writers love pop culture), would seem to indicate? Either way, we can only hope the second season sticks to its Gilmore Girls and Mermaids emulations–and hopefully offends Taylor just as much.
