Animation
Good Times
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
Desna Simms is tough as nails. And hey, she should know.
Desna owns a Palmetto, Fla., nail salon staffed by a cadre of colorful characters. She’s also in cuticle-deep in organized crime, from the Dixie Mafia to the Russian mob. Hard to put a coat of varnish on that sort of business relationship and make it attractive.
At first, it all seemed oh so easy: Just launder a little money from the shady pain clinic nearby, make a little cash on the side, and everybody’s happy, right? But despite the whole concept of laundering, business with the criminal underworld is rarely clean. Soon, the salon’s swimming in a sea of sex, drugs and murder—accoutrements that don’t do anything for Desna’s bottom line.
Cracked nails are an occupational hazard in Desna’s profession. Cracked heads? That’s something she’d like to avoid.
Let’s say this much: TNT’s Claws is … unique.
Part of that may stem from its formation in HBO’s content labs, where it was originally intended to be a half-hour comedy. Indeed, Desna’s salon is staffed with the kinds of caricatured-but-multilayered personalities you’d expect from an ambitious comedy. There’s Polly, the high-strung con artist; Virginia, the salon’s young, street-wise beauty; Jennifer, the straight-talking vet; Quiet Ann, who fittingly never talks; and Desna herself, played by comic actress Niecy Nash. It’s not hard to picture the cast migrating comfortably to a traditional two-camera sitcom. Five Broke Girls, if you will. And it tries to draw even more laughs—albeit sometimes uncomfortably so—from Desna’s mentally disabled brother, Dean.
But Claws isn’t content with just being a workplace comedy. It wants to be Breaking Bad, too, complete with Breaking veteran Dean Norris in the role of Dixie Mafia bisexual mob boss Uncle Daddy. His character is a nasty piece of work indeed, prone to chomping down on chicken wings while gators gobble his latest hit. Not a guy you want to mess with.
The result is a series that might give viewers a wacky relatively gentle storyline (“Polly tries to impress an old rich friend!”) with a wacky, bloody, nihilistic one (“Jennifer’s husband chops up a corpse!”) in the very same episode. The results are rarely pretty.
I’ve seen television shows that are more violent than Claws. I’ve seen shows that are more sexual. But I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one that combines both into a stew that feels quite so … sleazy. HBO’s Game of Thrones, for all of its gratuitous excesses, takes its storytelling seriously. But in Claws, salacious shock and schlock is the point.
Desna and most of her staff dress as if they might need to pull guns from their cleavages at any moment. They talk about sex a lot during the workday, and often engage in it after (or during) business hours. All manner of sexual habits and inclinations are discussed and occasionally documented on film.
And several characters are committed to killing those who cross them, sometimes in very messy ways. Language can be eye-wateringly bad, too—so pervasive, in fact, that one of the show’s episode titles uses the s-word.
What I’m saying is this: Claws is bad. Really bad. Interesting? Maybe for some. Unapologetically trashy? Absolutely. Worth watching? Hardly.
Desna’s salon, which had been under the control of a Russian crime boss named Riva at the end of last season, gets yet another new employer when Riva’s sister, Zlata, arrives and shoots her sibling in the head.
We see the impact of the bullet, and blood flies everywhere, spraying Desna and her crew. (We see chunks of brain matter in the hair of one of the women, and she later says she used all of her conditioner to get it out.) Blood pools around the dead woman’s head after she falls to the ground. Elsewhere, we hear about the nasty things that Russian mobsters do to their enemies.
Desna has sex with her new beau. We see no explicit nudity but plenty of skin, flesh clutching and lots of movement. In the aftermath, the sheets are positioned to avoid overexposure but leave no doubt the man beneath them is naked. In other scenes, Desna and her guy dance and caress, and he pantomimes taking a bite out of Desna’s behind. (Roller, Desna’s ex, also makes lewd passes at her.) Polly, a member of Desna’s crew, has sex with her doctor boyfriend at a party: Both are clothed, but, again, movements leave no doubt about what’s happening. Later, Polly takes it on herself to train male strippers for a club that Zlata hopes to open. (The strippers wear almost nothing as they writhe on stage, and Polly gives tips on how to dance suggestively.) Virginia, another crew member, is pregnant with Dean’s baby. (Dean is Desna’s mentally challenged brother.)
Toby, Uncle Daddy’s cross-dressing boy toy, rips out a pair of fake breasts he’s wearing in an angry huff. He later runs out of Uncle Daddy’s house in a dress and makeup. Uncle Daddy watches two nearly naked men wrestle in a vat of shiny liquid. “More glitter?” one asks. Jennifer, yet another member of Desna’s crew, was apparently caught on video having sex with her new boyfriend (apparently a Messianic Jew): Zlata steals the vid and shows it to her estranged husband. (We see it as well, though both parties are again mostly clothed.) Dean frets about Desna’s “intercourse.” Women at Desna’s salon engage in very raunchy, sexually explicit talk. We hear about Virginia’s pregnancy woes, including the fact she’s “always puking” and has sore breasts. (She continues to wear incredibly revealing get-ups, as do most of the other women here.) Zleta’s daughter complains that her mother turned her into a “sex marionette.”
Desna and Zlata throw Molotov cocktails at Uncle Daddy’s house. Desna walks into a cocaine processing center in a nearby nursing home. (All the workers are old ladies dressed only in hairnets and underwear.) Riva and Zleta both want Desna and her crew to take a more active part in their operation’s cocaine distribution. Folks drink wine and talk about opioid addictions; Desna and Uncle Daddy sell drugs to known addicts. (Money laundering is also a big part of their business.) Wine, vodka and champagne are quaffed.
Characters say the s-word more than 20 times, and we hear many other profanities as well, including several uses of “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—,” “d–k” and “p-ss”. God’s name is misused four times, once with the word “d–n.”
Uncle Daddy searches for Roller’s killer, and he guns down a suspect as the salon workers watch in horror. Meanwhile, Polly pretends she’s a rich widow to impress an old friend.
The show opens with Desna having a nightmare about violent sex (including hitting and choking) with Roller. (We see sexual movements and part of Roller’s backside.) Polly’s friend, who’s married to an old man, has an affair with a younger man that includes bondage and S&M. (We see elements of both as the two engaging in intimate activities wearing skimpy leather undergarments.) Uncle Daddy, meanwhile, ogles a pool full of synchronized swimmers, including his male bartender, who’s dressed in a woman’s swimsuit. A doctor mourns the fact that his old girlfriend is getting married, saying that she was the only “freaky Jewish girl” he’d ever met. (He also describes those freaky sexual details to a friend.) In the background of a scene, we see women pole-dancing. A man grabs his crotch in an obscene gesture. Jokes and dialogue reference masturbation, oral sex, S&M, gender changes, prostitution and abortion, among many other explicit sexual subjects. Salon workers wear revealing attire.
A man gets pulled out of a car trunk after he’s obviously been beaten. (Bruises cover his face). He’s shot in the chest, and salon workers are forced to mop up the blood. The body is later chopped up into pieces (barely off camera, but we see blood splash others), and it’s insinuated that those pieces are then fed to alligators. A man involved with the body disposal comes home with his shirt covered in blood; his small daughter worriedly calls her mother. Elsewhere, someone talks about how he wants to cut out his former foster parents’ eyes.
Salon workers openly sell illegal painkilling drugs. Several people who want those drugs make obviously fraudulent claims regarding their need for them—claims that have all supposedly been approved by a doctor. A man drinks from of a flask until he’s very drunk. Someone drinks whiskey at a strip club as he gets a tattoo on his back. People imbibe other alcoholic beverages, too, and there’s a reference to margaritas and martinis.
Polly jokingly says “God is good.” Characters utter the s-word at least 11 times. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p—y.” God’s name is misused about a dozen times, more than half with the word “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused three times.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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