
Dan Da Dan
Dan Da Dan may be a comedy, but the sensuality, violence and spiritual elements within it make it a tragedy for viewers.
Georgia Miller has a killer smile. Fitting, that.
It’s not that Georgia kills or hurts or maims people all that often. Hardly ever, really. But Georgia’s been on her own since she was 15 and pregnant, and she’s seen that the world can be a hard, dangerous place. Like a truck-stop mentor once told her: The world is full of bees; it’s best to sting first.
Georgia took the advice and thrived—smiling at and charming and, when necessary, kneecapping each challenge as it comes. She’s moved around a lot in this great big country, slept around a lot in great big beds, and she’s improved her lot at each step of the way. She has two kids: teenage Virginia, who was born in Virginia; and 9-year-old Austin, who was born in Austin.
But the curious little family’s in Massachusetts now, and Georgia says she’s done with men, even if her red lipstick and plunging neckline beg to differ.
Virginia knows her mom’s promises aren’t worth much. Still, the teen (who prefers to go by “Ginny”) hopes that she keeps her word this time. After all, it’d be weird to have a sibling named Massachusetts. And let’s be honest: She’s got her own problems to deal with.
Ginny doesn’t know about her mother’s deep, dark past, or just how far her mom’s willing to go to protect her and Austin. She just knows that having Georgia for a mom can be really frustrating.
Oh, Ginny loves her mother. But it’s not easy to be the daughter of someone that all the high school guys ogle. Or to get “The Talk” at age 7, which presented sex as a sweaty business transaction. “You should never give anything unless you’re getting something in return,” Ginny recalls her mother telling her, at an age not too far removed from training wheels and Velcro shoes.
Ginny’s 16 now—a year older than her mom was when she had her—and she’s trying to decide who and what she wants to be apart from Georgia’s cynical advice. She’d never had a boyfriend ’til they arrived in Massachusetts; now her love life’s more complicated than her AP English exams.
And Ginny’s beginning to wonder … just who is her mom? What is she hiding in her bedroom closet? What secrets is she keeping locked away? Is Georgia even her mother’s real name?
As Season 3 begins, Ginny (and the rest of the community) just may get some answers. That’s because Georgia’s currently on trial for the alleged murder of a community resident, Tom. Truth be told, Georgia did kill the man; but from her admittedly unhinged perspective, she’d suffocated the sick and dying man as an act of mercy to both him and his exhausted wife. What she didn’t know, of course, is that such an act would dredge up a lot of her past—for better or for worse.
It’s yet another act that fulfills the self-diagnosis Ginny tells her on-again, off-again boyfriend Marcus: “My whole family’s broken. I’m broken.”
She’s not wrong, as Ginny & Georgia’s deep relational dysfunction inches toward something like Euphoria, albeit nowhere near as graphic.
“We’re like the Gilmore Girls, but with bigger boobs!” Georgia tells Ginny in Season 1. And indeed, many have compared Ginny & Georgia to that beloved WB/CW show. But those comparisons have not been particularly flattering.
Gilmore Girls had its issues, of course, but it was built on snappy dialogue and winsome characters. Ginny & Georgia is built on soap and sass and salacious content and scads of inappropriate behavior.
Ginny laments in the opening episode that she’s still a virgin at age 15. She loses said virginity in that same opening episode. LGBT characters play major roles in the show, too. Self-harm and suicidal thoughts turn up in the story, too. And one Season 3 episode pushes pro-abortion propaganda.
Meanwhile, Georgia plays the “cool mom” as she plots and schemes and cheats and connives her way into the town’s inner workings and the mayor’s heart—drinking lots of wine and smoking lots of weed and flashing lots of cleavage along the way. Oh, and let’s not forget she’s willing to break noses, arms and even whole people if they threaten her little family arrangement. Because Georgia’s a bee, remember, and she has a brutal sting.
Gilmore Girls? More like girls gone wild.
I’m sure that as the show trundles on, it’ll offer some nice thoughts on familial love and acceptance and, who knows, maybe even responsibility. But all those messages feel a little like Georgia’s lipstick—a glossy sheen to hide the machinations underneath. Ginny & Georgia is, at best, trashy escapism not fit for the teens it’s aimed at. At worst, it’s just plain trash.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
After Georgia’s latest husband dies of a heart attack/car crash, she pulls up stakes and moves her little family all the way to a small, affluent town in Massachusetts. She promises her kids, Ginny and Austin, that she’s going to concentrate on them while they’re here—not seek out a new, eligible bachelor. “Mama’s dating life is like [the] desert—nothing as far as the eye can see,” she says. But the next day, it seems Georgia’s already plotting a way to get close to Paul, the town’s mayor and most eligible bachelor. Meanwhile, Ginny—who laments at the beginning of the episode that she’s still a virgin at 15—sleeps with her best friend’s brother and goes on her first real date with a totally different guy. We see a handful of flashbacks to Georgia’s own murky past.
The sex scene between Ginny and her neighbor (who are, remember, both well underage) is fairly explicit. We don’t see anything critical, but we do see Ginny’s bare back and the two having sex underneath the covers. And we hear some very graphic dialogue about what they’re doing under said covers.
Ginny also recalls a graphic sex talk that her mother gave her when she was 7 years old. In the car, Georgia and her 9-year-old son, Austin, sing to an extraordinarily provocative song. When Ginny wonders aloud whether it’s appropriate for Austin, Georgia muses that he probably doesn’t know what it means: The ensuing conversation suggests he knows exactly what it means. We hear references to sex, porn, various body parts and condoms. We also learn that Georgia uses a particular sex toy.
Georgia dresses provocatively throughout the episode, including at her husband’s funeral. (Other attendees remark on the inappropriate levels of cleavage she’s showing.) When her credit card bounces at a clothing store, she picks up a pair of the store’s shoes, tells an unwitting cashier that she’s returning them and asks for in-store credit to “buy” the purse she wants.
Austin’s new classmates are bullying him and, after the first day of school, break his glasses. When she sees the 9-year-old culprit, Georgia leads the boy and Austin behind some bushes, tells Austin to punch the kid in the nose, then squeezes the bloodied (and perhaps broken) nose with a tissue, pretending to staunch the bleeding as they all exit the hiding place. (Georgia tells the boy’s mom that he fell after threatening the kid to not tell the truth.) She also blackmails a restaurant owner.
In a flashback, a 15-year-old Georgia fights with a man (perhaps her father), scrambling out of a trailer as the guy threatens to kill her. She leaves with a big black eye. She later finds herself in a bar and drinks beer with a 17-year-old (with a fake ID), and later the two ride off into the world on his motorcycle.
Marcus—the next-door neighbor Ginny slept with—also smokes marijuana. His mom grounds him for the habit (which he ignores) takes a baggie of it from his sister’s room and later gives it to Georgia, who smokes it that night. Later, Marcus’s mom comes by and suggests to Georgia that they smoke the marijuana that she just confiscated from her son. (They do.) Georgia drinks lots of wine throughout the episode, too. Marcus’ twin sister, Maxine, is a lesbian: She makes a handful of references to her sexual preferences, and her mom says that Maxine came out when she was 9 (because, apparently, she was fascinated by her Barbie doll’s breasts). Characters say the s-word about 10 times. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “crap,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p—y.”
[Spoiler Warning] In flashback, Georgia’s new husband makes some deeply inappropriate physical moves on his teen stepdaughter under the guise of helping her with her yoga. Georgia sees, and she apparently poisons his coffee. The guy suffers a heart attack while driving and crashes his car, the combination of which kills him.
As Season 2 begins, Ginny has stolen ex-boyfriend Marcus’ motorcycle and run away from home, taking little brother, Austin, with her. They’ve spent a couple of weeks with Ginny’s biological father, Zion Miller, who’s doing his dead-level best to be a good dad. Meanwhile, Georgia and Paul are engaged and preparing for marriage, but it’s clear that Georgia’s many secrets may yet spoil the party. As Thanksgiving approaches, all of the show’s characters are navigating tense relationships with extended family.
Ginny, for her part, seems convinced that her mother is a murderer. Flashbacks to Season 1 show her being interrogated by private investigator Gabriel Cordova (whom we see on his computer in the present, chatting with, apparently, his gay partner in their home). Ginny is terrified of her mom and has a nightmare about her mom trying to suffocate her with a pillow. But she doesn’t want to tell anyone or turn her mom in, and she’s coping with that dissonance by self-harming. We see her with a lighter apparently burning her abdomen as she counts to four. (She eventually confesses this behavior to her dad in vague terms, apologizes, and says that she wants to stop.) We also see her researching the flower known as wolfsbane, which she learns can cause someone to have a heart attack. Georgia’s own flashbacks and panic attacks recall at least one man who wanted to kill her.
Various Thanksgiving celebrations among several different families feature, alternately, a prayer of thanksgiving and a lot of drinking. Paul’s mom gushes that’s what Thanksgiving is for. Marcus, meanwhile, smokes a joint and opines to his mother, “I’m not in a very thankful mood. We celebrate a holiday that praises our success at genocide. It’s a white celebration of colonization. If that’s not sadistic enough, then we package it up with image of a happy, smiling turkey.” Elsewhere, Ginny is reading the book The Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler, which she tells her mom is about “the demise of America through capitalist fascism.” Georgia says sarcastically and angrily to Ginny, “God in His infinite wisdom put me in charge of your wellbeing, Virginia.”
Marcus sneaks in the window to see Ginny near the end of the episode. She tells him to go at first, but then invites him to spend the night with her. They kiss, then lie down together, with Ginny still in torment over what her mom may have done. In a separate scene, Georgia pulls her top off (we see her bra), then puts another shirt on in front of Paul. We also see the two of them getting ready for bed in their bedroom (and it’s clear that they’re cohabitating though they’re not yet married).
We hear at least seven s-words, about 10 misuses of God’s name and one or two uses each of “d–n,” “b–ch,” “a–,” “a–hole,” “crap” and “good Lord.”
As Georgia awaits her arraignment, Ginny struggles with the embarrassment that comes with the whole town knowing that her mother has been arrested.
An adolescent girl admits to “hooking up” with another boy, engaging in “not sex, but other stuff.” Ginny wears a shirt that reveals cleavage. A pillow depicts breasts in abstract art. A lesbian invites another teen over; when her mom asks what they did, she jokingly quips that they stimulated each other. A woman takes a bath, though we don’t see anything. A boy kisses a girl on the cheek. A man and woman kiss. A man introduces himself by his pronouns.
Ginny snaps herself with a rubber band to distract her from the desire to hurt herself worse. Someone asks if murder is “really that bad?”
A young woman says her parents are very religious, and she was only allowed to watch VeggieTales growing up. A professor tells his students that they can refer to him as the “Lord of Light.” A background song sings about being “the devil” and going down to hell.
Teens smoke marijuana. There’s a reference to wine. People skip school. One character insists that people think of her as evil.
We hear the s-word six times. Other language includes: “b–ch,” “d–n,” “d–k” and “h—.” A young woman is called a whore. God’s name is used in vain 14 times.
Ginny panics when she realizes that she’s pregnant; she wants to talk to Georgia for advice. However, Georgia’s legal situation makes arranging that conversation difficult.
A teen girl admits to reading a book containing “fairy smut,” which another describes as pornography. We see a shirtless man, and he and Georgia share a sexual “will-they, won’t-they” moment. A woman wears nothing but a towel. Two teens (male and female) kiss. Someone says that being nerdy is “sexy.” Two young women develop romantic feelings for each other.
We see an abortion take place—Ginny ingests the abortifacient drugs mifepristone and misoprostol to end her baby’s life. Later, she suffers from the cramping pains wrought by the pills. We hear a reference to domestic abuse as well as (potentially) child abuse.
A quote at the start of the episode implies that getting pregnant is equivalent to “losing” at the game of life. Likewise, sad background music plays when Ginny confirms that she hasn’t had a false positive. Further character dialogue encourages doing what’s right for yourself rather than sacrificing for others—it’s advice the show ironically paints in a negative light when a boy “does what’s right for himself” by abandoning the mother of his child after he learns that she is pregnant.
Georgia confesses that her parents were drug addicts. An underage character is accused of drinking wine.
We hear the s-word six times. We also hear “a–,” “h—” and “d–n.” God’s name is used in vain six times, including once with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is likewise used in vain once.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
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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