Animation
Good Times
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
It’s not easy to raise a daughter, especially if you’re a single dad. And especially if you’re raising her to be a steely assassin.
But that’s exactly what Erik, Hanna’s resourceful pseudo dad, did. He spirited the girl away from a secret laboratory in Romania when Hanna was just an infant. For 15 years, Erik and Hanna hid in an Eastern European forest that not even a gingerbread witch would dare live in.
All that time, Erik trained his little girl to use weapons and her wits, talking to her in a litany of languages and quizzing her on the sorts of American movies a normal 15-year-old might be aware of. You know, a 15-year-old who hadn’t spent her entire life isolated in a forest.
But beneath those lessons, he taught an even more serious one.
“Human beings are …” he’d begin.
“… not to be trusted,” she’d respond, as if in church.
But those days are gone now. Erik is dead and Hanna is trying to figure out who she can trust. She knows she can’t trust anyone who wants her dead, and man, there are a lot of people who fit in that category.
It’s all so confusing, especially when Hanna knows truths that have the potential to disrupt the CIA and test her own life-saving skills.
Hanna is, in some ways, a coming-of-age story, and one more universal than you’d expect. She is in some ways a surprisingly typical teen. For years, her hidden home was Hanna’s whole world. Now she has a measure of freedom with which to experience the real world herself. She’s meeting new people, seeing new places and experiencing new things—things that, most certainly, Erik (and many other fathers) would’ve disapproved of.
‘Course, some of her experiences take place in military prisons or secret scientific facilities. Or, when she inevitably escapes such places, in some of Europe’s hippest cities and on its hardest streets.
But always, Hanna’s on the run from someone. And more often than not, she’s working some sort of double/triple agent angle to save other young people like herself who have either been trained from childhood as assassins or who have been targeted for their political leanings (and therefore pose a potential threat).
Amazon’s Hanna is based on the 2011 film of the same name (which starred a young, up-and-coming Saoirse Ronan and a gleefully wicked Cate Blanchett). Though the film was rated PG-13, it certainly didn’t garner its relatively family-friendly rating via any particular restraint. That film was intense and bloody, and there’s something a little jarring about watching a teen girl become so proficient at killing.
This television show, which bears its own deceptive rating (TV 16+), is of a piece with the movie. But while PG-13 films are quasi-legally bound to watch their mouths, television shows have no such constraints: F- and s-words are heard in the mayhem. But the issues hardly end there. Teen girls, in the throes of adolescence, experience new pulls and attractions toward some of the people they meet, including those of the same sex.
And, still, violence is the show’s biggest caution. Death comes quickly, sometimes painfully and often quite bloodily. Most everyone here, it seems, has a talent for termination. But given the level of blood we see, perhaps it’s only fitting the show has a heart, as well.
Yes, Hanna’s about a teenage assassin, doing battle with other folks out for blood. But underneath that storyline, the show’s also about a girl dealing with the trials and tribulations that come from a life seemingly destined for violence.
Hanna returns to the Meadows (an assassin-training facility) undercover to “graduate” and be given an assignment. But rather than take her target out, she helps him escape.
We hear gunshots and then see a man’s body tossed down a stairwell, and it hits the railing on the way down. People at the bottom then set the body on fire. (It’s implied this body might not even be real.)
Teen assassins spar with each other. One girl winds up with a bloody nose before getting choked out. We see the girls training with rifles and cleaning guns. Several of these girls talk about the people they’ve had to kill and how the memories haunt them. We also hear that some of their fellow assassins were killed on the job. Two teens are chased through the woods by hunting dogs.
Hanna and a boy nearly kiss. We also see them embrace in another scene. Two girls snuggle and hold hands. Some girls wear some slightly revealing outfits. We hear that a man’s girlfriend is pregnant.
People lie, blackmail and threaten others. A group of teenage girls get drunk at a bonfire. We learn that a man used to have a drinking problem. A guy rolls a joint. We hear uses of the f-word and s-word, as well as “d–n.” Christ’s name is also abused.
In the Season 2 premiere, Hanna helps escaped assassin Clara learn how to survive in the wilderness. Clara wonders about her biological mother. CIA agent, Marissa, tries to protect Hanna from outside sources that want her dead.
Male and female soldiers are shot and killed. A group of young women engage in target practice and are brainwashed about the dangers of the world. A young girl is Tased. We hear in conversation that CIA agent Marissa shoots herself in the leg. Hanna cuts an implant from Clara’s arm and later talks with her about her dead mother. Hanna survives a gas explosion.
Two young women talk about a “hot” boyfriend. Hanna and Clara break into a home to find food. The phrase “dumb a–” is heard twice.
In 2003, Erik and Hanna’s mother spirit away their daughter from a rather unsavory-looking secret clinic, but the mother is killed in the escape. Fifteen years later, Erik continues to train Hanna in death-dealing skills while teaching her to be deeply fearful of anyone else. But while Hanna loves her pops, she’s also a normal, curious adolescent. Defying her father’s orders, she sneaks off through the forest and meets someone else—a meeting with life-changing, and life-threatening, consequences.
Hanna nearly breaks the arm of her new friend, 17-year-old Arvo, when they first meet. But when Hanna stealthily rendezvous with him again, he talks her into sneaking into a communications facility to watch stars from a satellite dish. There, he tries to put his arm around her, and the two nearly kiss before they’re interrupted by gun-wielding security guards. Later, Hanna confesses her act of rebellion to father Erik, including the pass the boy made on her.
“He wanted to touch me,” Hanna said.
Erik, taken aback at first, says, “He’s just a boy. It didn’t mean anything.”
In bed, Hanna reaches under the covers, and when she pulls her hand out she discovers her fingers are coated in what we assume is menstrual blood (which she tastes). In flashback, we see Erik shirtless as Hanna’s mother sings to her infant daughter.
In a flashback to the 2003 escape, Erik fights with a couple of men. He grotesquely breaks the arm of one, and he essentially throws the other into a flaming furnace. We hear the man screaming in pain and, when he tries to get out of the furnace, Erik hits him again—making sure he stays put.
Later, a helicopter pursues the small family, shooting at them and eventually causing their car to crash into the tree. The crash kills Hanna’s mother: We see the woman’s skull smash into the windshield, leaving a bloody splat; later we see her lifeless, bloodstained face. (The car catches on fire, too.) Much later, shadowy CIA boss Marissa tells someone that Erik “killed” his own girlfriend before taking the child into the forest.
Hanna hunts, shoots and kills a deer. We see her gutting the animal before her father attacks her. They fight ferociously (it’s training, but their battle has a deadly earnest feel to it) before Hanna puts Erik in a suffocating choke hold. Hanna also slits the throat of an apparent soldier (with an American accent) When Hanna talks back to her father, Erik slaps her across the face.
Marissa tells personnel to kill Erik on sight, but also orders them to spare the girl. We see Hanna engaged in rigorous training, including marksmanship and punching the living daylights out of a tree trunk.
Arvo smokes. We hear characters say the f-word twice and the s-word about five times. We also hear “b–ch” and one abuse of Jesus’ name. In flashback, Eric steals IDs and, eventually, a car to make his getaway.
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.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
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