Drama
House of Guinness
Lawlessness brews in House of Guinness as the children of the late Sir Benjamin Guinness vie for political power and personal pleasure.
Hey parents, are you ready for an anxiety attack?
Picture this: You’re camping in the woods with your family and friends. Everyone seems to be having a good time. The kids are enjoying a silent rave. There’s a pretty sweet campfire going. At the end of the night, everyone gets tucked into their bunks safely.
The next morning, your teenage daughter, Penelope, wakes up before you and goes for “a little solo nature hike.” You text her when you wake, and she promises she’ll be back in about 15 minutes.
Well, that time comes and goes. So you give her a little more time. After all, she may have lost track of time or even took a wrong turn. But there are clearly marked paths. She’ll find her way back eventually, right?
You text her again, wondering where she might be. Then, you get a notification that someone has charged $500 to Penelope’s Apple Pay account. After that, her phone stops sharing her location.
At this point, you can probably imagine about 47 different horror scenarios. Maybe Penelope got lost. Maybe she tripped and hurt herself. Maybe she was mugged. Maybe she was taken. Maybe … maybe … maybe.
Or … maybe Penelope just suddenly felt the urge to spend $500 on camping equipment, hop on a train and leave without saying a word to anyone. ‘Cause that’s what’s happening.
“It’s not you. I’m not running away,” her voice messages says.
Um, Pen—can I call you Pen?—it sorta feels like that’s exactly what you’re doing. And I get it, you’re on some kind of pseudo-spiritual nature journey à la Reese Witherspoon in Wild. You feel like you need this for some reason.
But can I just say, as an outside viewer, that this is about the worst idea possibly ever?
I just feel like you need to hear someone say that. OK, boo?
If I were a teenage girl feeling unsure of myself and my place in the world, I’d probably feel inspired by Netflix’s Penelope. To Pen, every obstacle is a challenge to solve. She’s persistent and clever. And I’ll give the girl this, she’s got moxie.
Now, if Penelope was really clever, rather than wandering into the woods on a whim, she might’ve done a bit more research about how to survive in the wild. Instead, she just gets lucky. She happens upon a wilderness survival guide before her first night in the woods. Kindly strangers offer to help her along the way. And somehow, none of the adults she comes across bothers to ask questions about her parents or why she’s alone in the woods or why she doesn’t seem to know how to do anything.
But again, this is all luck.
Penelope makes a lot of, let’s say, ill-advised decisions. Decisions such as hopping on the back of a train like an old-school hobo; trying to befriend a bear; and flirting with a random guy, then following him back to his van—that he’s living out of—at the end of the night. Thankfully, nothing bad happens to her in those instances. But as the show goes on, we see how things end up a lot differently.
Penelope really leans into the feeling that nature is somehow calling her to go on this journey, asking trees to protect her and even hugging them. A woman describes trees as “social beings.” She claims the government is wrongly trying to uproot protected trees. And she shares her own beliefs about nature and ancestry that conflict with a biblical worldview.
In later episodes, Penelope befriends three teenage boys on their own spiritual journeys. The guys explain that they were raised Catholic and believe in God, but lately, they’ve been having some doubts. One of them says he is gay and doesn’t believe it’s right for Christians to “hate queer people.” Another struggles with the notion that he’ll go to hell if he has premarital sex. They express some other thoughts about God that don’t align with Scripture, but they also ask Penelope to pray with them at the end of the night.
Penelope and one of the guys hit it off, and one evening, she asks him to “pretend” that it’s their wedding night. When asked, she confirms that she wants to do what married couples do on their wedding nights. The guy is hesitant, stating that his faith says he can’t and that it’s also a “big deal” for him. However, after Penelope tells him it’s a big deal for her, too, they decide to follow through. We don’t see the act onscreen, but it’s certainly a major issue for Christian families.
Those weird spiritual leanings, premarital teenage sex, the danger of wandering into the woods on your own and occasional harsh language (the f-word pops up every now and then) are all things parents should keep in mind as they discern whether this show is worth watching with their families.
(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 letters@pluggedin.com, 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.)
Penelope feels “called” by nature to wander out into the woods on her own one night. The next day, she ditches her family to do just that, braving the wilds as she embarks on a spiritual journey of sorts.
Penelope leaves without saying a word to her parents. She lies about returning, disables location tracking on her phone and uses a large amount of her parents’ money to pay for camping supplies without permission. She illegally hops on the back of a cargo train, then sneaks into a park to camp without paying.
Penelope flirts with a young musician named Sam, who invites Pen back to his van for the night. He quickly explains that he doesn’t mean the invitation in a sexual way, stating that she simply looks like someone who could use some help. But the pair sleep snugly on the floor of his van together.
We hear a single use of the f-word in song lyrics and four uses of the s-word. God’s name is misused once. There’s a single use of “d–mit.”
Penelope attempts to make her way back to society after a harsh winter and cougar attack leave her sick and badly injured.
We see blood on Penelope’s clothes from when she was attacked by the cougar. She hallucinates as she walks. And when she thinks she sees her mom, she runs headlong into a tree, knocking her unconscious. Later, she wakes in hospital with bandages on her wounds, and the attendants inform her that she almost died.
Penelope sings a song about faith struggles. While hallucinating, Penelope sees herself kissing Peter, a boy she met in the woods in an earlier episode.
A social worker tells Penelope that the hospital will give her a prescription for pain medication. She then says that Penelope can sell the pills on the street, but that it would be ethically wrong. Penelope opts not to take the prescription.
Penelope gives the hospital a fake name. A social worker helps her keep her identity secret, telling her that the hospital will “eat” the bill if Penelope decides to leave. The woman gives Penelope information about several social services that can help her, such as food banks and free clinics, but also gives her information about Planned Parenthood.
[Spoiler Warning] Penelope plucks up the courage to call her parents, but the number has changed. She checks her old social media account to see if they’re still looking for her, but she discovers that they passed away while she was gone.
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.
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