Animation
Good Times
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
Grace Fraser has always lived the good life: Perhaps—as Grace would admit herself—a little too good.
She and her husband, Jonathan, live in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a zip code that the rest of America has been trained to covet. She’s a high-priced psychologist. He’s a doctor. They send their teen son, Henry, to an exclusive school named Reardon, the tuition for which runs $50,000 a year. Sure, folks say that money can’t buy happiness. But hey, the Frasers sure look happy, don’t they?
Still, Grace occasionally wonders whether they’re a little too happy, a little too comfortable.
“Don’t you worry sometimes that you’re raising your son in a bubble?” she asks Jonathan one morning.
Funny thing about bubbles: They have a way of popping.
The pinprick that bursts this particular bubble comes in the form of a savage murder. Elena, a new mom in Reardon’s exclusive clique, is found dead by her own son. She’s been so savagely beaten that her face looks less like a face and more like a month-old jack-o’-lantern—torn and puckered and unrecognizable.
Sad? Of course. Tragic? Sure. Not that Elena’s death touched the other Reardon’s moms especially deeply. She wasn’t really one of them. She came from Harlem, not the Upper East Side: Her son attended the school on a rare Reardon scholarship—the school’s attempt to secure a little “diversity.” Only Grace seemed to know Elena at all. “She seemed sad,” Grace recalls later.
But Elena’s not the only one gone. Jonathan Fraser is, too. Grace’s husband disappeared that night as well—leaving behind his cell phone, his family and a bunch of secrets to be unlocked, one after another.
Murder has always been savage business. But for decades, when people thought of murder mysteries, they likely thought of the genteel whodunits of Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers—proper affairs where a savage killing or two wouldn’t ruffle the mystery’s sense of British decorum.
Our own age is not so civilized. Whodunits are bleaker, bloodier collisions of conflict that, more often than not, suggest the true horror of not just the murder, but the cascading influence of that terrible act upon survivors: family, friends and even strangers caught up in the crime’s grim wake.
Murderous entertainment is no longer “fun.” And honestly, you could make an argument that that’s a good thing. After all, should we ever treat murder lightly?
But if the whodunit is no longer fun, why do we still find it … entertaining?
The Undoing, based on Jean Hanff Korelitz’s 2014 novel You Should Have Known, is a bloody, mean affair, one that revels in the bursting of bubbles. This story tosses Grace and the pampered, coddled community she represents into a crockpot of sins and vices, sex and gore. Like Grace’s Manhattan pals, the show minds its manners at times. But when it doesn’t? Hoo boy.
It’s not that viewers might see a little skin: They’ll see all the skin. And then, if that wasn’t enough, they might see some people without all their skin, too. It’s not that they might hear a little profanity. They’ll hear f-words and s-words and plenty of other words besides. The Undoing feels navigable until, out of the blue, it unexpectedly bombards viewers with stuff even most R-rated movies skirt around.
The Undoing sports an A-list cast and unfurls a compelling, if painful, story. But to erase the show’s problems, that takes more doing than it, or we, have time for.
Grace and Jonathan Fraser bicker playfully over whether to attend a glamorous fundraiser for Reardon, their son’s extravagantly expensive school. Given that Grace is on the fundraising committee, there’s no question about who will win the argument. But soon, Grace has a more pressing set of concerns: First, the newest, poorest member of the fundraising committee turns up brutally murdered. Second, Grace’s husband mysteriously vanishes. Could the two be connected?
The murdered mother, Elena, doesn’t fit in comfortably with the rest of Reardon’s rich mothers, and she knows it. She breastfeeds her infant during a meeting (the breast is fully visible), which shocks the other moms and impresses at least one. (A friend of Grace’s admits that Elena had “spectacular” breasts.) Later, at a health club, Elena walks up to Grace in the women’s locker room, completely nude. (We see Elena fully from both the front and rear.) “I’m all for women feeling comfortable with their bodies,” Grace tells Jonathan later, “but it was … weird.” Later still, a distraught Elena gives Grace a short, ambiguous kiss on the lips (which seems to surprise Grace a great deal).
Grace takes off a nightgown and steps into the shower (we see her bare back and a bit of her rear) and invites her husband to join her. (He playfully suggests that he can get his rubber gloves.) The two have sex in bed: Though both are covered, it’s obvious what’s happening. Elena lies in bed with her husband; we see their bare shoulders above the covers. Some women wear evening wear that exposes shoulders and cleavage. Grace counsels a gay couple and discusses an affair that one partner had.
Elena’s body lies on the floor, covered in blood and what look to be some pretty terrible wounds. Her face has been apparently smashed in, leaving her completely unrecognizable.
People drink wine and champagne. Characters say the f-word six times and the s-word twice. We also hear “crap,” “d–n” and about seven misuses of God’s name. Jesus’ name is abused thrice.
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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