Zach Gilford Bio, Age, Wife, Children, Career, Tarlor Swift, Good Girls

network television doesn’t get much attention anymore, aside from GIFs from A Good Place and This Is Us or a passing, curious mention of The Masked Singer. (And, of course, The Bachelor and sports and stuff.)

All the cool things seem to be happening on streaming and cable, further from the pressures of supposed public decency, where TV is freer to be weird and dangerous.

What a nice surprise it is, then, that there’s a show on network television—NBC, specifically—that is daring and full of fun, that often feels as nervy as anything on FX or HBO. You should watch Good Girls, is what I’m saying.

The show’s second season premieres on March 3, giving you a few days’ time to catch up with the first season, a Breaking Bad–esque narrative about three suburban Detroit women turning to crime to solve financial ills.

Good Girls may borrow from other series, but what it does with those revisited tropes feels fresh and exciting. The series, created by Jenna Bans, has a nice coil to it, tense enough that cliff-hanger endings land with a crack, but loose enough that there’s room for playfulness, for sweetness, for discursive ramble that the show’s three leads maneuver with natural charm.

Those performers are the major asset of Good Girls. Christina Hendricks takes the first-among-equals lead as Beth, a harried mother of four who realizes she maybe wouldst like to live deliciously as she takes a spin around the room with the devil.

She’s the Walter White of the group, I guess, and Hendricks is great at communicating that dawning appetite for dark energy, the sudden conflict between Beth’s settled life and the one that until recently she never dared to imagine.

Hendricks also has irresistible chemistry withManny Montana as a local gangster who becomes Beth’s main antagonizer an enticer. Their circling of one another, juggling threat and flirtation, is the stuff of perfect TV drama, sophisticated in its soapiness.

Ruby

As Ruby, mother to an ailing daughter and the moral compass of the three women, Retta richly expands on her Parks and Recreation appeal, deftly crafting a complicated marital bond with Reno Wilson and managing all of Ruby’s gnawing, mounting worry with sharp humor.

It’s a thrill watching an actor prove their range, and Retta would be on Emmy shortlists were there any justice in this world. (I guess Good Girls would argue, in some ways, that you have to make your own justice.)

Mae Whitman rounds out the trio as Beth’s scrappy sister, Annie, a single mom with an anarchic streak that is sometimes the teensiest bit cartoony, the show’s most frequent indulgence.

Otherwise, though, Whitman is just as dialed-in as the other two; when the three of them are together, bickering and negotiating and consoling, the show hums along.

They get able support from Wilson, Montana (swoon), Zach Gilford, David Hornsby, Matthew Lillard (yes!!), and especially this season, Allison Tolman as another exhausted mother hip to the crimes being perpetrated and wanting her cut for staying quiet. It’s a really well-curated group of actors, all reveling in the clever contours of the writing.

Season 2

In Season 2, the complications must take on extra shape, as certain problems from the first season are resolved (in violent fashion) and new quandaries present themselves.

In setting all that up, Good Girls is sometimes a little blithe, trying to sweep grim things out of our minds too quickly or skipping hurriedly through time to get somewhere new.

For the most part, though, the show remains compelling as ever, a smart mix of comedy with serious stakes—ones that are rarely not felt. The show isn’t afraid of the grisly, but it’s also not interested in shock value. It’s naked and admirably simple main motive is to entertain, which it does in abundance.

This kind of television show shouldn’t feel as rare as it does—an intelligent yarn that’s broadly accessible, that’s digested easily and satisfyingly while still provoking hunger for more.

Which isn’t to say Good Girls is junk food or a guilty pleasure or anything like that. It’s genuinely well-made TV, on par with a lot of “prestige” series on slicker networks.

What distinguishes it is that it has no intention to alienate or over-impose—it’s not at all aggressive about its artistry, and doesn’t preen or indicate or crow about its own embellishment.

Modest

I guess the word I’m looking for is “modest,” but I don’t like the gendered connotations that word comes with. All I’m trying to say is that Good girl is a simple pleasure: a good, solid series that isn’t getting more hype because it refuses to hype itself.

You should watch! The dragons and the zombies and the existential murder mysteries and all the rest will still be there after you take a break to catch up on Good Girls, which is like having a great, zippy conversation with a new friend.

One not laden with history and expectation and concerns about returned investment. The women of Good Girls may be thieves, but they demand little of us but our enjoyment.

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