“Ginny and Georgia” returned to Netflix with a second season, nearly two years after the release of season one. Viewers patiently awaited the release of a ten-episode arc filled with more scandals, lying, and relationship issues that at times were an over-dramatic and unrealistic interpretation of what one goes through during their teenage years. 

Georgia Miller (Brianne Howey) is depicted to be this sweet, loving, and perfect mother who in reality has a history of illegal activity such as fraud and murder. Georgia and her daughter, Ginny Miller (Antonia Gentry), have a small gap in age and through the first season are shown to be the best of friends. The pair begin season two not speaking after Ginny and her brother, Austin (Diesel La Torraca), run away after finding out a monstrosity of secrets their mother has been keeping which include killing her ex-husband and lying to Austin about where his biological father is and writing fake letters from him. They seek shelter with Zion Miller (Nathan Mitchell), Ginny’s father. After finding out about her mother’s real identity, Ginny sinks into depression and self-harm.

After living with her dad for an episode, Ginny moves back with her mom and tries to find comfort in her neighbor and lover Marcus Baker (Felix Mallard). They grow closer and end up becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. But their relationship is at some points extremely cringeworthy and not like a typical high school relationship. Even though she has Marcus, Ginny wants her friends Max Baker (Sara Waisglass), Abby (Katie Douglas) and Norah (Chelsea Clark), who are all mad at her because she lied to them about getting with Marcus, Maxine’s twin brother. She tries to rekindle their friendship, but they all persist because they believed this was not what a friend should do. The relationship and drama between Ginny and her friends shows yet another unrealistic conflict between friends. People don’t just get angry because they lied to each other, friends are not supposed to tell each other everything and it is a normal part of friendship.

Paul Randolph (Scott Porter), Georgia’s fiancè, is the mayor of the town. Georgia doesn’t tell him about all of her secrets until right before it could have been too late. She has the constant pattern to sabotage her life and run away when things get hard, and she had plans to run away from Paul days before their wedding because she knew he would find out about her problems. Ginny, however, convinces her to come clean to him about her past. Not only does Paul still want to marry her after she reveals her dark past, but he helps her get rid of abusive father to Austin, Gil Timmins (Austin Ashmore). When watching this episode, I was so surprised that even after hearing about Georgia’s surprise that Paul was still so in love with her and still married her.  True love does exist in movies: but the question I kept on asking myself during and after this was, how could Paul go back? How could he just pretend like nothing happened and marry her within days of finding out the truth? 

Ginny and Georgia, in my opinion, tried too hard to portray many heavy themes: but it was at times cringe worthy. I felt as though it portrayed Ginny in such a negative way that made me hate her a lot of the time. The show’s creator, Sarah Lambert, made this season extremely annoying for me because she tried to have so many issues tied into the show, but it was confusing. When I was watching the show, I kept on thinking that the relationships between Ginny and Georgia were not like a typical mother and daughter relationship. I also kept on thinking about why Paul would just forgive Georgia after she came clean about her past? That isn’t something that would happen in a normal relationship. 

Grade: B-