How Did Nobody Tell Me About Good Girls?

I don't know what I was watching when Good Girls originally aired.

I don't know what I was doing.

But I have questions.

How did four seasons of this show happen without somebody pulling me aside and saying, “Tracy, you need to watch this”?

Even more inexplicable: a business friend of mine represents Manny Montana, who plays Rio. I have actually been to a party with the two of them.

So please explain to me how I managed to stand in the same general vicinity as this man and escape without developing the major crush I now have on him.

Was I distracted?

Was the lighting bad?

I need answers.

Because I've discovered Good Girls, and now I wait patiently for Rio to appear on screen like he's a special guest star on a show that he is very much already on.

And yes, the entire cast is excellent.

Mae Whitman is terrific. Matthew Lillard somehow manages to make me angry and make me laugh. Retta is wonderful.

But Christina Hendricks and Manny Montana?

Good Lord.

It's the chemistry.

Every time Beth and Rio are in a room together, the temperature of the show changes. He doesn't even have to do anything. Sometimes he barely speaks. Sometimes he just looks at her.

And apparently that's enough.

But the more I've watched Good Girls, the more I've realized that the show is doing something much more interesting than giving us a sexy gangster and a suburban mother who absolutely should know better. Reminds me to Diane Keaton and Richard Gere in Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

There are things happening in this show that we accept immediately because we recognize them.

But nobody really talks about them.

Beth Isn't Trying to Escape Her Husband. She's Trying to Escape Beth.

On paper, Beth has the life women were told they were supposed to want.

House. Husband. Children. Nice neighborhood.

She's competent. She's responsible. She makes the lunches and remembers what needs remembering.

And she's dying of boredom.

Then she commits a crime.

And discovers she's good at it.

That's the part I find fascinating.

Crime doesn't simply introduce danger into Beth's life. It introduces competence.

She discovers there is this other woman inside her who can negotiate, strategize, lead, bluff and make decisions under enormous pressure.

Rio sees her.

Not as somebody's wife.

Not as somebody's mother.

Not as the woman who remembered the cupcakes.

He sees the other woman.

And I think that's a huge part of the sexual attraction.

And Then There's Rio.

Let's address the obvious.

The man is fine.

There. I've said it.

But I don't think Rio works simply because Manny Montana is attractive.

Rio understands something about Beth before Beth understands it herself.

She's ambitious.

She's good at this.

And perhaps most dangerously, she likes it.

Her husband wants the old Beth back.

Rio keeps calling the new Beth forward ( like Mickey Rourke telling Kim Basinger to “come for me”).

That's sexy.

And what's particularly interesting is that Beth doesn't become some completely different woman around him. She's still Beth.

The PTA mother and the criminal mastermind aren't opposites.

They're the same woman.

That's the revelation.

Ruby Is Me.

Then there's Ruby.

Ruby is the character I recognize.

She has a husband she genuinely loves. She has children. She has responsibilities. She has bills. She has people depending on her.

And she has to keep the entire machine running.

That's a very particular kind of woman.

The world can be falling apart and somebody still needs to figure out what's for dinner.

Retta makes Ruby funny without making her ridiculous. She can be frightened and brave simultaneously. She can participate in something completely insane and still somehow be the person asking the practical question everybody else forgot.

Every successful group of women has a Ruby.

I'm fairly certain I'm ours.

The Women Are Better at Crime Than the Men Expect.

This might be my favorite running joke in the entire series.

People continually underestimate these women because of what they look like.

They're mothers.

They're suburban.

They're carrying groceries and picking up children and wearing cardigans.

Nothing to see here.

Except they're laundering money.

And they're getting better at it.

There is something deeply satisfying about watching women discover that the same skills required to manage households, children, husbands, jobs, schedules, emergencies and impossible budgets are remarkably transferable.

Organization is organization.

Negotiation is negotiation.

Reading people is reading people.

Apparently the PTA has been preparing women for organized crime this entire time.

Who knew?

And Let's Talk About Money.

This may be the thing Good Girls understands best.

Money isn't theoretical when you're a woman without enough of it.

Money is healthcare.

Money is keeping your house.

Money is custody.

Money is whether you can leave.

Money is whether you have choices.

The women don't rob that grocery store because they're thrill seekers. They arrive at crime through financial desperation.

And then something changes.

Once they experience what money can do, the goal isn't simply survival anymore.

Money becomes independence.

And independence is addictive.

There Is Also Something Happening With Desire.

Women are allowed to be desired on television.

We're less comfortable with women desiring.

Especially mothers.

Especially middle-aged women.

Especially women whose bodies don't fit whatever Hollywood has decided the desirable female body is supposed to look like this decade.

Beth wants Rio.

And the show doesn't apologize for it.

It doesn't require her to lose twenty pounds first.

It doesn't give her a makeover.

It doesn't turn her into somebody else so that we're permitted to believe this very attractive younger gangster could want her.

He wants her.

That shouldn't feel revolutionary.

And yet somehow it does.

Which Brings Me Back to Retta.

One of the things I appreciate about Ruby is that her size isn't the plot.

She's not there to be the “big funny friend.”

She's married.

She's loved.

She's desirable.

She's a mother.

She's exhausted.

She's complicated.

She's allowed to simply exist in her body while the story concerns itself with much more interesting things.

As a plus-size woman—and as someone who spends a great deal of time thinking about how plus-size women are represented—that matters to me.

Sometimes representation isn't a speech about representation.

Sometimes it's simply letting the woman have a life.

Maybe That's Why I'm So Late.

Good Girls originally ran from 2018 to 2021.

Somehow I missed the entire thing.

Now I'm watching it years later wondering why nobody told me.

Maybe that's actually appropriate.

Because the entire show is about women everybody has underestimated.

And apparently I underestimated Good Girls, too.

So now I'm making up for lost time.

I'm watching Beth discover who she really is.

I'm watching Ruby hold everybody together.

I'm watching Annie make yet another decision that makes me want to reach through the television.

And I'm waiting for Rio to walk through the door.

Obviously.

Although I'm still stuck on the fact that I once went to a party with Manny Montana and felt nothing.

Nothing.

I really don't know what was wrong with me.

But I've corrected the situation.

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