Series / Ginny and Georgia

Finding themselves. Before the truth finds them.

Ginny & Georgia is an American dramedy streaming TV series created by Sarah Lampert, released by Netflix on February 24th, 2021.

Antonia Gentry (Raising Dion) stars as Ginny Miller, an Angsty 15-year-old who has moved to a New England town with her 9-year-old brother, Austin (Diesel La Torraca), and her mother, Georgia (Brianne Howey).

In the wake of her stepfather's death, Ginny is forced to balance between being the new girl in school and being the only responsible figure in her household. Quickly, though, she soon finds a new friend in openly lesbian Maxine "Max" Baker and a love interest in Max's bad-boy twin brother, Marcus (Felix Mallard).

As the Millers try to settle into their new lives, secrets from Georgia's past come back to haunt her and will endanger the new life for her and her children…

The trailer for the series can be found here. A second season premiered in January 2023.

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The series shows examples of…

• Absurdly Youthful Mother: Downplayed compared to some examples. Georgia is in her early 30s and mentioned to have gotten pregnant with Ginny when she was 15, Ginny's current age, explaining their close age range as mother/daughter.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Downplayed. Georgia Miller can be emotionally neglectful towards her children by being immature and irresponsible, but her heart is always in the right place and she does try out giving genuine love to her kids.
  • It's revealed that Georgia's stepfather sexually abused her and her sister as kids, which is why Georgia ran away from home to restart her life at 14.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Georgia's pet name for Ginny is Peach. It turns out Ginny's dad Zion used this for Georgia too.
  • Zion also calls likes to call Ginny "gummy bear" as a pet name.
  • Gil calls Georgia "G", though as they aren't together anymore she's not happy with it.
  • Ginny's boyfriend Marcus starts calling her "Pooh" (after the book character), but she's not really onboard with this.

• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Georgia is a near-constant source of embarrassment for Ginny, such as teasing her about her dating life to showing up at school dressed like a model with a nice car, shining the spotlight on herself.
• Awful Truth: In Season 2, Ginny wrestles with learning that her mom Georgia had killed her last husband.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: On her birthday, Ginny demands that Georgia treat her like an adult rather than a child. Georgia obliges by not intervening or bailing her out when she gets arrested later in the episode and telling her the truth about their familial finances.
• Betty and Veronica:
  • Ginny's Archie to the thoughtful Hunter's Betty and the brooding Marcus' Veronica. She starts to be with Hunter since he's easier to date but she felt attracted by Marcus, cheating with him.
  • It's more complicated with her mother Georgia. She's the Archie to Paul's Betty (the town mayor fitting the ideal man persona) and Zion's Veronica (her ex-boyfriend and her temptation as well) and in addition Joe's Cheryl (as her third option).
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Georgia has very large, dark prominent eyebrows which really stand out as she's blonde and pale-skinned.
• Bilingual Dialogue: Ellen, Marcus and Max Baker speak in English while using ASL to sign at the same time, since Clint is deaf.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Lots of them:
  • Georgia's main survival strategy. She puts on a pretty and smiling face... and then stabs you in the back.
  • Clean, handsome, gentle, and hot mayor Paul Randolph reveals himself as somewhat one of these when he admits being cutthroat and ambitious. The extent of this, however, is yet to be seen.
  • Ginny can be seen as this given her overall attitude, and her friends directly accuse her of this when they discover she slept with Marcus and kept it a secret.
• Blackmail: Gil comes back in Season 2, eventually seeking to blackmail Georgia. He threatens to tell her fiance Paul of all the criminal things in Georgia's past, demanding she give him money (Paul's wealthy). Georgia circumvents his attempt by coming clean with Paul about all this, who then threatens Gil in turn (he's a paroled felon, so this could send him back to prison) so that he backs off.
• But Not Too Black: Bracia notes that Ginny gets it a bit easier due to being light-skinned because she's biracial, while Bracia is a dark-skinned black girl.
• Casting Gag: Raymond Ablack plays Joe while his sister Rebecca plays Padma, one of his employees. Padma jokes how he's like an older brother to her with Ginny.
• Child of Two Worlds: Ginny, being biracial, has felt caught in between at times. She says to Hunter (who's also biracial with East Asian/white heritage), that she's had no friends in the past as, for white kids she'd been not "white enough", and for black kids, "too white". She cries on seeing one comment which calls her "the whitest black girl" and self-harms by burning herself with a candle over it. Later, she also speaks with Hunter about how annoying being asked "what are you?" is, and being stereotyped given their backgrounds (he notes that he's half Taiwanese, though "Asian" is all even his friends know). In a slam poem given for her class later she also mentions her annoyance at being put into a box with regards to her identity too, refusing that pigeonholing. She and Hunter talk heatedly of what their own experiences given this have been, which devolves into insults (this was highly criticized due to relying on stereotypes, plus the "Oppression Olympics" they mention, one-upping about who's experienced worse).
• Children Raise You: Played With. The series describes Ginny as being more mature than her 30-something mother who, despite her apparent immaturity, can afford a nice home and good clothes for her kids. (Although, Ginny's maturity is rather up for debate.) However, to her credit, Georgia does her best to give her kids the good life she didn't have.
• Daddy's Girl: Ginny really adores her dad Zion, and they connect much more than she does with her mom, despite the fact that he's not around too much.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Georgia is revealed to have one, with many hints before it's detailed. She ran away from home to escape being sexually abused by her stepfather at fifteen, ending up homeless for a time. After having Ginny at the same age with Zion, she rejected his rich parents' offers of support, afraid they'd take her daughter away. They struggled as she supported them living in poverty. Georgia joined a biker gang, the Blood Eyes, who helped dispose of her first husband's body. She then got involved with Gil, having her second child Austin by him, then had to escape him too as he ended up being abusive. Then she married another man whom she killed after seeing he was intent on abusing Ginny like she'd suffered. Georgia reconnected to her sister, who then stole from her. It's made her extremely protective of her kids and pretty ruthless to survive.
• Dark Secret: Something is being kept from Ginny and Austin by their mother, though what it is is unclear so far. Only that she gets nervous around police officers...
• Deadpan Snarker: Marcus. He most likely gets his dry wit from his dad.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Ginny's dad Zion is a photographer who's usually off somewhere doing that and having adventures, while he keeps in steady contact with her and sends Ginny regular gifts. He comes to visit in "Check One, Check Other" and now also wants to stick around. At least part of the issue is shown as being Georgia's fault, as we see she took off with Ginny in past. He later leaves again, saying it's what Georgia wants, which she doesn't really deny. Ginny of course is really upset about this. They begin spending more time together in Season 2 though.
  • Meanwhile Austin's dad's in prison, because Georgia framed him for embezzlement and fraud. It turns out that Georgia's been keeping Austin's letters instead of sending them, and forging Gil's. Later he and Ginny find out, to Ginny's outrage. It turns out that Georgia told him Gil's a wizard in Azkaban. He comes back in Season 2 though, eager to have a lot of time with Austin (more than Georgia likes, given their bad history).
• Disposing of a Body: Georgia once was part of a biker gang, the Blood Eyes. They helped to get rid of her first husband's body.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Georgia distracts Paul from talking about missing Ginny by quickly changing shirts in front of him, with her bust in his face (it works).
• Doesn't Know Their Own Child:
  • Said almost verbatim by both Georgia and Ellen, who get very surprised by their own children's secret behavior during the first season. Georgia also has no idea that Austin has been skipping school for days, and doesn't initially notice when he stops talking.
  • Literal with Zion, Ginny's father, who hasn't seen her much in his life due to focusing on his artist career.
• Domestic Abuse: It's revealed that Gil became abusive to Georgia after they had been together for some time. She revealed his embezzlement so he would be jailed and she'd get free of him. Unfortunately, he comes back after being released, angrily assaulting Georgia in her own home. Their son shoots him to defend her (it's only a graze).
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Ginny doesn't like to be called her full name, Virginia.
• Dude Magnet: Ginny relates that her mom Georgia has no trouble attracting men at all, which is not surprising given her beauty and charm. Georgia later even describes herself as a magnet for them.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Season 2 seemingly ends like this. Georgia is finally able to fully trust Paul, the two get married, Gil is defeated, and MANG has finally learned to think about others as opposed to only themselves. And then...
  • Downer Ending: The second season ends with Georgia being arrested during her first dance with Paul for the murder of Tom, Cynthia's husband. The entire cast is left in a state of shock and sadness.
• Easily-Overheard Conversation: First Ginny and later Georgia are easily able to overhear people saying hurtful things about them in the Season 2 opener. Ginny is in her bedroom loft just above, while Georgia's right around the corner listening. In both cases, the people saying this should have know it (and Zion tries to shush them for Ginny's sake as well).
• Freudian Excuse: It's implied that Georgia's immaturity can be linked to her Teen Pregnancy with Ginny that led to some form of arrested development, leaving the woman as an immature adult.
• Friend to All Children: Marcus gets along well with Ginny’s brother Austin and their cousin Caleb.
• Foreshadowing: Believe it or not, it has some of this:
  • Since the very first episode, we see Georgia tending a garden with exotic flowers (which gets repeatedly savaged and even burnt later in the season). It's revealed in Episode 8 that the flower she's growing is wolfsbane, a poisonous plant.
  • On the last episode of the first season, a friend of Cynthia says in a throwaway comment that she could have been affected by her family situation. Several scenes later it's revealed Cynthia's husband is ill and wheelchair-bound.
• Generation Xerox:
  • The trailer for the series presents a subversion of this trope where Ginny is presented as being more mature than her mother. Then the first episode sees her smoking pot and losing her virginity to a boy she's only known for a day or two; while this can be attributed to being a teenage girl, it helps to show that the two are not so different.
  • As the first season unravels, Ginny starts to compare herself more and more to her mother (mostly when people call her out on her manipulative and selfish behavior), to the point that, in the final scene she runs away on a stolen motorbike with her brother, just like Georgia ran from her abusive family when she was a teenager with Ginny on tow. She even wears an old jacket from her!
• Genki Girl: It's downplayed as she doesn't always act like this, but when in a good mood Max is bouncy, extremely cheerful and energetic.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Two straight girls at a party make out to the delight of the guys watching.
• Hidden Depths: In her very last scene of the first season, Cynthia Fuller gets this: it's revealed she has to take care of her ill husband and their child, maybe explaining her self-centered and unpleasant behavior.
• Idiot Ball: Ohh boy, does Georgia have several moments of these.
  • Who would keep a poisonous flower that could be easily identified in their own garden?
  • In Episode 8, Georgia openly takes some money from the Town Hall's account and puts half of it in her purse, separated from the rest. Of course, Cynthia Miller quickly catches on to this.
  • It gets better: turns out Georgia was keeping all the unregistered checks of the money she stole from the Town Hall in her very same office, right next to a computer where any other person could see how those are not registered in the Mayor's Office balance. Oh, put in a password, you say? Of course, she has it -written on a post-it under the keyboard.
  • Murdering a man in his own home, with other people also present, two of them being nine-year old boys playing somewhere in the house (unsurprisingly one of them witnesses the incident). Georgia doesn't even bother to shut the door.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Georgia tells Marcus not to hurt her daughter Ginny or get her pregnant, claiming she'll kill him if he does.
• I Have No Son!: Georgia disowned her mother, stepfather and half-sister, with no contact for years. Later we learn this was because her stepdad molested her, and half-sister Maddie took advantage of her. She lied and told Ginny they were dead.
• Incompatible Orientation: Max hits on a girl she thought liked her but it's revealed she's straight and rebuffs her. She's briefly heartbroken as a result.
• It's All About Me: Several of the major characters have this, especially between the teen cast (so it could be justified by this).
  • Ginny's father, Zion, could be seen as this; flashbacks imply it was Georgia herself who convinced him to leave her and Ginny in order to become the artist he dreamed of being. However, this doesn't explain why he barely visits his own daughter, or sleeps with Georgia when she has just argued with her boyfriend.
  • As stated above, Ginny is very self-centered and always plays the victim whenever someone rightfully calls her out on her attitude.
  • As the first season ends, several characters (including her own twin brother) point out Maxine is really spoiled, childish, and self-centered towards her friends and her girlfriend, more focused on her own life and problems than those around her.
  • Abby could be seen as this. Some view this as justified, though, since her parents are divorcing (which has clearly traumatized her) and she's having self-image troubles (even taping down her legs to appear thinner and has an implied eating disorder). She also called for a meeting with her friends to open up about her negative feelings regarding this, only to be met with a Kick the Dog moment by Ginny, which made many viewers sympathize with Abby.
  • This gets finally subverted with Cynthia Fuller, Paul and Georgia's political rival: at first it seems as if she just wants to impose her vision of how the town should look and be and get back at Georgia, but her last scene of the first season implies she has a difficult domestic life (her husband is wheelchair-bound) and that she really wanted to make some good for her town.
• Ironic Echo: When Georgia puts out an idea for a casino night instead of a bake sale, Paul shuts it down and Cynthia tells her "it’s nothing personal, Georgia". When Georgia manages to convince Paul to hold casino night, she tells Cynthia, "it’s nothing personal".
• Jerkass Has a Point: Most of the time when a less sympathetic character criticizes Georgia. Amber Lynn is completely right about Georgia being a manipulative Gold Digger, Cynthia correctly pins her for basically a con artist and Paul's parents are not wrong about him rushing into a marriage with her being a reckless move. And that's before we get into Georgia's body count.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Max and Sophie are more chapstick and into girly stuff, like their straight friends, though it's not very pronounced. At times Max also dresses a little more tomboyish too. Sophie is possibly bisexual, since she's dated boys too.
• Location Theme Naming: Georgia is a Southerner whose name's that of a Southern state. Her daughter has the full name Virginia, another Southern state (who only likes her nickname Ginny).
• Love Confession: Ginny and Marcus confess their love for each other in Season 2 at Christmas.
• Love Triangle: Ginny first has sex with Marcus, losing her virginity by doing so, but then falls for Hunter, dating him. She still wants Marcus though, and gets into a fight with Hunter. Marcus and she then sleep together again. Hunter finds out, and Ginny is torn between them, tearfully saying she loves both boys. She then chooses Marcus, dating him in Season 2, but he ends things later.
• Mama Bear:
  • Georgia is shown to be extremely protective if she believes something bad is happening to her children, but it's Deconstructed given her inclination towards Disproportionate Retribution. When she finds out Austin's being bullied, she has her son beat the bully up before she threatens to break his nose to keep the kid quiet.
  • It's later revealed that her previous boyfriend was on the verge of sexually abusing Ginny, inappropriately touching her in one instance as Ginny resisted him. Georgia saw him touching her daughter, leading her to use wolfsbane to poison his morning smoothie, causing his heart attack and death.
• Manly Gay: Gruff, muscular, tattooed Gabriel Cordova, the private detective after Georgia, starts a relationship with Straight Gay man Nick.
• Mercy Kill: Georgia smothers Tom Fuller, who's slowly dying of a painful disease, intending to end his pain. She gets arrested for his murder as a result at the end of Season 2.
• Mommy Issues: Naturally, part of the series deals with Ginny and Georgia's strained relationship due to the latter's immaturity and Ginny's own problem of refusing to see things from her mother's perspective and to cut her any slack.
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: Averted as while Georgia could theoretically look young enough to be Ginny's sister, the former is a blonde-haired Caucasian woman and the latter is Black because of her father.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Max shuns Ginny, and so do her friends, when she discovers Ginny's having sex with her brother Marcus. Her main beef seems to be that Ginny didn't tell her about it. She thought they were both virgins at the same time.
• Neon Sign Hideout: Georgia has a hidey-hole under a floorboard in her closet where she keeps, among other things, a gun, Austin's letters to his dad that she never actually mailed, and the cremated remains of her ex-husband's body that she had stolen from his grave. Each of her children finds this hidey-hole immediately the first time they're in her closet.
• New Transfer Student: The series starts with Ginny and Austin starting at a new school after moving. According to Ginny, it happens a lot because her mom has moved them around so much. She resents this, as it's prevented her getting friends and she's had to be the "new girl" so often, forced to adjust in yet another school.
• Nonconformist Dyed Hair: Ginny experiments with a more unconventional hairstyle in Season 2, which includes dying blue streaks into her hair.
• No Periods, Period: Averted as one girl mentions having cramps. Ginny refrains from vaginal sex with Marcus once as she's having hers as well.
• Office Romance: Georgia is assistant to Mayor Paul Randolph, whom she gets involved with.
• Only Known by Their Nickname:
  • Ginny is rarely called Virginia. This is also her preference.
  • Max is only occasionally called Maxine in the series.
• Only Sane Man: Marcus comes across as this, having a reasonably deadpan reaction to most of what goes on around him.
• Open-Minded Parent:
  • Deconstructed as any open-mindedness Georgia might show is more rooted from her being a Womanchild. Although part of it does come from her loving her kids and wanting them happy.
  • Ellen and Clint are a more realistic depiction; while they do have a reasonable degree of openmindedness when it comes to raising kids in modern times, they also get into natural and expected disagreements with them.
• Parental Neglect: Downplayed, but given that Ginny is a moody teenager, Georgia clearly has to spend more time on her than Austin, which can lead to her ignoring some of Austin’s very obvious problems. She doesn’t notice at first when Austin goes mute for a while, and she initially has no idea that he skipped school for a whole week (though to be fair, no one told her since his teachers assumed he was sick).
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Ginny is unhappy when Georgia talks about her past or current sex life, mimicking vomiting once after this.
• Parents as People: Ginny's parents are both flawed people with full lives.
  • Her mother Georgia is fiercely protective (up to murdering her second husband as she feared he'd molest Ginny), but also often childish, violates Ginny's boundaries and manipulates people.
  • Her father Zion on the other hand is more stable and even keel, but often away due to his work (which he regrets).
• Phoneaholic Teenager: Max jokingly says she'd have her phone surgically grafted to her hand if she could.
• Product Placement: Averted: an Analogue Pocket, while clearly shown in Season 2, is not mentioned by name.
• Proud Beauty: Georgia is quite aware of her good looks, showing them off with outfits which show her cleavage and legs often, plus always making herself up before going out.
• Rape as Backstory: It turns out that both Georgia and Maddie were molested by their step dad. First it was just Georgia, and then when she ran away to escape he molested Maddie instead.
• The Runaway: Georgia ran away as a teenager to escape being sexually abused by her stepfather, and was homeless for a time.
• Self-Harm: Ginny repeatedly burns herself to cope with stress and emotional pain. Marcus is very concerned on seeing her about to, and she later talks with him about it, saying she concentrates her feelings this way to release them. He gently suggests therapy instead. When she confesses this to her dad in Season 2, he has Ginny go into therapy. Georgia learns later, to her horror, and starts helping Ginny as best she can.
• Sex God: Ginny tells her friends that Hunter is very skilled with his tongue after he goes down on her.
• Shout-Out:
  • Georgia outright states in the first episode that she and her daughter Ginny are like the Gilmore Girls but with "bigger boobs" or at least that's how she views them.
  • Austin tells the class his dad's in Azkaban as he's a dark wizard. He also wears round spectacles which look like the ones Harry has in the films (empty and just for show). Austin is a fan, as later we see he has Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. We later learn his mom told him this about his dad, inspiring Austin's Harry Potter fandom.
• Silent Snarker: Clint Baker, who's deaf, makes some sarcastic remarks in ASL.
• Slut-Shaming: Cynthia uses the fact Georgia is in a relationship with Mayor Paul Randolph out of wedlock and has two kids with different fathers as part of her campaign's personal attacks on him.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Played With as many fans wondered when DCS would show up. However, while Georgia may seem emotionally neglectful, she's never actually abusive and her kids are the center of her world. Still, it's odd after things such as Georgia having unsecured guns in the house, no one (not even her bitter enemy Cynthia) calls DCS on her.
• Stacy's Mom:
  • Georgia is very attractive, and boys her daughter's age certainly notice.
  • In a more unusual male example, Ginny's dad Zion is quite handsome too, and she's disgusted to see girls at her school giving him appreciative looks when he picks her up, complaining that in her next life she wants ugly parents.
• Straight Gay: Nick turns out to be gay, and does not have stereotypical traits.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Inverted as Ginny is biracial and many people are somewhat surprised to learn the white, blonde-haired Georgia is her mother (biological, at that). Doesn't help that her mother also has a strong southern accent that her daughter noticeably doesn't have, which widens the gap between their resemblance.
• Teen Pregnancy: Georgia gave birth to Ginny at 15. Ginny's dad Zion wasn't much older.
• Their First Time:
  • Ginny early on has sex with Marcus as her first time, and loses her virginity this way. It later turns out he'd also been a virgin at the time, to Ginny's surprise.
  • Later, Max's first is with Sophie.
• Title Drop: Georgia says the title at the end of "A Very Merry Ginny & Georgia Christmas Special" after she and Ginny spent the day being together.
• Token Minority:
  • Hunter, who has East Asian and white descent, is the only prominent boy of color at the school.
  • Clive Baker is deaf, the only disabled character.
  • Joe is among the only men of color in the town, played by Indo-Guyanese-Canadian Raymond Ablack.
• Tomboyish Name: Max for Maxine, a slightly tomboyish lesbian.
• Tracking Device: Georgia puts a tracker in Austin's watch when he's with his dad, whom she doesn't trust.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Austin regularly displays this, an unfortunate consequence of emulating his mother Georgia. He’s quick to throw a punch at a boy’s nose as soon as his mom says to, stabs that same boy in the hand with a pencil, sets the garden on fire, refuses to talk for some time, takes a gun and shoots his father without a hint of hesitation, and according to Paul, is way too comfortable with an axe.
• Twofer Token Minority:
  • Bracia is the only black girl in Wellesbury (aside from Ginny) that we see in multiple scenes. They even have a discussion about Ginny getting treated as a "token" by other people at times. It changes in Season 2, when a couple other black girls begin appearing (they're Bracia's friends).
  • Max and Ginny's friend Norah, played by a Filipina-Canadian actor and is adopted by white parents.
  • Max's Love Interest Sophie is a Latina who's been in relationships with both boys and girls. She's the only Latina so far on the show.
  • Gabriel, who's played by a Filipino-Canadian actor, is gay.
  • Padma is the only woman of South Asian ancestry, played by Indo-Guyanese-Canadian actress Rebecca Ablack.
• Uptown Girl: Georgia and Zion. She came from a poor family, before running away and becoming homeless when they met. Zion comes from a well off family. His mother was very unhappy that he impregnated a homeless girl. Unusually, he's black and she's white. Their relationship didn't last, but they did have Ginny.
• Vorpal Pillow: Georgia smothers Tom Fuller using a pillow in his bed as a Mercy Kill.
• With Friends Like These...: Ginny, Max, Nora, and Abby all treat each other horribly at various points, with some viewers wondering how they're actually friends. Most notably, Ginny has sex with Max's brother and keeps it a secret, Max uses her friends as props to try to hook up with a girl at a party, and everyone gets so wrapped up in their own problems they ignore Abby while she's struggling with an eating disorder and her parent's divorce. In a Kick the Dog moment, when Abby calls them out on being so wrapped in their own issues they've failed to realize her near breakdown, Ginny responds by calling her selfish and instantly makes the conversation all about her personal problems. A furious Abby gives Ginny a slap in response.
• Womanchild: Georgia Miller has all the hallmarks of one, though the fact that she has managed to keep her kids healthy and well-cared for, if not necessarily happy, is a slight twist. She frequently acts pretty childish, very much like her daughter Ginny, which is likely due to having her at 15. E.g., putting every item of food they have in the trash to spite Ginny refusing the dinner she made.
• Would Hurt a Child: When Georgia learns Austin is being bullied at school, she takes her son over and has him punch the bully in the face before she herself grabs his bloody nose and threatens to break it if he tells anyone. Georgia then cheerfully returns the sobbing child to his mother.
• Youthful Freckles: Ginny has a few freckles high up on her cheeks, which helps to show her as a teen (despite being played by a woman in her mid twenties).

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"I'm sick of the lies. I want answers."