Teenage Bounty Hunters is a 2020 Netflix original Television series, created by created by Kathleen Jordan and starring Maddie Phillips and Anjelica Bette Fellini.
It follows the adventures of fraternal twins Blair (Fellini) and Sterling (Phillips) Wesley, a pair of teenagers attending Willingham Academy, a private evangelical Christian high school in Atlanta, who one night discover they posses an uncanny talent for bounty hunting, despite their age and upbringing. The twins soon find themselves moonlighting in the lucrative business of bounty hunters under the tutelage of Bowser Jenkins (Kadeem Hardison), while trying to keep the whole operation secret from their parents, the school and their high-school nemesis April (Devon Hales).
The first and only season was released on August 14, 2020.
Teenage Bounty Hunters provides examples of the following tropes:
- Alpha Bitch: April Stevens, a thoroughly nasty piece of work who likes to paint a veneer of Christian piety over her transparent Rich Bitch tendencies.
- This ends up being a mask April wears to hide the fact that she is gay. Her hostility towards Sterling is likely due to Sterling's apparent abandonment of her in the 5th grade.
- Armoured Closet Gay: April, the leader of the "straight-straight" alliance at Willingham Academy, is secretly gay.
- This is mostly a subversion as April doesn't have any self-loathing or denial that usually accompanies this trope and isn't shown to be hostile. She's just very afraid of coming out in a conservative Christian environment and to her homophobic parents, Sterling nearly convinces her to come out, but then her father returns from prison driving her back into the closet before she can come out.
- Bait-and-Switch: The third episode opens with a woman screaming and people looking horrified at a crime scene with a cop going "you never get used to the smell" as the woman moans on "seeing his head gone"...and it turns out it's a decipitated Confederate statue.
- Bluff the Impostor: While driving with Debbie, Sterling spots some odd quirks. Sterling quietly asks, if they're going on the run, "what happens to Queso?" Without hesitation, "Debbie" says "your daddy will bring him over," causing Sterling to literally scream "our dog's name is Chloe, who are you?!"
- Bounty Hunter: The twins' chosen after-school job. They are so good at it that even seasoned bounty hunter Bowser is impressed with their skill.
- Chekhov's Gag: Blair and Sterling's Twin Telepathy is mostly played for laughs, but after Dana kidnaps Sterling, Blair uses it to communicate with Sterling after she and Bowser arrive to save her.
- Contrived Coincidence: The very first bounty that the twins go after intentionally just so happens to be the father of April Stevens, Sterling’s rival in the Fellowship program and resident Alpha Bitch at Willingham Academy.
- Discriminate and Switch: Blair is really nervous about introducing her boyfriend Miles to her family...Sterling: Because he is Black?Blair: Because he is Catholic!
- Defrosting the Ice Queen April and Sterling's relationship vastly starts to improve when the two end up having to spend time with each other for various school functions. This comes to a head after Sterling discovers she has a crush on April one she likely had since the 5th grade but buried within her. After she finds out April has the same feelings, April has a hard time even pretending to be hostile towards Sterling.
- The Ending Changes Everything: After building up the sister's amazing "twin bond," it's jarring when the final scene reveals they're not twins at all but rather cousins with Sterling raised by Debbie when her real mother, twin sister Dana, went on the run as a fugitive.
- Even Evil Has Standards: April might be a falsely pious, manipulative, homophobic bitch... but even she thinks her father beating up a prostitute is utterly wrong.
- turns out this is mostly a false persona and April isn't even homophobic, being gay herself, while closeted, is completely accepting of herself and has long since made peace with her sexuality.
- Evil Twin: The first season finale reveals Debbie Wesley has one: Dana.
- Exact Words: When Miles tells Blair that his mother works two jobs, he is being entirely truthful. He just neglected to mention that those two jobs were lawyer and state senator. He also failed to mention that his father owns a bank.
- Foreshadowing:
- The fact that April is a lesbian and attracted to Sterling is foreshadowed by a Freudian Slip she makes in episode five.
- Both twins acknowledge how Blair is more the favorite of them...which makes sense given she's Debbie's real birth daughter.
- In the finale, Sterling is too upset at this bizarre stranger with her mom's face to note how Dana refers to her mother as "Aunt Debbie".
- Miles hints at future events while talking to Blair in episode six.Miles: I mean, everybody's parents have stuff they dont want you to know about. Doesn't mean it's all secret, evil Darth Vader stuff. (I am your father, anyone?)
- Freudian Excuse April's Alpha Bitch behavior and hostility towards Sterling stem from her discovering she was a lesbian in the second grade while having very homophobic parents. she also developed a crush on Sterling in the 5th grade, but believed that Sterling didn't feel the same way and abandoned her for Luke. Their relationship vastly improves once Sterling returns the same feelings
- Funny Background Event: After having an argument with Sterling, Blair phones Bowser for advice while he's in the middle of helping Terrence Coin arrest a drug dealing DJ at Tyler Perry's studio. This all, hilariously, goes down behind him.
- Gender-Blender Name. Sterling, which, while not a very common name, is usually associated with males.
- Good Bad Girl: Sterling is the most religious of the twins, but she is also the most sexually active of the two. In fact, the very first scene of the series is her initiating sex with her boyfriend Luke.
- Goshdang It To Heck: Sterling can't seem to be able to utter a proper curse, no matter how much the situation calls for it. Pays off in the season finale when she tells her parents "cut the crap," shocking them (and Blair).
- Gossip Evolution: In a wonderful take on Threat Backfire, after April threatens to reveal the condom she found to prove Sterling had sex, Blair decides to simply tell some classmates how a used condom was found in a classroom, with conflicting details. Within minutes, the entire campus is buzzing with tales from teachers going at it to which students are involved. April thus realizes accusing Sterling will just be another story amid the others going around.
- Hidden Depths: The first hint in April is when, beyond her father besmirching the family name or her puritanical attitudes about sex, she's disgusted that her father beat up a prostitute. She doesn't for a second forget that there was a human victim in that story.
- Hollywood Satanism: Averted hard, almost to the point of parody with the goth kids click at Willingham Academy. Sterling is shocked that their "Satanic Temple" is not involved in animal sacrifice or actual worship of Satan and are instead heavily involved in altruistic charity work and community outreach. By all appearances, they may be better Christians in practice than the actual Christians portrayed in the show.
- Hypocrite: Miles breaks up with Blair because he resented all the lies she was telling him. However, it is later revealed that he was also lying and keeping their relationship secret from his family.
- It looks like Debbie is this after spending the season in judgment of her daughters and others and acting rather pious when she's wanted for torching an abortion clinic. Then it turns out it was really her twin sister, Dana. Still not a good look for Debbie, as she's helped Dana evade the law and given her money.
- Sterling does this when she spends her whole relationship with April telling her about how they should be honest with their relationship only to omit the fact that she was the one who arrested April's dad.
- Implausible Deniability: Everyone just decides it's much better to play along with April's claims her dad is "on a long trip to Tokyo" when the entire town knows he's been arrested.
- Insane Troll Logic: Sterling employs some mighty “creative” theology when using Bible verses to justify to her boyfriend why them having premarital sex is OK despite being a sin.
- It Began with a Twist of Fate: The events of the series are set in motion by a random car accident that Blair and Sterling have with a skip that's running away from Bowser.
- Justified Criminal: The girls and Bowser both view the skip who goes around decapitating Confederate statues as this. When they finally catch up with her, they let her finish doing the last statue before taking her in.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Played with. Sterling is quite pious to the point of unable to curse and practical while Blair enjoys her wild fun and acting up majorly. Yet they share many traits such as enjoying this new job and wanting to help others.
- Then subverted as it turns out they're not twins at all.
- Played more straight with Debbie a proudly religious, law-abiding rich lady while Dana is a foul-mouthed rough gal who's a wanted criminal.
- Precocious Crush: April has apparently been crushing hard on other girls since the second grade.
- Racist Grandpa: Big Daddy Wesley, the twins' grandfather, cites "diversity" as one of the reason why he doesn't want to live in Atlanta anymore.
- The Reveal: The season finale has the girls rocked to discover they're not twins at all, they're cousins as Dana is Sterling's real mother.
- Rewatch Bonus: The reveal of Debbie having a twin sister and the girls not being twins puts scores of scenes throughout the series in a new light.
- There's also how a few scenes of "Debbie" were quite clearly actually Dana.
- Likewise, the reveal of April being gay and hot for Sterling changes how one sees her various scenes.
- Secretly Wealthy: Miles the parking valet from the country club... is the son of a state senator and the owner of a bank. His family is a whole order of magnitude wealthier than the Wesleys. Partially downplayed in that it is later implied that the adults knew all along and it was just Blair who was oblivious.
- Self-Serving Memory: Sterling believes that April abandoned her for another classmate, but April states that it was the other way around and Sterling abandoned her to that classmate. Its implied that April's memory is closer to the truth.
- Soapbox Sadie: By the standards of her social circle, Blair is extremely liberal, and will not shut up about it. Big Daddy actually seems to dread being around her because of this.
- Spot the Imposter: When Debbie picks Sterling up, they get along okay at first but Sterling is thrown by her acting odd and singing along with some country music. She then sees some used cigarettes in a coffee cup and the painted fingernails to know something is majorly off.
- Twin Telepathy: Blair and Sterling can have entire conversations with each other with a single look. Debbie and Dana are shown to have the same ability in the first season finale.
- Two First Names: The three Wesley women. Averted with Anderson, which is commonly a surname.
- Bowser Jenkins is a last-name variant, though the girls call him Mr. Bowser as part of their cover.
- Walking Spoiler: April's sexuality and her relationship with Sterling probably dominates at least half the tropes associated with her
- Wham Line:
- After failing an Impostor-Exposing Test, "Debbie" suddenly shifts to a deeper accent. "I'm your mama's sister."
- The final one of the first season as Dana tells Sterling "You're my daughter."
- Wham Shot: The pilot episode ends with a closeup of an old "Wanted!" Poster on Bowser's wall. The face on the poster? Debbie Wesley, the twins' mother.
- Subverted when the woman on the poster is revealed as Debbie's twin sister, Dana.
- That ends up being its own shot with Sterling texting Blair on how she's with Debbie...while Blair is at home with the real Debbie.
- With no warning Debbie and Dana do the exact same "twin telepathy" bit that Blair and Sterling have done.
