Good Times is an Animated Adaptation of the 1970s sitcom Good Times first released by Netflix. It was executively produced by Stephen Curry, Seth MacFarlane, and Norman Lear.
Now taking place in the 2020s, this show takes a look at the new generation of the Evans family living in the Chicago Projects, consisting of taxi-driver Reggie, Housewife Beverly, Soapbox Sadie Grey, artist with a case of Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! Junior, and the drug-dealing Enfant Terrible Delvin. Compared to the original, this series takes a Denser and Wackier approach to things, involving situations like talking roaches, aspects of a character's personality made real, and the women going on a journey through the womb to learn about being proper women.
The show was first released on April 12th 2024.
Tropes in this series:
- All Just a Dream: At the end of "Grey's Anatomy", the bizarre journey that Grey and Beverly take through a woman's womb is revealed to be just a dream that Grey had after hitting her head and knocking herself out in the bathroom.
- Animal Themed Super Being: In "Big Sister Is Watching", Junior takes up crime-fighting as "The Mother Clucker", a hen-themed hybrid.
- A True Story in My Universe: Reggie claims to Elon Musk that his grandfather James survived the 1970s by selling the rights to his life to CBS.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Junior has severe difficulty focusing, best exemplified when he struggles to do maths work and draws instead. His focus is even personified as a baby undermined by his creativity (until he takes pills at least).
- Automated Automobile: "They Came Before Elon" features the Robotaxi, a range of taxis created by Elon Musk that don't require drivers.
- Book Dumb: Junior does rather poorly in school, to the point that he's repeating tenth grade for the third time, but he does show a high talent for art and can make very detailed paintings.
- Dead Artists Are Better: In "Grey's Anatomy", a women is lead to believe that Junior, who she is buying drawings from, has died, so she spends more money buying his paintings. Reggie takes advantage of this by pretending that Junior dead, telling him that white people like it when black artists are dead.
- Denser and Wackier: The original was a largely straightforward and grounded sitcom about the trials and tribulations of a working-class black family. This series, despite being set in the same fictional universe, includes such elements such as talking objects and animals and drug-dealing babies.
- Disney Villain Death:
- In "Black of Focus", Junior's Focus takes Grey to the top of one of the buildings in the Project. Reggie's therapy dog manages to save the day by pushing Grey out of the way and sending Junior's Focus down the building. Unfortunately, Junior's Focus grabs the dog by the tail and they fall to their apparent deaths together.
- At the end of "Primary Coloreds", just as Delphine was about to evict the Evans from their housing, Dalvin sends a killer owl after her. The startled Delphine ends up falling down the apartment complex, becoming severely injured in the process. Downplayed in that the fall didn't directly kill her however - that came about due to the local rat population getting a taste for the blood she was producing as a result of her injuries and tearing her apart.
- Distant Sequel: Takes place several decades after the original, with Reggie being the grandson of James Evans.
- Divine Race Lift: Jesus is depicted as a Black person, just as Florida believed him to be in the original.
- Election Day Episode: In "Primary Coloreds", Beverly decides to run against Delphine as Project President after seeing how uninterested Delphine is in making substantial changes. In spite of her attempts to seem more appealing to voters however, she initially loses, although this loss is reversed when Dalvin kills Beverly.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: For all of Dalvin's drug-dealing tendencies, he does care for his mother, as shown when he sends Delphine to her death for trying to evict her.Dalvin: Nobody fucks with my mama.
- First Period Panic: In "Grey's Anatomy", Grey is horrified when she gets her first period and has to be told all about the horrors that come with a period.
- "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: In "Black of Focus", Junior takes pills designed to improve his focus and becomes very good at schoolwork, even getting an A + + +. However, Grey, disliking the fact that he's more intelligent than her, flushes the pills down the toilet, causing his focus to literally come out of his mind and eventually undergo a Disney Villain Death. Afterwards, Junior admits that he preferred it when he wasn't on the pills anyway.
- Fuzz Therapy: In "Black of Focus", Reggie sees his rising blood pressure go down thanks to a therapy dog trained for people with PTSD. He briefly adopts the dog, finding much benefits from the dog's ability to calm him from his rage. However, the dog becomes competitive with Beverly regarding giving Reggie affection, leading to Beverly having sex with Reggie to win him back, and the dog eventually commits a Heroic Sacrifice to save the family from Junior's Focus, mysteriously disappearing in the process.
- Generation Xerox: Must like his ancestor J.J, Junior is a budding artist, whilst Grey shares her ancestor Michael's Soapbox Sadie tendencies.
- Happy Ending Override: The original series ended on a happy note, with J.J. getting a job as a professional cartoonist, Keith and Thelma both having a baby and moving in to a bigger apartment, bringing Florida with them to be their live-in nanny, and Michael going to college. Evidently, these changes proved to be short-lived, as their descendents are back to living in dilapidation and squalor in the exact same Projects which their ancestors managed to start moving away from.
- Heat Wave: "The Red Treaty" focuses on a heatwave, causing shoot-outs from the gangs living on the project. It's even personified by a Sinister Sentient Sun annoying the people.
- Held Back in School: Junior is repeating the tenth grade for the third time when first seen, thanks to his inability to focus in school.
- Holiday Episode: "#BlackLoveDay" is set on Black Love Day (which is a real holiday within the Black community, although it is not set on the 29th of Feburary as the episode claims). Whilst Reggie forgets that he's meant to gift Beverly a gift, Junior tries to woo a date for the day, and Grey falls in love with a man called Quan.
- Inherent in the System: In "The Red Treaty", Beverly comes into contact with Alison Whitemen (All Whitemen) in her attempts to improve standards of living for the people in the Projects. The woman claims herself as the representation of the System and tells Beverly that she is responsible for the poor public education system, every corrupt judge that locks up brown and black children for a kickback, and the stop-and-frisk technique. She manages to successfully distract Beverly long enough to start back up the gang wars, emphasising how Beverly's attempts to improve life is being hindered by the System, and becomes the Big Bad for the rest of the series, manipulating Beverly into making the lives of the Black residents worse by moving them into even poorer accomodation.
- Meaningful Name: As her name suggests, Alison Whitemen (or All Whitemen) is actively working to make the lives of Black people worse and keep the White people in power.
- Men Can't Keep House: In "Primary Coloreds", Junior and Reggie is left to keep house whilst Beverly goes out campaigning. They end up knocking themselves out with a potent combination of cleaning liquids.
- Soapbox Sadie: Grey has some very strong opinions on things and isn't afraid to voice them, like her belief that spam is a "pink, racist meat designed in a lab by a pink racist".
- Superhero Episode: In "Big Sister Is Watching", Junior is bitten by a mutated chicken, causing him to turn into a buff human-chicken hybrid and become a chicken-themed superhero called "The Mother Clucker", putting him in opposition with Grey, who has been put into control of the surveilance systems around the Projects. The episode ends with Junior retaining his powers, but deciding to keep his identity under wraps, and they are not mentioned again in the subsequent two episodes.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: Dalvin is a baby who gets into very mature things, like drug-dealing and getting involved in shoot-outs.
- The Un-Favourite: Of the three children, Reggie likes Dalvin the least - whilst his siblings get to live under his roof, Reggie tells Dalvin that he isn't allowed in their house, and he doesn't have many kind words about the baby.
- Villainous Gentrification: Alison Whitemen plans to renovate the Do or Die Projects. To do this, she plans to manipulate Beverly into telling the residents of the Project that they would be finally getting the improvements needed for their housing and subsequently force them out of the area and into the worser housing that is the Harvey Projects under the claim that they're only moving out temporarily. Grey ends up finding out her intentions upon realising how White the neighbourhood had gotten in the absence of the kicked out Black community.
- Vocal Dissonance: Dalvin, despite being a baby, has a very deep voice courtesy of Slink Johnson.
- Womb Level: In "Grey's Anatomy", Grey decides to use a tampon, which takes her and Beverly to a woman's womb, complete with sapient eggs.
