Good Girls

Available Summary:

The series follows three suburban Michigan mothers, Beth, Ruby and Annie, who are each experiencing various financial difficulties. They decide to pull off an unlikely heist, robbing a local supermarket, in order to help mitigate their money problems. Their successful robbery attracts the attention of the store manager after he recognises Annie as one of the robbers, and of gang leader Rio, who was using the supermarket as a front to store and launder counterfeit money. The mothers subsequently find themselves caught in a series of gang heists, debts, secrets, and familial crises.

-Wikipedia.

Jack's Summary:

This show focusses on three women, all mothers, whose amateur criminal careers begin with the robbing of a grocery store.

When Isaiah Stannard, a trans boy actor, auditioned to play Annie's child, the plan was to make Annie's kid either a cis boy or a cis girl. But the writers, wishing to employ Stannard, decided to reevaluate the planned character and instead make Annie the mother of a trans boy. At the beginning of the show, Stannard's character is closeted, answering to she/her/hers pronouns and the name Sadie. In season 2, he comes out as trans in a scene which is very gentle and sweet. You can watch it below.

Issues faced by him, even prior to coming out, include bullying and sexual harassment by his peers. He discusses these struggles with his mother, who is shocked to find out that people have been pulling his pants down to try and figure out (in his words) "what I am". This is due to his masculine-presenting style and obvious gender non-conformity. He doesn't need to worry about that for long, though, because Annie invites a criminal to Ben's school, and Ben gets to watch this grown man break the bones in his bully's hand, as punishment for the bullying and a disincentive to do it in the future. In classic Good Girls fashion, Annie quickly moves on with zero qualms, and Ben is unaffected by children his own age being violently attacked on his behalf.

Ben eventually transfers to a new school where he is accepted and allowed to wear the boy's uniform, even before he comes out as trans. After he comes out, he doesn't immediately start using the name Ben, but his family immediately switches to using he/him/his pronouns. Minor and major characters also refer to him as Annie's son. All in all, I really like how Good Girls handles his trans storyline. I enjoyed the fact that his behaviours and masculine preferences were established before he labelled himself aloud, as occurs for many of us.

In the second episode of season 3, Ben is celebrating with his family (mother, father, step-mother) after he wins a national debating competition. When his step-mother deadnames him, his mother corrects her, and Ben charitably says, "it takes a minute". It felt very realistic to how many transitioning people handle slow-changing family members.

As the show continues, Ben simply becomes Annie's son. He plays lacrosse, goes to school, throws parties for his friends, and deals with his mother's antics. His medical transition is briefly discussed and then occurs offscreen. The wonderful part about Ben being played by a trans male actor is that, as the seasons progressed, Isaiah Stannard transitioned physically too. Ben's transition is authentic in a really cool way.

When the series ends, Ben is being emotionally supported by a man named Kevin, who is his mother's... partner. Sort of. (She used him for sex while he was experiencing homelessness, until eventually deciding to treat him like a human being who has, y'know, dignity.) While Kevin's presence in the show is riddled with harmful stereotypes about people who struggle to access housing, I did enjoy many of his interactions with Ben. He accepts Ben as a young man, teaches him lacrosse techniques, and changes Ben's domestic life for the better. It was really awesome to see a trans guy getting a positive, older male role model. It's just a shame that had to happen in the steaming pile of garbage that was season 4.

All in all, I'm really glad Isaiah Stannard joined this show. That being said, if he hadn't been in Good Girls, I would have stopped watching. I ended up despising two of the main characters (Annie and Beth), which made it a tough slog. I'll spare you a blow-by-blow account of my issues with this show, but here are the reasons I find Annie creepy and predatory:

• She directly makes sexual advances at her therapist, who refuses her. She tells him "grow a pair", as though not consenting to sex (and not finding her attractive) makes him less of a man.

• She intrudes into her therapist's romantic relationship, inquiring about his sex life against his wishes. It's textbook sexual harassment.

• Despite her therapist refusing to have sex with her, as is his right as a human being with autonomy (god forbid), she graphically describes having sex in order to either make him uncomfortable or seduce him. Either way, her intentions do not matter; again, it's textbook sexual harassment, and it occurs after he has already refused her.

• Later on in the show, she sexually assaults her ex-husband by abruptly kissing him without his consent, and continues making advances even while he repeatedly refuses her.

• She masturbates with her son's electric toothbrush.

Annie, a serial harasser, is never held accountable. Her acts of sexual harassment are supposed to be dismissed as the funny, harmless acts of a poor, awkward woman who is just lonely. Meanwhile Boomer, a serial rapist of women, is dismissed as a bumbling idiot at best, and redeemed at worst by the end of the show. Good Girls mishandles male and female harassment in unique, disgusting ways.

With two of the main characters being a sexually inappropriate creep (Annie) and an irredeemable egotist who annoys the fuck out of me (Beth), it became very difficult to watch for the sole trans character, especially since he's a supporting character rather than a main one. Based on my experience alone, I wouldn't recommend watching Good Girls. You may find the show to be perfectly fine, and have no issues with it, of course. I don't expect that my experience or perspective is universal.