Good Girls gets noticed on Netflix

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This article was published 02/03/2019 (2757 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the stealth high points of last year’s TV season was the launch of Good Girls on NBC, a show that garnered decent numbers, if little buzz.

That was surprising, because it’s precisely the kind of show that should have generated a response on social media — both funny and deeply serious in what it had to say about female friendships, bad relationships, good relationships, money worries, the overwhelming work of motherhood and everything in between.

A few weeks ago, a number of people tweeted about the show — even though it hadn’t been on the air for 10 months. Why? Because as of January, the first season is available on Netflix. Suddenly people who had been unaware of the show (or simply missed it among the deluge of other shows) were watching. And liking it. A lot.

Season 2 returns Sunday on NBC — which might come as a surprise to anyone who found the show on Netflix and assumed it was a Netflix original. It’s not.

But the confusion is understandable. It’s not often you see non-cancelled network shows on Netflix. More on that in the moment. First, let’s talk about the show itself, because if you haven’t been watching, you’ll want to fix that.

Here’s the premise: three women in desperate financial straits turn to crime and rob a grocery store — a scheme they manage to pull off, but turns out the store is a front for a money launderer (whoops) who is not pleased. And with whom they become increasingly entangled.

Starring Christina Hendricks (Mad Men), Retta (Parks and Recreation) and Mae Whitman (Parenthood and Arrested Development), the vibe in the early going had something in common with the 1980 movie 9 to 5 — explicitly told from the point of view of women who are exhausted and enraged and sick of a system rigged against them. So wrung out that they’re willing to break a few laws if it means balancing the scales a bit.

Call it suburban noir — but also funny. Oddly, a number of early reviews had a problem with that combination. You know what’s interesting? I never saw the same criticism levelled at a male-led show like The Sopranos, which had an enormous amount of comedy threaded alongside its darker storylines. But at least one critic writing about Good Girls suggested it needed to “pick a lane.”

It doesn’t. You’ll have no problem digesting the drama along with the show’s comedic sensibility. This is what the show’s creator Jenna Bans told Variety: “What always strikes me as funny is the absurdity of real people in really absurd situations. So I thought if I could make these characters as grounded and real and interesting as possible and just throw them into these heightened situations, they’ll do the rest.” She’s right.

And the cast is terrific. Hendricks proved her drama chops as Joan on Mad Men, and here she plays a woman who snaps out of the fog of a bad marriage (Matthew Lillard plays her husband) and asserts herself as the unofficial leader of their tiny band of outlaws. At the same time, she also finds herself unexpectedly attracted to the crime boss making their lives hell (played brilliantly by Manny Montana — the sexual tension between him and Hendricks jumps off the screen).

Whitman is also a practiced hand at drama, but she subverts that somewhat here; she’s playing a woman who can never quite get it together. It’s a brash and wonderfully human performance. (Her on-again/off-again ex is played by Zach Gilford of Friday Night Lights.)

But it is Retta who is a revelation. That she can be brilliantly funny is a given, but on Good Girls she’s given room to build a character with depth and nuance, often saying so much without even uttering a line. She happens to be in the only healthy romantic relationship on the show (Mike & Molly’s Reno Wilson plays her husband) which is complicated by the fact that said husband is also a cop.

So if Good Girls was renewed for a second season on NBC, how and why did the first season end up on Netflix?

You might assume it’s because ratings weren’t through the roof and NBC wanted to build interest in the show ahead of its new season, so: Netflix. Sounds smart.

And it is — but that’s not quite how it worked.

A little background: some TV shows on a network are made by outside studios. This is Us is NBC’s top show and it’s made by 20th Century Fox Television. Other shows, like Good Girls, are produced by NBC’s sister studio — Universal Television — which means NBCUniversal is the show’s owner, rather than the buyer. And that gives NBC flexibility to experiment with where viewers can find it.

Universal Television already has a relationship with Netflix. (Universal makes Russian Doll, for example.) According to NBC, early on in the Good Girls development process, Netflix knew about the show, expressed interest and wanted it as an original. NBC wanted the show for itself. So Netflix struck a deal with the broadcaster: NBC gets the series first (along with nbc.com and Hulu) and Netflix gets second-window rights — and all of that was negotiated before a single episode even aired.

The hope, obviously, is that there will be increased interest in the show going into season 2 when it airs live on NBC each week.

— Chicago Tribune