Review: ‘Good Girls’ Offers Equal Time for Anti-Heroines

There are reasons, which quickly become apparent, that “Good Girls” is not called “Breaking Bad Girls.” But the surface parallels to “Breaking Bad,” the teacher-turned-drug-dealer drama, are tough to miss.

The story starts with money trouble that can’t be solved within the bounds of lawful behavior. Beth (Christina Hendricks) wants to shed a philandering husband (Matthew Lillard) without losing her house. Her sister, Annie (Mae Whitman), is in a custody battle with her more-affluent ex (Zach Gilford). Ruby (Retta) has a daughter in need of an expensive medical treatment that must be paid for out of pocket.

Like Walter White opening up his artisanal meth business to pay his medical bills, they hit on an idea: a daylight armed robbery of the suburban Michigan grocery where Annie works.

Within a couple of commercial breaks, the three are in and out and counting their take. But the plan has worked too well. Instead of the $30,000 they were expecting, the store vault has half a million bucks. Annie’s sleazeball boss has been laundering money for a gang, leaving the three to hide a fortune and get a quick education in organized crime.

The resulting frying-pan-and-fire storyline forces the three leads to confront how serious they are about being criminals. The problem, as enjoyable as “Good Girls” often is, is that it seems unsure how serious it is about being a crime story.

“Good Girls,” which begins Monday on NBC, has an empowerment theme that’s timely in the #MeToo era. But it also speaks to anti-hero dramas’ long history of giving men — generally only men — license to be bad.

For Walter White and his many TV cousins, crime has often been about self-worth, even virility. (Tony Soprano’s big boat is named the “Stugots,” after Italian slang for part of the male anatomy.)

For Beth, Annie and Ruby, the money is more about self-determination: freedom from reliance on lousy men or the whims of the economy. When Ruby, flush with cash, sees an expensive doctor who offers her cucumber water, she cries a little bit at the upgrade in attention that money can buy.

The series, created by Jenna Bans, is tartly funny, less heavy than its cable kin and more concerned with righteous payback than ethical angst.

But it’s not entirely light, either. There’s some blood — more than a tablespoon, less than a gallon — and an attempted rape early on. This material feels like it should carry more weight than “Good Girls” often gives it.

“Good Girls” certainly works as a caper, especially given the rapport among its leads. You can’t not want to spend an hour watching Hendricks, Whitman and Retta rob stuff. The show gets plenty of mileage from its surburbanites-gone-wild conceit, as when Ruby chooses the location for a rendezvous: “They always do the drop-off at a park on ‘Law & Order.'”

The problem is that it’s also very much a drama, and the needs of the one mode often conflict with those of the other. (Throw in the scenes between Whitman and Gilford, formerly of “Friday Night Lights,” and the show occasionally shades into a third genre, a more realistic family dramedy along the lines of Whitman’s former show, “Parenthood.”)

To work as a walk-on-the-wild-side drama, the series needs a sense of stakes, that bad things can happen and that characters can come to bad ends. To deliver on the ironies of that “Good” in the title, there needs to be moral conflict — the possibility that these protagonists, however much we like them, might make a wrong choice that will get somebody hurt.

But because “Good Girls” has an offbeat tone — and is on a broadcast network — you get the feeling that the guardrails are up. Most of the threatening situations resolve comically, and we’re reminded that the robbery is a victimless crime. “We’re normal people,” Beth says. “We pay our taxes, and we take our kids to P.F. Chang’s, and we take orange slices to soccer games.”

That’s a valid choice, but one more consistent with an escapist comedy, and at times the show seems to have other intentions.

I’ve seen only three episodes of “Good Girls,” however, and it’s possible that the uneven tone reflects the characters’ situations. Just as the women have to decide if they’re actual criminals or just dabblers, so, too, may “Good Girls” land on a better sense of what kind of series it is.

There’s a sign of its long-term direction in the third episode, when Beth considers whether she’s breaking the law simply for the money or because she likes it. This might also address the question of how you make an extended series about three characters trying to get out of the crime business, rather than into it.

But maybe the pleasures of “Good Girls” so far are like the proceeds from a heist. You’ve just got to enjoy them while they last.

—

Additional Information:

‘Good Girls’

Mondays on NBC