The new series starring Retta, Christina Hendricks and Mae Whitman arrives on NBC "with a Time’s Up pin affixed to its suburban mom sweater," says Jen Chaney. In other words, Good Girls was made for this moment, featuring anti-heroines on network TV instead of the usual male anti-heroes. "There have been a lot of 'bad moms' in pop culture lately, but usually they are only 'bad' within a certain context: they drink too much or curse like Boston Red Sox fans on a bender after losing to the Yankees," says Chaney. "Truly reprehensible behavior, especially on TV, has generally been left for dads like Tony Soprano and Don Draper to handle. Good Girls not only flips that gender script, it does so by cleverly subverting the trappings we associate with stereotypical American motherhood. Instead of merely going grocery shopping, these mothers take money from the grocery store. These moms don’t just put their kids’ play guns back in the toy box. They hold onto them and wield them as weapons — albeit completely non-dangerous ones — during a holdup. Sometimes they do it in even more fraught situations."
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TOPICS: Good Girls, NBC, Christina Hendricks, Jenna Bans, Mae Whitman, Retta