people say Ginny & Georgia isn't relatable. but this actually happened to me.

When the promotion for Ginny and Georgia dropped, it never interested me, with the rise of edgier shows with adult themes. A comedy about a mother and daughter didn’t catch my eye—if anything, it was triggering.

“Angsty 15-year-old Ginny Miller often feels more mature than her 30-year-old mother, the irresistible and dynamic Georgia Miller.” - IMDB

Now, my mother didn’t have me too young; it’s the opposite. She had me at 37—a geriatric pregnancy. She nearly gave up on the dream of being a mother, but then came her “December Surprise,” a little bundle of joy two days before Christmas.

A white single mother giving birth to a black baby.

When I first heard about the show, all I saw was the cringey clip of Ginny, saluting her ex? (Who I know now as Marcus) and then slo-mo walking away to that cliche ‘bad girl’ song. That’s in the first episode, mind you. I thought it was an edit, turns out it was actually real. Usually, I’m into the cringeworthy content (see my last essay on Wattpad). I’m a big fan of funny cringe.

Still, I never watched. Until now.

spoilers ahead, obviously.

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Post-grad life is interesting. You’ve been in the institution of school your entire life—pre-k if your parents could afford it, elementary, middle school, high school, and college. Now, you’re finally in the ill-fated “real world” that your parents and teachers always blabbed about. You’ve broken free, you’re finally an adult.

Now what? Well, for me, with a BA in Journalism—it’s a lot of applying to internships, fellowships, any ship? I’ve probably applied—a lot of waiting. I am participating in a mentorship program in July, so any part-time job right now would be useless.

It’s a lot of waiting, and waiting means watching things that you never thought twice about. The third season dropped on June 5th, and apparently, I got one of my friends into to the show—purely based on talking shit.

“I thought you watched it. I was watching it because of you.” oops.

So, I started, and like genuinely, ten minutes in, I got triggered.

okay i don’t have a younger brother who will probably also be a murderer but you get it.

As soon as I got my license, my mother stopped driving me around. As soon as I was able to be ‘of use’ to her, she took that and used it to her advantage. The contrast of Ginny, uptight, tense, conscious, aware—compared to her mother, Georgia, relaxed, feet on the dash, singing inappropriate songs with her 9-year-old son.

I don’t have any siblings, I’m an only child—at times, my mother’s only friend.

Georgia is also obsessed with being the “cool mom,” something that my mom prides herself on being. A title that I did not bestow upon her. She thinks she’s cool because she smokes weed and allows me to smoke weed in my room. She thinks she’s cool because she believes in crystals, apothecary, and traditional medicine.

She thinks she’s cool because she’s a single mom who had to do everything herself. I do think that takes balls, balls that I don’t have—but it doesn’t make you cool. It makes you traumatized. My mother’s been stuck in her trauma since before I was born.

I got stuck in a trauma in my early twenties(I say, fully 23), it happens.

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Then, in Season 2, Ginny starts going to therapy—Georgia joins, well, she crashes therapy, to try to convince Ginny’s therapist that she’s not a horrible mother.

#mymothercore

Then, Ginny also states some obvious boundaries—for one, she wants her mother to acknowledge that she is black, and that there are some things in this life that her mother will never understand for her.

“Because I’m white, I can never understand my daughter?”

“kind of, yeah”

My mother will never understand that I’m black, just like my dad will never understand that I was raised in a white household, in a white neighborhood, with all white family members. The world will never know that I’m biracial. It wants me to choose one or the other—black, or white-girl black.

I understand Ginny, I’m stuck between two worlds, both wanting me to pick a side—their side, when in reality? I’m somewhere in the middle, straddling the fence, and getting hurt no matter how I adjust. I straightened my hair like Ginny. I’ve been doing it my whole life, and I like the silhouette. I had an afro for the back half of high school—I loved it. It was cute, simple, and understated. It clicked for everyone in my school. “Oh, wait, she’s actually black. I thought she was like, Dominican, or something.”

I grew up in a small, red county, in a blue state. It couldn’t have been worse for me than in high school. I was one of three people of color in my elementary school.

There are little microaggressions peppered throughout the show, that I actually thought were done very well, because the tension with Ginny and her identity builds and builds—and they don’t make a big deal out of the microaggressions, which helps.

• when max tries to touch ginny’s face as soon as they meet, and then immediately asks “is this like when white girls touch black girls’ hair?”

• then max saying “if i’m being an offensive dick, it’s just cause we have more starbucks than black people.”

• The racist AP English teacher who doesn’t acknowledge her wins, and also makes her teach the class a book that talks about the black American experience. She drops his class because it gets so bad, and it doesn’t get hinted at being handled until the season 3 finale.

• The whole race fight that she and Hunter get in, where they argue over whose more oppressed, and who is more white?": a biracial woman or an asian american man. Pandora’s box. (okay THIS was cringe, but being 15 is cringe)

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The dynamic between Georgia and Ginny’s dad, Zion, is another one that spoke to me.

People who were together for a short period had a child whom the father subsequently abandoned to live his fantastical life. Come back together and have unresolved tension.

Georgia describes it as “a penguin”; everyone’s got one. It’s that one person, your one person—you’ll always have them, no matter what. Penguins mate for life.

That’s my mom and dad. They bicker and say they hate each other, but deep down, they really love each other because they had me, and I’m the best thing to happen to both of them.

I think my dad is the only one who can put up with my mom, and I think my mom is the only one who could change my dad. They both need changing, why not do it together?

To be clear, if they were to get together, it would need to be after I move out. I’m not trying to see all of that. People are shocked at the actress who plays Ginny, being #TeamZion, in the “Who Georgia Should End Up With” debate. It’s the invisible string tying them together—something beautiful about bringing a life into this world. You love more through your child.

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The show becomes less cringe as it progresses, as more of the plot unfolds and you start to realize it’s not about the mother and daughter, it’s lowkey about the birth of a serial killer. I would say to watch it—if you’re like me and have nothing better to do.