The emotionally charged third season of Netflix’s “Ginny & Georgia” dropped earlier this month and has hovered steadily in the top 10 shows in the Kingdom since.
This season, the show focuses even more strongly on the fast-talking, faster-thinking Georgia, a single mother with bleached-blonde Southern belle looks whose dark past is fast catching up with her.
Flashbacks — some heartbreaking, others alarming — offer glimpses of her past life.
The story picks up moments after the dramatic finale of season two. Georgia is arrested, still wearing her wedding dress after a picture-perfect ceremony with Paul Randolph, the town’s popular mayor, as her two children and the whole town look on in horror.
The death of a seemingly minor character triggers a chain reaction that threatens Georgia’s carefully cultivated fairy-tale life.
Mayor Paul must decide between his new bride and his political career. He chooses the easy way out, but everyone knows there is no such thing. His life gets increasingly more complicated — as do the lives of every man, woman, and child drawn into Georgia’s orbit. They love her anyway. But at what cost?
The headlines swiftly label Georgia the “Mayoress Murderess.” This is not just a catchy phrase. We soon find out that she has been accused of murder before — and more than once. Is she a serial killer?
But this is not only Georgia’s story. Ginny, her 16-year-old daughter, is a budding poet trying to navigate a new chapter in her life, while dealing with school pressures, fragile friendships, and the growing realization that she is now the one keeping her mother in line.
Meanwhile, Ginny’s younger brother Austin ditches his dark-rimmed, Harry Potter-style glasses with no lenses — his emotional security blanket in earlier seasons — and begins shedding his childhood innocence. He is no longer someone who can be overlooked.
The comparisons to the cult classic “Gilmore Girls,” which aired from 2000 to 2007, still apply. Like Lorelai, Georgia is a teen mom who ran away from her hometown to raise a daughter on her own, far away from the parents she never got along with. But Ginny, Georgia, and Austin do not live in Stars Hollow. They settled in the fictional town of Wellsbury.
Amid the drama, the show does not shy away from more challenging subjects, including eating disorders, self harm, and depression, which are handled with more nuance than in earlier seasons.
When a new life-changing secret is revealed in the final minute of the finale, the stage is set for an inevitable fourth season.
