What do I know about this series going into it?
Never heard of it.
Previously On
I always dread the Previously…
A group of writers. One of them is going to be cast in the show they’re writing for.
Serena is going to do the “staged reading”.
A woman is in a relationship with her bartender.
A man and woman are kissing, but she still loves Evan.
The police are searching Silas’s yurt.
A man cries that someone he loves chose to go back to somewhere he doesn’t like.
Recap
A shovel lifts up some burning coals. A woman, identified in captions as “Mariana”, is being kept captive in a makeshift sauna by a man in a cowboy hat. She’s pleading to be let out, but he wants to cleanse her mind from “demons”.
Mariana wakes up in bed; Joaquin, half-naked in bed next to her, asks if she’s alright. She says it’s a bad dream and she doesn’t want to talk about it. Joaquin is worried about Jenna, who I guess is the woman from the Previously, and who decided to go back to “Silas”.
Opening credits showing murals on walls around New York City.
We fade in to Cowboy Hat Man, who I’m guessing is Silas, putting up a No Trespassing sign. A group of women are in his barn, members of his cult of personality. Kerchief Wife and Obvious Spy Wife discuss another cult wife, “Madison”, who left “the source of light”. Kerchief Wife describes a purification ritual matching what we saw with Mariana: the yurt was a makeshift sauna in which he would lock his wives until they submitted. Everybody else had been let out, but Madison kept resisting and begging for it to stop so she was locked inside much longer. That was the last Kerchief Wife saw of her.
A man comes home to find “Yuri” in his apartment. Yuri’s angry at the man, “Gem”, for doing new types of paintings – though I’m not clear on why Yuri cares about this. Gem is angry at Yuri in turn for stealing his art, but Yuri says he painted every piece in his gallery. “I created this idea,” Gem says. “You owe me commission on every piece you sell”, which is not how copyrights and commissions work. But Yuri extends an olive branch: he’s arranged for Gem to interview with a famous artist, “Frank Barda”, tonight at 8pm. But let me be clear that I don’t owe you jack!
A woman comes home and tells her SO that “Serena’s sick”, and that she’s been offered to take “the role” in Serena’s place. She doesn’t want to take the offer, though, because she’s angry at the producers for giving it to Serena in the first place and not having a lead actress will screw over the producers. Her SO convinces her otherwise: you can screw over the producers even more by proving in public that you’re a better Darla than Serena is.
We see another couple, the woman and the bartender from the Previously, but now I think the latter’s actually a barista. Barista’s-SO wants to know where they stand; she wants to be together, but only if Barista accepts that she has a career. “You have to be on board,” Barista’s-SO says. “On board with what exactly?” asks Barista.
Back to Obvious Spy Wife, identified by captions as Jenna. She tells Silas that she understands if something happened to Madison that he lied to the others about, and he should move Madison’s body off the farm. “My brother,” she says, I assume referring to Joaquin, “will never stop coming. And I can help you.” I’m genuinely surprised Silas doesn’t react violently for questioning his word.
Now we’re in… uh, I don’t know what this place is, so I’ll just have to show you.
The exercise leader chooses three people to be in a video, and the camerawork makes it clear “Luca” is the plot-important one of the three. I recognize him from the previously but know nothing about him. The video will be posted on social media, I guess to advertise the exercise place. After the video, Luca is approached by a random woman who saw his dance and is now attracted to him. “What made you stay this time?” she asks. “Callie found my alien ID number”, he says, so he doesn’t need to hide anymore. Also he came clean to “Galen”, whoever that is; I might have written that name wrong.
Ah, the conversation makes it clear the woman isn’t new; they already know each other. She says they should talk after he comes back from work.
Elsewhere, a squirrel costume identifies itself to the camera as Alice Kwan. It takes me a moment to recognize her as the woman from the writer’s room in the Previously who was going to be the new host of a show. The show is called “America’s Funniest Ferrets and Friends”, so it’s a ferret costume, not a squirrel. The three old guys behind the camera are bickering but eventually get their act together. There’s a genuinely funny series of clips starring the Alice-Ferret, and they’re getting ready to send the reel to a network. So I guess the show doesn’t exist yet.
Serena’s understudy is in the makeup room, getting ready to perform as Darla. The director thanks her for helping out. She puts him down: I’m not doing this for you. But he tells her that Serena’s not really sick: they had talked and decided that the understudy really is much better for the part. “You are Darla!” he says. Of course, he could be lying just to get her to be more cooperative. But she takes him at face value – and far from feeling relieved, she’s going to be sick.
There’s a city council meeting, and the new council president Jack Hauss introduces himself.
I don’t understand the motion that’s brought to the table, but it’s clearly very important to Barista’s-SO, who’s on the council as well. The motion passes 11-4. The council member beside Barista’s-SO isn’t happy: you must have given Jack Hauss something he wanted in exchange for this, and now the police will get all the tanks and military equipment they want! (This doesn’t make much sense, as Hauss’s vote wouldn’t have been deciding. Or is the deal that he agreed to bring it to a vote?)
Serena’s understudy is on stage after all, having recovered from her nervousness. She does a fantastic job.
Gem is talking to a friend of his. “Do you trust Yuri?” asks the friend. “No,” Gem says, “but he knows he owes me and if he doesn’t help me get my own reputation he knows I’ll have nothing to lose by outing him.” Gem wants to break into the elite world of fine art, but his friend says the street art is more important and authentic, because it’s appreciated by the public. “Since when do you care about a cabal of elites?” the friend asks. “How do you know what I care about? You’ve known me for five minutes!” Gem replies, before pointing out that the friend, “Jake”, is a doctor and therefore a member of such a cabal of elites himself.
In the elevator, Barista’s-SO tells the other city council member about the parameters of the deal: in exchange for the vote on the women’s center that just passed, she would not oppose Hauss’s bid for council president. But ha ha ha, that doesn’t mean she can’t run against him for his seat on the council directly!
Captions finally identify Serena’s understudy as “Davia” and we watch more bits of the musical. This is on the face of it unnecessary - we’ve already seen more than enough to establish that she’s an excellent actress and singer - so there must be some symbolism here, some parallel between the play and Davia’s own life.
Alice meets with a network exec, who says that despite how funny the demo reel was, they’ll still be sticking with Derek as host of the Ferret show. But the exec has an even better offer to propose: Alice can become a series regular on a sitcom. There’s a catch, though. Whoever replaces Alice as head writer on the Ferret show will probably replace all the other writers as well. Her face makes it clear she cares about the other writers and will thus turn down the offer.
Joaquin gets a phone call from Jenna.
But uh-oh, we cut away before we hear Jenna herself, and the soundtrack makes it sound like something awful’s happened: Jenna’s probably dead. Joaquin runs up to Mariana, telling her there’s an emergency situation – just in time, because somebody sinister is knocking on her door and “wants to talk”. Is he Silas’s henchman?
Elsewhere, Silas drives out to the middle of nowhere and begins digging up Madison’s grave.
Gem is meeting with the famous artist whose name I’ve forgotten, but in the middle of the interview he sees a vision of himself across the room. “What are you doing?” the vision asks him. “What are you doing?” Gem retorts.
The barista meets Barista’s-SO and tells her she’s in: she wants to be with Barista’s-SO and support her in her career. Barista’s-SO is, of course, thrilled – and steps around the corner to a waiting press to announce: “I’m Malika Williams and I’m running against Jack Hauss for the LA city council.” So I finally learn her name, and also learn where we are, because up until this moment I could’ve sworn this was NYC.
It's the afterparty at Davia’s play. The producers report that the show was a hit, investors are interested. The director demands Davia remain the star and the producers readily agree. And they’re not even going to bother with tryouts in LA - they’re going straight to Off-Broadway in New York. (Two seconds after I finally realized we’re in LA, we’re leaving? That’s just cruel.)
It’s the writer’s room at the ferret show. Turns out the writers that Alice was worried about getting fired were the three old guys behind the camera we saw earlier. Alice comes in and gives them the news. As I predicted, she can’t bring herself to say that she’s leaving them to their fates.
Luca is apparently torn between the woman from the hiphopercise class and a woman in the restaurant where he works. I’ll be honest, I’ve completely lost track of this subplot.
Davia meets her SO, who runs a restaurant. She’s nervous: he obviously can’t bring the restaurant with her to NYC. But he’s supportive, and says, “What’s two years in the scheme of our whole lives together?” She’s surprised, but yes, he’s just come out and said that that’s what he wants. It’ll be a difficult time apart, but they’ll be strong and pull through until she returns to LA. “I’m so proud of you, you’re going to be a star.” They kiss.
Silas is still digging. Two people photograph him from a distance. I feel like I should know who they are. Ah – one of them is Joaquin. We get a flashback to when Joaquin saved Mariana from the creepy guy: the phone call really was from Jenna, she’s not dead, and she’s convinced Silas to move Madison’s body tonight. All you need to do is catch him in the act! But they can’t call “Detective Briggs”, because Briggs no longer believes them about Silas. So they’ll go themselves. Flashforward to now, and now I recognize the other person is Mariana.
Gem comes home. The artist offered him the job. “So you took it?” asks his doctor friend. We cut away to preserve the lack-of-suspense that he’s going to say no.
Silas catches Joaquin crouching near his car and starts kicking him to death. They fight, and Silas gets the upper hand. He’s about to brain Joaquin with the shovel when Mariana runs him down with her car. Mariana and Joaquin do not learn from this, however: they waste time asking each other if they’re okay, then looking at the body in the grave, without checking whether Silas is actually unconscious. Morons. Silas gets the shovel again and this time actually does brain Joaquin. He’s about to do the same to Mariana when Jenna shoots him from behind.
It's later; how much later is unclear. Joaquin arrives home to Mariana, and they talk as if it’s later that same night, but I don’t think that’s a realistic recovery time. Joaquin reports that Silas is in the hospital and in stable condition. Hopefully they’ll put him away for good. By the way, what did “Evan” want?
The next day, Alice gets a phone call: she and her roommate are getting kicked out of their apartment in three months because the landlord is selling the building. That came sort of out of nowhere.
It’s later. All of the characters we’ve been following are for some reason having dinner together, with a bunch of additional characters I don’t recognize. They call themselves the “Coterie Family”, and go around the table updating each other on their lives:
Alice turned down the sitcom, of course, and it’s a good thing she did because it got conveniently cancelled before making it to filming. And for some reason she’s replacing Derek as host of the Ferret show.
Malika won the debates against Hauss and is gaining in the polls, establishing that this dinner takes place after a significant timeskip. (But somehow less than three months after she announced her candidacy? I don’t think the writers thought through this timeline.)
Gem turned down the apprenticeship, of course, but his street art has magically become successful instead.
Dancer guy is going on a road tour with the dancing troupe.
Joaquin is writing articles on cults and is getting offers to write for magazines.
The vaguely sinister “Evan” that wanted to talk to Mariana was the guy from the Previously who lost his memory. In a flashback, he reveals that it came back and he’s in love with Mariana. She doesn’t know how to react. Flash forward again, and Evan is joining the dinner.
Ah, the Coterie is the name of the building, and they all live here together. That explains how this random collection of people all know each other. They’re all being kicked out, not just Alice and her roommate. So this is their last dinner together. They dance and throw Styrofoam pellets everywhere.
After the dance party, they’re sitting out on what looks like the roof, reminiscing about their time together and regretting that they’re going their separate ways.
They ask if anyone will remember them and their impact, which confuses me – other than the politician, whose impact will be obviously remembered, each of the plots in this episode centered on individual characters’ personal lives; there was very little cross-pollination, much less collective action on the part of the group. So I don’t understand what this is referring to.
And then I’m confused even further. The episode closes on a montage of the history between two characters in the group, from childhood on up. I recognize one face as being a minor character from dinner who hadn’t appeared at all in the episode beforehand, and I recognize the other but can’t place who it is. So I’m left utterly bewildered at the end.
Unresolved questions
Will Davia’s relationship survive being long-distance?
Will Silas be convicted?
Will Malika defeat Jack Hauss in the election?
What will happen between Mariana and Evan?
Ratings
Story: 9/10. There is a shocking amount of plot in this episode.
Good Trouble needed to wrap up the stories of over half a dozen characters in less than an hour. When there are that many threads to juggle, a finale usually ends up taking the form of “here’s the last bit of each story”. Such finales end up feeling like we’re reading off a list of subplots and checking off each one to mark it compete.
Yet Good Trouble comes in and says “here are the last three bits about each story”. We didn’t only get the scene with Alice deciding to stay in the writers’ room (put aside her ascension to host; I’ll discuss it later) – we got her filming the montage and sending it to the network and discussing it with the exec and mulling over the decision. We didn’t only get Davia finding out she got the part in the play and moving to New York – we got her agonizing over whether to agree to perform and finding out the real reason she was invited back and getting sick and several scenes of the play itself and talking to her SO about their future. Every plot thread was like this: not just wrapped up, but given active attention and development and then wrapped up.
I’m shocked they set aside this much for the finale in the first place, much less that they managed to fit it in. But fit it in they did, hopping from one plot to another with brisk efficiency and never spending more time on a scene than necessary.
This had the side effect of often making me feel lost. I didn’t know the characters yet, and the scenes weren’t languid enough for me to learn their faces, haircuts, and mannerisms (especially while taking notes). In particular I had trouble recognizing Luca, Joaquin, and Mariana; every time they reappeared on screen I had to wait for their name to realize who they were. I even had to look it up afterwards to discover it was Mariana in the closing montage (thanks, prosopagnosia).
But I don’t dock the show points for any of that. If anything it’s a testament to how well things were handled. In fact, the only thing I’m docking a point for is the tonal clash between the Silas plot and the rest of the episode. I don’t have an issue with the quality of that plot, but it seemed to belong to a completely different show.
Writing: 6/10. Generally above-average writing. Alice’s montage of ferret jokes was genuinely funny and I would actually like to attend Davia’s play.
The timeskip to the final dinner scene was confusing; some lines of dialogue implied that only a few days had gone by, while others (like the fact that several debates had been held) implied it had been months. I don’t think the writers thought that out fully.
Some lines of dialogue were clunky – in particular when the dinnertime discussion turned to politics. The best actors in the world couldn’t make that line about “voting for one of the old white males” sound like a thing a human would say, much less the followup when the characters started chanting “vote vote vote”. There are so many ways to get a message out without abandoning verisimilitude; I genuinely don’t know what it is about modern politics that makes writers decide not to bother even trying.
Finally, I want to discuss a problem with the episode’s approach to moral dilemmas.
Three characters faced moral dilemmas in this episode, in the form of offers to advance their careers: Alice and her sitcom, Gem and his apprenticeship, and Davia and her understudying for Serena. These were difficult decisions where the pros and cons needed to be weighed carefully.
Does it sound weird that I’m describing them in this manner? The episode certainly thought so. In all three cases, the writing was very clear on which option was wrong and which option was right. But that is exactly the problem:
Alice doesn’t want to betray her friends in the writers’ room. This is of course a noble sentiment: How can I be selfish and relegate these three nice and helpless old men, my friends, to a likely enforced retirement? When looking at it through that lens, as the episode does, the answer is clear.
But we aren’t shown the other side of the debate. For that I must point you to another series finale, that of John Finnemore’s Cabin Pressure, a British radio program. There the character of Martin is faced with a nearly identical decision, and must learn that part of maturity means being comfortable with accepting advancement and new challenges and trusting that the adults you leave behind have the capacity to take care of themselves. And if those adults are themselves mature, says Cabin Pressure, they would refuse to allow you to sabotage yourself just because it gave them job security.
Gem’s dilemma is treated a little bit better: he presents perfectly valid arguments to his roommate as to why graduating to fine art is legitimate. Yet the choice was still ultimately presented as the decision between painting “for the public” versus painting for an “elite cabal”. Is that the real difference between the two? The vast majority of people walk past street murals without even noticing them. Either way, you’re creating art for the consumers of a particular subgenre. What makes one more moral than the other?
Davia’s dilemma is the only one that actually is as simple as the episode presents it: she had to decide between career advancement and pettiness. She of course makes the right choice.
Viewed through this lens, all three of these dilemmas look very similar: the character needs to overcome a form of immaturity in order to advance in the world. Davia is petulant; Gem is a contrarian; and Alice lacks theory of mind. Yet the episode is so certain of its moral compass that it presents each one as having only one possible right answer, even though in this framing Davia’s answer is the exact opposite of the others’.
I’m not saying that one must look at the dilemmas through that lens. I’m not saying that Gem and Alice necessarily chose wrongly (though I personally think they did). I’m saying that, in contrast to how the episode presents them, these decisions don’t have obviously right and obviously wrong answers.
And yet the writers don’t put their money where their mouth is. In the words of Jon Stewart, “If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values; they’re hobbies.” We don’t see Gem and Alice’s values getting tested. Is there a moment when they nod to themselves with satisfaction and say, I made life harder for myself but at least I made the right choice? Is there a moment when they despair and say, if only I could go back and accept the offer I turned down?
We don’t know, because each one is rescued by a deus ex machina that takes place offscreen and gives them what they wanted anyway. In the span of twenty seconds, Gem tells his friends that he had (at some point) turned the apprenticeship down, and that he had (at some point) gotten a commission to do street art. We don’t see how he coped with the hard part of being moral, the part that happens after you pay the price and before you’re sure you’ll get a reward. The same thing happens with Alice – except there’s an even bigger problem there. If she took Derek’s job as host, that means she’s still leaving the writers’ room and they’re still hiring a new head writer who will end up firing her friends. So what did she accomplish by turning the sitcom down? Aha, the sitcom was conveniently canceled, just to prove to us that she was right not to take it.
Later in the episode, however, there is a mature version of the career advancement dilemma: when Davia has to choose between her career and her relationship with Restaurant Owner. While everybody is celebrating the opening on Broadway, she is visibly hesitant and worried: she knows what this could mean for her relationship. Yet she doesn’t unilaterally refuse to move to New York: she brings it to Restaurant Owner so they can choose together, as adults. She recognizes in him the capacity for choice that Alice should have recognized in her own coworkers.
And he in turn proves that his devotion to her is a value, not a hobby: “This relationship is incredibly important to me, so much so that I will for the first time say out loud that I want to spend my whole life with you. Yet I will risk losing it so that you have your chance to be successful.”
Will it turn out to be the wrong choice? Will the relationship fall apart or survive? Will it actually help her career, or is this a dead end and they taking this chance for no reason? We don’t know - and that’s what makes this a true moral quandary. No deus ex machina came in to save Davia, not yet. And that’s what real life is like: you make hard choices and accept whatever consequences may arise.
Production: 10/10. The directors and editors did a fantastic job keeping the pace going, to the point where I was continually surprised at how little screentime had passed given how much had transpired. The musical and dance numbers were top-notch, and even the fight scene – as out-of-place as it was – stands up to scrutiny.
And if I complained earlier about the characters’ predictability, that is also necessarily praise for the acting. It means I could see into their heads, read their emotional state like a book. I want to single out the scene where Gem yells at himself: It was bizarre and out of place compared to the rest of the episode, but the actor did an excellent job playing both sides of that role. If there is a weak point, it’s that the directors could have told the actors to apply a bit more subtlety to their roles – particularly Jenna, whose true motives I never doubted for a moment, but also in the scene where Alice returns to the writers’ room.
Characterization: 7/10. I got to know most of the characters pretty well, though with the episode’s emphasis on plot I don’t know how complex or layered any given character is under the surface.
Clarity: 5/10. I was lost, repeatedly. By the end I understood most of what was going on. But I still don’t know many characters’ names; I don’t know who that woman was in the ending montage with Mariana; and I don’t understand the first thing about Dancing Guy’s plotline and the two women he’s in love with.
I also suspect that Gem isn’t Gem’s real name (gosh, there’s a stretch), and that maybe the woman sitting next to Malika in the city council meeting was Barista, not just another city council member, and I simply didn’t recognize her.
Closure: 8/10. A few things are left up in the air, most of them deliberate. But the show did an admirable job of tying up each of the dangling plot threads, at least the ones visible to me.
Do I want to watch the series now?
I can tell I’m not a good match for the show’s ideological outlook. But it’s definitely of very high quality, and I salute the creators.
The girl at the end of the show sitting next to Mariana was her sister Callie. Both two sisters were the leading character's in this show, as it's a spinoff of The Fosters. With that in mind, if you haven't already, I'd love to read a review from you of the finale of The Fosters. I absolute love how The Fosters continues into Good Trouble.
I would state start with “the fosters” then move to this if you think you may have an interest. Those of us that have seen it saw the main characters grow over the past 10 years so this was truly an end.