Ginny and Georgia is described as a modern-day Gilmore Girls, with diversity. But in reality, it's nothing like that.

The two female leads are compelling characters, but that's about all that's to be said in terms of positive representation of diversity in the show. For a show that wants to address issues of discrimination in small-town America, it does a hilariously bad job. It was interesting to watch, but mostly to make fun of and laugh at the ridiculous drama.

First of all, we have Virginia "Ginny" Miller, who is half white and half Black. Despite getting off on the wrong foot with her new group of friends because they pressure her to shoplift and then throw her under the bus, she decides that this group of girls is the one that she wants to throw in her lot with. She spends the season thinking that she can trust these three girls, and constantly feeling out of place. The narrative seems to want to throw everything awful that it can at her, not allowing her any happiness that is not shortly ruined. The friendship between the four girls is ruined by the end of the show.

The show wants us to be engaged by Ginny and Georgia's relationship, but it's only engaging in that it's the kind of train wreck that you simultaneously can't watch and don't want to look away from. The emeshment between the two is clear, with Georgia projecting everything onto her daughter and Ginny not being allowed to have sexual boundaries. Even if Georgia doesn't touch her, it clearly meets the definition of emotional incest. She even sleeps in bed with her daughter to keep herself from getting in bed with a man, something that her daughter knows and comments on. She repeatedly makes sexual comments that make her daughter uncomfortable, and demands to know details of her sexuality. She's uncomfortably possessive of Ginny's sexual inexperience. It's no wonder that she doesn't really want to tell Georgia anything unless it's exactly what she has told her she should do. Ginny is more mature than her mother on many occasions, but Georgia uses Ginny's frustration with her innaproriate behavior as the reason that Ginny is not an adult. (Of course she's not - she's 15 and 16 throughout the show.) After calling the cops on her, knowing that the local cops are racist, she asks Ginny if she's ready to be an adult, then drops bombshells about their financial situation and her childhood trauma on her. It's shown as a bonding moment, not trauma bonding - which is what it is. In the end, Ginny makes the decision to run away from home, but I don't have much faith that the narrative will treat her any better in the second season.

Dark-skinned minorities are used as props, and light-skinned minorities are nearly always villains. The only exception to this seems to be Hunter, Ginny's love interest, although he's also written in as hurling racist rhetoric at her in response to her own racist comments about his ethnicity.

Padma is only there to be the girl that Marcus, the other boy in Ginny's love triangle, mistreats before he realizes he loves Ginny. Sophie is Maxine's crush, who the girls fetishize and who puts up with Maxine's creepy behavior before dumping her and being the bad guy for it. Joe is a shop owner (who exploits his workers, yet Georgia punishes Ginny by making her work for him), and the reason Georgia moved to Wellsbury. He's also the love interest Georgia ignores. Zion's parents are the bad guys for wanting to be able to raise baby Ginny in a stable environment. And Zion, the most compelling dark-skinned minority character in the show, is emotionally exploited and betrayed by Georgia time and time again. Bracia and the other dark-skinned Black students at school only exist to show Ginny being torn between two worlds, and have very little screen time. Gabriel is a queer-coded villain who seemingly only exists to be creepy to Georgia.

There are four Jewish characters who are seen in the show - two of them are the other girls in Ginny and Maxine's friend group. Abby is (presumably) Ashkenazi, and Norah is Asian and Jewish. They both have mothers. Out of those four, Abby's mother is the only particularly sympathetic one. Remember how I said Ginny is thrown under the bus for shoplifting? Yes, that's by Abby and Norah. Progressive circles like pitting Jewish people and black/brown POC against each other, when that is the opposite of what actually occurs in activist circles. Norah is even clearly a character of color herself, but she's lighter-skinned, so she has to be villainous and racist (Hunter is also Asian and has his racist moments). As someone who spent most of my childhood in a town much like Wellsbury, I know that there are many racists. But the extent to which other people of color are racist in this show is unnecessary. The Jewishness of Norah and Abby is only mentioned in passing in the show, anyway. It's possible that Abby only has one Jewish parent, but nothing about how it will impact her ability to fit into the Jewish community is mentioned when her parents are going through a divorce. Surely, it's at least a little bit relevant, like if she'll have to change synagogues as someone who has already been bat mitzvah in her current one. Norah's mother is friends with Cynthia, the PTA Karen villain of the show, and claims that Ginny and Georgia are dangerous on TV as part of Cynthia's mayoral campaign. Abby also slaps Ginny and backstabs both Ginny and Maxine. These characters can fit into "Jewish American Princess", thievery and duplicity stereotypes, but can't be visibly Jewish for any more than two minutes.

It may be progressive to have two gay main characters (Maxine and one of Georgia's co-workers) on the show, but it is also handled awkwardly. Yes, Maxine is a somewhat annoying and hyper teenager, typical for her age, but she is also overbearing and has tendencies of sexual harassment, probably why her girlfriend of a short while changes her mind about their relationship. Nick is sexist to Georgia and possessive of Paul, who doesn't swing that way. I get it's a small town, but maybe he shouldn't be the one performing in drag for his co-worker's daughter's birthday party? He also ends up in a debatably-legitimate relationship with the PI investigating Georgia - it's not clear whether Gabriel Cordova is into men or just pretending to be.

The only characters with much substance who actually seem like decent people overall are Austin, Ginny's brother, Paul Randolph, the mayor who cares about his town, and Maxine's mother, who Georgia befriends. (Max's father is Deaf, and a kind but not very present character. I've also seen criticism of the sign language in the show by the Deaf/HoH community.) The narrative gives no indication of them being anything but white cishet goyim. They are all allowed to have moments of being silly or rude, but the narrative forgives them. They aren't really props for anyone's story, and are fairly interesting characters. Why does the narrative not extend this courtesy to any of the minorities on the show?

Oh, right, because the creator is white. Maybe next time, the person who sets out to create a show that emphasizes racial and ethnic diversity should be a person of color. We can tell our stories much better than people who can't understand our lived experience and the pain of living with the stereotypes can.