Good Trouble popped up on my recommendations from Hulu under the Pride Collection. The icon shows two girls, so they must be a lesbian couple. Maybe there are gay characters, too.
Scene 1: Two girls, who name themselves Mariana and Callie, squeal as they drive a U-Haul on an empty highway to L.A. I can't tell who has which name, so I'll call them Long Hair and Short Hair. One has just graduated from law school and found a job as a clerk for a federal judge, and the other, just graduated from college, has found a job as a software engineer.
Scene 2: With those salaries, they could rent a condo in West Hollywood, but instead they're moving into a hippie commune at the Palace Theater downtown. The manager gives them a tour:
Dennis is played by Josh Pence, left, and below.
Their horrible bedroom, with sagging plaster, unfinished walls, and opaque windows. They can use the communal bathroom, or they can buy a chamber pot, but don't poop in it, because the rats will eat it. I'm never going to get that image out of my head. Girls, just rent a decent apartment.
Scene 3: The girls complain, but they have no choice: they can only afford $1600 per month. Ok, that might be a problem. My old apartment in West Hollywood is now running at $3000.
Scene 4: Uh-oh, their U-Haul has been broken into, and everything was stolen! How long were you looking at the horrible commune before coming down to unload?
They go to a bar to drink tequila. Short Hair notes that the male bartender is hot. "Really?" Long Hair asks, annoyed. "When was the last time you got laid?" Wait -- I thought they were a lesbian couple. Why is this included in the Pride Collection? Is there a gay minor character?
Scene 5: They have no clothes for work tomorrow, so they head to an all-night discount store for a montage of trying on clothes, playing with dolls, squealing, and hugging. Then sleeping on separate mattresses, waking up late the next morning, and rushing out. Hang on -- you planned to move into your new place the day before your first day at work? What if you were delayed on the road?
On the way out, Short Hair gets a cliched jaw-dropping love-at-first-sight moment as the Boy of Her Dreams walks toward her in slow motion. I don't see the attraction -- he's disheveled, shabbily dressed, hair askew, looking like how Hollywood portrays meth heads. Long Hair knows him already, from when he interviewed at the software company. Wait -- she hasn't gone to work yet, she doesn't work in human resources, and, and....what the heck is going on? Anyhow, the takeaway of the scene is that they're sisters, both into the hunky Meth Head, and likely to sabogate each other's attempts to snare him. .
Or not. I can't find him in the cast list.
Googling Callie and Medina, I discovered that they are from The Fosters, a soap opera about a lesbian couple raising a lot of foster and adopted kids. So that's the gay connection?
The Fosters was a soap opera, so Good Trouble will probably have a lot of tragedy and angst.
Scene 6: That night, while mooning over Meth Head, Short Hair walks up to the balcony swimming pool ...in a seedy, decrepit falling-apart movie theater where they can't even afford to plaster the walls? None of this makes any sense. Just go with it.
Whoa, a sudden shot of Short Hair as a victim of a violent sexual assault. Or maybe extremely energetic consensual sex -- on tv with no context they look identical. According to the fan wiki, when Callie was living in the foster home before the Fosters, she reported that a guy named Liam raped her, but her previous set of foster parents didn't believe her and kicked her out of the house. She must be getting a post-traumatic flashback.
They discuss their dreams and goals, smoke pot, and examine Gael's art. He does terrible sculpting in clay -- and invites her to caress the very phallic end of his piece called "Stasis." Short Hair notes that she wanted to study art, but couldn't hack it and tried law as a back-up.
They feel more art, and the camera repeatedly zooms in on Short Hair's bare shoulder -- I wonder if she suffered an injury there during her rape on The Fosters. Then they kiss.
More Foster girls after the break. And a few guys.
Scene 6: First day at work, Short Hair is key-carded around the office and told not to discuss the cases on social media, while Long Hair is escorted past the pingpong tables and yoga room.
The chest to Alex, played by Dustin Ingram, a nerd at the software company who stares at Long Hair with Girl-of-My-Dreams intensity, but he's not in love, he's thinking "Tell the chick to bring me some coffee."
And the bulge, to the world-famous but shy Evan Speck at the software company, played by TJ Linnard.
As the day goes on, Short Hair gets an ally at the courthouse who warns her against taking the advice of some back-stabbers, and Long Hair, a software engineer, is relegated to data entry by the development boys' club.
Uh-oh, Long Hair calls to torture her sister by saying that she's having lunch with Gael, when it's actually 12 of them around the table, and he's at the other end. Then Gael texts Short Hair, and she blows him off. Girl, Sis is playing you
Ok, so Gael is Meth Head, who the girls met on their way to work yesterday. But when Short Hair saw him at the pool, she didn't act like he was the Man-of-Her-Dreams Meth Head, and he introduced himself as if they hadn't met before....are we getting a fragmented timeline?
Scene 7: Short Hair insists that they find another place: Long Hair can chip in more money, so they can do $3200 per month.
"Why are you so insistent that we move?" Long Hair asks. Of course Short Hair can't tell her the real reason: "To keep your greedy mitts off Gael." Won't work, girl. I tried it in West Hollywood.
Scene 8: The next day at lunch, Long Hair tries to sit next to Gael, but his space is quickly taken. She has to sit at the other end of the table, where she accidentally insults the designers, so she gravitates toward a woman. Wait -- is this her first day at work? We definitely have a fragmented timeline going on. Anyhow, the woman suggests that she shouldn't dress like...that, and that she should demand her place at the table.
She goes to team leader Alex and demands a task befitting her background, so he gives her the job of reviewing the code in the E1da file. Ulp -- it's a file full of jpgs of ladies' boobs. Hey, that's sexual harassment!
Scene 9: Time for dinner at the commune: vegan chicken adobo. The girls don't want to stick around, until they discover that Gael is there. Then they trip all over themselves trying to sit next to him. Har har.
23 minutes to go, but I'm out of space, so I'll just include another nude -- from my Good Trouble file, but it might be miscategorized . I'm working on a new Skyler Gisondo collection, also - and check for tragedies and LGBT characters on the fan wiki.
LGBT characters: Some friends and family visiting from The Fosters, Alice the commune manager, and Gael, who dumps his boyfriend for one of the sisters -- I'm not telling who -- then establishes a permanent relationship with a different woman.
Tragedies: The episode synopses are vague, but I see some soap opera terms: disturbing news, a shocking truth, hiding a secret, opening old wounds, tough decisions, facing depression, confronting anxiety, a secret, a surprise intruder, more tough decisions, a restraining order, a cult, and a lot...a lot...of relationship mishegas.
My Grade: The viewer is expected to be intimately familiar with the girls already, so watching them cold is like starting a movie halfway through. For Foster fans only.
See also: The Fosters: Twelve hunks and hunkoids, all grown up
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