‘Good Trouble’ quietly becomes leading drama
In 3rd season, series acutely captures last year’s news cycle like no other show has
While everyone is worrying about “Bridgerton’s” casting or “Euphoria’s” return, “Good Trouble” has quietly become the most interesting drama of the bunch.
In its third season, the Freeform series is remarkable for many things. It is a successful spinoff; two of its main characters, Callie (Maia Mitchell) and Mariana (Cierra Ramirez), are young adult sisters first introduced on the popular series “The Fosters.” They are part of a female-centric communal housing project in downtown Los Angeles known as the Coterie.
Like many shows depicting this demographic, “Good Trouble” involves a lot of sex, romance and interpersonal drama, but it also takes work-life very seriously. There are just as many strong storylines following the characters’ diverse careers, which include law (Callie), tech (Marianna), activism (Malika, played by Zuri Adele) and stand-up comedy (Alice, played by Sherry Cola.)
“The Fosters” was a groundbreaking show that revolved around a married lesbian couple and the many children they fostered and/or adopted. With parentage like that, along with a title echoing the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis, it is not surprising that “Good Trouble” uses these careers to explore the types of realities, often known as “political,” that many young-adult series tend to avoid or feature only occasionally.
In its third season, these realities have reflected the news cycle in a particularly astonishing way; no other show has captured the whipsaw nature of life in the last year as acutely. And without a single mask or COVID-19 graph in sight.
Like many series, “Good Trouble” shut down production in spring 2020. And like many television creators, executive producer Joanna Johnson and her team had to decide how or if the series, entering its third season, should reflect the new realities.
“We had just started to shoot the first episode when we got shut down; we had two or three scripts written,” she says. “We had no idea how long the pandemic was going to last, and we felt like we really couldn’t tell the stories we wanted to tell with everyone in masks and no one allowed to leave.”
“Good Trouble” didn’t need COVID-19 to reflect the many facets of the last year. The natural confines of the Coterie already created the enforced intimacy of the lockdown, and several of the residents’ jobs took care of the rest.
Among many developments this season, Malika faced the legal ramifications of her arrest during a Black Lives Matter protest, Marianna watched in horror as an activist app she had designed was taken over by white supremacists, and Alice dealt with the damage done by anti-Asian stereotypes.
If those plots seem torn from the headlines, they weren’t. At least not recent headlines. “People are always saying, ‘Wow, you really are ahead of things,’ ” says Johnson. “But we’re just trying to deal with things that have been going on for a long time.”
In addition to racist police brutality, those stories also included the plague of white supremacy, the continued male dominance of the tech world, the problems with so-called diversity initiatives and the danger of stereotypes in comedy.
None of which is presented as if it were a PSA or a hashtag. The beauty of “Good Trouble” is that, like all good television, it is exquisitely character-driven. And those characters are, like many young people, living politically aware lives: Unlike other good and very popular shows I could name, the interests of the Coterie extend way beyond the genre’s traditionally insular focus on self-discovery.
“They always say, ‘Don’t talk politics with your friends,’ but you do,” says Ramirez. “I feel like these writers have a crystal ball. I remember protesting at City Hall this summer and it felt like deja vu because we had just filmed a protest there.”
Coming from “The Fosters,” Ramirez had some experience with being a face of a socially progressive show. But for Adele, playing a BLM activist has been an education, politically and professionally.
“No one is going to be able to speak for the entire community,” Adele says. “It’s really important to lean into our strengths. For some people, that’s being on the front lines. For some people, it’s not. … My activism is sharing Black joy.”
When Cola read the audition request for a queer, Asian American woman who manages the Coterie and aspires to be a stand-up comic, her first thought was, “This is me.” But now that she’s played her for three seasons, Alice has become more like her best friend. “I’m not the same person I was,” Cola says. “I’ve been learning a lot. How to be a better ally, for one, to the Black community, to the trans community. Being in this show makes you want to do better. Not everyone can say that about a TV show they’re on.”
In season three, Alice competes for, and is accepted into, a diversity initiative for comedians, only to find that — guest appearance by Margaret Cho aside — it is as much a problem as a solution — participants are cast in bits that revolve around stereotypes.
“The mantra of this show is to speak up and speak out, and Alice has definitely grown. But then you see her realizing that she may be representing her people, but she’s being put in a box. And she has to decide, ‘Oh, I want to represent and get exposure, but am I setting my people back?’ And that is something I’ve dealt with in my career.”
Having this storyline coincide with the fatal shooting of six Asian women in Georgia was devastating and empowering for Cola. “We need to shatter society’s ignorant definition of what it means to be an Asian woman. We are not a monolith but the power of our community, and we are finally celebrating who we are and how we’re fighting back.”
Clearing a space for these kinds of conversations by telling stories television has too long ignored is what drew Johnson to “The Fosters” and propelled her to spin off “Good Trouble.” Both shows have taken on difficult topics while inevitably choosing optimism over despair.
“We wanted it to seem real but not gritty,” Johnson says. “Prestige television is always so dark. I love and watch a lot of dark shows, and I’m over it. Our No. 1 job is to entertain, to engage. I don’t want to be sappy or preachy, but more and more, I want to put things out in the world that are hopeful and ethical.”