In Good Trouble, Maia and Cierra play foster sisters Callie and Mariana Adams Foster, who have just moved to Los Angeles to begin their careers.
Here are five reasons to add it to your binge list immediately:
1. It’s a spinoff from The Fosters
The Fosters, which ended last year, was a family drama about a lesbian couple parenting a multi-ethnic family of adopted and biological teenagers. Winner of a Teen Choice Award for Breakout Show, a Television Academy Honours Award, a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Drama Series, and two Television Critics Association Awards for Youth Programming, The Fosters was the kind of drama “that gave your heart warm fuzzies almost every week,” to quote Refinery29.
Like The Fosters, Good Trouble is created by Bradley Bredeweg and Peter Paige (Queer As Folk), this time with The Fosters executive producer Joanna Johnson. They’ve kept a lot of The Fosters’ winning formula: Good Trouble is every bit as socially progressive; it will still give your heart ‘warm fuzzies;’ and family dinners, for example, have just shifted to Callie and Mariana’s new residence, The Coterie, ‘an intentional community’ with a communal, co-ed bathroom and as diverse a bunch of residents as you’d expect from a spinoff of The Fosters. So if you’re missing The Fosters, The Good Trouble will fill that hole.
2. But it’s not The Fosters Season 6
Good Trouble is a young adult drama, rather than a family drama, and is now set in Los Angeles, rather than San Diego. That’s impacted everything from the music and the styling to the tone and the edit, resulting in a very different show.
As Refinery29 puts it, Good Trouble “is sexy where The Fosters was earnest; messy where its predecessor was moral.” Or to use The Hollywood Reporter’s phrasing, Good Trouble is “as jagged and raunchy as parent show The Fosters was heartening and sunshiney.”
It’s also the start of a new chapter for Maia and Cierra, so even if you’ve never seen The Fosters, you’ll be able to follow Good Trouble as a stand-alone show.
3. It’s an accurate look at starting your career
TV series can make starting your career look really easy and glamorous. But when Mariana arrives at her Silicon Valley-esque startup straight from MIT, the first job she’s given is data-capturing; the rest of her team are male and keep porn in their assets folders; and she’s quickly put in her place when she tries to set up a meeting with the CEO to pitch her idea for an app. Pretty soon she’s crying in the toilet.
Callie doesn’t have it any easier: she’s competing against clerks from Yale and Harvard, isn’t making enough money to have the option of moving out of the co-op, and soon finds that her left-leaning sentiments are not going to influence the conservative judge she’s clerking for - and may actually be helping him rule against liberal arguments...
4. Tommy Martinez is “truly the bae Gen Y-into-Z deserves.”
Maia and Cierra are joined by a strong cast that includes comedian Sherry Cola (I Love Dick) as their apartment manager; Roger Bart (Desperate Housewives, Revenge) as the judge Callie is clerking for; and new ‘bi-icon’ Tommy Martinez (Malachai in Riverdale), who Refinery29 describes as a "hunky artist-graphic designer” who “is truly the bae Gen Y-into-Z deserves.”
You can also expect cameos from your favourite cast from The Fosters, including moms Stef (Teri Polo) and Lena (Sherri Saum) and Mariana’s twin Jesus (2019 MTV Movie Award Breakthrough Performance winner Noah Centineo from To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before).
5. Critics love it
The series currently has a 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Paste proclaiming it “the first great TV show of 2019” (admittedly before Chernobyl); Vox praising it as “TV’s first good Gen Z drama” (admittedly before Euphoria); and Mashable hailing it as “downright tantalizing and entertaining.”
You shouldn’t need more reasons than that to binge Good Trouble, but we could add that the pilot is directed by Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians); the title sequence includes gorgeous murals by South African street artist Faith XLVII; and the soundtrack features everyone from Billie Eilish to Morcheeba, Chromatics to Little Dragon.
Watch Good Trouble first and only on Showmax:
https://www.showmax.com/eng/tvseries/szadxrv2-good-trouble
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