Good Girls Revolt

The way the show digs into the process of writing and researching the news in a pre-Internet era is perhaps one of its strongest qualities; many of the stories being investigated by the “News of the Week” staff are legitimately fascinating.

Bring your 80-cents-on-the-dollar outrage here, for an entertainingly upright tale of the fight for equality.

Good Girls Revolt is careful to not demonize anybody; both the men and women have copious flaws. And though the cultural touchstones may feel a little tired at this point given its setting, what the show does do well is create a workplace atmosphere that feels both contemporary and retro, a sometimes startling commentary on how far we’ve come, yet how far we still have to go.

Good Girls Revolt is an eminently watchable, admiringly written drama that makes women’s liberation, so often portrayed as a movement forged by dour, humorless women, seem exhilarating, essential and--would you believe it?--fun.

Is GGR the best show on television? No, but it’s pretty solid.

Good Girls Revolt doesn't conjure anyone as compelling as Don Draper, but it delivers several credible variations on Peggy Olson -- and another window into the '60s, a decade with political ramifications that are still being litigated. For anyone interested in journalism, it also reflects when the profession was held in higher esteem, while women were denied ascendance to the higher rungs of its hierarchy.

Like most cable and streaming series, Good Girls takes its time. Still, it’s time generally well-spent, and not just on the show’s primary issue, but on other conflicts of the ‘60s that come into play.

Good Girls gets the journalism part almost laughably wrong, but as an ensemble drama with a good cast, high production values, and much else, even a crusty editor might observe that, “This story has legs.”

Good Girls Revolt is lively fun, telling an important story via young women who could be characters in a “Sex and the City”-ish dramedy.

Take away the graphic-print minidresses and the omnipresent ashtrays, and you’re left with a workplace drama that doesn’t always feel all that anachronistic.

The show is not perfect. At times, Good Girls Revolt can be very smart about the themes of the ‘60s; at others, it can be painfully obvious. ... With a show that is as much about atmosphere as plot, some sprawl can be forgiven.

Unless Good Girls Revolt can make the stories it tells more interesting and better paced, it'll just be a pretty good show in a world that's churning out great shows--breaking-news alert--at an awe-inspiring clip.

Despite the ambitious effort to show these women as individuals, to explore the ways the men hold them back and the ways they hold themselves back, the show feels generic.

Its narrative lurches forward so sluggishly that some episodes feel endless. [21/28 Oct 2016, p.97]

Mad Men used ingenious storytelling to look at people mired in the past; Good Girls Revolt relies on clichés to portray the era’s innovators. These women deserve better than that.

Perhaps the biggest issues with Good Girls Revolt are its tentativeness and slow pacing, both of which prevent it from being a truly exciting viewing experience.

Despite energy and a surprisingly timely premise, it generates only sparks and smoke.

There’s no question that the series is engaging, but at the same time, it is disappointing on a number of fronts. The writing is the biggest problem, because it reduces the complexities of character and, of equal importance, the events of the times to obviousness at best, cartoons at worst.

This is the very slow-burning story of their professional and often sexual awakening, bathed in period cliches that rarely feel authentic. [24 Oct-6 Nov 2016, p.17]

It’s a lot of money spent in service of a show that’s not very good. It’s well-intentioned, but Mad Men already chronicled this era with much more skill and subtlety.