Content warning: This article includes mentions of sexual assault.
Spoiler warning: This article includes spoilers for “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.”
Last week, I decided to sit down and watch Season 2 of Netflix’s “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder,” which came out May 27. While the new season started off strong, it quickly left me confused on major plot points.
I was all in with Season 1. I loved Pip (Emma Myers) as the main character. She’s incredibly clever and a bit socially awkward but is unafraid to ask tough questions to the people she interviews.
The previous season’s mystery of Andie Bell’s (India Lillie Davies) disappearance five years prior to the events of the show was an interesting set up to a slow burn mystery, although the reveal that Andie’s sister Becca (Carla Woodcock) was to blame was a bit of a weak twist. But overall, the first season was a strong start to a smalltown mystery series. I can’t really say that Season 2’s mystery kept this start going.
In Season 2, Pip tries to find out where her friend Jamie Reynolds (Eden H. Davies) has gone. Simultaneously, there is the trial of Max Hastings (Henry Ashton) happening throughout the week, in which Jamie is a key witness. So, Pip is trying to find out where he went before he gives his testimony.
Immediately, I don’t really care for this premise. We see Pip and Jamie talk for one scene at a murder mystery party. I was scratching my head trying to figure out if they recast his character or if I forgot about him in Season 1. But it turns out he’s just a newly introduced character that Pip is good friends with off-screen. Not a great start.
I found the idea of the perpetrator being a catfisher quite interesting. After searching through Jamie’s room, Pip and her friends figure out that someone has been talking to various men in the town on a dating app while using photos of their classmate Ruby (Orla Hill). They soon figure out this person is targeting men who are 29 years old to try to find someone who has hidden their identity.
The subplot about the trial of Max Hastings, one of the villains of last season, was honestly the most exhausting part of this season. In the previous season, Max was revealed to be a serial rapist during Pip’s investigation of the case, with Becca Bell’s motivation for harming her sister coming directly from his sexual abuse towards Becca. So, this season, he is on trial for his crimes, with Pip, Becca and Jamie as witnesses.
Not to say that trials themselves are uninteresting, but Max is literally the most annoyingly evil person in television history who gets away with everything because of his rich family. The trial was so predictably bad since the key witness Jamie couldn’t testify on account of being kidnapped, and Pip screwed up her testimony. So, when Max was declared innocent, I was like, “well duh.” Not because I thought he was innocent, but because the trial was an absolute dumpster fire.
Other characters introduced this season included Pip’s new neighbors, Charlie Green (Jack Rowan) and Flora Green (Anna Brindle), a couple who moved in across the street. Since I’m very keen on the idea of setup and payoff, I was immediately suspicious of these two since their introduction had no purpose. Lo and behold, I was right.
Charlie wants to murder Jack Brunswick (Misia Butler) who is living a secret life as Stanley Forbes in Little Kilton. Stanley was first introduced as a clumsy security guard. And as twists go, I wasn’t expecting him to have a secret identity to cover up that he served in juvenile detention for being an accessory to his father’s serial killings 20 years prior — mostly because that’s a stupidly weird plot twist.
Apparently, Stanley is the one who kidnapped Jamie, keeping him locked in his bathroom because Jamie tried to kill him when the catfisher told him to. It doesn’t really make any sense unless Jamie is just incredibly unstable. Then, throughout his time kidnapped, Jamie gets Stockholm syndrome and becomes pretty chill with Stanley.
Can you tell I don’t like this season?
When Stanley is killed by Charlie because Stanley helped his dad kill Charlie’s sister, they have a funeral for him. And when I say “they,” I mean eight random kids who knew him for about 20 minutes. At an official looking funeral, Pip gets up and gives a speech about him, something she isn’t qualified to do because she pretty much knew nothing about him.
And honestly there’s a lot more I could say about this season. Too many plot holes and sudden revelations made this season way less engaging than the previous one. I’m surprised this season did much better review-wise than Season 1: 83% on Rotten Tomatoes for Season 1 and 92% for Season 2, with an even larger gap for the audience scores. Perhaps I missed something, or maybe reading the books helps with some of the context. But as a first-time watcher, I was incredibly confused.
