Stars: 2/5
It seems as though Netflix and teen dramas just never work out.
One of their newest shows, “Teenage Bounty Hunters” follows twins Sterling (Maddie Phillips) and Blair (Anjelica Bette Fellini) as they take on the unlikely job of being bounty hunters. The two have to balance their everyday lives of being perfect students in their Christian high school and daughters in their very religious family.
The show has action and some witty lines, but the storyline itself doesn’t pack a punch.
I thought the show had a cool concept, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have liked to because I felt as if the writers were trying too hard to make the characters seem trendy and woke.
The dialogue wasn’t great at times, and sometimes it made the main characters intolerable to watch.
The show discussed certain topics like interracial and same sex relationships, which the two main characters experienced, and then talked about them constantly. The characters also made frequent jokes about those topics. It was supposed to be funny, but sometimes the jokes just didn’t land.
I can’t wait until we have a show where these things aren’t used to show “wokeness” or to be how the main characters rebel. The show tried to be empowering, and sometimes it worked, but other times it didn’t. Overall, if it was more genuine the story would have came off better to me, and I would have enjoyed it more.
I wish we could have seen more of the internal struggles and character growth that came with being in those situations rather than just focusing on how they’re taboo to some people.
Another problem I had with the show was that it was unrealistic. I usually give shows a free pass on that because well…it’s a show, but so many things in this southern town with strong Christian roots just didn’t make sense.
Maybe it’s the unfortunate world we live in where our generation expects the worst because we’ve seen it happen, but many times I caught myself watching and thinking “well that would actually probably end a lot differently.”
They addressed sexuality and racism, but it wasn’t always realistic in my eyes. If they showed more real life experiences, it would have added more depth to the show.
They did this sometimes with the criminals the girls were meant to catch but not often with the main characters themselves. They showed the struggles of exotic dancers and how they should be respected as well as sex workers.
They also highlighted protesting racist historical figures by ruining their statues, which is a very big, relatable topic right now. If the show discussed more topics like this, especially with it’s main characters, the plot would have carried more weight.
The show got slightly better by the end, and the last episode offered twists that I wasn’t expecting. The show made you want to root for the characters. I just wish along the way we could have discussed more of the real and raw situations throughout the whole season.
