You know what makes for a great summer read? It’s got nothing to do with a particular genre or style of writing. It’s really more of a state of mind. You see, when we’re on holiday, at the beach, away from the stresses of our over-scheduled, overworked lives, our minds are just more open and amenable to the kind of pleasure that books and reading can offer. Which is why the perfect beach read has more to do with our cognitive state than it does with books whose covers are made up entirely of pastels and creams.
Now, consider for a moment the world around us. The shitshow that is 2020 has, in my opinion, primed us for everything that Teenage Bounty Hunters is. We’ve been ready and waiting. We’ve been open to the possibility of joy. And this outrageously fun, wacky romp about twinning, teenage angst, sex, Christianity, and bounty hunting is the perfect antidote to the masked monotony of life in quarantine.
The series centres around Sterling (Maddie Phillips) and Blair (Anjelica Bette Fellini), fraternal twins who decide to rebel against their very Southern, and very Christian, upbringing by becoming bounty hunter “interns.” All of this happens very suddenly and incredibly quickly. This is a show that gets right into it.
The opening moments of Teenage Bounty Hunters, which take place in two cars parked across from each other, offers a canny introduction to both Sterling and Blair as devout Christian girls, with healthy sex lives, who are struggling to reconcile their sexuality with God’s demands. In one car, “the good sister” Sterling is spouting bible verses in an attempt to convince her curiously chaste boyfriend, Luke, that they should consummate their love. In the other, Blair is getting a post-mortem from the boy that she’s been seeing on the technical proficiency of her hand jobs.
The twins, who then accidentally crash their father’s truck into the car of a fleeing bail jumper, whip out their guns and inadvertently help professional bounty hunter Bowser Jenkins (Kadeem Hardison) capture one of his bounties. They prove to be so good at it that they manage to finagle their way into Bowser’s heart and this dangerous and exciting new world.
Even before the show’s opening credits drop, we’re already well acquainted with the sisters and the entire premise of Teenage Bounty Hunters.
(Note: The show was originally called Slutty Teenage Bounty Hunters, but Netflix decided to drop the “slutty” when they announced its premiere date in July.)
What follows isn’t necessarily new. In fact, the show shares a similar sensibility to Veronica Mars, and even Insatiable. There’s the usual high school hijinks. A good dose of family drama. And even some sexual confusion. None of which is out of place for a show of this sort. But where Teenage Bounty Hunters shines is in its approach.
In how it draws its protagonists, these two girls who are at that crossroads between teenage rebellion and self-discovery. In the way in which it deals with sex and relationships. In the relationship that develops between Sterling, Blair, and Bowser, and how it becomes the emotional backbone of the series. All of it is so honest and believable.
It is also unflinching, and hilarious, and brilliant in the way it satirises purity culture without stooping to making cheap jokes about religion.
Because Teenage Bounty Hunters is a series that doesn’t apologise for its setting. This is the South. There are guns. There are confederates. There is a conflict with being young and modern and having to deal with such contradictions. It’s complicated. And lesser hands would have felt the need to cast moralising lens over every aspect of that.
Here, none of it is ignored, and all of it is addressed with subtlety and great humour. There is one episode in particular, that deals with an activist who is secretly beheading confederate statues, which feature such nuanced conversations about the issue that you can’t help but yearn for it in our actual discourse.
It helps that Teenage Bounty Hunters has Maddie Phillips and Anjelica Bette Fellini as its leads. Everything about them is just perfect. Their chemistry. Their dynamic. Their banter. Yes, they are working with some fantastic material, but there is something about the way the two of them interact with each other that is breathtaking. It’s in the timing of their delivery. In a wink and a smirk. In a look of zany disbelief. The two of them are so in synch that it couldn’t possibly be acting.
The rest of the cast are equally as good. With a special shout out to Kadeem Hardison (long live Dwayne Wayne from A Different World!) who brings such pathos to the broken down Bowser, striking that fine balance between tragic and pitiable.
I’m not calling Teenage Bounty Hunters “YA.” That classification seems to have been hijacked by far too many books and television shows with sanitised plot lines and orphaned plain Jane chosen ones. (I’m looking at you Cursed.)
This isn’t the same old tired tropes and hackneyed characters. This is much smarter that that. So don’t let its cotton candy appearance fool you, Teenage Bounty Hunters is a savvy comedy with a lot to say.
Teenage Bounty Hunters
Netflix, Season 1, 10 episodes
Showrunner: Kathleen Jordan
Writers: Kathleen Jordan, Robert Sudduth, Shane Kosakowski, Aziza Barnes, Zoë Jarman, Earl Davis, Megan King Kelly, Tara Herrmann, and Jenny Kohan.
Cast: Maddie Phillips, Anjelica Bette Fellini, Kadeem Hardison, Spencer House, Devon Hales, Cliff ‘Method Man’ Smith, and Virginia Williams
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