Isn't it time to Feel Good?

 I realized the other day that I never did a follow up post on Feel Good despite having finished the show and loving it. The best part of this show was how real the characters felt. Mae's trauma felt real, the way they suppressed it felt real. George's inability to accept her bisexuality felt real. Mae's mom being judgmental and overly meddlesome felt real, and Mae's denial also felt real. George's dad with his flightiness felt like a real dad going through a midlife crisis. It was all so brilliant and realistic. The roommate character (Phil) continued to be lovable despite it turning out that he actually was the reason his dad left like he'd said all along. 

So the comedy aspect of it was good, because I felt that the situations were actually pretty funny sometimes. Certain elements I felt actually lent to more situational comedy, like the fact that the caring, sensitive guy George dates when she breaks up with Mae turns out to be a bit of a possessive jerk in the long run, or how George ends up coming out to her friends.

I will warn you, in case this is a problem, that Feel Good does deal with issues of statutory rape, grooming and pedophilia, drug addiction, mental health issues, and LGBT issues including being genderqueer. It does not make light of these, but draws its situational comedy from other elements and especially from how other people view and react to the characters in the show, sometimes in ludicrous ways that feel all too real. Take, for example, George's fear about coming out. It shows up when she confronts one of her students for calling another one a gay slur. She then goes to the principle to rant about how the SRE class should be teaching things like sexuality only to find out that she should have been doing that all along and that it was her own hang-ups that caused the issue. Another time that also involves George's school life comes when George jokingly sends Mae a text asking them to meet up at the school for sex. Mae takes George's request seriously and ends up being shuffled into a closet so George's class doesn't find out. A lot of Season's one's comedic moments deal with George's insecurities and her own internalized homophobia. Phil's depression isn't treated as a joke either, but there are some comedic elements concerning the unique way he tries to cheer George and Mae up, or how he deals with their breakup. In many ways he is like a child, their child.

The show was so good for so many reasons. I loved the well-written main characters and dialog, the director's choice to use certain sounds to indicate a PTSD response in Mae, the way they portrayed the inner dialog Mae has with Scott before finally confronting him, the side characters (especially Phil, but even the ones I really hated because they were jerks), the romance, the comedy. I really can't think of a single criticism.