Ashley Garcia: Genius in Love
This past, bleak February week, I figured the best way to handle the never ending winter is to hide under a blanket, eat cheese, and watch a sitcom. Combing through Netflix’s new releases section, I found Ashley Garcia: Genius in Love (originally The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia), a teen/family comedy which had one season in 2020 (Netflix tends to cancel most of its original programming after the first season or three), and decided to try it out.
\Ashley Garcia is about a fifteen-year-old rocket scientist who moves in with her uncle when she relocates for her new job at NASA JPL. Excited to live away from her overbearing mom, Ashley wants to know what it’s like to be an ordinary kid, and she makes a list of things she wants to experience. When she meets the captain of the football team that her uncle coaches, Tad, she decides that kissing Tad is at the top of her list.
This show (produced by Mario Lopez, who also plays the owner of a coffee shop that acts as one of the main settings of the show) is an effort at better representation for Latinos. It’s nice to see a lesser-known Latina actress as a lead (Paulina Chávez is effervescent as Ashley), and to see plenty of supporting characters who are people of color. Nearly every character comes across as individual, and the writers (with a couple of exceptions) don’t look down on either their child or adult characters, which is unusual in family comedies. The characters tend to respect each others’ differences, too (Ashley’s best friend, Brooke, is a makeup artist/Instagram influencer, and the two girls support each other). The show has a lot of charming moments.
There are two characters who fall flat in these first three episodes. The first is Bella, Ashley’s love rival, who, so far, is pretty much like every other unlikable love rival on TV. The second is Ashley’s mom. We’re supposed to get the sense that Ashley had a really strict upbringing, but other than her mom having a specific beef with one pizza place, none of the rules Ashley has lived with feel that unusual or arbitrary. It also seems like a fair amount of Ashley’s unconventional childhood has been because of her own love for science, so it’s hard to understand why we’re supposed to feel it’s so important for Ashley to rebel against her mom and to reinvent herself.
The show’s concept would work better if Ashley’s bucket list included a wider range of experiences that her mom never let her try before. Instead, there’s one experience that’s given real weight: Ashley doesn’t have any experience with boys. To Ashley’s friends, Ashley not having had her first kiss at age 15 is like that time Tom Brady told everyone he’d never had a strawberry. Kissing a boy is something Ashley has to do to become normal. Her frustration at not being normal (at never having kissed or dated) is set up in these three episodes to be a major conflict in the show.
Ultimately, even though this show is supposed to be a positive portrayal of women, I felt that it sends the message that girls need approval from others, especially in a romantic context, to have value. Characters push Ashley toward a kiss that she’s not ready for, and while she eventually says “no,” the show never indicates that it was wrong to put her in that position in the first place (instead, the other characters tell her it’s “cute” that she wants her first kiss to be romantic, and it’s not depicted as mean). So far, everything Ashley’s learned about regular life is about being desirable to others, not about finding enjoyment for herself. No character assures Ashley that it’s okay, that she doesn’t need to kiss Tad or impress anyone to be whole.
There were a lot of cute moments in this series, and I enjoyed the actors. Ultimately, though, there were too many issues in this one for me to fulfill my relax-and-eat-cheese plan. I’m going to have to buy more cheese and try again with another show, another day.
Detailed content advisory for Ashley Garcia: Genius in Love.
(Note: I have only watched the first 3 episodes)
Language:
A main character describes verbal abuse from his father, rattling off insulting names his father calls him (eg, dolt, nitwit). One of these names, “windowlicker,” is a slur from the UK.
“God” is used as a curse word multiple times.
Violence:
Some playful/slapstick fighting among friends - a man tackles another man (both former football players).
Sexual content:
There’s a fair amount of sexual content/language in this show.
Teenage characters are physically affectionate in a way that’s meant to be over-the-top and disgusting.
A man has women over to his house for one-night stands.
A lot of innuendo, (a teenage boy character makes a joke about consuming porn, a man teases another man about sexual dysfunction, etc.)
A teenage girl mentions going to “make-out parties” when she was thirteen.
A teenage boy is (mostly) shirtless.
Questionable content:
Adults drink alcohol. The second episode revolves around a character thinking there’s underage drinking going on at a party (there isn’t). A character uses a bottle of wine to get a stain out of a carpet.
