Teenage Bounty Hunters S01

STREAMING IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS
Season 01 (Netflix, USA, 2020)
Created by Kathleen Jordan; starring Maddie Phillips, Anjelica Bette Fellini, Kadeem Hardison…

Teenage Bounty Hunters is a teen drama with more on its mind than the exploitative title might indicate (shades of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though Veronica Mars might be the closer relation). Maddie Phillips and Anjelica Bette Fellini star as Sterling and Blair Wesley, fraternal twins and rich white girls living a privileged life in the American south. They attend a Christian private school so, having reached an age to be very interested in sex and stuff, there’s lots of potential conflict with parents, school, and their conformist fellow student.

Standard fare for a coming-of-age drama, but Bounty Hunters (again, like Buffy or Veronica) uses its genre format to open up the world and push our heroes into unexpected places and situations. Heading home after an evening with their boyfriends, Sterling and Blair stumble upon a bounty hunter (ahem, bail enforcement agent!) in the midst of not apprehending his bail jumper. The girls provide an assist and – yada yada – he takes them on as apprentices. They need the money to fix their parent’s car (long story) and he, as a black man, figures two white girls will be useful for getting into snooty country clubs and such.

Soon Sterling and Blair are dealing with relationship issues, schoolwork, mean girls, tracking bail jumpers, and holding down a pretend job to keep their real part-time occupation a secret from their parents. Fortunately, the show is structured as a comedy and the well-stuffed plots are propelled with a minimum of teen angst and a maximum of humour. Cue the jokes about southern cuisine, gun culture, and wild-west style law enforcement. The show also has fun with the girls’ “twin vision”, a kind of telepathic communication which lets them deliver quirky commentary on whatever’s going down.

Despite the humour, Bounty Hunters treats its setting and characters with respect. At school the twins may be rebels without a clue, but the pervasive Christianity of this world is never mocked. Despite their sex-positivity, both girls are believers and the show takes their experiences seriously as they ponder what else their church and parents might have got wrong. They’re navigating that fascinating and terrifying stage of life when you start questioning your childhood assumptions but aren’t fully adult yet. A process complicated, of course, by their bounty hunting adventures, which keep putting them in the middle of race and class divides they would never see otherwise. Kadeem Hardison, as their bounty hunter boss, also has stuff going on. A disgraced ex-cop, he’s looking for another shot: both at life and with his attractive bail agent. Taking on two hormonal teenagers will be either the best or worst choice he’s ever made.

That’s a lot to deal with, and the first season of Bounty Hunters sometimes struggles to balance the bounty hunting with the other plot threads. The cases of the week noticeably get short shrift as the season goes on. There’s also a season ending plot-twist that’s barely set up before it’s sprung. Finally, Bounty Hunters isn’t quite as consistently witty or smart as Buffy (what is?), nor does it have the psychological depth and twisty detective work of Veronica Mars.

So, it’s not quite up there with the genre greats. But what it does have is loads of heart and a loopy energy that propels the season in a binge-able rush. The terrific cast doesn’t hurt either. Phillips and Bette Fellini are loads of fun and hugely watchable as the eponymous twins. The actors (as usual) are twenty-somethings playing teenagers, but they both perfectly embody the puppy-dog energy, unfounded (and unbounded) self-confidence, and naïve enthusiasm of actual teenagers. When reality trips them up (as it does), they dust themselves off, chalk it up to experience, and carry on – never for a minute thinking this experience might be telling them that they aren’t quite as smart as they think they are. Hardison is likewise perfect as the aging bounty hunter, cynical from past failures, but who might just have something to teach his apprentices – while their naive optimism could be just the thing to re-light the fire in his belly (if they don’t drive him crazy first). The secondary characters are strong too: distinct personalities who all get a good moment or two each.

I wobbled (sorry) on whether to give this a low THUMB UP or a high WOBBLY THUMB, but Teenage Bounty Hunters is the most pure fun I’ve had on Netflix since finishing Dead to Me, so THUMB UP it is.

2021 Update: Tragically Netflix cancelled Teenage Bounty Hunters in a vicious round of cost cutting. Which means that Season 01's cliffhanger will now never be resolved. Netflix's YA shows have been especially hard hit with the also excellent Everything Sucks and I Am Not Okay with This also falling victim, both also with their stories still unfinished.

Well, Netflix, what goes around comes around. If you won't show any loyalty to your stories, then I have no reason to be loyal to you. I no longer maintain a regular subscription. When enough shows pile up that I want to check out, I subscribe to Netflix for one month – immediately cancelling so I don't forget. That gives me a month to catch up on anything I missed.

THUMB UP