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Cartel Bonus: AGGGTM Episode 1

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We are sharing our discussion about the first episode of the Netflix adaptation of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. If you like what you hear, consider joining the Clued in Cartel for a year for as little as $12. You’ll get early other bonus episodes, new releases from Sarah and Brook, and you’ll get to read along as Sarah and Brook write a mystery together.

Discussed

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019) Holly Jackson

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2024) Netflix

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Transcript

This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.

SarahWelcome to a Clued in Bonus episode. I’m Sarah.
BrookAnd I’m Brook and we both love mystery.
SarahHi, Brook.
BrookHi Sarah, we’re ready to discuss episode one of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.
SarahYes, I’m so excited to hear what you think.
BrookI know, it was really, really fun. I just watched it last night, so it’s all fresh in my mind.
SarahOkay, so tell me your first impressions.
BrookWell, one of the things we had questioned was whether or not it would be set in the UK and it is and I I really like that. I think it feels pretty true to probably what the original story that Holly Jackson you know came up with. Um and you can tell me if I’m right or wrong ah as we discussed this because listeners will remember that I have not read the book series and Sarah has.
BrookBut in watching episode one, I felt like this was probably a lot of book one. Like, I feel like we got a lot of information in, you know, just 40 minutes of time. Or maybe just the feeling that it probably was expanded upon a little bit more in the book, because I feel like we’re really set up pretty well for the mystery that she’s going to solve. And it just happened really compactly.
SarahYeah, so I think there was a lot of set up in this episode. For me, it I mean, as you say, I’ve already read the book, so I know what the arc of the book is, and I assume that the show is going to follow a similar arc.
SarahBut this was a lot of set up, and it didn’t, it wasn’t that satisfying in terms of there being enough of a mystery for me.
BrookYeah. And maybe that’s kind of what I was touching on as well as it’s like, kind of like, okay, XYZ, here you go. Here’s, here’s the setup. Like, kind of a short hand almost. Instead of feeling really emotionally attached. I didn’t really get that sense and to feel real worried for Pip and what she was going to be going through and this kind of dilemma that she’s found herself in.
SarahSo one of the things that comes across, I think, a little bit more strongly in the opening of the book is the impact of Andie’s disappearance on the community and on Pip and her friends. Because one of her friend’s, older sisters, was a close friend of Andie. And that, you know the result, the impact of Andie having disappeared is um something that Pip and her friends feel. Which is, I think, why she chooses to um use this as her as her project. The other thing that I’m not sure came through is that in the book, Pip is really um portrayed as a true crime fan.
SarahRight, so we see in the show where she creates this, you know, she paints her wall and and adds all of these pictures and information to her wall, creates her own like murder board, right? I think she does that in the book too, but there’s more, you get a stronger sense of how into true crime she is.
BrookMm hmm.
SarahWhereas in the book, it feels like this is just something that she’s like, “Hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do this thing.”
BrookYeah, there that definitely is not a part of her, you know, a hobby or a part of her personality at all, which I think would really add a lot more because you have to have that reason why this amateur would get involved, right? There’s a little hint, like she keeps having this flashback in the show where she’s, a you know, it’s been what, five or six years. So she’s a much younger girl.
BrookAnd the boy who is assumed to be the perpetrator of Andie’s death, ah she tells him where Andie has gone. You know they’re in a school setting and she points while she went in there.
BrookI guess the thing that I’ve looked to as her reason at this point is she somewhat feels responsible, even though, however, she doesn’t feel that that boy Sal is responsible for Andie’s murder. So it’s a little murky.
SarahYeah, and so I don’t remember that from the book that she was kind of involved in that in that final day. Um like I said, it’s been a couple of years and I didn’t reread it before this. So um that detail may or may not be something that has been added for the show.
BrookI think if we had had that background of her being into true crime or you know reading about other investigations that had taken place, she might have ah handled how she dives into this a little differently. Because she kind of botches it up right off the bat. It’s it’s a small village. People are obviously know each other very well and she is pretty insensitive the way she starts things out.
SarahYeah, that’s that’s a ah good point. I mean, we have to remember, she is 17 or 18 years old, so may not have that skill set to be able to handle questioning people in ah in a more subtle way. um So you know I think that’s maybe a nice way of seeing her fumbling a little bit because she is young. And so that would be expected. But yeah, she does kind of blunder around a little bit.
BrookBut she’s endearing, isn’t she? She’s got this, I’m not sure if this was a quirky personality in the book, but definitely just like this, a slightest bit of, um you know, kind of stepping on her own toes a little bit. And I think that it’s endearing to a viewer, but I feel like the other characters are are endeared towards her as well.
SarahYeah, we we got to know her friends a little bit, but I wanted to know them a little bit more.
SarahI felt like there was, you know, in the book, her friends are really important ah to her. And I’m not sure that we got to see how much how strong those relationships are. But that may come.
BrookAnd that’s definitely true. I don’t feel like we have even, or her parents or her family. We don’t have a lot of sense of like who these people are to her.
BrookSo let’s talk a little bit, um, just kind of briefly go down what she’s done so far. So she is decided to take on this. It’s not technically a cold case because they’ve, the police have determined that the boyfriend Sal was the one who killed his girlfriend, Andie Bell.
BrookSo she’s decided she’s going to take on this project to you know figure out who the real murderer is. She doesn’t believe it with Sal. And she talks with tries to talk with Sal’s brother, and that’s one of the things she doesn’t handle real great. She gets shot down. She visits the woods where there’s a lot of black ribbons hanging from a tree, which um we assume is ah probably in the area where Andie was found and is kind of a remembrance of her.
BrookThere’s a blonde girl in the woods, who is kind of interesting to me. And then she goes ahead and she talks with some of those friends of of Andie’s who were these older kids to her and discovers that they covered for Sal and told the police that he was actually there until after midnight, there being a party they were at. And in fact, he left at 10:30. So, it seems to me that this group of kids has pretty much bought into the idea that Sal was the killer. Is that where we’re landing, Sarah?
SarahYeah, I I think that’s a ah good summary, Brook. um I hope in the next episode that she starts her actual podcast, right? Like that’s a big part of the book is her doing this podcast as she’s doing this investigation. And she hasn’t, I don’t think that that’s come up yet, that that’s what her intention is, right?
BrookNo, she hasn’t she hasn’t mentioned a podcast at all. Like you said, we see the murder board in her bedroom and you know that’s the cover of the book, isn’t it?
SarahYeah.
BrookWe see the they pieces of yarn and that connects things. So I saw that connection. We’ve also um had one other like unusual format in that they have Sal’s old cell phone so they can read back through the text messages that were sent back and forth the you know the night that it happened. But I’m excited about the opportunity to maybe see her start a podcast.
SarahYeah, I think that I hope that that’s something that happens in the next episode. And we see how her investigation continues.
BrookAll right, so we have some things on our wish list. We would like to have some deepening of characters. We want to see this podcast, which is an important part of the book, and um maybe feel a little bit more of um an emotional attachment to our main character.
SarahMm hmm. Well, let’s hope that that happens in the second episode. We’ll have to watch it and come back and tell our listeners what we think about or share with our listeners what we think about that episode.
BrookThat sounds great. And thank you, Cartel, for listening today. We hope you are watching along. But for now, I’m Brook.
SarahAnd I’m Sarah and we both love mystery.

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