MovieChat Forums > Good Times (1974) Discussion > Penny's mom is a criminal mastermind.

Penny's mom is a criminal mastermind.


As messed up as Penny's mom was, her plan to get Penny back by making Wilona look like an unfit mother was pretty clever and diabolical. Like seriously. She must have been planning that out for a long time, and things would have gone according to plan if it wasn't for the tape recorder. Causing chaos at the party, creating so "evidence" that Wilona was an unfit mother and having everyone arrested, etc.

Also, I feel kind of bad for Wilona. First, it was Ray who claimed to change his ways (only to be a creep who tried groping Thelma). And then in "A Matter of Mothers", her new boyfriend Jeff turns out to be a backstabber who is secretly working for Penny's mom, lol.

Poor Wilona can never catch a break with the shitty relationships.

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The Jeff storyline would have been better if they had him in a few more episodes because we would have gotten use to him more, liked him and thus his betrayal even more of a shock. To have him in one episode seemed like a rush especially with him and Willona already wanting to "elope" and we never seen the guy before. A missed opportunity there.

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Yep, I was thinking the same thing. It would have been better if Jeff had been a recurring character throughout the season as Willona's partner or something like that.

Maybe there could've been an episode where at the end, we see Jeff talking on the phone to someone and he says - "she doesn't suspect a thing", or something like that and then the credits roll. Leaving the viewer to realize Jeff is up to something and he's not what he seems. It would have made the eventual reveal more surprising.

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Exactly. That would have been sweeeet.

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