Netflix's & Holly Jackson’s A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER: Teen Andie Has Sex with Janitor and Teacher!

IMDb’s Storyline:

Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town. But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day.

In Netflix’s A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (2024), Andie was involved in two age-gap relationships -  with Dan Da Silva, a “handsome” police officer, and with The Secret Older Guy, Mr. Elliot Ward, the Head of English at Fairview High. (Note that Pip, a teen investigating Andie’s murder for a school project, referred to Officer Da Silva as “handsome” in s01e01.)

Pip Discovers that Mr. Ward is Andie's Secret Older Guy

In s01e05, Officer Da Silva informed Pip that he and Andie “had a thing”. Pip was able to deduce that the thing between Officer Da Silva and Andie occurred when Andie was illegally 15. However, Officer Da Silva implied that Andie claimed that she was 16 when they had sex. (Note that 16 is the age-of-consent in the United Kingdom where the Netflix series was set.)

Officer Da Silva, “Andie and I had a thing, but it was two years before she went missing.” 

Pip, “How old was she? That’s statutory rape. She was 15!”

Officer Da Silva, “Yeah. Not a good look if you want to become a police officer. I could tell you she lied about her age, said she was 16, but I’m not sure you’d believe me, would you? 

Later in the same episode, Mr. Ward shared with Pip that when Andie was 17, he and Andie “grew close and started a relationship”, but they only had age-gap sex three times before Andie started dating Sal - her teen boyfriend with whom she did not have sex. 

Mr. Ward, “[...] her grades had started slipping. She came to me for help - just tutoring. This was not long after [my wife] Isabel had died and I was in a dark place. Andie and I grew close and started a relationship.”

Andie's Ivy House Hotel Selfie

Unsurprisingly, it was Andie’s idea to have Mr. Ward take her to the “posh’ Ivy House Hotel where they checked into the hotel under Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby. To commemorate the occasion, before sex with her teacher for the first time, Andie took a selfie in a pink lingerie set in the hotel’s bathroom. 

They went to the Ivy House three times before Andie ended the age-gap relationship and started dating Sal  - a teen classmate. 

Mr. Ward, “It only happened a few times, and then she started seeing Sal. We limped on for a bit, but then she called it off. She said she was in love with him.”

However, after Andie started dating Sal, she asked Mr. Ward to see her again at the Ivy House, but that time it wasn’t for sex. It was for money.

Pip, “You were at the Ivy House Hotel with her just days before she went missing.”

Mr. Ward, “You’re right, I was. She said she wanted to see me. At first, I thought she’d had a change of heart, but she wanted money.”

Pip, “Why?”

Mr. Ward didn’t know why Andie needed the money, and he didn’t give her the £5,000 that she requested. Consequently, a few days later at Mr. Ward’s house, Andie threatened to (falsely) accuse Mr. Ward of having a non-consual age-gap relationship with her, but Mr. Ward refused to be blackmailed. 

Mr. Ward, “I don’t know, but I said, ‘No.’ Then she left, but a few days later, she came to my house. She told me if I didn’t give her £5,000, she would tell the world that I’d taken advantage of her. Again, I said, ’No, I wouldn’t be blackmailed.’ 

Consequently, Andie, “[...] went wild, screaming and slapping [Mr. Ward]”. In an effort to defend himself, he pushed Andie who, “Hit her head on the countertop. It was bad. There was blood everywhere.” But after Mr. Ward went to get his phone to call an ambulance, Andie was gone - never to be seen by him again. 

Naturally, Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder novel, a #1 New York Times Bestseller, provided more details about Andie. For example, we learned from the novel that 17-year-old Andrea “Andie” Bell was described as “[...] white, five feet six inches tall, with long blond hair and [“sparking pale”] blue eyes” and “plump pale lips” - the  “[...] prettiest, most popular girl in the grade”.

Mr. Elliot Ward was described as the Fairview High history teacher and former Yale professor with “wisps of gray hair in his brown hair and [...] thick-rimmed glasses.” Mr. Ward taught Andie AP US History during her sophomore year, but per Mr. Ward, Andie initiated their student-teacher affair when she started “paying attention” to him at school during her senior year. For example, Andie followed Mr. Ward in the halls where she asked about his day, and she even asked for his phone number.

“It was late February. Andie started . . . paying attention to me at school. I wasn’t teaching her; she didn’t take his history. But she’d follow me in the halls and ask me about my day. And, I don’t know, I guess the attention felt . . . nice. [...] And then Andie starts asking to have my phone number. Nothing had happened at this point, we hadn’t kissed or anything, but she kept asking.”

Not being able to resist the allure of a nymphet, Mr. Ward (somewhat) reluctantly gave Andie his phone number. Subsequently, Andie suggested that they, “[...] meet somewhere outside of school. Like a hotel” where they had sex for the first time. 

“I told her absolutely not. But in a moment of madness, a moment of weakness, I found myself booking one. She could be very persuasive. [...] And I booked the [The Ivy House] hotel for the next week [...] That’s when it happened the first time.’ His voice was quiet with shame. ‘We didn’t stay the night; [...] We stayed just a couple of hours.”

Mr. Ward tried to end the age-gap affair, but Andie blackmailed him into returning to The Ivy House for sex by planting her nude selfie in his classroom, which Max, to his delight, discovered in the back of the classroom.

“I said it couldn’t happen again and tried to call it off. Andie wouldn’t let me. She started threatening to turn me in. She interrupted one of my lessons, came over and whispered to me that she’d left a naked picture of herself hidden in the classroom somewhere and that I should find it before someone else did. Trying to scare me. So, I went back to the Ivy House the next week, because I didn’t know what she’d do if I didn’t. I thought she would tire of whatever this was soon enough.”

Subsequently, Mr. Ward tried to end the affair again, but that only caused an “irate” Andie to go to Mr. Ward’s home where she screamed, she said that she “only touched” him because she wanted him to help her get into Yale, and she destroyed his deceased wife’s paintings. 

There are some notable differences between the Netflix series and the novel:

Andie’s selfie that Pip found in Max’s bedroom and that Max found in Mr. Ward’s classroom was different in the book than in the series. In the series' selfie, Andie was wearing a pink bra and pantie set, but in the book, the schoolgirl was nude except for a pair of black underwear. Jackson wrote:

A photo she’d taken of herself in a mirror. Standing on a red and white tiled floor, her right hand raised and clutched round the phone. Her mouth was pushed out in a pout and her eyes looked straight out of the page; she was wearing nothing but a pair of black underwear.

(Note: In the ebook that I referenced, which was published by Electric Monkey - an imprint of Egmont UK (2019), instead of black underwear, topless teen Andie wore black pants.)

In the series and the novel, 15-year-old Andie had sex with Daniel “Dan” Da Silva. In the series, Daniel implied that Andie lied about her age. In the novel, it was clarified that they had sex while Dan was Fairview High’s janitor. 

In the series, Nat Da Silva’s nudes were leaked “all over the school”. Consequently, Nat was nicknamed “‘Nude-gate’ Nat.” In the novel, we learned that Nat was a freshman at the time (i.e., ≈14-years-old) and that Andie was the leaker`of Nat’s topless video. 

In the series, after Mr. Ward and Andie ended their student-teacher affair, Andie attempted to blackmail Mr. Ward by demanding £5,000 or she would “tell the world” that he took advantage of her, but after Mr. Ward refused, Andie “[...] went wild, screaming and slapping [Mr. Ward]”. In the novel, Andie blackmailed Mr. Ward into returning to The Ivy House for sex by planting a nude selfie in his classroom. But after Mr. Ward tried to end the age-gap affair again, Andie became “irate” and went to Mr. Ward’s home where she screamed, she said that she “only touched” him because she wanted him to help her get into Yale, and she destroyed his deceased wife’s paintings. 

Alan Sepinwall opined in his review of the series for Rolling Stone (August 1, 2024): 

Once again, the idea is to contrast the seemingly sweet, wide-eyed, innocent exterior of these girls with the dark secrets they’re trying to uncover... "Good Girl’s Guide" is a reasonably well made version of that [...]

GLAMOROUS DISASTERS: A Fifth Avenue Teen “Porno Druggie Queen”

Here’s part of Amazon’s synopsis for Eliot Schrefer’s Glamorous Disasters (Simon & Schuster, 2006)

Noah rose from humble beginnings and [...] got himself through Princeton. Now staggering under the weight of massive student loans and dazzled by life in the big city, Noah enters the rarefied field of SAT tutoring in Manhattan, working one-on-one with the spoiled, gorgeous children of the American aristocracy.

He takes on the considerable academic challenges that are Dylan Thayer [...] and his waifish sister, Tuscany. [...] Tuscany is avidly pursuing her own downfall via drugs and relationships with men more than twice her age. 

[...] Glamorous Disasters is an incisive portrayal of a small and privileged world, a cautionary tale written by a Harvard grad who was once an SAT tutor himself -- an outsider who became a magnificently observant insider.

That’s correct. Schrefer’s a New York City based 2001 Harvard alumnus and former SAT tutor. Autofiction?

In terms of Tuscany’s drug use, the reader learned from Dylan that Tuscany used to steal pills from their mother - Dr.  Susan Thayer, the pediatrician. Dylan, “I mean, Tuscany and me [sic] used to go into my mom’s office and her bedroom all the time and steal her shit.” 17-year-old Dylan smiles crookedly. “She has all this crazy shit.” 

However, Dylan did not say exactly when 15-year-old Tuscany started stealing her mother’s (prescription) drugs.

Tuscany, “a fifteen-year-old beauty”, was expelled from Moore-Pike Girls Academy, which some referred to as “Whore-Like Girls Academy”. Why was Tuscany expelled? She sexted her teen nudes, and she was found with a number of tabs of Xanax. Consequently, Noah and his  “Hamptons-tan” was hired to prepare Tuscany for the ISEE boarding school exam. 

For their first tutoring session, Tuscany wore “tiny purple pants'' that didn’t “[...] quite make it to the top of her exposed hipbones.” “The majority of her shirts sit on only one shoulder, and her pants all require thong underwear.”

Tuscany beckoned Noah into her bedroom while she played with a strand of her “white-blond” hair - twisting “it around an orange, fake-baked finger.” (i.e., an indicator of interest).

In a bit of age-gap relationship foreshadowing, Tuscany displayed a poster of Josh Hartnett. The actor was over her bedroom desk and encased in an “ornately gilt eighteenth century frame”. Before the tutoring began, Tuscany shared with 25-year-old Noah that her boyfriend was “so much older”: 

“My boyfriend is so much older than you.”

“My mom thinks I should hang out with guys my own age.”

“[...] But guys my age are so dumb.”

And before offering Noah one, Tuscany placed a cigarette between her lips, which her mother allowed, because, as Tuscany stated, “[...] She knows I’d be eating if I wasn't smoking.” Connectedly, a pillow placed in the center of Tuscany's bed read: “Boys Like Girls Who Look Neat - When in Doubt, Just Don’t Eat!”

On the way to the next tutoring session, Noah spied Tuscany on 86th street. Tuscany and Monica,  Tuscany’s “Really tall, really skinny” friend, were observing a Victoria’s Secret “pink teddy on a waxy pale mannequin”. It appeared to Noah that Tuscany was: “[...] recounting something that recently happened to her, probably involving a boy, or [more likely] a man.”

An hour later, Noah entered Tuscany’s cigarette smoke filled bedroom where “at the sight of her swaying hips”, Noah was “overtaken by a sudden burst of nerves.” And Tuscany shared with Noah, “I’m grounded again.” Why? “This man,” she replies. “My mom is crazy.” Thus, it appears that Tuscany was grounded for participating in some salacious activity with a man whom Tuscany described as, “[...] pretty nice. And loaded.” Unsurprisingly, Tuscany opined that her mother was “crazy” for disciplining her for having an age-gap affair. 

And where did 15-year-old Tuscany meet men? “At a bar, a club.” “Sometimes” the men would buy Tuscany drinks, but she preferred to keep her options open.

During a subsequent tutoring session, Tuscany wore: “[...] denim shorts that have been cut so high that the white cotton pockets hang to midthigh.” And a “tiny pink “Wild Girls” T-shirt”. Noah surmised that Tuscany was: “[...] probably planning her next date with an older man [...]”

Noah described Tuscany as a “hot girl in tiny shorts” ; thus, it was his “[...] job to look at her as little as possible.” But admittedly, it took “[...] resolve to keep his gaze averted.”

During the tutoring session, Noah asked Tuscany about It’s All You - Tuscany’s glossy teen fashion magazine. Here’s the headline on page 8 with Tuscany Thayer’s byline: “Hewitt Hos and Nightingale Nymphos: The Sluttiest Manhattan Schools Exposed”

And what did Roberto, Noah’s Albanian roommate, exclaim when he saw Tuscany on the cover of It’s All You? 

“Wow,” Roberto says libidinously

“This bitch is hot,” Roberto adds. “Seriously, Noah, you have to let me meet her.”

“No,” Noah says, his eyes flashing. “Absolutely not.”

“You’ve got to be shittin’ me. Why not [...]?”

“She’s a kid. Stop it.”

However, that night Noah was “alarmed by his [own] flicker of attraction” to Tuscany whom reminded Noah of his age-gap tutor-tutee attraction to Monroe. 

After Monroe he promised himself never to be drawn to another student. He stuffs It’s All About You under his mattress.

He thought he had banished Monroe from his mind, thought he had healed, but suddenly he feels the shame and guilt afresh. The depth of his feelings for her was inappropriate, he knows. His intense affection led him to consider doing things he should never have done, for which he can’t forgive himself. He distrusts his own feelings toward Tuscany, second-guesses himself: surely he isn’t repeating history, allowing attraction to distort his sense of duty?

Do you remember Monica, Tuscany’s “really tall, [and] really skinny” friend? Well, Cameron, another tutee, shared with Noah, “Well, they’re totally not friends anymore.” Why? Tuscany disappeared with Monica’s “totally hot doorman”.

“Monica has this totally hot doorman. Like, a little like Colin Farrel. And this one night Tuscany goes to Monica’s but, well, the doormen call up from the desk to say that she arrived, but she never makes it to Monica’s apartment”

“Whatever, I’m not going to say what I think, I’m sure she’s totally nice, but my friends say she’s a slut.”

Eventually, instead of going to boarding school, Tuscany: “[...] got into Choate, began the spring semester, and was removed from classes three days in [...]” Consequently, Noah was upgraded from tutor to teacher with teaching being done between Tuscany’s riding, ballet and piano lessons. 

After Noah became Tuscany’s teacher, Roberto suggested that Noah have a student-teacher sexual affair with Tuscany, whom Roberto referred to as “the bitch from the magazine”. But Noah replied, “She’s my student, Rob. And she’s fifteen. That’s not going to happen.”

However, Roberto persisted, “Just do things, don’t worry about what’s gonna happen, you know?” And Roberto suggested that Noah stick his hands in Tuscany’s pants or as a last resort, Roberto suggested that Noah kiss his student. 

On the first (home) school day, Noah: “[...] was nervous about entering the bedroom of a sleeping hot fifteen-year-old.” However, Dr. Thayer had Agnès, Tuscany’s assistant, prepare the dining table as Dr. Thayer deemed that it was “improper” for Noah to spend all his time in Tuscany’s bedroom.

Tuscany attended their first class: “[...] wearing a clubbing shirt emblazoned with a sequined martini glass, the neckline dipping to the tops of her breasts.” And “skin-tight denim”. Why? Per the narrator, Tuscany “[...] draws focus to herself whenever she can.” Consequently, Noah reprimanded himself: “[...] stop looking at the slender fingers playing with her bra strap, the butterfly wings of her breastbone.”

Later, Noah learned from Dr. Thayer that Tuscany had dated “forty-year-olds”, but Dr. Thayer didn’t “think” that Tuscany was still dating older men; however, Dylan referred to his sister as the “porno druggie queen”.

At Pangaea’s, a Manhattan night club, while Noah was at the bar, Dylan entered with an entourage:

Two are long-haired and handsome [...] Upper East Side twentysomething aristocracy; the other is an eyebrow-pierced Asian kid about Dylan’s age.

Noah learned from an aristocrat that Tuscany patronized Pangaea “all the time” - with the aristocrat. And, to Dylan’s dismay, Noah learned that Tuscany was the aggressor in the age-gap affair with aristocracy. 

“Hey, Dylan,” Roberto asks, “where’s your sister tonight?”

“My sister? She’s like fifteen. She’s at home.”

“Come on, Dylan,” an aristocrat says. “You know she’s here all the time.”

“Yeah,” says the other aristocrat to the first. “Here with you!”

“That had better not happen ever again, asshole.” Dylan says darkly. “Don’t ever let me hear about you touching her.”

“Dylan, Dylan.” The aristocrat over enunciates, bathing the group in beer vapor. “Don’t you remember? Maybe you were too coked up. She was touching me.”

The Asian kid shared some more details about Tuscany, Pangaea and men. The Asian kid pointed out a man “thirty-five, one hand against his belly and the other holding an unlit cigar” whom Tuscany had been “with for a while”. 

Interestingly, the Asian kid opined that Tuscany was too hot, and he related that Tuscany knew that there was a positive correlation between being skinny, being hot and being the center of attention at Pangaea. Consequently, she got “eaten alive” before turning eighteen due to men offering her drinks and drugs in exchange for teen sex. 

And it was the Asian kid who revealed to Noah why Tuscany was expelled from prep school. 

Asian kid: “What were you tutoring her for, the SAT already?”

Noah: No, no, the ISEE. She wanted to go to boarding school.”

Asian kid: “Oh right. I forgot, she got busted for sending naked pictures to some guy and having like forty bajillion tabs of Xanax.”

Later in the novel, Noah chaperoned Tuscany and Octavia, Tuscany’s teen friend, on a field trip to France. Octavia carried herself with a “voluptuous sense of sexual possibility”. On the Air France flight, 15-year-old Tuscany imbibed a miniature bottle of wine. And after landing, Tuscany and Octavia “developed an instant crush on Benoît” - the French tour guide and father of two. 

After returning to Tuscany’s Fifth Avenue bedroom, for being such a credible chaperone, Tuscany gifted her teacher:

A pink oxford. The fabric is sail-thick, as if made from the very stuff of yachts. The sleeves can be rolled up when watching a regatta or worn down for cocktails on the lawn.

While changing into the pink oxford in Tuscany’s bathroom, Noah’s “thoughts leap to horrible places” like the “bliss he would feel should he have ducked into the bathroom after having slept with Tuscany.”

After emerging from the bathroom, Tuscany, braless and with her lips inches away from her teacher’s, seductively adjusted the pink oxford. Tuscany’s young fingers skated across her teacher’s pectorals and lingered on his chest. Ergo, Noah was tempted to embrace his student, but he opined that Tuscany did not need another man “holding her”. And Noah was not like Roberto whom did not fear the potential consequences of having an age-gap affair with a 15-year-old.  

Later, at a dinner party for Mr. Thayer, Tuscany was dressed “like a fairy-tale princess” in a “red silken dress, ribbed in a darker red” - crisscrossed in the front and tied low in the back. Consequently, a group of men in business suits with names like “Solomon X, X Lidden III, Powel X, Peter X Stockton, and a half dozen Andrews” formed an “admiring circle” around the nymphet where Tuscany received “admiring glances”. 

After Octavia arrived “wearing a very short dress” “with lips glossed and erotically parted”, the two nymphets faced “down unsuspecting thirty-year-old bachelors are in arm, giggling and laying their hands on the unwary men.”

In the end, Olena, Noah’s Albanian immigrant tutee, fittingly said, “Perhaps we have fallen into a type. Student and teacher fall in love. It happens all the time, no?” 

From DAVE to CHUCKY: Streaming Teen Sex and Drugs in Pop Culture

I related in The Allure of Nymphets from Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood that as recent as two hundred years ago, the concept of childhood did not exist and that it originated during the Renaissance when the printing press was invented. 

Postman purported that the disappearance of literacy, education, and shame that occurred during the Dark and Middle ages in Europe lead to the disappearance of childhood and with little literacy in the Middle Ages, what we consider today to be childhood ended at age seven, which was when most humans had a command over speech and was considered an adult. 

There were schools in the Middle Ages, but instead of teaching reading and writing, the students underwent “on-the-job-training” in classrooms with other students whose ages ranged from 10 to adults of all ages. Even at 10-years-old, the students lived away from their parents in what could be described as dorms.  Consequently, since there was no social distinction between “children” and adults, the “children” were exposed to everything. 

However, the invention of the printing press initiated the distinction between children and adults and the bridge from childhood to adulthood was only crossed by learning how to read. As a result, a new form of schooling was required. Children were no longer placed in mixed-aged classrooms to learn a trade. Children were placed in classes with other children close to their own ages and taught a curriculum that emphasized literacy. Sound familiar? 

Just like Postman, Richard Farson’s research in Birthrights lead him to the conclusion that "children" were invented in the 16th century in Europe during the Reformation and Renaissance periods, which was when children were no longer thought of as little people but as fragile potential adults who needed to be protected and educated. However, it still took another two-hundred years before “children” began to be separated by age in school. Farson wrote that prior to the seventeenth century, children were not considered innocent, were not segregated, and were not prevented from participating in adult conversations where salacious topics like sex were discussed. There were no children’s stories or books, and it was common for girls to get married at the age of thirteen. 

However, technology, specifically the Internet accessed via smartphones, has re-exposed "children" to everything (e.g., pornography). For example, in "Porn Before Puberty?", an ABC News feature, Winnifred Bonjean Alpart shared that when she was in the eighth grade in Manhattan: "[..] boys mostly, were watching porn during school [...] during independent reading, they would do that."

But what inspired us to post this post was the "Hypospadias" (s01e03) episode of Dave where  two nymphets encouraged a young Dave to "feel up" there fountains. Mallory Parker even informed Dave, "You can go under the bra," which was before Kayla Waters informed Dave, "Now we wanna feel you up." However, due to his hypospadias, Dave declined to let the nymphets feel his penis. 

And Dave reminded us of a number of other mainstream shows that blurred the line between "children" and adult content. For example, on the "First Day" (s01e01) episode of PEN15, Maya informed Anna that, "[...] Heather gave a handjob to both Brandt and Dustin L. this summer." Anna, "That ho bag." Maya, "Such a slut. Also, I heard that Connie M. grew double-ds last night at camp." Interestingly, Connie, a middle-school nymphet, was shown with  swigging double-ds.

On the "September" (s02e01) episode of Better Things, after being introduced to Arturo, 16-year-old Max's 32-year-old boyfriend, during a game of Truth or Dare, the viewers witnessed Duke, Max's pre-teen sister, dare a nymphet, "Put four Monopoly pieces in your vagina." She did!

On the "Winter Kills" (s10e6) episode of American Horror Story, Alma, a nymphet with a thirst for men's blood, was informed that a shirtless "Hustler" had been picked up for her from a donut shop in Santa Monica. Interestingly, the Hustler was of the impression that he was supposed to have sex with the pre-teen Alma.

In addition to Alma, who killed her father on American Horror Story, there have been a spat of recent shows and films that depict "children" committing murders and/or being murdered (e.g., Halloween Ends (2022), but although we've read a number or YA novels (e.g., Gossip Girl) that depict teens doing drugs, we were shocked to see Lexy Cross, a middle-school student on Chucky, snort cocaine and crushed Clonazepam pills. For example, on the "Halloween II" (s02e01) episode of Chucky, after Lexy made out with another teen, she snorted a bump. 

In the end, we know that art imitates life and vice versa; thus, it should come as no surprise that Connie got double-ds over summer when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reported that in 2020 (i.e., during COVID!) over three thousand nymphets, between the ages of 13 and 19, had breast augmentations (i.e., teen boob jobs). And previously, we wrote about Laura Sessions Stepp's Washington Post post "Parents Are Alarmed by an Unsettling New Fad in Middle Schools: Oral Sex" (July 8, 1999) and the New York Post post about the teen masturbation and porn literacy classes being taught at some Manhattan prep schools.