Imagine this: in a world where college women are drugged, raped and watch those who committed those acts get away with a slap on the wrist, if any punishment at all, lives one girl who takes no man’s shit. In fact, she’s going to straight up f*ck it up.
Meet Jules, the vigilante kicking ass and taking names on Darlington College’s campus. By day she’s sweet sorority girl with a pink phone case that has bunny ears. By night, she’s a masked ninja warrior punishing men for the sexual atrocities they’ve committed against women.
Things get complicated when Ophelia is thrown into the mix, a quirky blue-haired feminist whose parents have the college wrapped around their finger. The problem is that she can’t seem to stop smoking weed and lands in the campus police station so often that she knows them by name. It’s one of these blunt-related police chases that lead Ophelia straight into a dark alley where Jules is beating the living daylights out of Tommy, a boy who date raped a girl on Ophelia’s floor freshman year.
There’s a lot of sleuthing on Ophelia’s part and I should probably mention that she’s a computer hacking genius, but she tracks Jules down by a necklace she dropped. There’s a whole confrontation in a basement and Ophelia is held at knife-point by Jules who threatens her if she tells anyone about her secret.
Naturally, Ophelia doesn’t listen. There’s some other things in there too, like how Jules’ best friend’s boyfriend is the one who raped her and started this mess, and Ophelia maybe accidentally murders a guy, and that guy happens to be the step-brother of a really cute boy Jules is into, and there’s a a Carpool Karaoke-esque rendition of “Defying Gravity” from Wicked.
“I think that dichotomy is life,” said Sweet/Vicious creator Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. “Life is really sad and heartbreaking, and life is really funny and warm and full of romance and full of fun, so we wanted to tell a story that felt as nuanced as anyone’s life felt. But when we are talking about and dealing with sexual assault, it’s not funny, and we take it very seriously.”
There’s some serious trigger warnings for this show not only due to the content it handles but the way in which it is handled, but Robinson wants the world to know that vigilante is maybe not the best way to deal with a real-life situation like this.
“I do not think violence solves violence, so this is a heightened environment,” Robinson says. “Don’t go out there and kick anyone’s ass, but get out there and fight injustice however you can.”
We start by tuning in to Sweet/Vicious on MTV, airing every Tuesday at 9.