A Girl Named Jo

Bullying sometimes gets physical, like when a mean boy knocks Jo's book out of her hands, and a mean girl pushes her into a puddle. Trying to retrieve a stolen ball, a character is stalked horror-movie style, then we hear a faraway scream (he turns up unharmed in the next episode). A dad asks if he should "knock some sense" into his daughter's estranged boyfriend. A fire is responsible for a character's mother's death.

Teens flirt and kiss. In one scene a girl kisses her best friend's boyfriend; they are discovered, and another character dumps a milk shake on the girl's head (but not the boy's). A boy sneers to a character that the character's sister will soon be in "the backseat" of his car.

No cursing, but characters sometimes come up with vintage slang: "Don't flip your wig!" and "Don't have a conniption!" a young boy says to his mother. A girl calls another a "skag" and a "four-eyed sweat hog," while a boy calls his girlfriend a "wet rag" for refusing a date with him, and a mom calls a teen a "heel."

Nobody drinks, but it's said that a fire was caused by the mistakes of a "notorious drunk."

Parents need to know that A Girl Named Jo is a drama about two teenage girls from different walks of life who navigate social dramas and try to solve a mystery in 1963. The show is mostly clean -- there's no sex, drinking, drugs, or cursing -- but two characters in particular are mean to others, particularly a girl who comes from a working-class family, who is called a "skag" and a "four-eyed sweat hog." A strange fire is the cause of one character's mother's death, and it's implied other characters know more than they're telling. Teens have dates, flirt, and kiss, including in a scene where a girl who kisses her best friend's (creepy) boyfriend in secret. Violence tends toward pushing and shoving during a fight, but in a spookier-than-it-needs-to-be scene, a young boy sneaks into a yard to retrieve a stolen ball, we see a foot come down, and then we hear the boy screaming (he's OK in the next scene, so what happened?). Two strong female characters anchor the action -- though there's not a lot of diversity in the cast otherwise.