Netflix’s Grand Army: A Review

If you want to experience high school in 2020, Grand Army is the show for you.

Grand Army follows the lives of a few main characters with various storylines very applicable to the reality of contemporary teenage lives. Issues of sexual assault, struggling to fit in, racial discrimination, declining friendships, and coming to terms with one’s sexuality are all on the table. The show seems to employ all the typical teenage tropes but does such a great job to enthrall audiences into the characters' lives that it is entirely intriguing. The storylines unfold with such realism that audiences are let into a front-row seat not only to problematic events that the characters experience but also the consequences of those events and the spiraling well-being of those characters.

Something about the lack of glamour in the way the school was illustrated spoke to me. Not that other high school dramas are not realistic (okay, maybe they aren’t) but I could not imagine seeing a school like Grand Army being illustrated in the affluent neighborhoods of Riverdale or Gossip Girl.

While this show has been referred to as “poverty porn” my honest opinion is that is it kind of nice to see the representation of teenagers that live a lifestyle that is not typically illustrated in a Netflix series. Sharing rooms with siblings, having to be financially responsible, and the struggles of balancing work with school are all real issues that youth in working-class communities have to face, and to see that being illustrated on Netflix speaks to me in ways another teenage drama about various love triangles could never.

Showrunner and creator Katie Cappiello seems to have done a great job illustrating relevant issues to teenagers today but with her background in teaching, that does not seem to be surprising. What is surprising however is the offscreen drama. Racial and abuse allegations suffered against Cappiello from playwright and screenwriter Ming Peiffer who speaks on the explosive treatment of her and two other writers of color prior to their resignation from the show. Neither Cappiello, Peiffer, or Netflix have commented further since those allegations have been made.

There are also a lot of little pieces to the series going on in the background, each episode begins and ends with what seems to be a journal entry and viewers do not get to see the whole story nor the writer of these entries until the end of season reveal. Joey (Odessa A’zion) and Dom (Odley Jean) also listen to news programs and podcasts that appear to be reflective of their mentalities at the given moment and it is an attention-grabbing thing to pay attention to as it adds an extra layer to the tone of the scene. Each episode also features a scene solely animated in a type of comic. To me, the comic appears unnecessarily graphic and it took away a little bit of the enjoyment of the series. However, the comic seems to reflect the mentality of Leila Kwan Zimmer (Amalia Yoo), the character it features.

I am not going to advocate for Leila; in fact, her character contributes a sense of irritation to the entire series. Depending on your perspective of course, because trying to fit in is never an easy thing — especially as a high school freshman. She is a really difficult character to root for. Yoo does a phenomenal job bringing Leila to life and illustrating how her self-involvement and egoism heavily take over her identity to the point that she does not really care for anything that does not have to do with her. Even when she is happy, there is still an ominous feeling in the scene.

The storylines of Jayson (Maliq Johnson) and Owen (Jaden Jordan) were absolutely heart-wrenching. I say this knowing that their story is not too far off from the reality-based of discrimination and consequences of harsh levels of discipline that Black teenagers their age face. Johnson and Jordan are both amazing at evoking audience emotion — Johnson illustrating heartbreak in a way that breaks one’s own heart and Jordan illustrating the interruption of a bright future to the point that it gets painful to watch. Their storylines were actually the reason I could not bring myself to re-watch the series, despite wanting to.

If I were to tell you one thing about Grand Army, it is to watch it with caution; there is no easy way to illustrate the issues that the show takes on. There are so many concepts that need a trigger warning (which thankfully, Netflix does), and the fact that the show hurts a lot more than it heals is enough to say that it very securely fits into the category of drama.

The characters go through so much that it is a little overwhelming for viewers; personally, I could not binge-watch the show because I needed some recovery time after each episode. Although, perhaps that is foreshadowed in the choice of song in the ending scene of the first episode: Emily Wells’ “Come on Doom, Let’s Party.”