TV Review - Grand Army

Katie Cappiello is a playwright, director and feminist. She created a play seven years ago called Slut (2013). It follows a teenage girl who is raped by three of her friends, delving in a "brutal honest way the damaging impact of bullying, rape culture and slut-shaming." Cappiello adapts that play for this series. In order to do so, obviously some things would have to be added and certain things would have to be stretched out. Not having seen the play, it's still painfully obvious that Cappiello is stretching here. Perhaps, that's the point in order to reinforce the themes and emotions inherent in this series. Some additions are interesting. Some are not, but the series feels like it starts to drag, even from early on. The series bounces back and forth between five teenagers, one corresponding to the major racial groups. Cappiello has worked with the cast of Orange is the New Black, which had a larger cast, but never felt like it dragged because it incorporated more plot and chugged along better because of the humor and comedy. There is humor and comedy here, but the pacing does begin to slow down and this thing really starts to spin its wheels.

Odessa A'zion (Fam and Nashville) stars as Joey Del Marco, a 16-year-old girl who is on the school's dance team but it doesn't seem like she's a cheerleader per se. She's a very smart girl. She plays chess very well. She could probably give the girl in The Queen's Gambit a run for her money. She can dissect all kinds of literature and deconstruct even the most acclaimed authors. However, one night when she's out partying with her male friends, only her male friends, she gets drunk and starts being sexual and flirtatious. Unfortunately, her male friends go too far and sexually assault her. This is the central conceit of Cappiello's play. Yet, it doesn't happen until Episode 3. Cappiello obviously wants to take time to establish the characters, but it still feels too long. The aftermath takes too long to get to its point as well.

Odley Jean, in her screen debut, co-stars as Dominique Pierre, a fellow student at the same high school as Joey. Dominique is Haitian-American. She lives with her single mother and siblings in a small apartment. She plays basketball and hopes to do social work after getting into college. She starts to have feelings with an older boy at her school. Things change when her mom has medical problems and can't work. The family worries how they're going to pay the bills, but a solution is having her do a green-card marriage by someone willing to pay a lot of cash. This is an incredible story, but like with Joey, the series takes too long to get there and it doesn't really dive too deeper into it.

The series is a lot about the sexuality of these young people, but it takes a circuitous route to get there. That route includes a terrorist bombing. It's not really a spoiler. It's simply a thing that happens and doesn't really have much resonance throughout the rest of the series. It's a bit of a random thing that's a compelling way to start a series regarding teenagers, but it becomes a thing that is quickly forgotten.

Amir Bageria (Degrassi: Next Class) also co-stars as Siddhartha Pakam aka "Sid," the son of parents who immigrated from India. He's one of the main athletes on the school's swim team. His issue is that he's secretly gay. He's closeted and is trying to hide it by dating a very pretty girl. He's applying to college and the essay to his application is seen as boring and inauthentic, so he decides to write about his homosexuality. We never learn how he does so, but he apparently outs himself. His essay is supposed to stay private, but it's not hard to guess what happens with that privacy.

There are two other plot lines. One involves a Black teen boy who is an aspiring musician who gets in trouble with the school over something that's overblown. The second involves an Asian girl who's struggling with her Asian identity because she was adopted by white parents, as well as her desperate attempt to get a boyfriend and her anxiety over it. I just don't think the series did enough to get us to really care about these other characters.

TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 9 eps.

Available on Netflix.