Teen dramas are so hard to make, and even harder to like by-and-large. Either being awkwardly old fashioned, weirdly out of touch or so heavy handed they don't work. Grand Army is something else entirely really, adapted and expanded from an acclaimed play by its original writer Katie Cappiello. It is a worthy and very earnest piece of work - a sprawling granular teen odyssey with a superlative cast of incredibly good young talent. I wouldn't be surprised if this ended up being some sort of amazing relic that people look back on and go "WOW THEY WERE ALL IN THIS?!"
It covers a lot of bases, not all of them successfully, and invokes such a profoundly specific atmosphere of kaleidoscopic teenage panic that after a few episodes I found it difficult to sleep - kept awake with the ghost of adolescent anxiety. Certainly it often falls into soapy tropes and melodramatic funks, but what kept me watching was the veracity of the performances and vitality of the characters. There are some serious rings of truth here - in the painful ebb and flow of reality and trauma - the sickening unfolding of certain events. On the awkward fumbling at trying to get things right. The importance of it for me as someone much older than the young cast (although a bit younger than Cappiello it turns out) was the almost guidebook quality for support and allyship it provides. The best parts for me were quiet moments of encouragement, stuff you rarely see on television but are invaluable in reality. You may never be put in the same situation as these characters but it also serves to show you what you can do to help people who are.
The strongest storyline is that of Odessa A'zion's profoundly real Joey Del Marco - and it was no surprise to me that the original play concerned her storyline alone - the series expands out to cover a lot of other bases - and the final stark scene of the show is given over to a very present statement about representation but hearing there were issues with that in the writer's room gives the show's coverage of those themes a sad irony. All the stories in the show ARE important, but perhaps not all of them are Cappiello's alone to curate. After all, sometimes just being a supportive friend in the story is just as important as being the star.
It covers a lot of bases, not all of them successfully, and invokes such a profoundly specific atmosphere of kaleidoscopic teenage panic that after a few episodes I found it difficult to sleep - kept awake with the ghost of adolescent anxiety. Certainly it often falls into soapy tropes and melodramatic funks, but what kept me watching was the veracity of the performances and vitality of the characters. There are some serious rings of truth here - in the painful ebb and flow of reality and trauma - the sickening unfolding of certain events. On the awkward fumbling at trying to get things right. The importance of it for me as someone much older than the young cast (although a bit younger than Cappiello it turns out) was the almost guidebook quality for support and allyship it provides. The best parts for me were quiet moments of encouragement, stuff you rarely see on television but are invaluable in reality. You may never be put in the same situation as these characters but it also serves to show you what you can do to help people who are.
The strongest storyline is that of Odessa A'zion's profoundly real Joey Del Marco - and it was no surprise to me that the original play concerned her storyline alone - the series expands out to cover a lot of other bases - and the final stark scene of the show is given over to a very present statement about representation but hearing there were issues with that in the writer's room gives the show's coverage of those themes a sad irony. All the stories in the show ARE important, but perhaps not all of them are Cappiello's alone to curate. After all, sometimes just being a supportive friend in the story is just as important as being the star.