Is Grand Army Worth the Hype?

Grand Army is the newest trending Netflix original series that has the media talking.

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Camdyen Tate

New teen drama takes the media by storm.

By Camdyen Tate, Staff Photographer

Grand Army is a Netflix original series created and produced by Katie Cappiello. The show is a teen drama about a group of five high schoolers trying to take on the challenges of their chaotic city, New York. It gives us a look into the lives of students of different ethnic and economic backgrounds and how they have to overcome the obstacles they face individually. 

One of those characters is Dominique Pierre. We learn that she’s living in a cramped New York apartment with her mother, her sister, her niece, and two nephews. After unfortunate circumstances, money becomes even tighter than it was before. Throughout the series we see Pierre try to hustle extra money for her family whilst also keeping up her academic performance. 

I enjoyed how the show touches on sensitive topics such as problems that many students of color and students of the LGBTQ+ community face. The show does a good job of illustrating the social injustices that the black students at Grand Army face and how they fight against those injustices. It paints the perfect picture of what many high school students in 2020 face daily.

In the first episode, we meet Siddhartha Pakam, an Indian-American student at Grand Army highschool. As the show progresses, we see him and his parents struggle to come to terms with his sexuality. We also see how he copes with being discriminated against as an Indian-American. Much like we see student, Owen Williams, come face to face with social injustices as he was wrongfully accused of thievery, and sentenced to a 60-day suspension.

There was not much I disliked about Grand Army, besides a few characters that I didn’t particularly care for. This, in my opinion, proves how well the actors delivered their roles in the show.  For example, Leila Kwan Zimmer, played by actress Amalia Yoo, is a narcissistic, boy crazy freshman. Yoo does a fine job at portraying that to the audience. 

I would recommend this show to anyone who enjoys shows like Euphoria or On My Block. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for sensitive audiences, as Grand Army is rated TV-MA and deals with substance abuse and sexual assault.

All in all, Grand Army is quite a captivating, thought-provoking show.