"The Grand Army": Cute Boys, Vagina Dialogues, and Heterosexism do not make a LGBTQ Drama

 The Netflix series The Grand Army was on my list of "Emotional LGBTQ Shows," so I put it on without any research.

Scene 1: Establishing shots of subways, graffiti, a bloody dumpster, and  black women saying "I'm still here."  In a locker room, the black girls are dancing and giggling on on side, and the white girls on the other.  A white girl goes into a bathroom stall and tells Gracie, "I got you. It will be fine" while reaching ..into her vagina....I think I'll fast forward.

The black girls criticize Gracie for whatever happened, and White Girl yells "I don't have time for this shit right now. I'm drowning in APs."

Scene 2: Black Girl yells at White Girl about how she handled the situation.  "You're the Dance Captain!  You should do better."  They go out to the gym and cruise John Ellis, a hot boy walking by.

He walks out into the hallway, and passes Asian Girl, who is texting someone about how "I fucking hate it here."  Girl, everybody hates high school!  It's all about cliques, exclusion, bullying, hostility, and heteronormativity.

She bumps into some hot South Asian guys, who tell her to "Relax! Slow down."  Then one of them, Sid the Harvard Boy (Amir Bageria, left),  gets ribbed by his friends for being a virgin (maybe he's the gay one?)

Teacher grabs Sid and tells him he needs to finish his essay for "the deferment."  So many characters, so few names....

Scene 3: Class.  Asian Girl is presenting on Jews in China, while the Chinese girls criticize her for not being Chinese enough and for dressing like a whore.  

Scene 4: Washington Square in New York. Two black kids get shwarma from a halal truck (I wish they had halal trucks in my neighborhood!) and discuss their saxophone auditions.  Jay (Maliq Johnson) has had a lot of privileges, so he is sure to get in; his friend is not so sure.   Not a gay couple -- they discuss vaginas.  They talk to an elderly guy who is apparently a 60-year old high school senior, heading for the University of North Carolina.

Scene 5: Just as they get to school, there's an explosion outside.  The school goes into mandatory lockdown.  Students rush to their designated hubs (apparently they have a lot of drills), while continuing to discuss the party tonight, complain that Grace's "vag pulled the condom right off," google "abortion," and look at pics of naked girls on their phones ("I jerked off to her for like two weeks").  This is really disgusting. And wildly heterosexist.

One of the vagina boys is Luke, played by Brian Altemus (top photo). 

Sid the Harvard Boy gets permission to go down the hall and sit with his sister. 

Scene 6: On the way, he finds Asian Girl crying in the hallway: she hates this school, and she doesn't want to die. Darn, I thought he was the gay one  I fast forward past their interminable falling-in-love conversation.

Scene 7: Sid and his new girlfriend finally reach his sister.  His friends text him.  A lot of "pussy" and "cunt" words, something about posting pix of sister's vagina.  I fast forward through the scene.  

Scene 8: Still in lockdown, students are texting furiously and reading news reports: Brooklyn Bridge bombing, two dead.   Apparently the elderly high school senior is one of the victims. I fast forward through their long, boring, "pussy" and "cunt"-filled vagina dialogues.

Scene 9: Lockdown is finally over.  Joey, who hasn't been introduced before, has a trivial conversation with his sister and her best friend about staying with Dad instead of Mom.  He's played by Odessa A'zion, and gets top billing in the cast list, so I guess he's important.  Also, Odessa is a girl, but Joey is a boy.  Or is Joey secretly a transgender girl?

Or maybe Joey is one of the girls, and I just assumed it was a boy due to the lack of naming.

Whatever.  I'm outta here.

Beefcake: No. Some of the actors on the IMDB list have shirtless photos posted on their instagrams.

Gay Characters: Heck, no.  Every boy spends every second of his life either doing things inside vaginas or discussing vaginas with his friends. I had no idea that vaginas could even do all those things.  I thought they just sort of sat there.  Of course, I have never spent so much time hearing about vaginas before. How about mentioning a penis now and then, for balance?

Racial Diversity:  The students are segregated into black, Chinese, South Asian, and white cliques, and rarely interact with anyone else.  There seems to be one main character from each racial group, which makes identification easy, especially since there is an almost complete absence of names. 

Names: Your first job as a filmmaker is to get the main characters identified -- by name.  Here that just doesn't happen.  Some minor characters get names.  Abdulla the Halal Truck vendor is named.  But the main crew, not.   How hard is it to have someone say "Hi, Jay?"  Or in this series, it would be something like "Jay the Vagina Fan, how many vaginas have you had squeeze the condom off today, Jay?  Aren't vaginas great, Jay?  Vaginas!"