Young Adult Media Immersion

grown-ish, a spin-off from ABC's black-ish, leaving the nest of both its original network and target demographic by running on the young-adult-aimed Freeform. The reasons I settled on this show are twofold: it first aired in 2018, the year I transferred to a four-year university, potentially giving me a sense of what kids my age were "supposed" to be watching, and 2) since it's set in college, they don't have to do the thing where they cast legally grown adults as high school underclassmen.

grown-ish stars a Yara Shahidi playing the eldest daughter of black-ish's central family, having left her nest for university on the youthful high that the world will be hers to conquer—only to quickly realize that she, in fact, does not know a single thing. Shahidi's disembodied voice narrates her retrospective epiphanies over the whole show, be they about lingering annoyances from the parent show, or the quirks of her soon-to-be friends, an ensemble cast of a diverse cadre of backgrounds akin to the California college setting. 

grown-ish's first episode is fun when it pokes fun at their stereotypes hanging around their identities—but when it came to its delicate emotions, the show takes no chances. Every character sounds off their personal insecurities in short sequence (I think?), and for the central conundrum, Shahidi's regret over abandoning a possible friend to death by inadvertent embarrassment at a frat party, her future self narrates every stage of her then-mental state the entire time. It's nice, it's safe, it gives a firm moral compass for adults to nod along to and young adults to follow. It also might as well be the show giving you a SparkNotes analysis as it plays. Which leaves no room for interpretation, no room for the viewer to have their own conversation. Obviously, this is very much a case of my complaining that a cup labeled "regular" has a "regular" drink inside. One episode doesn't give me much license to call it bad, but it sure isn't my cup of tea.

In comparison to my TV experience, my choice of movie was much less deliberate: simply picking one of the titles listed in this discussion at random, which was Booksmart. I am quite glad I did, because while it is a great movie, my whims ended up playing into The Point of the movie. On their last day of high school, resident teachers' pets and overachievers Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) bumble through their boisterous, carefree classmates as aloof and snobbish as ever, safe in the knowledge of their uniquely prestigious universities awaiting them after graduation. Of course, since this is Los Angeles, home of numerous multinational corporations and all the associated inflated expectations that are inflicted on its youth, many of their seemingly carefree, partygoing classmates have just as prestigious prospects awaiting them after graduation—leaving them both wondering just what the point of all of that rule-following was for. Pulled down a peg, the girls promptly decide—and by decide, I mean Molly ropes Amy into—stepping out of bounds to break rules and party as hard as their classmates before it all ends.

Given that description, Booksmart checks off all the boxes you might think: a cast featuring every general class of high school stock character, ill-planned hijinks, innocuous psychadellic drug usage, a whole three extravagant parties at expensive venues, crushes that are quickly crushed without the crushee's doing, explosive misunderstandings with your best friend that are inevitably reconciled just in time for the crowning moment—the works. And while it does go through all those motions, the fact that the protagonists are know-it-all teenage girls with no idea what their peers would do keeps the whole thing fresh. As much as the R-rating might artificially limit its audience, the casual appearance of all the teen taboos are exactly what makes it the truest young adult title here.