By KAYLA ROYSTER
Staff Writer
Is your college life boring you? Want to enjoy a more exciting college experience from the comfort of your fuzzy slippers and warm blanket? Then tune in to Grown-ish Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Freeform.
Set to depict the modern-day college experience of one college student Zoey Johnson. We follow Zoey around as she makes the many mistakes that us college students make.
Focusing on a young girl as she heads off to college and quickly discovers that not everything is easy, perfect, or meant to go her way. Grown-ish focuses on her issues and the cultural battlefields of people in college. A tv show spinoff from the sitcom Black-ish, which focuses on the modern-day lifestyle of an African American family often bringing up and enforcing the theme that black lives matter.
This show developed from the focus on the eldest Johnson’s daughter Zoey as she embarks on her freshman year of college at the fictional California University of Liberal Arts where she makes a couple of new friends. Friends who condone intercourse, illegal activities, drugs, drama, and romance.
Zoey is still the Zoey that all her fans came to know and love on Black-ish. She is cool, pretty, confident, and stylish. She just shows us that much like most college kids she’s confused, crazy, and completely falling apart inside as well. We see her struggles as she deals with drugs, sex, relationships, and finally living away from home in a dorm.
This show seems to depict the extremes of college in my opinion. Then again, these depictions may be accurate at some universities though, but to me it just seems the college life on steroids. It’s a show focused at college yet there’s little representation of her doing classwork or attending class. The only thing we know class wise is that she takes a fashion class, she had a paper to write on Ruth Bader Ginsburg (that she used Adderall to complete), and that she’s in a midnight class full of prostitutes and drug lords because she registered for a class late. This same late-night class where she meets her crush Aaron, and her friends Vivek a bright student with a side job as a drug dealer, Nomi the Dean’s feminist niece who’s come out of the closet, Sky and Jazz the twin track athletes, and Ana a religious girl who has finally earned some freedom. This odd group reminds me somewhat of the breakfast club.
While I love the show because of its extreme unrealistic entertainment purposes, some people dislike the show for just that reason.
We know it goes overboard for the sake of views, but don’t you think a show about college should focus more on, I don’t know college? The whole first season was basically focused on Zoey’s odd obsession for her male friend Aaron. When I say odd, I mean odd in the sense of her stalking this male at restaurants, art galleries, parties, you name it. You can tell that for yourself, but the fact that her drugged up lesbian best friend points it out every couple of minutes surely helps. Not to mention the fact that Zoey herself breaks the third wall to tell the audience that she’s normal. Not at all crazy, because assuming a rose emoji within an Instagram caption is a sign a guy wants you is completely normal.
If that doesn’t prove anything, she surely proves how crazy she is later in the season when she decides to take Adderall to stay up to see said male. Well she didn’t the first time. She took Adderall the first time for her paper on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which she failed to do and instead went off track spending $3,000 online shopping for shoes. The 2nd time she succeeded in completing the paper along with her fashion homework, and the third time she did it to see Aaron.
She obviously likes the guy, then right? Well she messes things up by deciding it’s easy to be a player and attempting to prove so to the audience. Which resulted in her losing not one, but both her love interests, and that’s where the last episode left off. With her giving and insightful quote about realizing (hopefully) that all she needed was her friends and to focus on her future.
If you loved Black-ish you’d like Grown-ish.
If you want to be over prepared for a college experience that probably wouldn’t happen Grown-ish is for you.
If you want a show that includes relatable comedy, drugs, romance, parties, and stupidity Grown-ish is for you.
