The kids are all right in Freeform's 'Grown-ish' premiere

If Black-ish's Andre Johnson had to choose which of his children got a spinoff show, it would be Zoey, by a mile. Grown-ish sees Zoey (Yara Shahidi) leave the nest for exciting collegiate adventures, which turn out to be nothing like what she imagined.

In its debut, Grown-ish sets itself up to be Black-ish lite; it isn't targeting the same audience, but hopefully it'll aim for the same bar.

We begin with Zoey breaking the fourth wall as she shares her father's tearful reaction to spending just three days without her at home. She's sure college will be a breeze, an arena as easily conquered as high school, where Zoey reigned supreme. But college, it turns out, is kicking Ms. Johnson's butt, and she finds herself stuck in shady Charlie's (Deon Cole) night class to make up for some mysterious mistakes.

The episode is packaged, somewhat confusingly, as a Breakfast Club tribute. It's nice to see some much-needed diversity injected into that narrative, but The Breakfast Club is a seminal high school movie, and this is emphatically not a high school story. Still, it's a quick hack to get a group of misfits in a room together and show us – or in this case, tell us – that they're going to become best friends.

Joining Zoey are laid-back Luca (Luka Sabbat), Nomi (Emily Arlook), whose parents don't know she's bisexual; Jazlyn and Skyler (Chloe and Halle Bailey), twin track stars referred to as something out of "Tyler Perry's The Shining"; Vivek Shah (Jordan Behat), a first-generation Indian American who doesn't want to be like his father; and Aaron (Trevor Jackson), who Zoey has been crushing on since freshman orientation and who wears a "Michelle 2020" pin.

If it sounds like a lot, it is. The show's approach to intersectionality and the progressive worldview of Generation Z are admirable, but there's no getting around the fact that it's just a lot to fit into a 22-minute episode. There's a quick character rundown with Black-ish-esque exposition (including an important footnote about stigmatization of black female athletes); later, they each get a quick flashback to what made them miss registration and wind up in Charlie's class in the first place.

It turns out that Zoey missed the registration deadline because she was hiding from Anna (Francia Raisa), her first college friend, who Zoey ditched for getting too drunk at a party. Zoey hastily flees the scene, anxious to distance herself from the uncool drunk girl, something which her new late-night peers inform her is "some East African genocidal war lord shit" (hmmm).

The best part of the episode is when the newfound just-believe-they're-going-to-be-friends finally open up to each other about sexuality, upbringing, and ambition, and the understanding is that now they're bonded for life. They write a letter to Charlie about why they're in his class – again, not for any narrative purpose, but to fit the round peg of this episode into a square Breakfast Club hole.

Though it can be contrived, Grown-ish offers its disparate protagonists some much needed common ground in a time when that can seem scarce. Zoey sums it up nicely in this heartfelt run on:

One by one I looked around and saw a group of strangers with nothing in common look at each other and see their truest selves reflected in the eyes of people they would soon call family.

In an enterprising premiere, Grown-ish introduces enough characters and potential storylines to populate several seasons, and though it jumps hastily from one to the next, they may get their due outside the Breakfast Club template.

But it has a firm anchor with Shahidi, who wouldn’t be there if she hadn’t proved her mettle on its literal parent show. Grown-ish, like it’s characters, needs to find its footing in the wild world of college — and once it does, it'll soar.