Quantico
Quantico is a relatively new TV show on the ABC network. An American drama thriller series, Quantico follows Alex Parrish—an FBI recruit—who is the prime suspect of a terrorist attack on where Grand Central is located. The entire first season is told in a style like that of the hit TV show, How to Get Away with Murder—through a mix of past and present. The flashbacks show her time training at the FBI training camp, while scenes of the present reveal Alex searching for evidence to clear her name.
The pilot episode starts out in the present with Alex waking up in the debris left behind from the Grand Central attack. It then quickly switches to the past, when she is first leaving home to go to the FBI training facility. Alex is one of the 50 new recruits; the beginning of season 1 focuses on relationships with six main characters.
Priyanka Chopra stars as the main character Alex Parrish; a young woman determined to find answers about her father and become an FBI agent. She quickly meets Ryan Booth (Jake McLaughlin) on her plane ride to Quantico, Va., and the two hook up in a car. This is just the start to their tumultuous relationship as Alex quickly discovers that Ryan is a part of her class at Quantico. Along with meeting Ryan again, Alex also meets Shelby Wyatt (Johanna Braddy), Simon Asher (Tate Ellington), Caleb Haas (Graham Rogers), and the Amin twins—Nimah and Raina (Yasmine Al Massri). As if these characters weren’t enough, Quantico Assistant Director Miranda Shaw (Aunjanue Ellis) and Special Agent Liam O’Connor (Josh Hopkins) are also introduced as the two instructors for the recruits.
The pilot episode kicks off with the recruits being told their first lesson is investigating their classmates. Each one chooses another student and is told to find the missing piece of information in the other’s profile, provided courtesy of the FBI. It is during this episode that viewers get their first glimpse into each of the characters and possible future terrorist.
Shelby, whose parents died in 9/11, is a wealthy heiress whose sweet and innocent demeanor belies her talent with firearms. Supposedly Quantico’s first gay recruit, Simon is a former accountant who’s surprisingly good at hand to hand combat. A seemingly golden boy on paper, Caleb seems to be at Quantico only because his parents managed to pull some strings. Next in the list of characters who have seemingly never ending secrets comes Nimah, who has what is arguably the most interesting secret of all. A young Muslim woman recruited by Miranda Shaw, Nimah struggles to keep the secret that she and her sister Raina are pretending to be one person.
As the first season switches between past and present, the answer to who planned the attack on Grand Central becomes more and more confusing. No character is safe from suspicion, as each new episode presents possible reasons for each character to be the bomber. From Simon’s visits with suspicious characters and Shelby’s secret calls, each recruit gets their moment of ‘maybe it’s them’ from the audience. However, the terrorist’s identity is finally revealed in the concluding episode of the first season. A mix of mystery and drama, Quantico is definitely a show to binge on Netflix.
