'Boots' takes us to camp before 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Miles Heizer stars as a closeted teen who joins the Marines in timely Netflix series.

- Review ROBERT LLOYD TELEVISION CRITIC

Photographs by ALFONSO "POMPO" BRESCIANI Netflix

MILES HEIZER is Cameron Cope in "Boots," based on "The Pink Marine," Greg Cope White's memoir.

In “Boots,” a new miniseries set in 1990, Miles Heizer plays Cameron Cope, a scrawny, bullied gay teenager who is out only to his best (and only) friend, Ray (Liam Oh). Ray, who is joining the Marines to make his disciplinarian but not unkind father proud, convinces Cam to join alongside him. (The recruiters sell a buddy system, which is a bit of a come-on.) Cam told his messy but not unkind mother, Barbara (Vera Farmiga), where he was going, but she wasn’t listening.

Though the series, which premieres Thursday on Netflix and is based on Greg Cope White’s 2016 memoir, “The Pink Marine,” is novel as regards the sexuality of its main character, it’s also essentially conventional — not a pejorative — and largely predictable. It’s a classic Boot Camp Film, like “An Officer and a Gentleman,” or Abbott and Costello's “Buck Privates,” in which imperfect human material is molded through exercise, ego death and yelling into a better person, and it replays many tropes of the genre. And like most every military drama, it gathers diverse types into a not necessarily close-knit group.