My Life With The Walter Boys Is Just Another Forgettable Teen Drama
When Jackie’s (Nikki Rodriguez) parents and sister are unexpectedly killed in a car accident, she moves in with her mother’s best friend and her family of ten children in My Life With The Walter Boys. Trading her big city world for the farm life of Colorado, Jackie attempts to fit in with her new found family all while stirring up drama with her romantic interests in two different brothers.
If The Fosters met The Summer I Turned Pretty, this would be it. A recipe of family drama, a love triangle between brothers, and a household that seems to be bursting full of kids creates a chaotic and dramatic plot. The series is based on Ali Novak's viral Wattpad novel of the same name, and clearly follows the disorganized nature of fanfiction style writing. The show lacks a deep exploration of any character as it tries to touch on too many things in its short ten episode run. They only explore the backstory and personality of about 4 of the boys, and the rest just fall into overused tropes used for background noise.
I commend their attempt at diversity and representation, but they missed a big opportunity to explore that aspect of their characters. While Jackie’s unsuccessful attempts to fit in with the family pertain mostly to her city upbringing, her race is never acknowledged as a differentiator in the household. During the Thanksgiving episode, the topic of Native American heritage is discussed thoroughly in the context of the origin of the holiday. There is also a character who is partially deaf, which is only mentioned in the first episode and then ignored after. They bring up a lot of important themes, but never fully expand on them.
While many of the actors actually look like they’re teens, most of them are in their twenties. I would’ve loved to see real teens cast much like Netflix’s Heartstopper — a new trend Netflix and the industry is moving towards. The acting performances were a bit lackluster, but the writing did not give them much to work with in the first place. The best scenes were those starring side characters who had minimal screen time.
Overall, My Life With The Walter Boys is just another teen drama retelling of the fish out of water story without adding anything new or interesting. The characters lack chemistry, the acting isn’t convincing, and all of the twists are predictable and executed poorly. The series was a forgettable teen drama soon to get lost in the excess of streaming originals.
My Life With The Walter Boys is streaming on Netflix.
