This Is Why The To All The Boys Spin-Off XO, Kitty Doesn’t Work
I wanted to love XO, Kitty… but this is why the show doesn’t work.
The series comes from the mind of Jenny Han, the creator of the To All The Boys trilogy and The Summer I Turned Pretty, and follows the youngest Song-Covey sister Kitty on her own adventure. Kitty gets into an elite Korean boarding school with plans to connect with her true love and learn more about her late mother who also went there as a teen.
I want to believe we over at Pop Culture Planet manifested this spin-off, as I had asked Anna Cathcart about the potential for one during an interview for To All The Boys: Always and Forever.
Never forget that time we manifested the #ToAllTheBoys spin-off #XOKitty starring @annacathcart — out today! pic.twitter.com/T9AytJzzsH
— Kristen Maldonado (@kaymaldo) May 18, 2023
The first episode immediately had me hooked. I loved so much of what they set up — Kitty going to a Korean boarding school known as KISS (so cute!), the Jenny Han cameo, the idea of her writing letters of her adventures to her sisters and signing them XO Kitty, following in her mom’s footsteps, exploring her own romance — I was on board. Unfortunately everything they set up in the first episode fell apart as the show went on.
We’re introduced to a whole new world of characters and some classic rom-com tropes… but they often felt forced. They give us this fake dating romance that messed with Dae (Choi Min-young) and Kitty’s relationship and then after that it seemed like every character has a crush on each other. I started getting whiplash. But the big problem is they weren’t really developing any of the characters. Kitty is the main character, the show is literally named after her, and I feel like we focused on everyone else BUT her. They try to keep in Kitty’s matchmaking as this small quirk that she has, but it feels like an after thought. They also add her starting to question her sexuality in a way that didn’t feel planned or well thought out. Many of the plot points felt like the writers were just throwing things together and didn’t know where they wanted to go with the story.
Dae was a very boring character to follow. They didn’t do enough with Q (Anthony Keyvan). Min Ho (Sang Heon Lee) was the only character that felt like he got real development. It seemed like the actress playing Yuri (Gia Kim) was meant to give off a Paris Hilton-eqsue heiress vibe and then have the layers peeled back as we get to know her, but she felt miscast to me. On top of that, Yuri’s parents were really hard on her for no real reason that we got to see on screen. There’s additional characters they introduce like Madison or people who are fairly important like the principal and teachers who just felt so surface level. There was no depth there. They also introduce this huge mystery about Kitty possibly having a secret brother. The whole mystery felt shoe-horned in and wasn’t set up well, plus it was super glaringly obvious what the answer really was.
One of the things I loved about the final To All The Boys film was that they went to Korea and explored and tried all these new things. That’s even how Kitty met Dae. They could’ve filmed this show anywhere, even on a lot in LA, because they didn’t showcase Korea well. They stayed on campus 99% of the time, which seemed like a waste of a location.
If I were writing this show, I would’ve focused more on Kitty trying to explore Korea, go to the places her mom went to, and introduce the secret brother earlier on. Maybe even making that mystery one of the catalysts for her wanting to go to the boarding school in the first place. It would’ve been really cool for them to keep up her letter writing to LJ (Lana Condor) and Margot (Janel Parrish), maybe as a way to narrate the season. Some of it could be her lying to her sisters to make it seem like things are better than they are and she could sign off each episode with her XO Kitty signature. Things like that would’ve made the season feel more structured and not so random. There was so much that was forced in and felt like an after thought as if the writers of this show didn’t think their audience was smart enough to follow along and they had to dumb everything down. Half of the things in the show could’ve been solved in five minutes if the characters would just sit down and talk to each other, but instead they kept having constant interruptions that just became an overused plot device.
This was a huge step down after the success of the To All The Boys trilogy and The Summer I Turned Pretty adaptation. It reminded me of Lana Condor’s more recent Netflix miniseries Boo Bitch in the way that they led with really convoluted plot points that don’t make sense or are WAY too obvious. It was also disappointing the sisters didn’t make a single cameo, not even on FaceTime. It made the world feel even smaller and disconnected from the To All The Boys universe. While they open up some mysteries for a season two — like who is Simon, or will Min Ho pursue Kitty or will Kitty pursue Yuri? — I don’t think we need one unless they’re going to do a total re-haul of the show.
All in all, XO, Kitty had a promising premise that falls flat as it delivers a mess of a show that is overstuffed, aimless, and has no real identity.
The first season of XO, Kitty is streaming on Netflix.
