'My Life with the Walter Boys' Season One kinda sucks and here is why

This TV show is hilariously dumb. It got me annoyed at pretty much every character. It’s like a badly written Wattpad fanfic. And I hate love triangles. Especially involving brothers. Wtf is that trope. Honestly. That’s disturbing. And sad. The writing is dull, the characters are one dimensional with tropey issues and no emotional depth. The main girl, Jackie, loses her entire immediate family in the first five minutes. She has zero agency and thirsts over two basic boys that are supposed to be her foster brothers for this whole season.

But I still watched it though. LOL.

Synopsis

Jackie is the fifteen year old main character. Fifteen!! Keep that in mind. The show starts with her organizing an event and then being told that her older sister and her parents died in a car crash. Which is why her whole life gets uprooted and she moves from New York to Colorado to live with her mother’s best friend’s family on a farm. This family are, you guessed, the Walters and it mainly consists of boys. A whole bunch of them. Like, nine probably. From oldest to youngest (my guess) that’s Will, Cole, Danny, Isaac, Alex, Nathan, Lee, Benny. Okay, that’s eight boys, and one girl, Parker. And Isaac and Lee are actually their cousins who live with them because their dad is… away? In prison? Not sure. Either way, Jackie moves in with them and a love triangle between two of the boys, Alex and Cole, and her develops. That’s the set up.

Let’s take it from the top. Be warned, I’m gonna be raging about quite a few things and I simply had to get it out of my system at the start. If you want to read the proper review of the show, skip to ‘Overall’ towards the end.

!Spoiler Alert! Skip to ‘other stuff’ to avoid them.

Criticism

To start, I simply cannot get past the fact that the boys are supposed to become Jackie’s family, not her crushes. She’s supposed to get closer to them, platonically, and see them as brothers not somebody she could date. Like, this is your foster family??

Also, where was the sadness? Where were the tears? The real emotion? Losing your whole family all at once is about the worst, most traumatic thing I can imagine to happen in someone’s life. You don’t just brush over that. And you sure as hell are not gonna be worried about which of the two boys that are supposed to be your BROTHERS you wanna kiss.

Jackie is just so plain. What do I know about her after watching this whole show? That she is good at planning events. And does well academically. Woo, what amazing character building. She is very pretty though.

Alex and Cole: The Love Triangle

The trope of “everyone leaves the cute nerdy overbearing brother for the hotter immature irresponsible broody bad boy brother” has not only gotten old ages ago, but is also really sad. And twisted.

Compared to Jackie, Cole and Alex at least had some character and relationship development. Well. Kind of? They have a heart to heart after arguing like babies and not communicating at all for the whole season, where they finally clear some things up.

Another thing that got me so annoyed? Cole crying over not being able to do his hobby anymore while Jackie literally lost her whole family was so annoying. Like, I’m not saying that that is not hard. But. Jackie wasn’t out here drinking and ruining her mother’s acceptance speech, was she? Honestly, the show is generally so weird about Jackie being an orphan. I mean, it’s the whole premise of the story but Jackie seems to have completely forgotten about it most of the time. Except for like two or three scenes. Like, what fifteen year old would act like she does when losing their family and having their whole lives uprooted??

All Cole has going for him is that he is attractive. And I would agree that attractive people live a different life, some people are so lucky that they are hot because no one would put up with them otherwise, but it’s so annoying when movies and tv shows overdo it. Like. Just because you’re hot you are not allowed to an be obnoxious asshole all the time.

Can I also just point out that Cole actually barely does the minimum. All he does is push Jackie’s boundaries. At least Alex is nice to everyone around him. Well. Except for his friend whose name I forgot. Has Alex ever heard of people regularly continuing their friendships despite being a romantic relationship? Your platonic relationships are at least of the same importance, in case you didn’t know. And the whole Paige thing? Alex does understand that she is a human who makes her own decisions, right?? Paige knew what she was doing when she made out with Cole while she was still dating Alex.

Once Jackie finally decides that she will date Alex I thought that this show might get better. Not because I’m team one or the other, I was team neither of them from the start lol, but because at least she makes a decision. But then Cole still makes moves on her. That is the biggest red flag. That should have sent her running the other way immediately. But all Jackie ever does is smile. Oh, and let Cole flirt with her even though she is dating his brother. And get freaked out at Alex saying ‘i love you’ after they have dated six months. Which might have been a bit much but calm down, communicate. Or, go kiss his brother I guess. And destroy their whole relationship all over again. Stupid idiots who deserve each other, the whole bunch of them.

Oh, and if you’re like, well, I like the trope of the hot guy being mean to everyone else but his girl (in fiction obviously). Then at least read something like ‘Fourth Wing’ instead of this. Because here, all Cole does is fixing her teapot. (When he could be killing people for her hahahahah, go big or go home, amirite?) Oh my, Cole was decent for once. No ulterior motive of course. Honey, Danny has been decent this whole time!! But no, Cole does one (1) nice thing and she is like, omg, I should kiss him. No brain, no agency, this girl. And then she just runs away?? And that is how it ends?? You have got to be kidding.

That is a stupid ass ending. Trying to avoid the consequences of cheating on your boyfriend. With his brother. By breaking his heart even more and leaving him to go back to New York. Like, what do you mean?

Side plot

Quick side note: American high schools are so weird. Especially in movies. But the whole having to basically live your teenage years in a way that colleges will accept your application?? Ridiculous. Will never understand the American school system. And before you come at me, I have spent my entire Junior year at an American High School. Didn’t hate everything, had quite a great year actually, but I could go back to actual school after. And objectively, you gotta agree that the American school system just generally is not great. Like. Is there anyone who would disagree with that sentiment?

Anyway. Let’s talk about some other things that are going on in this show.

Pretty much every character is a walking cliche, not only the three that I have talked about already.

The oldest brother, Will, I don’t like that guy. I also had no interest in his relationship tbh. His girlfriend is insanely pretty though. Was just looking at her the whole time. And her friend, the guidance counselor, I had no interest in her relationship either lol.

What did I like then, you might ask?

I liked Danny. And Parker. And Erin, who was the only character with a decent arc. I also thought it was interesting, the way the scenes with many characters were handled. Especially the chaotic family scenes. I just love stories with big families. And I really liked the parents and the way they interact with each other.

So sorry to everyone that thoroughly enjoyed this show because I wrote a whole ass review listing everything awful and one single paragraph about what I liked. Haha. Woops. You gotta admit that I’ve got a point though, right? Like, even if you enjoyed it nonetheless, you gotta admit that it was nonetheless.

Overall

This show was pleasant enough, alright. It was mediocre, not very memorable, and just doesn’t stand out in any particular way against other stories in the same genre. It’s very generic, highly predictable, follows toxic stereotypes, has a weak storyline and there is NO EMOTIONAL DEPTH.

And I basically knew that this would be cliche and foreseeable. That’s what I expected. And it fell flat nonetheless which was a bit disappointing.

You could have made this story work much better by actually making the characters feel real. Yes, the setup is cliche but you could have made a real point of Jackie’s struggles. Properly addressed the grief. Properly talked about the difficulty of starting over at a new high school and trying to find friends and find your place in a new family despite the emotional trauma. This could have been done so much better, it could have surprised everyone by actually making the characters deal with the things they are going through. And when none of that happened a few episodes in, I still had hopes that the love triangle would at least treat the boys decently. That once she decided on one of them, the other one would back off. That the boys would not sacrifice their relationship over a girl they just met. Or at least that the family dynamics would be explored more and how Jackie fits in with them, that she would build different relationships with all of them. And I guess they tried to do that by giving quite a few characters their own backstory and struggles. But, let’s be real, none of those backstories were even a tiny bit original, and they were not introduced in a way that made you feel invested in them. There was no emotional depth.

I’ll keep coming back to that point. The characters felt like characters and not like real people. And that is just the worst storytelling offence in my book. Because if they had not felt one dimensional, if they had felt more real, then it wouldn’t have mattered as much that the plot was so bland.

Maybe my hopes were too high. But the story had potential and I was holding on to hope till the last episode. And then the ending just made me angry. Honestly, if the ending had been decent I might have been able to overlook all of the above. I mean, I kinda enjoyed it while watching, it was an alright distraction from life. I mostly overlooked all of the above while watching. Or maybe overlook is the wrong word, because I noticed and got a bit annoyed but I gave it the benefit of the doubt nevertheless. Because the characters are good looking and we all knew the premise of this show, the love triangle, everything. And it had the chance to address some important topics and problematic tropes but it didn’t address even one. Not one.

To be fair, the author wrote the book this show is based on when she was only fifteen. So, hats off that she finished and published a book that young. That’s pretty cool. And who knows, maybe the book shows more emotional depth to the characters than the show.

Conclusion

It’s cheesy, predictable and that was excactely what I wanted when I started the show. A distraction. Which is probably why I finished it despite all of the above. I had hope that it would turn around but was disappointed.

Honestly, there is better ways to get a distraction. Like, Julie and the Phantoms. What a show that is. Absolutely amazing. A great example for what the Walter Boys was missing, Or you could watch Young Royals. Or Heartstopper. Or warrior nun. Even the summer i turned pretty was better.

I don’t think I’ve ever written a review where I drag a show this much. But the ending made me so angry. In between I was thinking that it might turn out to be okay, that this show might surprise me. Nevermind.

Who is the show for?

If you just wanna watch hot people, and are old enough to realise that you are watching a twisted fantasy that you should not subconsciously try to adapt into real life actions, then you mihgt enjoy watching this show. But for real, watch some of the shows listed above instead.

Rating