Warning: Some Spoilers

This winter break, I had the pleasure of vacationing in Ocean Isle, North Carolina, where my cousins and I watched the popular new teen/tween drama “My Life With The Walter Boys.” Now, even though I’m a huge fan of television shows that fall into the drama category, I find myself preferring either the ‘basic’ older shows (such as One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl) or shows that are more intense (such as Prisonbreak and Breaking Bad) over the more recent releases, which I find to be more cringe-worthy and predictable. Nevertheless, I did watch the entirety of the first season of this Netflix Original and am ready to unpack it.

The series follows the life of Jackie, portrayed by Nikki Rodriguez, as she moves to Colorado and moves in with the Walter house from New York after the tragic death of her parents and sister. Jackie is 15 years old, incredibly talented and intelligent, and strives to do her best in school in order for her to attend Princeton, which seems to be her ultimate goal. The Walter family, which consists of the parents and their 10 ‘kids’, two of which are cousins to the Walter children (Lee and Isaac). As Jackie adjusts to her new life in Colorado, she finds herself getting closer to the members of the Walter family, specifically to two of the Walter brothers: Alex and Cole.

Cole is the resident ‘bad boy’. He’s your typical playboy who uses women as a distraction from what’s really going on. In this case, after a leg injury, Cole is left without any scholarships and his hopes of being a football player is crushed, ultimately leading him to perform poorly in school and skip class. In comparison, Alex is the sweet, charming, and geeky brother who is really into video games, family centered, and does well in school. The dynamic between Alex and Cole was a predictably unusual one, as both brothers aren’t too fond of each other due to a previous misunderstanding involving another girl. So it’s such a shocker when the exact same situation arises once again, only this time, the girl is their mom’s late best friend’s daughter who now lives with them.

In addition to the fact that almost all the events in this show were foreseen (at least by myself) there were a couple of other components of the show that either irked me or made little to no sense.

The first thing was that Jackie didn’t mourn her family’s death at all. I understand that she’s trying to move on, but personally, I found that to be extremely weird. I also thought more of an emphasis should’ve been paid to all the trauma she was going through, but I guess the show-makers just wanted her to immediately jump into a weird and complicated love triangle. Additionally, I found it really weird how an effort was made to show that space was limited in a house with 11 people, but it was so very easy for Jackie to essentially get her own room basically her own bathroom too, while the other nine kids had to share one bathroom and all the other rooms. Also, completely unrelated, but Jackie’s late mother was supposedly a big-time designer in New York, but Jackie’s outfits did not reflect that at all, whatsoever.

The other thing was that although the main objective of the story was Jackie’s struggles and all of her boy drama, there was a weird shift to Will (the eldest Walter brother) and all of his troubles in paradise. Specifically, Will and his fiance are going through financial and communicative troubles, resulting in a rough patch of their relationship. But the thing is, I really didn’t care about Will and his problems at all. I felt like the show-makers just wanted to add another storyline in there, but with all of the Walter boys and Jackie living under the same roof, there was already too much going on. Plus, I ended up skipping through half of the ‘Will scenes’ anyway because they were so boring, and at the end, I still understood the full story, proving that he was irrelevant.

Now, contrary to everything I just said, the show was not incredibly horrible. It was definitely entertaining at times, and it really emphasized the value of togetherness and family. Even though the premise of the show was not my cup of tea and was too childish for my preference, objectively, I would give the show a solid 7/10.