As we enter the holiday season, you may be looking for something sweet and easy to binge on your journey home, or when you need to take a break from the family. Enter the new Netflix series, My Life with the Walter Boys, which quietly dropped on Friday December 8, 2023.
Based on Ali Novak's book of the same name, the show follows 16-year-old Jackie Hudson (Nikki Rodriguez) who is forced to move to small town Colorado from New York City to live with her new guardian Katherine Walter (Suits' Sarah Rafferty), and her large family when tragedy strikes and her entire family is killed.
Jackie, who is a kinder Blair Waldorf (complete with preppy Upper East Side looks including polo shirts and chinos) takes the transition in stride as best as she can, until she meets the Walter boys – Katherine Walter's seven sons, Will, Cole, Danny, Alex, Nathan, Jordan and Benny, and two nephews Lee and Isaac – and their younger sister Parker.
My Life with the Walter Boys hits almost every trope you can think of – the big city girl in the small town community, the high school football player's jealous girlfriend, brothers at odd and also brothers in love with the same girl, the best friend's unrequited love, the farm in trouble, the younger sister who feels like she needs to be tomboy – but somehow, it works.
Are there issues? Yes.
With the five eldest boys plus Jackie, the farm's financial troubles, and supporting characters from the high school including the guidance counselor all receiving their own storylines, some of them have little depth, across ten 40-minute episodes.
Even storylines for Jackie fail to truly dive into the upheaval she faces; Jackie is a Latina who is dropped from her busy life and circle of high-achieving peers in New York to the Colorado world of rodeos and high school fairs.
Set over almost an entire school year, there was scope here for an interesting story on ethnicity and being the outsider on the inside, or even an intimate look at grief and how teenage girls process emotions.
But instead the focus remains on Jackie's love life and the triangle she finds herself in between brothers Alex (Ashby Gentry) and Cole (Noah LaLonde).
As episode one ends it's already clear that Alex is halfway in love with Jackie, while Jackie is attracted to Cole, the stereotypical bad boy who any viewer worth their salt will already recognize as hiding a softer side for a reason that will be determined at a later date.
Noah as Cole brings the broody swagger needed for any small town bad boy, looking up at Jackie from under his blonde bangs, and is talented enough to make the viewer root for him as we slowly unpick what turned him from the star quarterback star to the rude and brash boy silently crying out for help.
He's the opposite of younger brother Alex, the sweet and romantic horse rider who is hurting over an as-yet-unnamed incident that happened with Cole before Jackie arrived.
The two brothers are at odds, even before Jackie gets in the middle, but with so many Walter children, parents Katherine and George (Marc Blucas) have, surprise surprise, yet to see the tensions brewing under their own roof.
The episodes play out with this back and forth escalating with an explosive moment that sees a turning point emerge – but the final moments of the season drop a major cliffhanger that had me considering going straight to the original source material to find out what happens next.
Here's hoping Netflix gives us a season two — and that it keeps all the tropes we love for a reason while also offering a deeper perspective and narrower focus.
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