It’s saying something when even I, Queen of trash TV, can’t get into a teen drama that’s supposed to be mind-numbing entertainment. Sadly, XO, Kitty season 3 is the Netflix series that has completely missed the mark.
I’m not the only one who’s been left feeling underwhelmed, though. A quick social media search shows that the new series has been dubbed as “disappointing” and “cringe” by fans, not helped by the fact it chose to break up one of the most popular relationships in the show (no spoilers here, though).
While Netflix’s new binges this month are so far, ahem, underwhelming, it didn’t always used to be this way. I’m not just talking about seeing the back of Bridgerton and Virgin River for the foreseeable, either.
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Over the last few years, the streamer has released some of the best teen and young adult dramas around. In fact, one of them is so heartwarming that it’s my official antidote to XO, Kitty — sack season 3 off and stream My Life With the Walter Boys instead.
Why you need to stream My Life with the Walter Boys instead of XO, Kitty season 3
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Yes, I could have picked the really obvious choice of the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before film trilogy that’s also on Netflix. But not only do I want to keep my recommendation TV-centric, I genuinely believe My Life with the Walter Boys is the stronger teen franchise in the streamer’s arsenal.
Based on the book series of the same name, My Life with the Walter Boys follows Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez), a 15-year-old New Yorker whose life is upended when her family dies in a car accident.
She moves to rural Colorado to live with her guardian, Katherine Walter (Sarah Rafferty), who is raising 10 children… which as you can imagine, is a world away from what Jackie is used to.
While it encapsulates the same will-they-won’t-they romance vibes of XO, Kitty, My Life with the Walter Boys excels at presenting the struggles of everyday teen life. Relationship building is at the core of the show, with family platonic bonds just as significant as its romantic ones.
Adolescence is a complicated thing, and we want to be reminded of the bad bits in the most palatable way possible. Where XO, Kitty often verges on cringe, soap opera tropes, My Life with the Walter Boys stays grounded.
Don’t get me wrong, though — there’s a ton of drama in the latter to get stuck into. It’s messy, raw and complicated, which is everything we want in an epic teen drama binge.
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