I don’t know what I was thinking when I opened Netflix and willingly typed “My Life with the Walter Boys” into the search bar. After sitting through all ten episodes of needless drama in season one, I didn’t think I would return for round two. But I’m a glutton for punishment and needed to know what happened next, so I came crawling back.
“My Life with the Walter Boys” season one is the kind of turn-your-brain-off show that you can watch with friends and a bottle of cheap wine, pointing and laughing at the events unfolding onscreen. In contrast, this season involved a lot less laughter and a lot more screaming into my pillow. And I didn’t have any wine. The series follows Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez, “On My Block”), a Manhattan teenager who moves to rural Colorado after her family dies in a tragic accident. Jackie is taken in by Katherine Walter (Sarah Rafferty, “Suits”), her mother’s longtime best friend, and her family, which consists of ten sons and one daughter. As Jackie navigates the difficulties of adolescence and the grief of losing her family, she simultaneously struggles with her feelings for two of the Walter brothers: Cole (Noah LaLonde, “Dear Camp ’86”) and Alex (Ashby Gentry, “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”). Jackie initially starts a relationship with Alex, but her feelings for Cole continue to simmer.
Season one ends on a massive cliffhanger: Drunk at his brother’s wedding, Alex tells Jackie he loves her, but she doesn’t say it back. Then, upon discovering that Cole fixed a teacup belonging to her deceased sister — previously broken by one of the Walter siblings — Jackie and Cole kiss. Now having cheated on her boyfriend with his older brother, Jackie flees, hopping on a plane and flying back to New York to live with her uncle.
Unfortunately, leaving is the last sound decision Jackie makes in this series. Within the first ten minutes of season two, she’s already back in Colorado, having been convinced by Katherine to return for the upcoming school year. Her relationship with Alex is (naturally) strained, and the pair officially breaks up. But rather than turning her attention to where her heart truly lies, Jackie locks herself in the same love triangle. Despite her obvious feelings for Cole, she gets back with Alex. I was consistently baffled by her ability to make the worst of any given situation.
Throughout the entire season, the plot is trapped in the same vicious cycle. Jackie makes an awful decision that, in real life, would be grounds for going completely no-contact. The other person — Cole, her best friend Grace (Ellie O’Brien, “Alert: Missing Persons Unit”) or whoever else her latest victim might be — gets upset and expresses their grievances to her. Then, instead of fixing the original problem, Jackie replies with a small act of kindness that she assumes will make everything better — before immediately repeating the same terrible behavior that landed her in this situation in the first place. Flawed protagonists may make for good TV, but reheating the same conflict with different garnishes doesn’t make the flavor any better.
Unfortunately, the problems don’t just end with Jackie. Some kind of metaphorical black mold has infested the Walter ranch and made all members’ choices equally insane. No, Nathan (Corey Fogelmanis, “Girl Meets World”), cheating on your boyfriend in public is not the power move you thought it was. No, Alex, you don’t have the right to be jealous of your girl best friend seeing another guy while you’ve been pining over Jackie for the past two years. By the end of the season, my favorite characters were the ones with the least amount of screen time simply because they didn’t have the chance to make the same terrible decisions the others did. I can enjoy a show with characters that aren’t the pinnacle of rationality — I honestly prefer them — but when these decisions are made for no reason other than stirring the pot, they quickly become frustrating.
That all said, there are still some genuinely emotional moments sprinkled throughout the season, as Jackie continues struggling to cope with the loss of her family from the first season. Rodriguez delivers a genuine, heartfelt performance, and a few scenes even brought tears to my eyes. Sadly, these are spliced between some of the most useless drama I’ve ever seen — even for a flock of hormonal high schoolers — which waters down the impact of these otherwise powerful scenes.
And the most frustrating part of it all? The season ends with the protagonists in the exact same position as last season. Jackie is back with Alex, but she and Cole have a confrontation that reveals no, she is not, in fact, over him. The finale renders any previous development completely null. When the episode concluded, I nearly launched my laptop into the nearest wall out of sheer rage. I couldn’t believe I dedicated almost 10 hours of my life to this season for nothing.
If you haven’t seen the second season of “My Life with the Walter Boys,” you honestly don’t have to. But if you share my masochistic desire for pointless conflict and secondhand embarrassment, I guess I can’t stop you.
Senior Arts Editor Morgan Sieradski can be reached at kmsier@umich.edu.
