SHOW:
Boo, Bitch
WHERE TO WATCH:
OUR RATING:
2/5 Stars
WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
Over the course of one night, a high school senior, who's lived her life safely under the radar, seizes the opportunity to change her narrative and start living an epic life, only to find out the next morning… she's a motherf*%king ghost.
WHAT WE THOUGHT:
There's no denying that today's teenagers - especially American ones - have to contend with death more than earlier generations, especially in a world that seems deadset on ending itself. Place this in a comedic setting, and you might just have had a poignant teenage story about how to deal with death in youth.
Netflix's new limited series - Boo, Bitch - was so close to giving a new twist on the old formula, but instead, it just rehashed every trope from every teen movie ever made. Makeovers, good girl gets tainted by popularity, popular girl feud, hooks up with popular boy, best friend gets left by the wayside - at some point, you'll hit 'BINGO!', but there are no rewards to be won here.
While its premise sounded intriguing beforehand, it actually makes zero sense in practice, and it kept breaking my suspension of disbelief. The story follows play-it-safe Erica and her bubbly best friend Gia - both suffering an existential crisis when they realise they have left almost no high school legacy. They decide to change that in their last days as seniors, and they head off to a party where everything gets off to a great start. However, fate had something else in store for them, as they wake up the next day and Erica's body is under a moose. Now dead, she tries to restart her life post-mortem as she and Gia try to figure out what her unfinished business is.
Straight off the bat, the man-on-the-moon leap one has to take from seeing your shoes on a dead body to assuming you've become a ghost is quite something, especially when everyone can still see you, you still need to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom and you can't walk through anything. Erica doesn't even check the body hidden under the moose, she just assumes she's become ethereal. And then they try to use all this nonsense to hide a neon-signed plot twist one could see from space from the first episode, and the little bit of suspension of disbelief you clung to wither away. This whole bit was some crazy lazy writing, and this trend continues through the first couple of (thankfully) short episodes, where boredom struck at every turn.
That's not to mention the myriad of Mean Girls references peppered throughout the series, from certain 2000s fashion choices, a five-way call but with teenage boys and even the mom-who-tries-too-hard that serves the girls champagne. Also, the new trend of the popular-girl-is-an-influencer trajectory also needs to end soon in movies - we get it, they like social media. A lot of this series feels like a millennial's version of high school, and I'm not sure if a Gen Z audience would really resonate with a lot of it or even catch the homages to one of the best movies of our youth.
But halfway through, when you finally start to settle into the mediocrity, some gems begin to shine through, and you start to get somewhat emotionally attached to the characters, especially Gia. Played by Zoe Colletti, she is like a reincarnation of the Disney Channel Quirky Best Friend, complete with the wacky wardrobe, but somehow an improvement. Colletti is a great actor, and she delivers some rare powerful moments as she tries to bring her friend back down to earth. She steals a lot of scenes from Lana Condor, who plays Erica and Netflix darling from the To All the Boys franchise, and you much rather wanted her to have a happy ending. Condor plays her usual self, but her 'bitch' mode - an unfortunate word used throughout the series - does give her some new range that is funny at times, albeit cliché. The popular girl character also had some fun surprises, like her not trying to overthrow Erica with some convoluted plot, but she unfortunately still felt a little bit hollow. As for the boys, Mason Versaw and Tenzing Norgay Trainor were cute enough and funny enough as charming arm candy to our lead girls.
In the end, you wanted so much more from Boo, Bitch, especially zoning in on the death and youth aspect, but you should just take it as a dumb teenage series rather than anything more profound. A few tweaks to the gaping inconsistencies could have made it more enjoyable, and from a cursory glance at Twitter the Gen Z kids seem to enjoy it enough. Sometimes I wonder if I've finally just ascended to the 'too old' peak when it comes to teenage content, but then a new Ms Marvel episode comes out (review coming soon), and I feel all young again.
WATCH THE TRAILER HERE: