‘My Life With the Walter Boys’ Season 2 Needs To Fix Its Love Triangle

Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for My Life With the Walter Boys

The Big Picture

• The love triangle in My Life With the Walter Boys lacks emotional investment due to unlikable characters and shallow relationships.
• Jackie, the protagonist, starts off as sympathetic but becomes a bland character with superficial connections to Alex and Cole.
• The season finale exacerbates the issues with the love triangle, as the characters make questionable decisions that further betray their likability.

In Netflix’s My Life With the Walter Boys, teenager Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez) has her life thrown upside down when her parents and older sister all die in a car accident. Six months later, she arrives in the fictional town of Silver Falls, Colorado, to move in with her mother’s best friend Katherine (Suits’ Sarah Rafferty) — whom she has only met once — Katherine’s husband George (Marc Blucas), and their nine children. Little did she know that two of the Walter boys, Alex (Ashby Gentry) and Cole (Noah LaLonde), would be vying for her romantic affection, which would further exacerbate an ongoing war between them. However, during and especially after the first season, it’s hard to care at all about this love triangle and either of the relationships, which is a major issue going forward considering it’s the central aspect of the story.

Why Isn’t the Love Triangle in ‘My Life With the Walter Boys’ Working?

What is a love triangle when you don’t care about any of the characters involved? The Vampire Diaries and The Summer I Turned Pretty, two very notable love triangles, made us care about the three characters involved (in some capacity, whether that be love, like, disdain, or hatred) almost from the jump. But, it’s rather difficult to care for Alex, Cole, or even Jackie from the very beginning of My Life With the Walter Boys.

This love triangle falls into the spotlight as Jackie not only deals with moving to a new, unfamiliar town, but into a house with nine other children where two boys are constantly vying for her affection and attention. Instantly, both Alex and Cole are incredibly unlikable, effectively ruining this potential love triangle. Alex’s so-called “nice guy” behavior is tired and ineffective because, directly due to this behavior, he comes across as shallow and petty, which only worsens as the season goes on and he becomes almost territorial over Jackie. On the other hand, Cole’s “bad boy” facade is wholly unnecessary and directly trying to channel Conrad (Christopher Briney) from The Summer I Turned Pretty, as Cole lashes out at everyone around him because of his injury that has made his future in football a non-starter. Seriously, haven’t we moved past the point where we need such reductive and dull conflict?

The Love Triangle Holds No Weight in ‘My Life With the Walter Boys’

As for Jackie, she’s by far the most likable of the bunch when the series begins. What she’s going through is absolutely tragic and easy to sympathize with. However, she becomes a rather bland character throughout the season. She doesn’t have much screen presence, nor does the series give us any reason to think that these boys are with her for anything deeper than her being the pretty new girl in this small town who captured Alex and Cole’s attention. Jackie’s also pretty judgmental, which at times is called for and creates some much-needed conflict, but also pretty much assassinates her character after what happens in the season finale, which we’ll discuss a bit later on.

Jackie’s relationships with Alex and Cole feel very surface-level throughout the first season. Neither offers anything outstanding, much less something memorable for the show to be known for (as we see with other popular love triangles in the media). Alex is simply the nice, kind brother (but is he really?) while all of the so-called allure that Cole has is reduced to the show continuously telling us everyone is interested in him because of “The Cole Effect” while offering absolutely nothing (aside from a few shirtless scenes) to justify this. Instead, they prove that nobody should be interested in either of these boys and that these relationships aren’t deep or special in any capacity. Rather, the series relies on a collection of overused and tired tropes to tell a story that viewers have seen countless times on, let’s face it, much better teen dramas.

The Season 1 Finale Makes the Issues With the Love Triangle Worse

Simply put, the love triangle fell completely flat in My Life With the Walter Boys, mostly due to the characters being so unlikable and unworthy of becoming invested in, and the Season 1 finale only made it worse. After Jackie harshly judges fellow student Paige (Madison Brydges) for her role in the ongoing war between Alex and Cole — as Paige cheated on Alex with Cole, though Cole didn’t know they were together — Jackie then takes it a step further and possibly becomes irreversibly unlikable, as do both Alex and Cole.

As Will (Johnny Link) and Haley (Zoë Soul) get married, Alex gets ridiculously drunk. Though Alex and Cole made peace over the Paige situation, Alex’s insecurity over his brother and Jackie’s obvious feelings for Cole leads to him making a drunken fool of himself before his best friend Kiley (Mya Lowe) drags him off to bed and he makes a major mess of their friendship too. Meanwhile, after it builds throughout the season, Jackie and Cole kiss while Alex, whom she’s been dating for weeks/months, is passed out drunk. Considering the mess Paige made and how Jackie judged her for it, Jackie did the same thing, except somehow worse, because she knew exactly how badly it would impact Alex. Meanwhile, any redemption Cole had over the Paige situation was wiped away because this time he knew very well that Alex and Jackie were together. Then, Jackie skipped town to return to New York City with her uncle for the summer, putting off the inevitable showdown that is sure to blow up the Walters’ world.

In short, My Life With the Walter Boys needs to make some major adjustments with this love triangle. Right now, there’s nothing special about it or the characters involved to make this a teen drama that must be watched. It doesn’t need to be groundbreaking by any means, but it’s not even very enjoyable, and it only seems to be getting worse as the characters are already doing things, like Jackie cheating on Alex with Cole, that they haven’t earned the right to do and be forgiven for in the audience’s eyes. More effort needs to be put into developing these characters and relationships into something that doesn’t feel so basic, as this series has a lot of potential to be outstanding (but maybe that’s just because of the other much more entertaining characters).

My Life With the Walter Boys is available to stream on Netflix.

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