Netflix's promotion strategy is no mystery at this point. Unless it is a very popular intellectual property or an already established series with good audience data, the platform has a tendency to place its content in the catalog. They trust that, thanks to the algorithm, the correct series will appear in the user interface and that, with a little luck, the viewer will give it a chance. If it succeeds, then it is time to orchestrate an entire communication strategy to further enhance success.
My life with the Walter boys, on paper, was one of these new titles with many possibilities of passing unnoticed. It was based on a young adult novel by Ali Novak and it had a trailer and a poster, but it arrived without the background noise of those titles that arouse expectation, that have the favor or predisposition of the public even before having seen an entire episode. It also had a bargain aesthetic, from the old series, with no other pretensions than to target a teenage audience without contributing anything new.
It was like that. My life with the Walter boys is so unoriginal that even its plot forces us to compare it with another series currently on air, Amazon's The Summer I Fell in Love, also based on a novel designed for young audiences and the most popular series among the public. female on the platform. There, Belly (Lola Tung) received the attention of the attractive Fisher brothers (Christopher Briney and Gavin Casalegno), who stopped seeing her as her lifelong friend when her physique changed.
Here, however, the protagonist is Jackie (Nikki Rodriguez), who loses her parents and sister in a tragic accident. Since her uncle can't take care of her, she moves in with the Walters, the large family headed by her mother's best friend from college (Sarah Rafferty, now back in fashion with the revival of Suits). . Counting the number of children is complicated, because there are too many.
The important thing is that, of course, there are two who make eyes at him: Cole (Noah LaLonde), the school rebel, and Alex (Ashby Gentry), who is understood to be a good person because he spends the day with a J.R.R. book. Tolkien in hand. And, between flirting with her adoptive siblings and having to adapt to her life in deep America after growing up in elitist New York, Jackie is more than entertained.
The protagonist does not have the presence that the character requires, the characters have the complexity and subtlety of “with a six and a four, here is your portrait” and there are embarrassing secondary interpretations. The lighting has an after-dinner touch and the episodes have a clumsy rhythm, as if the editor cut a second late.
The last straw, however, is Jackie's absent conflict: her parents died but you can see that this circumstance almost bothers the scriptwriters, since it is only an excuse to put the girl in a house where socks have more uses than hair. to wear them on your feet. The series, so we understand each other, is a disaster that is very easy to watch: it seems like a mediocre teen series from 2005, one that possibly would not even have been renewed for a second season, accompanied on the television schedule by One Tree Hill. But, against all odds, it works wonders for Netflix.
In its first four days, it came in first position among the most viewed English-language series. It made 57.4 million hours watched, which translated into 7.5 million viewers. In its second week, it has reached 97.5 million hours watched and another 12.8 million viewers. Taking into account its low budget, it is an unquestionable success that has allowed it to renew for a second season.
And how is this success further confirmed? Because of the success of My Life with the Walter Boys on Tiktok, which proves to what extent the series resonate with young audiences and serves to amplify popularity. Some of the videos uploaded by fans exceed 500 million views. Since Stranger Things or Wednesday, a Netflix series has not penetrated the fashionable social network in this way. There are Walter boys for a while.
