Boo, Bitch, an eight-part Netflix limited series that is occasionally witty but often mediocre, plays to a beloved but frequently overlooked tradition: the sitcom in which supernatural aspects (including time travel, foresight, and magic skills) underline the hardships of being a teenage girl.
Erika Vu, a quiet, studious senior played by Lana Condor, draws inspiration from the whimsically occult characters in comedic series like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Wizards of Waverly Place, That’s So Raven, and, more seriously and succinctly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
She transforms into a ghost after being struck by a moose the night of her first high school party. The show’s candy-colored aesthetic and jittery energy makes me think of Nickelodeon’s Zoey 101, and the clothes resemble a gloriously deranged interpretation of TV adolescent style from the middle of the aughts.
Until it isn’t, everything is jovial and more enjoyable than you may anticipate. Tim Schauer, Kuba Soltysiak, Erin Ehrlich of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Lauren Iungerich of Awkward’s comic series Boo walk a fine line between campy and corny, gloriously ludicrous and stupid, cheeky and cringe in the first half of Bitch before the second half swings into practically unwatchable, cheap drivel.
(Up until the final episodes, the title is kind of a funny wink, but then it just becomes a refrain.) Boo, Bitch can keep the audience’s attention for five 25-minute episodes in large part thanks to Condor, Netflix’s tremendously likable in-house star of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, and Zoe Margaret Colletti as her wacky, dedicated best friend Gia.
Erika and Gia are introduced to us 48 hours “premortem,” right before they begin their final six weeks of high school. When Erika’s parents (Cathy Vu and John Brantley Cole) learn that their best friends are going to a party, they can finally exhale in relief because they are so invisible that they are left off of the senior SMS chain.
In one of the more elegant high school party scenarios I’ve recently witnessed, the two decide to take a chance and say yes to everything. Erika discovers that she is a living ghost when she awakens the following morning. A scream, car headlights, and other sounds can be heard.
In the beginning, Boo, Bitch presents an amusingly bonkers perspective on death: “If a ghost in Ghostbusters can give a BJ then it makes sense that you can still pee,” Erika is consoled by Gia during her initial bewildered morning post-mortem; nonetheless, Erika subsequently comments that trying Wellbutrin could be a good idea after finishing up one’s unfinished job.
Erika, who is neurotic, obsessed, and disguising her illness, is more concerned with going to prom, snatching her crush Jake C from vicious Riley (Aparna Brielle), and finally getting noticed than she is with dying. She would say, “I’m going to get down to business until I find out my unfinished business.” (Again, it can be difficult to distinguish between hokey and camp.)
For the first half of the series, the treatment of Erika’s high school purgatory is pleasantly humorous and just enough odd. Erika can jumble screens and flicker lights, but she still needs to go to the bathroom and to school. Even her farewell mochaccino with Gia and her good-byes to her parents and brother are played for laughs before she (may) rise by kissing Jake C.
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The girls plan a party to complete Erika’s alleged unfinished business. The two enlist a student supernatural group in pursuit of information beyond The Sixth Sense and Patrick Swayze in Ghost. Gavin, the club’s medium (Tenzing Norgay Trainor), shows an unusual interest in Gia.
The funniest section of the performance is the joyously bonkers foursome, which features would-be magician Brad (Reid Miller) and clairvoyant Raven (Abigail Achiri). I laughed out loud at a fair portion of their lines.
Some jokes quickly become stale, like those about a classmate who unexpectedly gave birth in a hot tub or the long-bullied student who was blamed for a fart in third grade. Others give the program a brief, welcome bite, such as Gia’s repeated jokes about Lexapro, a talk between the boys about chill vs. cool girls, and a lot of profanity.
The second half, which adds a deflating plot twist, clumsily summons a cringe-worthy charade of the TikTok fanbase, and transforms Erika into a power-hungry monster, sadly, burns off the heady buzz of this nonsense.
Especially Condor, a charming actor who can play a stone-faced high school villain with ease, is unable to make up for the show’s abrupt heel flip, incomprehensible premise (even for a ghost story), and rather careless handling of grief. By the sixth episode, I had already begun to miss the naiveté of watching the first 30 minutes without understanding how unpleasant and needlessly cruel Erika would turn out to be.
Oh no, Bitch doesn’t bounce back from this. Because ghosts can’t stay around forever, the final two episodes force the viewer to accept the death of a loved one, but they don’t care enough to ponder what that means or tease it out for more than a brief conclusion. It’s a terrible, jumbled ending that made me feel unsatisfied. Teenage supernatural pranks can be entertaining, but not if the heart is lost.
