REVIEW: Hitting Teen Comedy Right with ‘Boo, Bitch’

What happened if you finally started taking back your life from a bully only to, well, die? Only you’re still walking, talking, kissing, and definitely needing to pee. That’s the premise for the Netflix Original limited series, Boo, Bitch—and man does it deliver beyond any comedic expectation.

The series comes from Co-Creators, Showrunners, and Executive Producers Erin Ehrlich and Lauren Iungerich, with Lana Condor not only staring in the series but joining them as Executive Producer as well. The series also stars, Zoe Colletti, Mason Versaw, Aparna Brielle, Tenzing Norgay Trainor, and Jason Genao as teenagers in their last year of high school working through all the pressures coming with that—or just being oblivious to them all and going with the popular flow (or in the Afterlifers club’s case, pushing against it).

In Boo Bitch, best friends Erika (Lana Condor) and Gia (Zoe Colletti) are two best friends who have been living their lives under the radar. While Gia is the rock of the friendship, Erika is the one being pushed around by bullies, and pretty scared to rock the boat. I mean, “it’s better to be unseen than seen,” right? Well, over the course of one night the two friends decide to change everything and accept everything that comes their way. Saying yes to booze, to prom, and to opportunities they never saw for themselves. But what begins as their first time seizing opportunities they couldn’t even think of before ends with a truck, a moose, and Erika becoming a ghost.

To start, Lana Condor is a gem. Sure, we knew she was great from her role in the To All The Boys trilogy, but in Boo Bitch, we get to see her show some pretty dynamic range. Over the course of eight 30-minute episodes, we see Erika go from timid to confident to a raging mean girl as she tries to get her affairs in order before she ascends to the afterlife. With her future gone, Erika gets to do everything that she’s wanted to do. She confesses to the boy she’s had a crush on for four years. She confronts her bully. And she makes sure everyone never misnames her again. But with all that growing confidence she also loses the pieces of herself that defined who she was to her best friend Gia.

As a series, Boo Bitch is able to blend Gen Z humor with enough bite to make it catch for older audiences as well. Yes, the series is honed in on its current YA audience, but it manages to hit an all-ages or at least teen and up demographic with ease. Jokes don’t overstay their welcome and the camp of the series is well-thought-out, in a way that feels organic and not hamfisted. In fact, the amount of well-executed crude humor and over-the-top take on social media works here, and while I’m certain it’s because of how Condor sells it, everything just works.

Boo Bitch knows what comedy it’s serving up and it never loses sight of that, even in the more emotional moments including the limited series’ ending. Hitting both emotion and comedy effortlessly, this sometimes rushed series is an absolute treat and even comes with a few tricks thrown in to keep the audience moving. This isn’t a genre-defining series by any means, but it’s still a damn good one, bitch.

Boo Bitch is available now exclusively on Netflix.