PUBLISHED
November 02, 2025

KARACHI:

My Life With the Walter Boys (MLWTWB) sat on my watch list quite for some time and I didn’t start seeing it until not so long ago, when a feisty tweeny mentioned to me that she had enjoyed the book of the same name by Ali Novak, on which the show was based. She is learning to ride and the show offers, horses, a ranch, a rodeo, bronc riding, all things she loves. At the time, it didn’t occur to silly me that ofcourse it was a show for younger audiences, that would ofcourse have a young cast and would explore young-people issues. It was one of those in-between nights when you suddenly notice that your big, fat watch list had slimmed quite a bit, and the remind me list is gaining a few, so I decided to give MLWTWB a go.

Now who doesn’t love pine-dotted snowy mountains, huge ranches and horses? Anyone would be as easily pulled in as I was. And that makes quite an accurate description of Colorado, which I have never been to and am curious about. Hence I settled down to watch the first season, found it an easy watch, fairly intriguing and a visual treat.

Ali Novak is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of contemporary young adult novels. Interestingly, she started writing her debut book, My Life with the Walter Boys, when she was only fifteen and since then, her work has received more than 150 million reads online. Soon after season 1 was released in December 2023, the series became a member of Netflix’s billion-minute club, after drawing in millions of viewers, Deadline Hollywood, an online news website reports. It’s not difficult to see why MLWTWB became one of Netflix’s biggest hits in no time.

In the backdrop of a fictional town called Silver Falls, in the breathtakingly beautiful Colorado, which in actual fact was Alberta in Canada where it was mostly filmed, this is a teen romance that tells the story of Jackie (Nikki Rodriguez), a high school student forced to move from New York to Silver Falls, after she loses her parents and sister in an accident. I found that to be the most intriguing angle for which I kept watching the first season, followed by the second one was been released recently.

Jackie is then entrusted to the care of her godmother and her mom’s closest friend, Katherine Walter (remember the iconic Sarah Rafferty in Suits?), Jackie finds herself living on a farm with nine other children, seven of them boys and Katherine’s husband, George (Marc Blucention)

This family drama peppered with young romance explores how a young girl deals with the loss of her family and finds it quite challenging to be accepted in a new, predominantly male one. After the devastatingly personal tragedy, as Jackie moves to a small town from a bustling city such as New York, she confronts both awe and jealousy, she finds friends and frenemies, she misses the glitzy city life and adjusts to the rustic life, but the close-knit world of the Walter family ranch, the Walter boys and their parents help her consciously and subconsciously through her unexpected and unprecedented journey of self-discovery, healing and finding herself.

The young audiences easily connect with these themes and Jackie’s struggle to deal with her trauma. Within the framework of the ranch in a small town, there are other story tracks so that older and young characters navigate life with their own problems such as property issues, family and heritage values, gender issues or setbacks such as not being able to continue sport due to a debilitating journey and adapting to difficult changes and choices that life throws at anyone.

The series is an entertaining mix that portrays themes of grief and resilience, love, jealousy, sibling rivalry, a small-town community camaraderie, and chaotic family dynamics.

Let’s hope that in the three seasons, all characters and their stories get played out well enough to reach a plausible conclusion. The performances are ace, especially the young lead Rodriguez who is a young actor in substantial layered role that moves from tragedy through different levels of self actualisation.

With a heroine as ultra-sensitive as Jackie, how was it possible for a love triangle not to develop between two brothers Cole (Noah LaLonde) and Alex (Ashby Gentry) and herself! Alex is the younger one, who is stable and mature, while eye-candy Cole is passionate, bold and daring, both seasons have plenty of cliffhangers, twists and turns, and apparently the audiences have enjoyed it so much that a third season is being planned for release next year.

According to showrunner Melanie Halsall, the third season might focus more on the stories outside of the main love triangle. So far the stories revolved around younger characters, but the writers and producers feel that in the third season, they want to explore more intergenerational perspectives.

Although Novak originally set her bestselling book in Denver, most of the series has been shot across three regions of Alberta, Canada. In Calgary, scenes were set at Girletz Rodeo Ranch, Heritage Park Historical Village, The Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Splitsville Glamorgan and the University of Calgary.

In the rodeo scenes where Alex learns and performs bronc riding, real rodeo action was used where Ashby Gentry and Noah Lalonde actually rode horses after they were trained by real-life wranglers and spent time at actual ranches and rodeos to used authentically portray their characters’ experiences.

Without a spoiler here, I can’t keep from you the juicy bit about Noah Lalonde and Nikki Rodriguez actually dating since last year, although we can keep guessing who Jackie finally chose between the two brothers at the end of the upcoming third season.

Every time I watch a series that views life from so many angles and perspectives, I wonder what keeps our channel, drama companies and screen writers from expanding their horizons, waking up to a karrak doodh-patti, and to start exploring themes other than the beaten-to-death storyline of a woman’s struggle to get married, followed by the struggle to stay married because of warped in-laws or girl wants to get married or girl doesn’t want to get married!

And our very limited and a little bit warped storylines are watched by all age groups. There is nothing that is specifically created for young people or mature minds. Grandparents and kids sit alongside each other to watch a play whether it is talking about incest, rape, marital abuse, domestic abuse, extra-marital affairs, and infidelity, you name it.

For instance, an orphan’s tale in our productions would entail pity, sorrow, and tears for the girl being an orphan. The word ‘yateem’ meaning orphan in Urdu would be repeated in every third line in the script with the prefix or ‘bechari’ meaning ‘tsk tsk poor girl’! Also it would be everyone’s mission to mistreat and abuse her and bucketfuls of tears would follow. Jackie on the other hand hardly ever cried, the approach was positive, courageous, mature, and deep.

The only instance I can remember is how perfectly Haseen Moin crafted drama series Tanhaiyan, in 1985, where the story began with two girls, Zara (Shehnaz Sheikh) and Sanya (Marina Khan) lose their parents in an accident. There was no bawling, just Zara’s serious and intense personality paired with Sanya’s jovial one in a story of how they start a new life, pay off their father’s debts and re-purchase their family house. It was progressive, positive and brilliantly entertaining and gripping. Somewhere, somehow, we lost that standard, the ability, the mindset. Sad.

Dear screenwriters and content creators, there is a ginormous and colossal world out there to traverse, and thousands of ideas, stories, angles, perspectives and themes to feel curious about, and write on. While younger people content is a story for another day, we are waiting to see our creatives to turn out something new and exciting.