There's such an obvious twist looming over the Netflix limited series Boo, Bitch right from its first episode that it can be tough to focus on anything else. When the truth about what's going on is immediately obvious to every viewer, it's a bit infuriating that it takes the characters six episodes -- out of eight total -- to figure it out. Boo, Bitch is lively and fun to watch despite its often frustrating plotting, and that's a testament to the clever writing, led by showrunners and co-creators Lauren Iungerich and Erin Ehrlich, and the endearing performances from stars Lana Condor and Zoe Colletti.
Iungerich and Ehrlich previously worked together on Iungerich's underrated MTV comedy series Awkward, and Boo, Bitch often resembles a version of Awkward with a supernatural twist. Condor stars as high school senior Erika Vu, who's spent four years hiding in the background, only hanging out with her best friend Gia (Colletti). Like the main characters in Booksmart, Erika and Gia decide that they can't leave high school without having at least one crazy night of partying, and their experiment turns out to be a huge success. Erika connects with her longtime crush Jake C. (Mason Versaw), and finally gets people to stop calling her by the wrong name.
Then she gets hit by a truck and dies. Drunk and walking home from the party, Erika and Gia find themselves in the path of both oncoming traffic and an errant moose. When they wake up hungover the next day, they return to the woods by side of the road and discover Erika's feet sticking out from under the moose, like the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz. Erika realizes that she died without ever having truly lived, but since she hasn't yet passed into the afterlife, she decides to make the most of her remaining earthbound existence.
Thanks to some online research and some consultation with the weirdos in their school's afterlife club, the friends determine that Erika must have unfinished business left to take care of before she can ascend to the next phase of existence. First, Erika decides that her unfinished business is kissing Jake, and later she adds going to the prom to the list. That gives Boo, Bitch the same narrative momentum as many other high school stories, counting down to the prom along with Erika's theoretical departure from the earthly plane.
Boo, Bitch is funniest in its early episodes, when Erika and Gia are figuring out the particular quirks of Erika's afterlife, in which she seems to have the same physical presence she did when she was alive. "How can I be dead and still peeing?" she asks with exasperation, still saddled with all the normal bodily functions of living people. Since everyone around her can see and hear and feel her, no one treats Erika like she's a ghost, but she finds death liberating, allowing her to seize all of the opportunities she was previously afraid of. Soon she's dating Jake, throwing parties, telling off mean girl Riley (Aparna Brielle), and building up her social media following.
Condor played a very similar character in the To All the Boys movies, a shy wallflower who blossoms when she starts dating a popular hunk, but Erika takes things even further, eventually turning into exactly the kind of vain popular girl she once despised. Jake is a bit bland, and the central relationship in Boo, Bitch is really between Erika and Gia, whose friendship is tested by Erika's increasingly self-centered behavior. Erika is so likable in those early episodes that her eventual turn to the dark side feels extreme and abrupt, even fueled by the reveal of the big, obvious twist.
Still, Condor and Colletti have great chemistry, and Boo, Bitch should be a breakout role for Colletti, who's every bit as charismatic as her co-star. Iungerich and Ehrlich, who developed the series from a version by original co-creators Tim Schauer and Kuba Soltysiak, come up with a range of colorful supporting characters, portraying a heightened but believable teen world. Erika and Gia's tendency to speak in elaborate acronyms is an exaggerated version of Gen-Z slang, but like Awkward, Boo, Bitch endearingly creates its own lexicon while only rarely seeming like it's trying too hard to be cool.
With occasional detours into dodgy subplots, Boo, Bitch builds to a sweet emotional climax, honoring the central friendship and even offering some understated observations on grief and maturity. Although the episodes are short, Boo, Bitch still probably could have worked better as a feature film, which would have gotten the twist out of the way more quickly and efficiently. It still has enough charm to envision it as a potential ongoing series, a throwback to supernatural sitcoms like Sabrina, the Teenage Witch but with sharper writing. The creators provide a satisfying, definitive ending, though, with wit and enthusiasm making up for the narrative bumps along the way.
All eight episodes of Boo, Bitch are now streaming on Netflix.