The steam from your sizzling comfort food subsides as you helplessly scroll through a bleak Netflix feed. I know the feeling. I often find myself rewatching the same shows. I mean, has anyone watched a truly new good series these days? Look no further because I have an awful show for you to watch that will leave you unable to look away.
XO, Kitty is a romantic comedy spinoff of the To All the Boys movie franchise. It follows Kitty Song Covey (Anna Cathcart), the younger sister of Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor). The matchmaker turned hopeless romantic moves from Portland, Oregon to the Korea Independent School of Seoul to reunite with her long-distance boyfriend, Dae Heon Kim (Choi Min-yeong), and embark on her own high school adventure.
Dae and Kitty met in the movie To All the Boys: Always and Forever, when Kitty visited Seoul with her family, marking the start of their long-distance relationship. This spinoff explores Kitty’s relationships and their nuances. The first season reveals Kitty’s struggles moving across the world, starting at a new school and confronting issues of love, family, personal growth and friendship.
Released on Jan. 16, the second season portrays Kitty’s second semester at KISS as she further explores her mother’s secretive past and attempts to connect with her Korean relatives. As the season unfolds, Kitty faces the complexities of teenage life and convoluted drama. She continues exploring her sexuality, relationships and friendships, all while juggling her rigorous academics.
Despite ending her last semester almost flunking out, getting expelled and destroying her entire friend group, Kitty had the intention of having a drama-free semester. From the onset, Kitty discovers she is living with her crush, her crush’s partner and a sweet new girl, Stella (or so we thought). And not to mention, she ends up in a complicated situation with her ex-boyfriend’s best friend. The B-plot of the season begins after learning more about her mother, when Kitty begins searching for Simon, her mom’s first love, with whom she was formerly classmates at KISS.
The simplicity of the writing in a world of complicated character entanglements makes this show addictive. Every inch of my body shutters each time Kitty embarrasses herself. On her first day, she had a traumatizing roommate struggle, was academically humbled, knocked down a cupcake tower and proceeded to trip on the cupcakes. Now, I reflect on my Orientation Week at Cornell and immediately feel better about myself.
Like traditional teen rom-coms, this show highlights friendship and relationship instability. This new season highlights the trials and tribulations of the teenage years. With each passing episode, Kitty is subject to confronting her feelings and exploring herself further.
Spoiler alert: the writing in this show is laughably bad, with an overexploited rom-com theme and moments of forced diversity. That said, XO, Kitty is highly entertaining — not for its deep and eloquent script, but because it is so bad that it is good.
