To All the Boys’ spinoff XO, Kitty is Degrassi with a K-drama makeover

polygon.com:

Here is the secret to enjoying XO, Kitty, Netflix’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before spinoff show: The sooner you realize it’s actually a completely different ballgame from the mainline To All the Boys movies, the sooner you will enjoy it.

The main trilogy of movies are coming-of-age romantic comedies, which had their own whimsical moments, but were mostly grounded in reality. XO, Kitty, however, fully launches into teen drama territory. It’s Degrassi with a K-drama makeover. And somehow, despite all that, it’s also still incredibly PG-13, with very chaste makeouts and no one raring to go underage drinking. (In fact, the one time they do, it becomes a huge problem.)

High school TV shows tend to be more over-the-top than their cinematic counterparts, but this is a particularly interesting case study since there is a direct movie comparison to make. From the get-go, the plot is already a bit more convoluted and overexaggerated than the comparably straightforward To All the Boys movies. Lara Jean’s younger sister Kitty (Anna Cathcart) decides that she wants to reconnect with her long-distance boyfriend and also learn more about her Korean heritage, so she applies to an international school in Korea. The show wastes no time from her pitch to her dad to getting her on the plane to Korea, waving away any wait time because Kitty did a whole application without telling anyone in her family. Sure!

Anyway, Kitty’s in Korea and she finds out that her boyfriend is actually dating a rich socialite! Gasp! That would be dramatic on its own, but there’s something off about that relationship that’s hiding a bigger secret (and Kitty, with her superior matchmaking senses, detects this from one press conference livestream). Also Kitty’s