For years now, Netflix’s My Life with the Walter Boys has kept audiences glued to their screens with an uncomfortably addicting love triangle between lead Jackie Howard and brothers Alex and Cole Walter. It’s not the first time we’ve seen something like this happen. The Summer I Turned Pretty does it masterfully for three seasons before calling it quits. But while the latter knew when to bring the storyline to a close, the former is having trouble letting go. The result is a show that finds itself and its main protagonist struggling to live up to their potential. But what that means for the series and for Jackie (Nikki Rodriguez) feels like two very different things. (Spoilers ahead!)

Season 2 left us on a cliff-hanger: Jackie finally confessed her love for Cole, Alex’s heart shattered into a million pieces, and patriarch George Walter was taken away in an ambulance due to what we now know was a stroke. But what felt like high stakes last season more or less fizzles out within the first couple of episodes.

You would think that Alex would have strong feelings about this situation. The girl he loves betrayed him and left him for his brother – all the while living under the same roof! But no, Alex gets over it quickly. And not just in a surface-level way where the negative feelings are bound to come out later. He genuinely puts Jackie’s confession aside, focuses on his rodeo life, and finally begins to notice his (now unavailable) friend Kiley.

Meanwhile, Jackie and Cole dive headfirst into their relationship. Initially, this part makes sense. Jackie starts to let other things in her personal life slip. Grades fall. She’s distracted during track practice. She’s head-over-heels in love, after all. Cole also makes a few mistakes here and there, but for Cole, that’s not too unexpected. He’s been the screw-up brother before, after all. Still, the two recognize the effect they’re having on each other and promise to do better. Instead of preventing each other from their commitments, they’ll make sure to encourage and support one another. Frankly, pretty mature.

While Cole starts to improve, though, Jackie doesn’t. Maybe it’s because she takes on more than most. But when she forgets to plan her best friend’s birthday, then whips up a last-minute birthday blowout at her Uncle Richard’s (Alex Quijano) temporarily uninhabited house, chaos ensues. Someone breaks her uncle’s extremely expensive table. Then the Walter boys get into a brawl with some of the rodeo guys. Someone calls the police, and everyone gets taken home in a cop car.

Things get harder for Jackie from there. Richard is beyond disappointed in his niece, who’s so preoccupied with her new boyfriend that she’s risking her dreams of going to an Ivy League university. And his reaction only makes Jackie want to rebel more. It feels like a page out of Gilmore Girls, though luckily, there are no pregnancies involved here. As the viewer, you can sympathize with her to an extent – Richard does seem to be going a little far.

But it also feels like a missed opportunity to address the elephant in the room. On the show, Jackie is a Latina who also comes from a privileged background. Her mother was a famous fashion designer. She ran around in high-society circles throughout her life. We even learn she spent summers in Martha’s Vineyard with family friend Elliot (whose main purpose of getting in between Jackie and Cole this season feels extremely forced). But Jackie isn’t in that same bubble anymore, and the truth is she’s trying to get into Princeton, a school whose demographic history suggests she’s fighting an uphill battle (roughly 4.5% of Princeton’s student body is Latina – among the lowest for all Ivies).

Race isn’t ever overtly addressed on My Life with the Walter Boys. Maybe it’s to provide an escape from real horrors like tuberculosis spreading in immigration detention camps or ICE’s new electric shock gloves. Or maybe it’s to stay mostly apolitical and keep the Coles of the world more comfortable. Regardless, even shows that offer a respite from all things awful (such as Heartstopper and Schitt’s Creek) still manage to occasionally drop reminders of our actual struggles.

When we see Uncle Richard’s disappointment at Jackie, some of us can’t help but remember that there’s simply more at stake for the Jackies of the world than for the Coles. In one scene, she skips school to skinny dip with Cole despite knowing she has to be back in time for a make-up exam (and she doesn’t make it back in time). In another, she practically blows a meeting with a college admissions counselor (but eventually gets another shot and makes up for it).

While Richard inevitably lets up on Jackie, recognizing she’s still a teenager who lost her parents early in life, this whole arc would have been strengthened with some acknowledgment (and some education for the viewers) about how much harder she’ll need to work to achieve her dreams. Acknowledging that Cole will always have more opportunities or even having Cole recognize that he needs to be even more supportive would have also raised the bar for My Life with the Walter Boys. Instead, Jackie’s rebellion is just one of many half-baked plotlines this season.

There are other reasons this season fell flat for me. Alex’s rodeo experiences (older guys who want to get him hooked on pills and force tattoos on him) are over-the-top. Nathan’s mini seizure plotline vanishes as quickly as it shows up, proving that it’s unnecessary. Then there’s Isaac and Lee’s screw-up mother appearing out of the blue, trying to make things right (which also felt like it was right out of Gilmore Girls). Add to that Cole’s sudden need for speed via street racing? It was just way too much on the surface with little underneath to really make any of it matter.

Never did I think I would somehow miss the drama of a love triangle between two brothers, but here we are. And while I’m glad that portion of the plot is over, I hope next season of My Life with the Walter Boys (as it’s already been announced) finds its footing and does a better job of making Uncle Richard and the viewers proud.