When it comes to high school, particularly senior year, the stakes of every choice feel like life or death. Between getting paired with a competent lab partner to securing the hottest prom date, nothing is low-key — particularly when it’s senior year, and you only get one chance to leave a lasting legacy. But what if your final days as a high school senior actually were life or death? In Netflix’s Boo, Bitch, starring Lana Condor and Zoe Margaret Colletti, a high school senior, who’s lived a very low-key life safely under the radar, decides to finally take charge of her story and say yes to the epic life she’s been missing out on only to wake up the next morning as a motherf*%king ghost. Now, she’s racing against the clock to sort out her unfinished business before she gets trapped in the mortal realm forever. What kind of legacy would you leave under that kind of pressure?

Reminiscent of Disney Channel’s ’90s classic Susie Q meets Booksmart meets Mean Girls, Boo, Bitch is a delightful limited series exploring young love, frenemy rivalry, and true friendship. Erika Vu (Condor) and her best friend Gia (Colletti) have spent their entire high school career leading up to the pilot episode staying very much in the shadows. Ever since Erika accidentally injured mean girl Riley (Aparna Brielle) at freshman orientation and Riley branded Erika with the nickname Helen Who — a moniker that has haunted Erika for the past four years — Erika has made a concerted effort to stay out of the spotlight. But when the yearbook mockup lists Erika’s name as Helen Who, Erika finally realizes she’s let this one fleeting moment of bullying define her entire high school career. She realizes that she can’t leave high school without taking control of her narrative and reclaiming her own identity. She and Gia, her prom-loving BFF, make a pact to finally participate in the high school experiences they’ve each desperately sought to avoid all this time, and that’s where the real fun begins.

Their lowered inhibitions eventually lead to utter catastrophe. Erika wakes from their one and only night of debauchery to realize that she’s now a ghost. Suddenly, questions cascade out. What kind of ghost is she? Does she have powers? Why can people see her? Why is she still here? Does she have unfinished business? If so, what is it? Erika and Gia work together to try and figure out the mystery of what’s going on and ultimately uncover how they can help Erika ascend. What’s at stake if they don’t is her getting trapped in the purgatory of being a ghost who has never settled their unfinished business and is cursed to walk the mortal realm unseen for eternity. As Erika steps further and further into the new, more confident persona she thinks is the answer to her ascension out of this mortal plane, an epic rift cracks wide open between her and Gia that becomes a heartbreakingly poignant allegory for loss.

Where Boo, Bitch really excels is in balancing its silly, irreverent tone with the moving message underlaying all of its wild antics. Aside from the affecting scenes between Erika and Gia coming to terms with the fact that their time together is effectively running out, the secondary characters surrounding these best friends also work through legitimate motivations. Mean girl Riley begins the series as that quintessential Regina George-esque queen bee. Yet, as episodes progress, exhausting familiar tropes of the mean girl’s boyfriend leaving her for the girl next door, we’re left with moments of real discomfort and agony as Riley wrestles with vulnerability and incrementally inches her way out of her unhealthy bullying patterning.

Even the love story between Erika and Jake C. (Mason Versaw) reads as more nuanced than the typical teen romance. Jake C. is certainly introduced as that well-worn good-looking, sensitive popular kid archetype trapped in a terribly unhealthy cool-kid-coupling. He meets Erika, and she’s a breath of fresh air. But, taking a note from Mean Girls and running with it, as Erika strays further and further from the identity that first intrigued Jake C., he questions what it really was that he liked about her anyway. Because this is a limited series and not a movie, we get to spend more time lingering in those uncomfortable, hurt, questioning moments with Jake C. than we otherwise might, truly feeling the consequences of the impressionability of youth. Feeling how painful it can be to have such strong feelings for someone who weeks later has evolved their personality so much that they’re no longer recognizable.

Can romance survive between two characters traversing dueling identity crises?

While the show does develop these moving moments and gives these primary relationships opportunities to veer and bloom in unexpected ways, the characters on the outskirts read as less effective. Jake C.’s arc with his friends in particular, while obviously intended to have an antagonistic feel, moves into uncomfortable territory. Moments like when they aggressively and repeatedly pressure Jake C. to stay in his dysfunctional relationship with Riley for such superficial reasons distract from the show’s more nuanced, progressive storylines. These scenes give these characters a caricaturish feel. Additionally, the magic club that Erika and Gia turn to for answers also strays far into the campy realm, pulling focus in an ungrounded way. Though these moments do fit with the established tone of the show — that quirky, irreverent air — they ultimately detract from the show’s stronger, more emotionally affecting elements.

Within the context of the teenage comedy genre, Boo, Bitch is a fun, dark, quirky, poignant mystery. It’s a show about loss. Loss of life, loss of love, loss of friendship, loss of identity. And amidst all that loss comes the message that while circumstances may be ever-changing, our commitments to honoring the people we love and to honoring ourselves by taking risks and living out loud are what matter most. Bookended by its strongest moments — those between best friends Erika Vu and Gia — this series sees Condor truly shine. Her wide range as an actress is on full display, gifting audiences moments of delightfully weird desperation mixed with deep, grounded grief. The friendship chemistry between Condor and Colletti will have you scrambling to the phone to catch up with your long-lost high school bestie. Boo, Bitch is a campy limited series with a little bit of everything that’s absolutely worth a watch.

Rating: A- Boo, Bitch is on Netflix now.