This is a case of “slip and fall” as I’m diverging from movies and accidentally slipping into and have fallen for the Netflix series, “Outer Banks.”

Growing up in a small summer tourism town, I went back in time as I watched the cliques of kids drawing lines in the sand, never mixing. The series takes place in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, or the OBX as they refer to it, comprised of two groups of people–the haves and the have-nots. Their terms, the poor kids live “in the cut” and are called Pogues and the wealthy country club kids are the Kooks. It is this delineation that plagues each group as they attempt to make their final days of summer “epic.”

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The story revolves around John B. (Chase Stokes), his missing father, and a sunken treasure ship from more than a century ago called The Royal Merchant. John B. and his friends, all misfits in their own unique ways, band together to support John B. in continuing the research his father started. Of course, this leads to murder, mystery, and mayhem far beyond the simple jealous antics of teen angst. Well, there’s plenty of that as well.

“Outer Banks” is a lot of fun, even if you can predict what’s going to happen as the characters are fun to get to know. There’s the hot-headed boy JJ (Rudy Pankow) who has a lot of family issues, Pope (Jonathan Davies), the bright boy who is counting on a scholarship to get himself out of “the cut,” and Kiara (Madison Bailey), the intelligent, caring, environmentalist Kook who went to the dark side to hang out with this group of Pogues. Balancing out this group are the condescending rich kids Sarah (Madelyn Cline), Topper (Austin North) and Rafe (Drew Starkey). The two polar opposite groups have plenty of issues to confront and are not limited to just social class.

What makes this even more fun is the chemistry among these kids. They’re engaging and invite you to care about them and their situation. Their friendships test the limits as they focus on an end goal and jump through more hurdles than you can imagine. And there’s plenty of really bad guys in this show. Their stereotypical portrayal would be comical if there wasn’t the blood and brutality, but like most kids’ movies and television, there’s no mistaking who the bad guys are! It’s a lot of over-the-top character portrayals, but who cares? The actors make you believe they really are in these situations and you can’t wait to see what happens next.

“Outer Banks” has been my go-to series while I run on the treadmill. I owe a big thank you to Netflix for helping me attain my exercise goals each day and for providing a series I look forward to. My only warning is that even though this is a teenager-centric series, there’s a lot of drug use. As my 25 year-old daughter said, “Why does Hollywood think every high school kid should be portrayed with this kind of access to drugs and alcohol?” And as a mom, that was music to my ears!