Fix: Summer on the beach, exasperating love triangles, moody as hell teenagers
Platforms: Amazon Prime
Source Material
Title: The Summer I Turned Pretty (Summer #1)
Author: Jenny Han
Published: 2009
Series: Summer
Prime Summary:
Belly Conklin is about to turn 16, and she’s headed to her favorite place in the world, Cousins Beach, to spend the summer with her family and the Fishers. Belly’s grown up a lot over the past year, and she has a feeling that this summer is going to be different than all the summers before. The Summer I Turned Pretty is based on the book by Jenny Han, who is creator and executive producer.
FYA Summary:
Okay, full disclosure: back in 2011, I reviewed The Summer I Turned Pretty, and I was… not a fan. Maaaaybe you can tell from lines like this: “Our chemistry deflated faster than a beach ball with a hole in it.” So when the first season of this show released in June of last year, I wasn’t exactly racing to tune in.
But now that the second season has come out, I found myself getting curious. After all, I really dug the series based on Jenny Han’s TATBILB series, and I LOVED the Netflix adaptation of Sarah Dessen’s Along for the Ride. And, like, this show got a second season! It can’t be that bad!
WELP, y’all, maybe it can be that bad.
So Belly has spent every summer of her life at the beach with her family and her mom’s bestie’s family, which includes two boys. She’s pined over Conrad, the oldest son, her entire life, and now that she’s lost her braces and glasses (i.e. pulled a She’s All That), she wonders if she’s hot enough to finally get Conrad to see her as more than a little sister type. The main issue is that, to quote my book review again, “CONRAD IS A DICK.” Y’all this dude suuuuuucks. He’s moody as all get out and sends Belly mixed signals, which she devours because she’s a teenage girl. But she’s also determined to have the summer of her dreams, so she starts dating a local guy named Cameron, who is sweet but so obviously in the friend zone. Oh yeah and then Jeremiah, Conrad’s brother, also has a thing for her? For reasons I can’t quite fathom? (Let’s call it the Bella Swan Effect.) Meanwhile, Belly’s mom is still dealing with the effects of her recent divorce from Belly’s dad and her struggling writing career, and Conrad and Jeremiah’s mom is, surprise, dying of cancer and separated from her husband, who cheated on her WHAT! BEST SUMMER EVER.
Familiar Faces:
Christopher Briney as Conrad, Lola Tung as Belly
Lola Tung, who is indeed quite pretty, is fantastic at capturing Belly as written by Jenny Han. Here’s my take on her character in the book: “Belly struck me as a pretty realistic teenager, and by that I mean, she’s self-absorbed and kind of annoying.” I couldn’t even bring myself to give her the Big Sister BFF Charm, such were the depths of my exasperation. While Tung does imbue Belly with a sweetness, overall she’s still an impulsive ball of hormones and emotions, which makes it tough to root for her.
And then there’s Conrad. Like I said, DICK. Christopher Briney is attractive for sure, but to make this character even remotely compelling, you have to give him some depth, some tortured soul, and Briney simply doesn’t have the acting chops for that. He’s no Taylor Kitsch, is what I’m saying.
Gavin Casalegno as Jeremiah, Lola Tung as Belly
Gavin Casalegno, on the other hand, is a delight in every way EXCEPT for the fact that I felt zero sparks between Jeremiah and Belly. Like, as I watched the show, I found myself wondering if they were diverging from the story and nixing the love triangle aspect, but NOPE! I did, however, enjoy one way the adaptation did change things up: they made Jeremiah bi, and Casalegno’s portrayal of bisexuality felt natural and like no big deal, which is exactly how it should be.
Jackie Chung as Laurel, Rachel Blanchard as Susannah
Of COURSE I’m gonna include the moms! And not just because they are, ahem, close to my age. The writers thought that joke about a dating app for “people over 40” was sooo funny, hahaha HOW DARE YOU. Anyway, I kept staring at Susannah wondering where I knew her from, and surprise, Rachel Blanchard was Cher in the Clueless TV series! She was also on Flight of the Conchords and Fargo but that’s not nearly as exciting to me.
I enjoyed the fact that the series brought the adult storylines more into focus, but I did NOT enjoy the scene where Laurel is all of a sudden boning the local author guy in the front seat of her car. Yikes.
Couch-Sharing Capability: The Summer I Turned Judge-y
I watched this alone, and man I wish I hadn’t! I wanted someone to share my rants feelings with! I wanted validation from another viewer that Conrad just kept sucking SO HARD and Belly could not quit being a CHILD (for a series that’s all about growing up, the heroine does surprisingly little of that) and like what is happening with this debutante ball thing and how is Belly just continuing to drink margaritas with no adults noticing and how many Taylor Swift songs is this show gonna dramatically drop in to trick people into thinking a scene is romantic and like does this family own this house but only spend a month there a year, that seems incredibly offensive?!! So yeah, this series would’ve been way more fun with a partner in cattiness.
Recommended Level of Inebriation: The Summer I Turned Tipsy
If you’re picking up what I’ve been putting down, then you’ve already guessed that I don’t recommend watching this sober (if you drink, obvs). Like, the teenagers on screen are getting lit, why not you?! But with that said, don’t Conrad it, i.e. chug an entire bottle of Chardonnay—not because you need to pay attention, but because that’s just gross and there’s no reason to bring additional misery upon yourself on behalf of this show.
Use of Your Streaming Subscription: The Summer I Turned Cringey
When it comes to TV series about childhood crushes and summers on the beach, I’m usually an easy target. I guess I should’ve known that no amount of adapting could change the fact that I’m simply not a fan of the story itself: I don’t think it’s fun to watch a teenager be SUCH a teenager; I can’t handle a hot guy whose behavior is so NOT hot; and I don’t find a love triangle with only one likable character to be interesting. To quote my book review one last time: “Belly spends the whole book swooning stupidly over Conrad, emasculating Cameron, and jerking Jeremiah around. Swoon fail.”
Swoon fail indeed.
We published this review during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. This work would not exist without the labor of writers and actors, and we support their goals.
I have not watched this, purely based on the fact that I could not take a character named Belly seriously, but it seems I have made the right choice.
Also, as much as I enjoyed To All the Boys, I still haven’t gotten over her sticking with Peter when she could have dated John Ambrose Mcclaren, so I never read any other Jenny Han books.
OTHER MEREDITH ARE WE THE SAME PERSON?!!! John Ambrose Mcclaren was CLEARLY the right choice, and I’ll never forgive Netflix for like, not even giving him a real fighting chance. But yes, it is very hard to take a character named Belly seriously, so much so that I kept writing it as Bella (uh, maybe for other subconscious reasons as well).
I kept trying with this book series because I love TATBILB *so much* (book and movies). I honestly can’t believe Han wrote both the Summer series and the Boys series because Boys is so, so much better.
Well, I will always give snaps to any writer who actually improves over time, so there’s that!