This summer, while most of you were planning your lives around Love Island episode drops and psychoanalyzing each couple in TikTok comment sections, I was doing something far more embarrassing: watching, rewatching, and rewatching (again) Conrad Fisher edits in preparation for the third and final season of The Summer I Turned Pretty.
The show returned on July 16 and has been consuming my thoughts ever since. Not in a normal way, either. I know everything from book spoilers and alleged Easter eggs to fan color theories. (Apparently, blue symbolizes Jeremiah and red symbolizes Conrad. And you know what? Sure!) Mind you, I’m a 29-year-old adult with bills to pay and a husband at home. I’m also a writer, so it feels sacrilegious to be this obsessed with a show in which a character utters the line “I wanted to grab her and hold her and kiss the shit out of her” during what is supposed to be a heartfelt monologue. Much of the dialogue is so cringeworthy I will often pause an episode and watch something else as a little palate cleanser, only to turn TSITP back on ten minutes later. I can’t remember the last time I was this invested in a series. So why does this questionable show about a love triangle between three teenagers — two of whom are insufferable — keep me coming back for more?
When I watch The Summer I Turned Pretty, I have to imagine myself living in a mansion in Cousins Beach, the fictional town inspired by idyllic East Coast destinations like Cape Cod and the Hamptons, with both Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher, two brothers competing for the heart of Belly Conklin. Under that delusion, lines that would normally give me secondhand embarrassment like “I evict you from my heart” start sounding poetic, wholesome, and heartwarming. Suddenly, I’m hanging on to every word and counting down the days until a new episode drops — and I know I’m not the only one, because 25 million others tuned in to the season-three premiere. Belly is fulfilling every girl’s childhood fantasy of hooking up with the hot family friend (or friends, plural, in her case), so of course it’s fun to spend my summer living vicariously through her.
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Coming-of-age stories usually hinge on relatability, but this one is aspirational. Belly is the most normal teenager in the world who gets to live in a mansion on the beach every summer in her family friends’ second home. She is immature, annoying, and kind of a brat at times (weren’t we all?), yet somehow two of Cousins Beach’s most eligible brothers are pining for her love, baring their souls left and right in confessionals that would have made teenage me absolutely melt. I’m also hooked on the dichotomy between Conrad and Jeremiah, the black-cat boyfriend versus golden-retriever boyfriend trope. Thankfully, sweet Conrad is seen as mysterious and complex because he walks around as if he carries the weight of the world on his privileged shoulders, like a Gen-Z Edward Cullen, not because he is an asshole with deep-rooted commitment issues like Chuck Bass. I would be remiss not to mention that Conrad was the only brother perceptive enough to notice his mother was dying from cancer while also clocking the fact that his loser father was having an affair.
If you are caught up, you know things have only gotten worse for Connie Baby. He spent the four years between seasons two and three yearning for Belly, only to find out that she is now engaged to his brother (at his mother’s memorial event!). You might think that because I’m a Conrad stan, I would be tapping out at this point. But no: Series creator Jenny Han did me a favor by letting Jeremiah be even more childish this season than he was in the previous two. It’s too delicious not to watch Jeremiah and Belly’s train wreck of a relationship, and I’m still holding out hope that Belly will get a goddamned grip and choose the man who believes that their love is infinite, not the super-senior who proposed to her with a pea-size ring and once nearly decapitated her with a firework. I will be tuning in week after week until this sick and twisted love triangle comes to an end. Stay strong, Connie Baby.
