First love never ages
Why are teen dramas like The Summer I Turned Pretty such a hit with “older” audiences?
- Caroline Frost
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On paper, there’s not a lot to admire, and much to irritate. The sight of privileged, perma-tanned American teenagers driving brand-new SUVs to college, immune from economic hardship, their biggest problem who to escort to the debutante ball, would usually be enough to have me switching off and taking out a subscription to the Morning Star. However, purely in the interests of research, I’ve joined the millions watching The Summer I Turned Pretty, Amazon Prime Video’s mega-hit that reached its big finale after three seasons on 17 September.
Lola Tung as Belly. Prime Video
Adapted by Jenny Han from her 2015 bestselling novel, the series follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin as she spends her summer, as always, at the beach house of her childhood family friends, the Fisher boys. Except, as Belly – you guessed it – turns 16, she must decide which brother to set her heart on: Conrad – unknowable, moody, lifelong crush (bad); or Jeremiah – sunkissed curls, “eyes like the ocean”, best friend (good). All this because Belly has turned “pretty”… in whose eyes, I wonder? This anti-feminist message is something fudged early on with Belly’s defiant “We are all pretty in our own ways”. Yeah, right. Worse, the shorthand for her transformation is the hackneyed removal of her glasses – nonsense, when youngsters have been wearing specs as fashion items since the 1990s. And Belly’s dilemma is played out in endless conversations on the beach, then conversations about conversations by the pool… it makes Love Island feel like Plato.
It's a mixture of novel and very, very familiar
Why, then, is this the biggest show on Amazon Prime, with a reported 25 million worldwide viewers tuning in for the third season’s premiere in July, with many more sharing endless clips on TikTok and memes across social media? Of course, the central love-triangle premise is one as old as Ken-Deirdre-Mike Baldwin (or possibly ancient Greek myth). And so passionate are fans for their favourites – numbers for “TeamConrad” and “TeamJeremiah” apparently evenly split – that Prime Video have had to issue an edict, reminding viewers to abstain from bullying rival camps: “Let’s keep the conversation kind this summer.”
More surprisingly, a huge portion of the audience isn’t the swooning youth market, but equally swooning “older” (25- to 54-year-old) women. Manhattan bars are hosting weekly watch parties for female viewers at least a generation older than the show’s characters. What’s the appeal? Forty years ago, this story would have been told in a heavily soundtracked film, invariably starring Molly Ringwald and assorted members of the Brat Pack. It would have been Winona Ryder asking her elderly How to Make an American Quilt relatives whether to marry her lover or her best friend. But such films don’t get made any more; instead viewers of every age get 27 streaming episodes of Belly gazing out to sea, to the sound of seemingly tailor-made Taylor Swift songs.
Lola Tung as Belly and Gavin Casalegno as Jeremiah. Prime Video
Nods to the past are everywhere. One beach volleyball scene even has a ball-spinning Conrad in close-up, Iceman-style, while Belly and her friends celebrate the need, the need for speed! Even if these youngsters, born a generation after the release of Top Gun, don’t know what they’re doing, their producers certainly do.
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Like so many successful creations, The Summer… is a mixture of novel and very, very familiar. In Manhattan bars and beyond, the show’s fans get to bask in timeless tropes and surroundings, while admiring, even envying, the supernatural confidence of 2025’s young women. Gavin Casalegno (who plays Jeremiah) told The New York Times: “This story brings people back to their childhoods and summers and first loves – it’s super relatable” (as he drives off in his shiny SUV). Will Jeremiah be the chosen one, will it be his brother, or will Belly – whisper it – find a third way? Millions will be tuning in to find out. I might have to join them, in the interests of research, obviously.
Authors
Caroline Frost
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