Based on the novel of the same name by Jenny Han (“To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before”), “The Summer I Turned Pretty” is a perfectly distracting piece of summer fluff. Newcomer Lola Tung stars as teenager Isabel “Belly” Conklin, whose family’s annual summer trip to Cousins Beach, Virginia gets shaken up by both family drama and Belly’s burgeoning sexuality.
Every year, Belly, her older brother Steven (Sean Kaufman), and her novelist mother Laurel (Jackie Chung) spend the summer staying at the beach house of rich family friend Susannah (Rachel Blanchard, “Fargo S1”). Belly has had a crush on Susannah’s eldest son Conrad (Christopher Briney) for several years, while his younger brother Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno, CW’s “Walker”) has harbored a secret crush on her. Complicating things further is Cam (David Iacono, “The Flight Attendant”), who is the first boy to show Belly any kind of romantic attention.
READ MORE: Summer 2022 TV Preview: Over 40 Shows To Watch
As the title says, this is the summer Belly has “turned pretty” and boys are noticing. Like the Britney song, she’s no longer a girl, not yet a woman, but she is enjoying exploring the complications that come with romance and dating. Each of Belly’s suitors has his charms. Conrad is mysterious and brooding, while Briney brings just enough interiority to his performance to keep the character from being just a cliche. Jeremiah is confident and flirty, with Casalegno’s piercing Paul Newman-esque blue eyes conveying gallons of emotion. Cam is sweet and thoughtful, although Iacono almost underplays his chill demeanor.
What makes the love quadrangle different from countless others is the (mostly) lack of drama between the boys. Instead, the focus is on Belly’s emotions, her thoughts, and her conflicted feelings. Although the voiceover in which she shares these feelings is unevenly deployed, it’s refreshing to see a story that puts the girl in the driver’s seat and gives her the room to work through the contradictions of adolescence and sexual coming-of-age on her own terms. Tung doesn’t quite have the prowess to always carry the series, though she does well imbuing Belly with a rebellious spirit, as she challenges herself to grow out of her comfort zone.
Along with the requisite YA romantic angst, there’s drama amongst the adults as well. It’s implied that Susannah and Laurel’s decades-long close friendship may have started out as more than that; at one point Laurel’s ex-husband John (Colin Ferguson, “You’re the Worst”) says “there were always three people in our marriage.” Chung and Blanchard have tremendous chemistry and given that both women have jettisoned their husbands (side note: I love this phase in Tom Everett Scott’s career where he just shows up for an episode, absolutely kills it, and then peaces out), I kept hoping the implications would develop into actions. Instead, Laurel is saddled with a one-note hate-turns-to-love relationship with another novelist (Alfredo Narciso) spending his summer at Cousins. Hopefully, further seasons will explore Susannah and Laurel’s connection more deeply, otherwise, it’s skirting dangerously close to queerbaiting.
Sharing similar chemistry, but afforded much more depth is the friendship between Belly and her best friend Taylor (Rain Spencer). Described as being “like a hurricane,” Taylor only appears in a few episodes but Spencer’s charm and electric screen presence makes the case that the character should have been in every episode. While supportive of Belly’s attempt to embrace her sexuality by lending her slinky dresses and gifting her a bikini, she’s also not ready for the growing pains that Belly’s newfound confidence will bring to their friendship. Spencer and Tung easily oscillate between breezy and biting with each other, the way only BFFs can. With Spencer on the cusp of a breakout year after giving a tremendous lead performance in the drama “Good Girl Jane,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last week, hopefully, she’ll get bumped to series regular in the next season.
A few overarching plot points planted in the pilot and stretched throughout the season don’t quite work. First, Susannah snags a spot for Belly in the country club’s debutante ball. While there is a scene or two related to the ball – dance class, shopping for her white dress, etc. – there isn’t enough time spent on either the richness of its tradition or Belly’s investment in the ceremony to make the emotional beats set at the event in the finale episode have the impact that they should. Also, the huge financial discrepancy between the Conklins and everyone else who summers at Cousins is only vaguely explored, again stripping an emotional beat, this time for Steven, of its heft.
Another season-long arc that unfortunately feels tired and cliched is Susannah’s battle with cancer. While Blanchard is more than capable of balancing between Susannah’s dream of one last perfect summer with her family and the darkness she keeps inside, her illness feels like a trope that was outdated when the book trilogy was first published a decade ago. The series does as best as it can to add nuance to the tried trope of someone secretly dying of cancer – a sequence where Susannah and Laurel get stoned and eat literally everything in the house is fun and helps build their friend chemistry – but mostly the source material has it in a headlock. Unfortunately, with where the season ends, there will probably be even more cancer cliches on the horizon.
Although the season ends by tying Belly’s romantic life up in a pretty bow, it does leave several threads left untethered. The show is already renewed for a second season, so the last two books in Han’s trilogy will likely make the leap to the small screen, bringing closure to those loose ends. While “The Summer I Turned Pretty” doesn’t exactly reinvent the breezy teen summer series, it’s a bit like an overly sweet icy pop. Not very nutritious, messy af, but fun while it lasts. [B-]