Why The Summer I Turned Pretty has appealed to all ages as Belly finally makes her choice
Why are teen dramas like The Summer I Turned Pretty such a hit with "older" audiences?
Belly has made her choice – finally. After three seasons, 26 episodes and several summers since that one she turned, fatefully, pretty, the heroine of Amazon’s biggest show has plumped for…. Conrad.
This, of course, means, she’s left his brother Jeremiah nursing a briefly un-healable broken heart (except it appears to have already healed), but there was always only going to be one victor in this battle for the heart of Isabel “Belly” Conklin – despite what the tireless and passionate fanbases of each brother would have you believe.
Millions of fans across the world tuned in on Wednesday morning for the much-hyped denouement, prompting the question – in a crowded market of young adult romance drama (both fictional and contrived reality) – how has The Summer I Turned Pretty become such a mega-hit with not just youngsters but older viewers too?
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 being who to escort to the debutante ball, would usually be plenty enough to have me switching off and complaining about kids these days and their first-world problems.
Adapted by Jenny Han from her 2015 bestselling novel, the series follows Belly spend her summer, as always, at the beach house of her childhood family friends, the Fisher boys. Except back in season 1, Belly – you guessed it – turned 16 which meant she had to 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 turned “pretty”… in whose eyes, I wonder? This anti-feminist message was something fudged early on with Belly’s defiant “We are all pretty in our own ways”. Yeah, right. Worse, the shorthand for her transformation was the hackneyed removal of her glasses – nonsense when youngsters have been wearing specs as fashion items since the 1990s. And Belly’s dilemma ever since has been played out in endless conversations on the beach, then conversations about conversations by the pool... it makes Love Island feel like Plato.
Why then is this the biggest show on Amazon Prime Video, 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 time. So passionate are fans for their favourites – numbers for ‘TeamConrad’ and ‘TeamJeremiah’ apparently evenly split – that Prime Video has 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 predictable 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? 40 years ago, this story would have been told in a heavily-soundtracked 100-minute 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 anymore; instead viewers of every age get 27 streamed episodes of Belly gazing out to sea, to the sound of seemingly tailor-made Taylor Swift songs. 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.
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).
He’s right. None of us forget our first loves, as all of our star-crossed trio would no doubt attest.
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