Warning: This column contains spoilers for “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
I can almost picture it like it was yesterday: My best friend and I snuggled under our covers, watching “The Summer I Turned Pretty” over Teleparty the summer after our freshman year of high school. Our lives were consumed by whether our friends were Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah, and we constantly fought over who was better.
Now, in what seems to be a full-circle moment, my roommates and I have just finished watching the last episode of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” in the Fall of our freshman year of college. After following the show for four years, it is surreal to have finished it for good. It’s almost sad to talk about the final season of a show that carried me through high school.
For me, season three as a whole was significantly better than the first two seasons. The acting, especially from Lola Tung and Christopher Briney, definitely impressed me as I was watching the show. Tung’s ability to make Belly seem like she was really convincing herself she was in love with Jeremiah was astounding. Briney made Conrad seem much softer and gentler than he was in other seasons; I felt like I was watching a real man truly yearn over the girl he had loved his entire life.
I really enjoyed the last two episodes of the season, “Last Year” and “At Last,” specifically because they felt the most mature out of all the episodes of the entire show.
In previous seasons, Belly’s whole world has revolved around Jeremiah, Conrad and Susannah. She barely had time to think about her own desires and goals and didn’t really seem to have a personality outside of the Fisher boys. This all changes when she moves to Paris.
In “Last Year,” Belly realizes that there is more to the world than Cousins Beach. She struggles to find herself in Paris, grappling with making new friends and learning a new language.
However, it is this struggle that really humanizes Belly, and it’s what made her a more enjoyable character for me. While many called these episodes “filler,” I feel as though they were needed to flesh out Belly’s character. Instead of just focusing on Jeremiah and Conrad, she becomes more worldly and expands her friendship circle to include the lovable Gemma, Max and Celine. She also finds sparks with a new love interest, Benito.
In “At Last,” we see the romantic tension come to a head between Belly and Conrad as they profess their love for each other in Paris and come back home to Cousins Beach. The crux of the series comes in the form of Belly running to catch Conrad as he leaves on the train for Brussels. I really enjoyed the overlay of Taylor Swift’s “Out of the Woods,” especially because her music has been the heartbeat of the series.
But while this was the pinnacle of the series for many, I still found it lacking. The audience barely got snippets of Conrad and Belly's interactions, and the ending was left very vague. Do they get married? Does Jeremiah leave for San Francisco with Denise? What about the rest of the family?
In terms of the overall show, my expectations were never very high. In the first season, I thought Belly was a bit of a brat, Conrad was a bit standoffish and Jeremiah was just plain annoying.
The second season did not bring much improvement in my eyes. Yes, we did get the loss of Susannah (who I genuinely liked, I will admit), and we saw the characters’ reactions to that, but it felt like more of the same ideas as season one. Intense fighting between Jeremiah and Conrad over Belly, Conrad and Belly having a brief moment of romantic tension, all for it to fall apart at Belly’s prom.
At that point, I was getting very tired of the show and didn’t care for the boys (I was more Team Cam Cameron than anyone else). My best friend would beg and plead for me to give it another chance, sending me TikTok edit after TikTok edit of Belly and Conrad. I even tried reading the books, but I stopped after beginning the third book because I genuinely could not believe Belly would actually say yes to Jeremiah’s proposal.
So, when season three came out, I was a little bit skeptical. The production value looked like it had increased, and I begrudgingly trusted that the show had improved over time.
I think it is safe to say that I have been pleasantly surprised.
With the announcement of the new movie, fans are hopeful that there will be more scenes of Belly and Conrad’s life post-Paris, including their wedding. As for my roommates and I, we definitely look forward to watching the movie together.
Isabella Cabrera is an 18-year-old UF political science freshman.
Isabella Cabrera is an 18-year-old UF political science freshman.
