After having 25 million viewers the first week Season 3 came out, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” has taken the internet over by storm. The Amazon Prime show, based on Jenny Han’s book series, has become a weekly ritual for many people. Many viewers anticipate watching the weekly episodes as soon as possible. Some viewers wake up as early as 5 am to start watching before school.
The show in general is one of the best TV I have seen in a while. The amount of detail and effort put into it is crazy. Jenny Han, Whose been very involved in the TV show production, truly made the show one of the most memorable and talked about shows of the 2020’s. Every episode that has come out so far is so perfectly made and accurate to the books. I have never been as excited for a show than this one. I have also never been so glad to see the fall of a character as much as Jeremiah Fisher.
“The Summer I Turned Pretty” follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin, a teenager who goes to “Cousins Beach” every summer with her family. Also there is her mother’s best friend, Susannah Fisher, and her two sons Jeremiah and Conrad Fisher. Throughout all three seasons, Belly constantly finds herself caught between the two brothers and their relationships. These have sparked up a famous internet debate – Team Jeremiah or Team Conrad?
As the show grows larger everyday, so does its fan base. Almost immediately after the weekly episode drops, many fans go straight to their social media and start making videos debriefing everything that had happened in the episode. Some start making edits and memes about the characters.
For example, in episode five, Jeremiah is very insistent on having a special “two-tier dark chocolate cake with a raspberry coulis filling and a mirror glaze.” This has led the internet to start a meme with Jeremiah being “Willy Wonka” and being in love with chocolate. Some went as far as saying he wanted to spend more money on the chocolate cake than Belly’s wedding ring.
On Thursdays, after everyone has had the chance to watch the weekly episode, all you hear about is the debate between the two brothers. The end of Season 2 was the highest point of the Conrad vs. Jeremiah debate, leading many people to getting in heated debates on who treated Belly better and analyze every little behavior that a brother does. This far into Season 3, most fans are Team Conrad.
Jenny Han is also notorious for having hidden meanings in her shows and how it correlates with the people and relationships in the show. One that people have picked up on is the constant use of Red and Blue. In the first trailer Jeremiah was shown while the Taylor Swift song, “Daylight”’s lyrics were playing, then Conrad was shown when another one of Swift’s songs, “Red,” was playing. Each of these songs allude to love being blue or red.
The eighth episode was the end of the book series and viewers had no idea what was coming up in the last three. The eighth episode left us off seeing Belly, who just ended her engagement with Jeremiah and spontaneously left for a solo trip to her previous study-abroad location, Paris.
While there is only just one episode left, you can still hop on the “The Summer I Turned Pretty” train. It is available on Prime Video and the show will keep you on your toes and is definitely binge-worthy. The last episode to come out is Sept. 17 and will mark the end of a major fanbase and era in Gen Z.
