Spoiler Warning: Spoilers for season 1 of Sterling Point ahead.
Sterling Point, an original young adult series created, written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Megan Park, debuted on Amazon Prime on Aug. 5, with eight episodes. It follows Annie Jacobson, an ambitious yet bumbly, 17-year-old girl who travels to Muskoka, Ontario, after receiving news of her estranged grandfather’s passing to discover a long buried family secret.
Though that sounds rather ambiguous, it is a deeply charming, intimate and heartwarming series, and if we’re being honest, has quickly become one of my favourite shows.
Not only does it have some of my personal favourite cinematic techniques, such as a cyclical beginning and end, callbacks and meaningful motifs that the show-runners actually remember (thank God some filmmakers actually care about continuity). It also features unexpected and compelling plot twists, while at the same time being genuinely funny — in a laughing-out-loud sort of way.
There are also a couple of really refreshing qualities to the acting that are maintained throughout. Sometimes characters will speak over others, and rather than reshoot the scene — which risks stripping it of its awkwardness and imperfections — is precisely what moves this away from just another show, and into something more candid and relatable.
It also captures accurate young adult speech — repetitive with an abhorrent, yet realistic amount of “likes” peppered into dialogue, and borrows slang that teens actually use today. It presents youth not in the cringe, childish way, but in the authentic and raw one. Intimate scenes linger, letting the “embarrassing” and natural moments breathe and simply exist — not to be critiqued or deconstructed — just to be experienced. It truly feels like you’re peering into these character’s core memories as they’re being formed.
In fact, Park confirmed that she welcomed “input” from cast members “… on everything from the script to the wardrobe,” according to CBC.
There’s a cozy familiarity that the show replicates, like when you stumble upon an old family picture from a photo album at your grandparent’s home, or the smell of a crisp, early dawn, as sleepy darkness gives way to a soft fog.
I personally adore how chaotic, disorganized and tangled it all feels; it resembles a shoelace that’s formed way too many knots over time, in the perfectly imperfect way life is. Decisions are led by emotions, and actions are carried out because of personal desires, not because it fits the plot.
At heart, this show is about love in all of its shades: romantic, platonic and familial. It illustrates the validity of a found family, while embracing the growing tension that bubbles from underneath, the spaces consumed by silence that aren’t discussed, but are simply shown to us.
Annie and Ramona, mimic two charged particles, drawn to each other, and plagued by curiosity for the life the other has lived.
Annie mourns the singular memory she has left of her mother, and envies that Ramona is biologically hers: the same blood, DNA, each strand of hair on her head and those eyes. She craves that same connection.
And Ramona is envious of this whole other world that Annie was given, and the time Annie spent with their mother, that she never had. Above all, Ramona yearns to be chosen and unconditionally loved.
By the end, Ramona and Annie both realize they actually do have what the other always wanted.
Annie is just as much Goldie’s daughter as Ramona is, because her mother chose her, chose to love her — that is enough. This is the same decision Annie makes — choosing her sister. What they both missed, they found within each other.
And now, Ramona is more connected to Annie’s family than ever, while her mother isn’t there anymore, her brother, sister and father are.
While these particles are heading in different yet familiar directions, both geographically and emotionally, they remain connected. They part not only to fulfill the pieces of themselves that were missing and return whole, but to understand one another more deeply — because to love, truly, is to let go.
At first, Annie wakes up in her New York City bedroom, frantic and conflicted, but her new chapter begins with her jumping into the water. Reborn, she enters the same waters that her mother and sister have grown to know.
And Ramona wakes up in that same fancy New York bedroom, trading a life where unexpected waves created an unstable sense of belonging for one with solid, dependable ground.
And while these particles seem different at first, repelling when they draw too near, they are intrinsically bound.
Even though they want to connect and desperately merge, one issue remains: they can never truly understand each other until they finally diverge. They needed to meet, to learn, love and to leave in order to understand. And through it all, they have and will always remain connected — sisters.
The sequence where Annie is recounting her only living memory of her mother, and as if watching a film, observing moments she will never have with her, is so special for many reasons, but here are my favourites.
When Goldie apologizes, Annie forgives her, accepting that she isn’t there anymore, but Annie also recognizes that her loss had meaning. Like an invisible string, Goldie’s passing was part of a bigger web, that sought to bring Annie and Ramona together all along.
That sequence was also a form of catharsis for Annie. Those “memories” were fictional, but her mother wasn’t — she wasn’t merely a fleeting moment of nostalgia, she was a person: flawed, but beautiful.
For Annie, this was her way of coping and forgiving her mother’s mistakes, her failures, her absence and the hole left behind, because by the end of it, she was loved and that love will always remain: through her, through her sister and through the island.
As of Aug. 20, Amazon Prime has renewed the series for a second season, which means there remains infinitely more to explore within the beautiful world of Sterling Point.