The Summer I Turned Pretty was the show to watch this fall. It was the epic conclusion to three seasons; viewers finally got to find out who Belly ended up with and how the show was going to tie up all those messy loose ends. For this review, I am incredibly biased, and this is all just one long opinion; however, I have reasoning for all of them. Be warned, there are spoilers ahead, so let’s dig into the messiest show I’ve ever watched.
The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 starts three years after we left off in Season 2, and Belly is a junior at Finch College, still with Jeremiah. For context, Jeremiah had a lot of support going into the season, with the fan base having about a 50/50 split of support for Belly to end up with Conrad or Jeremiah. After this season, both Belly and Jeremiah took a lot of damage and hate from their fans, resulting in Conrad being the only character left with any kind of support. The season starts out red flags waving, with Belly discovering she got accepted to a study abroad program but hiding it from Jeremiah because she knows he wouldn’t want her to go. This was the first of many events that completely destroyed Belly and Jeremiah’s relationship, as well as their backing from the fans.Â
The second big event of the season was Belly finding out that Jeremiah had cheated on her in Cabo over Spring Break. I’m not going to spend too long on this because in short, Belly broke up with him for a day before she forgave him, and they got engaged. Oh, and this was at the hospital Steven was in after he got into a car crash because Taylor broke up with him due to her fear of caring about him. Doesn’t it make sense that if you just found out your boyfriend cheated on you, you would not only accept his apology the next day, but also his PROPOSAL? Don’t worry, this is just the first of many horrible mistakes.
The middle of the season was just a giant dumpster fire that I don’t have time to cover, but will discuss very briefly. The whole middle of the season was incredibly frustrating, because we just watched the characters make decisions that, honestly, made no sense. I understand that characters are going to mess up and make bad choices, but no person, fictional or real, would make as many as Belly. Not only does she date and kiss and break up with both brothers too many times to count, but she also decides to move to Paris to “find herself.”
I would like to start by saying that I don’t hate Belly’s French arc, I just think it’s unnecessary. The French arc symbolizes Belly’s rediscovery of herself and what she truly wants. She struggles at first to find her footing with the language barrier, to find a job and fit in, and to have her most important belongings stolen on her first few days in Paris. I think that all-in-all, it was a good idea, it just wasn’t executed well. We get a short and shallow two episodes of Belly in Paris. We don’t see her rediscovery; we see her struggle in one episode and perfectly fit in the next. Without any context, we are just supposed to accept that she is French now, with friends, a nice apartment, and no language barrier. There was a significant time jump in between the last two episodes of the show, and it’s understandable that her character changed and found her footing, but it was rushed, and the viewer didn’t get to see any of it.
The biggest problem with Season 3 was the finale by far. The finale was as if the creators dropped you in the middle of the next season and said, “Good luck!” It jumps all over the place, it creates conflict for no reason, and only resolves half of it. For example, Jeremiah is very stressed about debuting as a chef to a large crowd of people, and it’s an event that has been in the works for months. This would be important because it shows that he has found his purpose in life, but the whole thing was never mentioned until the last episode. They stressed this event a lot in the finale, emphasizing its importance, but failed to make us care by never building it up. If an event is supposed to be that critical, make me care. Mention it in prior episodes, build it up throughout the season so that we are looking forward to it and rooting for his success. Instead, I was sitting there watching, wondering if I was really supposed to care.Â
The ending of this show felt like the writers sat in a room and asked what the fans wanted, before shoving it all into an hour. All of the characters that we like have to end up with someone, so Jeremiah and Denise end up together. Once again, that came out of nowhere in the finale. Steven and Taylor had to end up together, but they didn’t have enough conflict in the middle of the season, so they fought over Steven moving to California for work without telling her. Can you guess why I don’t like this plot? You probably guessed right; there was no buildup again. Finally, the biggest thing the fans wanted was for Conrad to end up with Belly. The show teased this throughout the season, but nothing really happened until the last thirty minutes of the finale. A lot of people loved the ending because Belly ended up with Conrad, but I felt unsatisfied. In the last fifteen minutes of the show, she breaks up with him again before running to him, and after that conflict, I just didn’t want to keep watching.
In conclusion, I enjoyed The Summer I Turned Pretty as a whole, and I think that it is dramatic and interesting enough to recommend to people, but I was disappointed in the end and left wondering what could have been if the creators had taken more time to build a layered and complex story. For TV shows, I love finales because they put all of the pieces together, usually leaving me an emotional wreck like Arcane did. But instead, I watched the whole show build up to an ending that didn’t deliver.