The Summer I Turned Pretty

The TV series The Summer I Turned Pretty features a messy love triangle, plenty of drama, and a LOT of Taylor Swift songs. The show has become a word-of-mouth sensation, with fans obsessing over whether they’re Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah. Now in its final season, the Prime Video series is based on a series of books by Jenny Han (To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, XO Kitty). To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. http://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Stephen Thompson?

  The TV series "The Summer I Turned Pretty" has become a word-of-mouth sensation with fans obsessing over the show's central love triangle. As the show approaches the end of its third and final season, it's time to break down some of its messy dramas and explore how one TV show can afford all that Taylor Swift music. I'm Stephen Thompson. Today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we are gearing up for the finale of "The Summer I Turned Pretty" and determining whether we're Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah.

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• 2:01Stephen Thompson?

  Joining us today is NPR music reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. Hey, Isabella.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  Hello, Stephen.

• 2:07Stephen Thompson?

  How many people call you Belly?

• 2:09Speaker 03

  No one, thankfully, no one.

• 2:12Stephen Thompson?

  Oh my god.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  And I would correct them if they did.

• 2:15Stephen Thompson?

  I'm happy for you. If that's what you want, that's what I want. Also with us is co-host of Slate's Icy YMI podcast and former Pop Culture Happy Hour producer, Candace Lim. Hey Candace.

• 2:25Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 2:26Stephen Thompson?

  It is a pleasure to have you both here. So The Summer I Turned Pretty is based on a bestselling trilogy of books by Jenny Hahn. Both the books and the TV show tell the story of a young woman named Belly, who's coming of age alongside two brothers named Conrad and Jeremiah. Their families are deeply intertwined by lifelong friendship, but as the kids get older, their romantic entanglements grow increasingly complicated, forming a love triangle that threatens to shatter lifelong bonds. Lola Tong plays Belly. As season three begins, she's in college and happily dating Jeremiah, who's played by Gavin Castellano. Conrad is played by Christopher Briney. He's moved across the country to pursue his dreams

• 3:07Stephen Thompson?

  of becoming a doctor. But old feelings aren't so easily buried, especially once Belly and Jeremiah announce their plans to get married. The Summer I Turned Pretty is streaming now on Prime Video, and we should mention that Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Isabella, I'm gonna start with you. What do you think of The Summer I Turned Pretty?

• 3:26Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, I am obsessed with this show. I am obsessed.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  That's right. Speak on it.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  I think about it all the time. I wake up possessed on Wednesday mornings to watch the new episode, and then I'm watching Team Connie Baby edits for the rest of my week. So, safe to say, I love this show. And to be fair, I'm not going out of my way to watch this. The algorithm has gotten so powerful that it knows, I love a male character written by a woman whose entire purpose is to yearn.

• 3:55Stephen Thompson?

  Conrad does a lot of yearning this season.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  My TikTok algorithm, it's just clips of Conrad with like, role model songs over it. And I quite enjoy it.

• 4:04Stephen Thompson?

  He has definitely perfected sulking while sneering.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 4:09Stephen Thompson?

  It is truly a gift. Okay, so you are pro.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  Pro.

• 4:12Stephen Thompson?

  This show, and fully obsessed. And we'll get to this, but you are Team Conrad.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  I am Team Connie Baby. Confirmed, yes.

• 4:19Stephen Thompson?

  All right. I'm here as a journalist.

• 4:21Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 4:22Stephen Thompson?

  Gathering information.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  As you should.

• 4:24Stephen Thompson?

  Candace Lim, what do you think of the show?

• 4:26Speaker 04

  First off. Team Connie Baby. Don't get me started, all right? Team Connie Baby, clerk it. And so my situation is that I actually really resisted the show for the first two seasons. I knew it was happening. I actually read the books like when I was 12, but I didn't really love them because they were just like so much going on all the time. But, look, I am in the Jenny Han universe, right? Ex O'Kitty, To All The Boys I Loved Before. I'm familiar with her work. I clocked into season three, not only because I had nothing better to do, but also because I feel like there was just so much steam coming off season two. This built up anticipation that I was seeing on social media and all of my timelines that I was like, honestly, I could use some community right now. I could use something to get excited about, something to get feral about, something to

• 5:11Speaker 04

  like talk to strangers about at bars, which is something that has happened to me all summer. And so I binge watched the first two seasons, have been watching season three, and I officially wake up every Wednesday going, it's Rage Bait Wednesday, guys. And what I do first thing in the morning, 6:00 a.m., I watch it. I watch the whole thing, right? Text my friends. I have been going to watch parties every single Wednesday at this bar in L.A. Fun fact, the music supervisor for the show actually went to one. It was very cute. Went to one last night.

• 5:39Stephen Thompson?

  We will get to the music of this show.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have a lot of questions.

• 5:41Stephen Thompson?

  That music supervisor has a lot to answer for, such as where did you get all that money? Go ahead.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  I know. And I have been going to these watch parties to re-watch it again with more people because the reactions, the way people really watch this like sport in a way that is somewhere between like a political debate and literally like the Super Bowl, has been so fun. And I think that is actually one of the things about the show. This is a show where I actually love the audience and community even more than the show. I gotta be honest. Show, sometimes bad. And that's okay. We move on. We're obsessed. And I think it's because the show is not candy, it is ice cream. It is smooth. You really have to be in the mood for it. One bite is enough to keep you interested, and you keep it in the freezer for a reason. Because mommy's going back, okay?

• 6:25Stephen Thompson?

  And there are some people, like with ice cream, who need to take pills in order to consume it.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Hell, yeah. Correct, Jeremiah. Just kidding.

• 6:35Stephen Thompson?

  All right, I'm late to this show. I'm also, some might say, outside of this show's target demographic, though I am, as a music guy and as a person who covers the Billboard charts as part of his gig, fascinated by this show's deployment of music, which is very, very aggressive and extremely well-funded. Yes. It's one of the first things that really jumps out about this show is that, like, there's Taylor Swift in almost every episode. Yes. But there are also huge hits by Olivia Rodrigo and Harry Styles. It definitely feels like the height of the Billboard charts circa 2022 or 2023, which is to be expected. There's always a kind of a long runway in the making of any TV show. And I

• 7:19Stephen Thompson?

  definitely found, as I tuned into the show, I was able to kind of immediately lock in to the mix of high drama and low stakes. And, you know, any love triangle, the writer is going to have to kind of have machinations in order to level the playing field. And so it might seem like one brother is zooming way out ahead of the other brother. Well, we're going to have to kneecap the brother that's in the lead and make that person much less likeable. And so, you know, they're kind of constantly toggling back and forth between the two. And I did find myself engrossed by it. I will say, and I want to get your thoughts on this, the first season of this show is seven episodes long, and that was

• 8:01Stephen Thompson?

  from 2022. The second season, from 2023, eight episodes. Yeah. This season, this third and final season, is 11 episodes, and they are long. Very. The penultimate episode of the series is 71 minutes long. Yes. Does this show feel bloated to you? Absolutely. Yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  I will say, like, because I also, like Candace, read the books when I was younger. I kind of have some recollection of what happens, but not entirely, because I was like 13.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  There is so much going on that feels so unnecessary, and it almost always feels like they're saving the stuff that you actually care about until the very end, which I understand, because they're trying to keep you hooked. They want to keep you guessing for what's happening next week. But there are so many characters and storylines I frankly could like walk away from and return and would just not care about anything that I missed at all. It feels very, very bloated.

• 8:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, Cam Cameron, shout out to him.

• 8:58Stephen Thompson?

  What about Taylor's mom's hair salon?

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Oh, my God, not the Lucinda, not the Lucinda.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  I do not speak of Lucinda.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  Um, no, I think you're right, Stephen. When I talk to my friends about the show, a lot of times we'll go like, that was a filler episode, that was a filler character. I think what I have been feeling personally is that if I were to rank the seasons in terms of how much I love them, season three for me is number one. I've been loving it. I think everything is doing something to move the plot forward. I love it. Season one is my second choice, season two I hate. Season two I hate because, hate, H, because season one and season three are really about summer. We're living in it. Day one, we land at Cousins, we're in the beach house, we're having a good time, we're going to the pool, ah, Conrad. And it happens very linearly. Season two, there's a few things that happens.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  First off, spoiler, Susanna, who is the mother of Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher, she does succumb to cancer and she passes away. But we don't watch her die, we watch people talk about her after the fact. And season two, this is really weird thing where all of the biggest moments, this is, I'm just gonna say it, Belly and Conrad having their first time, this is Susanna dying, this is everything that happened in prom that led to Belly and Conrad's breakup. All of these big moments happen in flashbacks. And so it almost feels like we're catching up on a friend who clearly has done so much and not told us, and we feel really left out.

• 10:23Stephen Thompson?

  Right.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  In a way, the show became a game again, where a season two felt like a recap, you know?

• 10:27Stephen Thompson?

  Hmm. Season two is also bogged down in like the fate of the house.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  Real estate law, that's all they talked about. Kira Sedgwick, like, thank you so much for appearing, take your check and go home. To Kevin.

• 10:40Stephen Thompson?

  It's interesting. I realized, you know, we've talked about the show this long enough. I never actually answered the question of whether I am Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  Oh, oh, I'm so scared right now. Yeah, let us know. Speak up.

• 10:50Stephen Thompson?

  So I am on Team You've Got Your Whole Life Ahead of You.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  Okay, valid. And say that.

• 10:55Stephen Thompson?

  So I'm on Team Laurel.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 10:57Stephen Thompson?

  Who is Belly's mom, played by Jackie Chung. Laurel, definitely the character I found myself relating to the most. Which, you know, is to be expected. I'm coming into this show, you know, from a different generational perspective. But I eventually just found both of these boys to be total drips. Probably Jeremiah more than Conrad. Jeremiah is, I mean, he is the younger brother, but he is the one who seems far less ready to be married.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 11:24Stephen Thompson?

  And is kind of a bigger baby. Well, no, that's not true. They both are. He's a louder baby.

• 11:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:30Stephen Thompson?

  He's a screaming baby and Conrad is a sulking baby.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  Correct. I will say, like, one of the funnest things about, like, watching this show as a community, both online and like going into watch parties, is, look, let's talk about the last episode we all watched, which was when Belly is fully in Paris. She is emerged. She's French. The part of the episode, which I really actually thought was my favorite episode of the season, the part of the episode that the entire house just cheered like crazy ding dong ding dong, is when Belly chooses neither Jeremiah or Conrad. And she makes out with this very intriguing man named Benito. And she really, in that moment, kind of chooses herself. And I think that is actually very emblematic of what the discourse is really around

• 12:14Speaker 04

  and what the show is actually really about, which is Team Jeremiah and Team Conrad as a conflict. I think it is a distraction from what this show really is trying to do and say, which is, this show is not about them. This show is about Belly. And the frustration that we feel both as viewers and critics is that we are watching someone for three seasons not only take a long time to finally turn pretty, but we are also watching someone constantly choose not themself or choose the option that us as older people would not want ourselves to choose. And I think in that way, there is something so fiery about this season, which is that I think they're landing the plane. I think I like her going to Paris. I like what's happening.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  I'm hearing that there are some diversions right now between like the book and what happens there and what happens here. And I think that's exciting and kind of interesting because when Jenny first wrote the book way back then. A different time. Apparently, they were all white. That's a whole other thing. But now, we're kind of in different territory. And I like that. I like that energy.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  I agree completely. I feel like for a protagonist of a show, Belly has had the least character development of almost anyone in these series. And I feel like we know very little about her to have watched this many hours of her life. And it's been so frustrating to watch her entire personality revolve around these two boys. I mean, also, the fact that they're brothers. We're not even gonna get into that.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  That is quite crazy.

• 13:40Stephen Thompson?

  And the fact that they've all known each other since early childhood, which, how would they not seem like cousins or stepbrothers to you? But anyway, go ahead.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Exactly. I agree. In my mind, they're all related, and this whole thing is weird. However, I've been waiting for Belly to A, develop a personality, and B, think about anything other than these two men for all three seasons. Which is why I've also, I love the Paris episode. I loved when she told her new hot fling that he needed to leave because she wanted to sleep in her bed in her apartment alone for the first time. That was actually like so moving. And I do think something I loved about the Paris episode, I think there's been a lot of criticism throughout the show of how they dress Belly. I think there's been a lot of like comments on her fashion, the fact that it feels like she's just dressing to trends. Sometimes the clothes fit her a little bit strange. Like, something has been a little bit off about the way that she's dressed for most of the show.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  And this episode, she has like face framing layers. She's wearing lipstick. Her clothes are significantly more grown up. Like, you see that she's finding herself reflected in all of these different ways, not just in her decisions, but like how she's presenting herself to the world. And also, I really appreciated that she's not just like having a blast and everything's easy and perfect for her in Paris. She's like struggling a little bit. And that growth is so important to this character that like, we haven't seen that for her at all.

• 14:58Stephen Thompson?

  I think you've both touched on something that's really, really important about this story. And why I, I agree with you so wholeheartedly that it's so important to get her to Paris and dating somebody other than one of these two jokers, is what these two boys, and I'm going to keep calling them boys even though they're played by like 27-year-olds, whatever.

• 15:19Stephen Thompson?

  Conrad and Jeremiah represent idealized visions from her childhood. They represent a subconscious and maybe even conscious decision to cling to what you have always known. And you cannot, maybe you can, but it is a long, long road. It's very, very hard to live like a fully realized life when everything stays rooted in your childhood. There are just going to be parts of you that don't grow and develop. And so the fact that for so much of this series, she views the world as a binary choice between these two guys who are so similar. They share DNA.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:01Stephen Thompson?

  And like, you need to get out and meet other people and find out what you want.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And in that way, I mean, this show always reminds me of another love triangle teen drama, also filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, which is One Tree Hill. Yes. And I think so much of what propelled that show forward was also when all these characters finally leave. Even if we don't see them far away and like they eventually do return to this place, which I'm sure we'll maybe see a return to Cousins Rebellion at some point. But yeah, I think the like going out, seeing the world, meeting other people, becoming your own person has been really missing for so much of the show. And it's so refreshing that we finally are getting to see that. Yeah.

• 16:38Stephen Thompson?

  This show has needed a Rumspringa for a while.

• 16:43Speaker 04

  There is something very incestuous about the way that Susanna, to me, was very like, I made my boys for you, Belly. I have presented you the best option. And then she dies and then she's like, you figure it out. Uh, but yeah, I think that actually now that I think about it, the show is also not even about Belly. It's really about what Belly could become, which in our perfect world, the person we root for, the version of her we want her to be is the Laurel of her life, is the Susanna of her life. And once again, Conrad and Jeremiah, it's not about them, but we love to talk about them.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  I do think the biggest love story in this entire show is Laurel and Susanna. And I'm sometimes sad we don't get to see more of Laurel's grief because I saw TikTok that was like, they soulmate it so hard. They passed it down to their kids. And I was like, yeah, that is really accurate. Like, it was always them. And like the fallout of that, I wish we saw more of, but not the point of the show, I guess.

• 17:37Stephen Thompson?

  I guess. One last question that I wanted to ask is just in general about the music, because the music is, in a way, a character on the show. I mean, it's almost like Taylor Swift is a character on this show. There are so many Taylor Swift songs. Where do you two come down on the way this show deploys music? Because in its own way, as colossal as its music budget is, the music can be as on the nose as the music in Love is Blind.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:07Stephen Thompson?

  Where like, oh, he slept with a character named Lacey. Now we're going to hear Olivia Rodrigo's song, "Lacey", about how she's jealous of a woman named Lacey.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  It's too much.

• 18:17Stephen Thompson?

  Do you ever find like, maybe this show has too big a music budget?

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I mostly hate the music on the show. I often find myself groaning at the needle drops because they're too on the nose. And I think like, I don't know, I really believe in music and film being a way to discover music. And sometimes to me, it feels a little bit lazy that it's just like Jeremiah and Belly kissing for the first time. And "Are We Still Friends?" by Tyler, the Creator starts playing. Like, it's just a little too obvious. And I feel like the music has to actually do something for itself, other than reinforce what we're already seeing and hearing the characters say to each other. And it, to me, historically, the show has failed to do that a lot. And I find the music to be mostly annoying. But I will say there have been moments, especially in season three, that I've appreciated the needle drops. I mean, the false god with Conrad and Belly, like,

• 19:04Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  That was great. The wild horses during the peach scene. That episode in particular, I feel like it did something really interesting, bringing in the Rolling Stones and all of this older music to the Belly-Conrad storyline and trying to frame their love as like timeless almost, rather than like present and like youthful, as it does with the music with Jeremiah and Belly. So like, there are interesting decisions, but overall, I find the music to be completely overwhelming. And also, it moves too fast. I feel like there have been moments where it's like, needle drop, one line, another needle drop. Like, the pacing of the music, I find to be very frustrating.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  Music can turn the stakes up. This show in general. V Low Stakes. This girl is just trying to go to Paris.

• 19:47Stephen Thompson?

  All these people will be fine.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  Absolutely. They're going to go to Cousins and they're gonna leave Cousins. And we're all Cousins. But I think the show, that's kind of the engine that it pulls. It's like, it's trying to tune you in, even in those seconds when you lose out and you're like starting to fade. They're like, ah, Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift. And I think that's why people watch. I mean, to be fair, when I re-watch the show, I leave it on my like TV. I just let it go. And sometimes I will like turn my head because I'm like, oh, my God, they just played the what? My Taylor Swift! And I'm like, dance moment, continue back to work.

• 20:15Stephen Thompson?

  I have such a love-hate relationship with the way that this show deploys music.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:20Stephen Thompson?

  But at the same time, sometimes it's really effective. And if you were just like looking to marinate in, you know, like what people are actually listening to, this is a good way to do it. I do think it's fascinating, the way that Amazon is set up. You know, because this show airs on Amazon Prime. And when you pause it, you know, you not only have the opportunity to buy products, but you'll get like, here's the actor who plays the character that's in this scene. Here's the song that is playing right now. And so there are so many needle drops that it's nice to be able to kind of pause and be like, wait, who is this? A soundtrack album for this show would be like a 20-hour.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So I've been thinking a lot and asking around, trying to figure out why this summer, the summer of 2025, is the reason that like this show has really exploded into this like Team Conrad, Team Jeremiah, 24/7/365 sphere, especially online. I have two thoughts and definitely give me your theories as well. My first is just that I wonder if the love triangle is something that as a pop culture, media-infested society, we haven't fully felt satisfied with. The first being like, is it that this is the closest thing we have to Challengers, a movie I still love? Is it that Materialist, which came out earlier this summer? Did that leave us unsatisfied and we just wanted to take that energy and like put it somewhere else?

• 21:41Speaker 04

  I've been thinking a little bit about, is it possible that this is a show that kind of posits two people, Conrad and Jeremiah, like candidates with no election, with no politics to it, in a way that I actually compare a lot to American Idol, where, you know, it didn't really matter if David Cook or David Archileta won, both of them would walk with a record deal, but also they wouldn't necessarily change the state of our country. And I think in a similar way, like Conrad and Jeremiah, they live inside this box called my Amazon Prime account, and no matter what they do, no matter what Belly does, it's not even actually up to me. There is a loss of agency from the audience because the show is written, the show is made, the show is done, and it's gonna upload what it uploads.

• 22:23Speaker 04

  And so I was thinking about that, but then I was also thinking about the fact that like, is it possible that right now, the TV landscape is really flooded with a lot of like highbrow stuff, right? Yeah. Like The Bear, Severance, The Last of Us, those are shows that really take up the oxygen. Is it possible that the show has a gravitational pull because it feels like happy hour? Like, you can walk in, not be prepared, you don't need to be deeply informed on the lore, you don't need to be in the subreddits. There is something very calming in this time, in this summer, in this year, of like having a show that's a weekly drop, that has this baseline for everyone to kind of congregate around, and then on top of that, the TikToks, which Isabella, I'm on the same timeline as you, babes, where just, it never stops,

• 23:05Speaker 04

  I think about it all the time, and it feeds me in a way where I am not full, you know?

• 23:09Speaker 03

  I think the escapism is a huge part of it.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  I think the very competitive nature of the love triangle, and not to get too deep into it, but the different kinds of masculinity that Conrad and Jeremiah present, I think is something that like, it's just really compelling to like, have this thing that you're invested in and you're cheering for someone, but yeah, it's just like not that deep, and it's not like, making this huge commentary on capitalism and labor and all of these bigger things that like, that's the real world, you know? It's kind of like Emily in Paris, like, smooth brain, happy hour, like. Right. I just wanna turn on the little show, what about the girl wearing the little outfits? These boys, and honestly, I don't see how this show can end well because to me, like, the brothers of it all is just like, there's no bouncing back from that.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  I know.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  It's toxic, but like, I can't look away.

• 23:55Stephen Thompson?

  For my part, I just boil it down to four words: high drama, low stakes.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Mmm, absolutely.

• 24:01Stephen Thompson?

  All right, well, we want to know what you think about The Summer I Turned Pretty. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Candace Lim, Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, thanks so much for being here.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 24:17Stephen Thompson?

  This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Liz Metzger, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. One more thing, these days, a lot of listeners are asking us how they can support the show, and there is a super easy, totally free thing you can do. It takes literally two minutes. Go into the podcast app where you're listening to right now and rate and review this show. That's it. Doing that helps other people find Pop Culture Happy Hour. That helps us keep going. Thank you so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.

• 25:01Speaker 00

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