Fans of the hit Amazon Prime series “The Summer I Turned Pretty” tuned in on Wednesday to watch the highly anticipated series finale, yours truly included. The phenomenon, based on the book series by Jenny Han, premiered in the summer of 2022 and centers around a seemingly never ending love triangle between Isabel “Belly” Conklin and brothers Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher.
Belly spends the whole of her young adult life desperately yearning for the day that her last name is Fisher, and the brothers seem to forget that any other female exists once they realize that Belly has turned pretty (unless, of course, they find themselves in Cabo). Belly spends years bouncing from brother to brother to a whale-crazed side character and then back to the brothers. Yet, at the end of Season 2, it seemed as though she made her ultimate choice in favor of the younger of the brothers, Jeremiah.
Season 3 transported us to the spring of Belly’s junior year of college, and she and Jeremiah are still together and very much in love. Following a tragic accident, secrets revealed and “love” proclamations, Belly and Jeremiah find themselves engaged, sealed with a kiss and the world’s most expensive nub of tinfoil. Die-hard and self-proclaimed “Team Conrad” fans (once again, including yours truly) were devastated at the idea of a marriage between Belly and a Fisher boy not named Conrad; however, all hope was not lost. Season 3 had a point. That point? Stop the wedding and break up Jeremiah and Belly. After the failed wedding, Belly flees to Paris, and at the end of the penultimate episode, Conrad is seen flying to Paris to go get his girl.
The season finale opens with Conrad embracing his inner Lonely Boy (Mr. Daniel Humphrey himself) outside of Belly’s minute Paris pad. After a night of love and clarity in Paris, Belly and Conrad ultimately confess their feelings for each other and set their intention to fulfill the promise of being “infinity.”
Countering Conrad’s successful day, back across the pond in Cousins Beach, Jeremiah is becoming a chef? The only good part about this storyline that took up far too much screen time is the food itself. Why and how Jeremiah became a chef is honestly an anomaly to me. As much as I am a firm believer that Amazon Prime is the world’s best streaming service for book to television adaptations, this quite frankly choppy — no pun intended — and thrown together plot ruins the passion of Paris which is honestly the whole reason I continued to tune in week after week.
At the end of the day, a majority of viewers wished this episode would be a lovefest between Conrad and Belly, and while I was fed, I am not full. The cuts between passion with a capital everything, our infinity, and our resident Food Network star made the momentum of the episode run dry — not to mention that the Food Network star is now once again in a relationship, only this time it is with Denise. Unfortunately, Denise is De-nice, the definition of mid.
The only saving grace of Jeremiah’s new cooking show is the power couple behind the scenes. At many points over this final season, I have been rooting for two entities: Taylor and Steven for making it through, and Junior Mint (a stuffed polar bear) because I love stuffed animals. Thank God Taylor and Steven are still together. If Amazon broke them up, the Lyons Hall watch party would have heard from me far more than they would have liked.
Ultimately, this season as a whole fell flat for me. I loved to poke fun at the absurdities (marriage with no credit score and a proposal in front of the hospital, just to name a couple), but I left most episodes wanting more. Don’t get me wrong, I did in fact have my jaw on the floor when I heard Taylor Swift’s “Dress” start to play when Belly and Conrad got back together. That sequence gave me life. It was the literal wind beneath my wings.
This show has been a part of my life for four summers now. Four summers ago, Notre Dame was just my deepest hope and dream, and now, I’m over a quarter of the way through my time here. Life is too fast not to spend it doing what you love with the people you love, so even though I am ready to say au revoir to “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” I will still be sat with the popcorn in hand for the money grab of a movie they’re apparently planning to make.
