For the past three years the TV show ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ has grown in popularity, taking the world by storm.
Originally a book series, ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’, by author Jenny Hahn, follows a young Isabel (Belly) Conklin as she navigates the challenges of her youth. Every summer, Belly goes to her mother’s best friend’s beach house where she spends the summer with their two boys, Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher, who eventually become her love interests. Through the series, Conklin goes through high school, college, and it ends with her being a young adult.
One of the bigger reasons why people are attracted to the show is because of the love triangle that takes place within it. Junior Nailah Daniels states, “The first thing that got me into the show was the love triangle between Belly, Jeremiah, and Conrad. I’ve been following it through all three seasons ever since.”
In the show, Belly has been in love with Conrad her entire life, but suddenly Jeremiah takes an interest in her, which she pursues throughout the first season. At the end of the first season, Belly realizes she is in love with Conrad and tries to pursue a relationship with him, which includes flashbacks throughout the second season, while her main love interest in the second season is Jeremiah. Finally, in the first half of the third season, she is engaged to Jeremiah until Conrad confesses his love to her and she calls off the engagement.
One of the biggest debates concerning the love triangle is the question of which brother is better. They both have their strengths and flaws but here’s what I’ve noticed while watching the show.
Conrad is a character who always feels the need to be the hero which is recognized by Belly throughout the show. In the third season of the show, Belly is talking to Conrad about his “hero complex” stating, “…maybe that’s the next thing you should tackle with your therapist, your hero complex.” One of his biggest flaws, in the first two seasons of the show, is Conrad shutting down Belly whenever he feels upset. For example, when his mother in the show, Susannah Fisher, had cancer, he forgot Belly’s corsage for her prom and walked out of her prom, not explaining his grief of his mothers cancer to her. Though Conrad possesses this weakness, he also possesses a very prominent strength: growth. In the third season of the show there is a time jump of about four years, after the time jump, the audience sees Conrad going to therapy to hopefully fix his weakness. Throughout the third season, Conrad also starts opening up to Belly more. He admits his feelings for Belly twice in the third season, once before Belly and Jeremiah’s wedding, then when he visits Belly in Paris, and even if Belly rejected him, he didn’t take it back or apologize for his feelings.
On the other hand, we have Conrad’s brother Jeremiah. Jeremiah is commonly overlooked in the show. For example, the series shows lots of Conrad’s grief surrounding his mother but not a lot of Jeremiah’s. In the second season of the series, Conrad and Belly go to Thanksgiving together as a couple, not considering that Belly’s recent ex-boyfriend, Jeremiah, would be there, and he could be hurt by that. The fact that Conrad overshadows Jeremiah’s accomplishments and griefs makes Jeremiah grow insecure surrounding Conrad throughout the show, which becomes one of his weaknesses. Whenever Jeremiah gets into an argument with Belly, it is common for him to try to prove that Belly thinks Conrad is superior to him. For instance, in season three of the series, Jeremiah gets into an argument with Belly surrounding a trip to Cabo and brings up the argument, “…and I’m sorry that I’m not some straight A, overachiever, going to med-school like Conrad.”
No matter what side you are on, we all must agree that both brothers helped Belly become the woman she was by the end of the series. The brothers’ strengths were there when she needed them, and their weaknesses helped her realize what she wanted in a relationship.
