The third season of the Amazon teen drama has become a certified phenomenon, encouraging watch parties and intense fan reactions
I
t’s after work on a Wednesday night, and I’m at a sports bar in downtown Manhattan. It looks exactly like what you’d expect of a bar in the Financial District. Men in button-up shirts stand around a tall table with folded arms, ranting about the current season as multiple baseball games are playing on TV screens all around the bar.
I feel out of place as I wait for a friend, but I know it’s only a matter of time until things change. A stream of women slowly trickles in, group by group. The mood abruptly changes when the TV screens flicker on to a clip of sparkling water. The bar cranks up the volume, a wistful three notes plays over the speaker, the brief theme song of what has become a show so popular that sports bars in Manhattan are throwing watch parties for women who, like me, are years older than the show’s protagonist.
I have a confession: When I first watched The Summer I Turned Pretty upon the series’s release on Amazon in 2022, I only got through two episodes. I quickly deemed the show too cringe-inducing to handle. I believed I had grown out of love triangles driven by hormones and a lack of a fully developed prefrontal cortex. Growing up had taught me there were much, much more important choices to make in life than who you take to debutante ball. Also, the lead character’s name is “Belly”, and no one’s questioning that?
