Well, at least we’re finally back at Cousins. Because this is where Belly’s and Jeremiah’s efforts to sell their families on their quickie marriage have landed them, and don’t all roads lead to Cousins eventually? Belly has retreated to the beach house to escape Laurel’s judgment, and Conrad is there because he has nothing to do but dick around since he got fired from his job. Now, while Conrad and Belly are to spend the weekdays staring mutely at each other across the kitchen island, Jeremiah will be toiling away at his internship in Boston in hopes of keeping his Dick Dad happy — or at least less hostile.
So far, Belly and Conrad’s interactions have had a 3-to-1 ratio of longing looks to actual conversations, and I do hope that’s an indication that a return to our central love triangle is on the horizon. I can’t take any more of this overreactions-in-lieu-of-actual-stakes thing that The Summer I Turned Pretty has been trying to sell me on this season.
I know I say this every week, but every week it remains true. Our A-plots are all self-inflicted melodramas that could be righted with just a skosh of perspective, while Taylor racks up material for her future therapist to unpack as a sidebar. Fleetwood Mac soundtracks Belly’s internal monologues, but Taylor quitting her prestigious New York City internship in order to pay off her mother’s debts is underscored by generic “[pensive music playing].” Do you see what I’m saying? Laurel is working herself into a lather that Belly is “ruining her life!” by marrying Jeremiah at age 21, but let’s take a step back and think about that. No, hear me out: Divorce is still legal, and Belly and Jeremiah, despite being named Belly and Jeremiah, are not Mormons, so it’s not as if Belly is being trapped into a barefoot-and-pregnant life by either the law or society. If they get divorced in two years, what assets are two 23-year-olds going to be fighting over? The Cousins house? Believe me: That fight is happening with or without a marriage certificate.
I’m not saying marriage isn’t serious, because of course it is. I’m just saying that marriage does not actually preclude Belly from finishing college, getting a job, or going to Paris (even though she’s making it seem that way). There are a lot more permanent mistakes that Belly could be making. And, yeah, her insistence on a $15 shotgun wedding, rather than waiting a year or two like normal people, is unhinged. But Belly is her mother’s daughter, and Laurel declaring she won’t even attend the wedding out of protest is also histrionic. Has Laurel even considered what might happen if she just let this all play out naturally? In a couple of months, she could be helping Belly to fill out annulment paperwork and apply for her student visa to Paris in the same trip to city hall.
At the end of the day, I just want to know why nobody seems to care that Taylor is the one who is actually, literally, and in a very real way throwing away her future. Kind of in the same way that Taylor was the one actually cheating on her boyfriend. Or the way Taylor is the one with real, deep-seated issues with her mother — which Belly, of course, finds a way to make it all about her. Belly, Taylor, and Lucinda are shopping for Belly’s wedding dress in the prom section of a T.J.Maxx because Laurel has pettily refused to participate in any way and then Belly briefly remembers that Taylor has a life of her own. They gush for a moment over Taylor’s upcoming internship in the big city (the company does PR for the Met Gala!), and Taylor ventures a complaint that her mom will do anything to avoid dealing with her own shit, i.e., the impending bankruptcy that Taylor is crisis-managing by herself. This gives Belly a perfect opening to sigh theatrically and refocus attention on herself, sniveling, “I mean, at least someone’s mom is here.”
I just know that one day Taylor is going to be recounting all of this in a psychologist’s office and be slowly guided to the realization that she has never gotten the support she needed from her best friend, because she has never really asked for it, because she has been repeating the inverse caregiving dynamic she has with her mother. Until that time, Belly continues to be the center of everyone’s universe.
Case in point: Jeremiah has taken that internship at his dad’s company — mostly, we are assured over and over again through dialogue, in hopes of winning his father’s blessing for his upcoming nuptials. This is sad because Jeremiah’s dad is a dick, and Jeremiah is on track to be rolling this boulder up the hill for the rest of his life. Dick Dad bullied Jeremiah into taking this internship, and now he is openly bullying Jeremiah in front of all the employees, who already call him Nepo Baby both behind his back and to his face. Steven tries to defend Jeremiah to his hot, mean co-worker, whose name is actually Denise, but then Denise points out that the Jeremiahs of the world do one internship and then in six months they’re her boss, to which there is no counterargument because it’s true.
So every day Jeremiah gets all dressed up in a suit and a tie to bring his Dick Dad extra-hot lattes and FaceTime Belly from the office kitchen. Belly is also wearing a suit and a tie — she has a summer job as a server at a restaurant, and now she has blisters on her feet. Quelle horreur. Jeremiah says, “I don’t like you working this hard,” as if he’s Don fucking Draper, and the tradwife movement ticks another notch on their scoreboard.
Belly says she has to work because they’re saving up for their wedding in six weeks, because on this show, weddings are paid for in one lump sum on the day of the event. But this is the same show in which Steven discovers, just through some extracurricular investigating, that Lucinda’s ex-boyfriend was taking out loans in her name and destroying her credit. Are we to believe that entering the finance world automatically grants one access to everybody else’s banking information? Was there an induction ceremony in which Steven was bestowed a Patagonia fleece vest, a Tesla, and a master key to all three credit bureaus’ data? It’s not impossible, I guess. I write words for a living, so how the hell would I know?
Sorry, I keep getting distracted by the economics of this universe. Where were we? Ah, yes, Belly and Jeremiah are charging boldly ahead with their wedding plans and dragging their families onboard kicking and screaming. Steven can be bought with clout, so he’s in the minute he’s offered a co–best-man position. They don’t know it yet, but they also have a secret ally in Belly’s dad, who has been fruitlessly trying to get Laurel to soften her position. Conrad would rather pluck out his own eyeballs with skewers and eat them like kebabs than stand up at Belly and Jeremiah’s wedding, but he can’t just let Belly sob herself to sleep every night. He agrees to do the co–best-man thing and then immediately regrets it, which we know because the final words of the episode are Conrad asking himself in voice-over, What have I done?
This leaves Laurel as our only holdout, and not even an appeal to Susannah — a logical fallacy specific to The Summer I Turned Pretty — can sway her. Actually, one begins to wonder, maybe Susannah has been subconsciously urging Belly to grow up too fast all along. Perhaps this can all be traced back to the blue wallpaper Susannah imported from Paris for Belly’s new big-girl room at Cousins. What if Susannah prematurely forced Belly out of the nursery, and that’s why Belly wants to get married so young? Is there a way this can still all be Susannah’s fault? This is The Summer I Turned Pretty — of course there is.
• I’m going to need this pool-drive-in setup that Belly and Jeremiah are enjoying, complete with Champagne straight from the bottle, in my life stat.
• Jeremiah actually encourages Belly not to go to Paris for that semester when I was really hoping for a “WHY did you drop out of YALE?” sort of reaction. Guess that’ll be up to Conrad.
• Sorry, is there a reason Agnes is the one telling Conrad he got this job?
• Steven and Denise are bonding over their shared disdain for NFTs and love of gaming, which feels romantic. But Steven is also offering to send Taylor $5,000 of his own money to help get her mom out of the hole.
• If I said that every bedroom in this show looks as though it were designed by Bobby Berk, would you guys understand what I mean?
• Belly’s dad, presenting her with her birthday Mickey Mouse pancakes: “Welcome to adulthood, honey!”
• I know that’s not actually a T.J.Maxx.
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