The TV adaptation of the final book of Jenny Han’s “The Summer I Turned Pretty” trilogy dropped late last summer, and boy did it land with a thud. While the corresponding book to season three of this teenage romance drama, “We’ll Always Have Summer,” comes packaged with a longing, hopeful title, the show’s finale ultimately disappoints for its dramatic deviations from the novel, its rushed pacing and conclusion and a host of other issues. Warning: there may be spoilers in this review.
Perhaps the biggest detractor from this season was its brisk pacing. A book format allows for development at the author’s pace, while the 11 episodes allotted to the show to wrap up loose ends meant major emotional beats felt sudden and even unearned, leaving audiences wondering how they got to what was supposed to be a hard-hitting point so unceremoniously.
On top of that, the showrunners’ plan to wrap up the story was strangely blunt: the love triangle dynamic that had defined the series up until this point wound up feeling repetitive, and the conclusion unsatisfying. If “love triangle fatigue” was a thing, it would seem as if Jenny Han does not suffer from it, because her M.O. includes love triangles where love triangles really need not be. For just any random show, the way the story ends would have fans in a riot, and it is mostly due to the goodwill these characters have built up for years that a conclusion of this sort has received a reaction as generally muted as it has been.
Even beyond the plot issues with this latest and last season of “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” the show makes the habit of taking wildly generous liberties from the source material. While some fans enjoy creative liberties when it comes to different forms of entertainment, there really was not anything wrong with “We’ll Always Have Summer” that needed to be changed, especially major plot points like the protagonist’s foreign trip (Paris? Really? Why does everyone want to go to Paris?) and one of the core love interests’… side hobbies. Particularly with the second point, it felt like the showrunners and writers became lazy towards the end of the show, and did not bother exploring emotional dynamics the way the books tried to. Rather, to expedite the ending that they wanted, they manipulated the characters’ actions and emotions to suit their own ends, which never works well in a predetermined story.
If anything, the predetermined aspect of the story only hurt it in the long run. “The Summer I Turned Pretty” as a show attracted a lot of attention and online discussion, with fans separating into factions based on who they thought the protagonist “should” end up romantically involved with. While the books certainly came to their own conclusion, if the show wanted to deviate so heavily from the books, why not go all the way, and leave the ending ambiguous? By taking the greatest creative liberty of all, and intentionally leaving the story unfinished, the show could have encouraged fan speculation and debate, prolonging and promoting the show’s cultural relevance. Instead, however, the show took the muddiest of both roads, making changes to major plot points while still insisting on remaining “true” to the books. In doing so, the show has only hurt its own standing in the eyes of originalist fans and show-only watchers alike.
It is interesting to note that the series is expecting a movie on top of the three existing seasons, which will seek to conclude the story in a fresher medium. This may be puzzling to some, as the TV show covered the plotline throughout Jenny Han’s three books, indicating that the movie’s content will be mostly new, never-before-seen plot for viewers to enjoy (or not). Now, the series finale episode was already near-film length, at 79 minutes long, so it would be challenging for the filmmakers to release a movie that is satisfying to audiences in depth while also standing on its own legs without too much support from the existing show. Regardless, this review will only take into account the existing “The Summer I Turned Pretty” properties, and coverage of the film (expected earlier next year) will be left to the Observer of the future.
Ultimately, season three of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” backtracks on the features that made it different from many other teenage romance dramas. Plot beats felt rushed, major event changes and adherence to the original ending wrote the show into a corner and the entire experience ended up becoming shallow. While it is sad to see a season fail to live up to expectations, it also is not entirely surprising that an aging property was unable to rekindle the warm, breezy, carefree feelings the first two seasons inspired in viewers. “The Summer I Turned Pretty” season three is by no means bad TV, simply weaker than what came before, and maybe not good enough to be a fan’s happily ever after.
