Like many people on September 17, I sat down to watch the series finale of Amazon’s The Summer I Turned Pretty. In this final episode, Conrad goes to Paris to see Belly, and after a whirlwind day (and night) in the city of lights, Conrad declares his undying love for Belly and the two of them finally end up together (for good this time).
Personally, this is the ending I wanted, and after scrolling on TikTok for a minute, it seems like the internet was satisfied. The fan favorite couple prevailed, and each character got their storylines wrapped up somewhat neatly. People were showing their love for the show through detailed analysis and edits alike. However, through all of these videos, one stood out to me above all the rest. The TikTok user wrote in their post, “Episode 11 proved one thing: it was never about who Belly would choose — it was about who was willing to wait until she grew enough to finally choose herself.” The comments under this video all sang the same song of, “Omg!!! You’re so rightttt.”
Now I believe that this is nonsense for a myriad of reasons, ranging from how Belly treated both Jeremiah and Conrad to how she handled each breakup. And while I could write a three-season analysis proving this, I believe this take relates to a much bigger issue: the romanticizing of romcoms and the romance genre as a whole.
Released in 2004, The Notebook is a movie adaptation of a novel by the same name. For those who don’t know, the movie unfolds as follows. Noah and Allie fall in love one summer but are separated when Allie moves away. Allie eventually grows up and is engaged to be married when she is reunited with Noah, who she learns has waited for her all this time. Allie then chooses Noah and breaks off her engagement, with the two living happily ever after.
Now, the intended moral of the story is never give up on true love and, when taken at face value, this is a fantastic lesson. However, if you examine the story, cracks in this moral start to form. Yes, the audience knows that Noah and Allie are meant to be, but look at it from any other perspective other than the main two characters. Allie breaks off her engagement to be with a guy she only knew for a few months as a teenager and hasn’t seen for years. Think about how Allie’s fiancé must feel once the scene shifts away from him.
This is the issue with so many pieces in the romance genre. The genre was created as an escape from reality — to imagine a grand love story where there is clear-cut good and evil, and where there is a right and wrong choice. The thing is, in real life, fictional romance cannot exist. To try to make your decisions based on what you have seen in a movie is absurd.
The Summer I Turned Pretty was a great show, no doubt about it, but I feel as if it should be another reminder of why we make and watch romcoms. This is an escape from the mundaneness of reality. This is not a blueprint for our own lives. Yes, it will always be possible to pull off a grand romantic gesture like Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything, but we shouldn’t base our entire lives around the hope of that potential gesture. Instead, we should admire romcoms for the spectacle they present but be wary of the actions they condone.
