Being a teenager, as Olivia Rodrigo says, is brutal. It’s one thing everyone can agree on. And, if personally making one’s way through high school didn’t prove dire, then parsing through the myriad of teen shows our world has to offer will guarantee the theatrics—well, at least for some.
The classics that built up the genre, “Degrassi“, “The O.C.“, “One Tree Hill“, and more, spent airtime centering white teenagedom, with characters of Asian heritage taking the backseat or being written off within a couple of episodes. Thankfully, it’s 2023, and author and showrunner Jenny Han is adding to the teen drama index with fervor. This year, her two series, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and “XO, Kitty“, took the genre to familiar and fresh places with Asian protagonists in the driver’s seat—granting API viewers a chance to see themselves at the center of formative high school shenanigans.
In “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, Isabel “Belly” Conklin (Lola Tung) is in love with two boys. It sounds like a cut-and-dry love triangle, but not exactly. Her suitors are brothers, Jeremiah “Jere” (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad “Connie” Fisher (Christopher Briney). The plot heavily revolves around Belly’s romances, but there are other indicators of the teen drama genre, too: friendship betrayals, school problems, parental divorce, terminal illness; the list goes on.
The show’s second season, which premiered in July of 2023, ignited a battle of the love interests reminiscent of the Team Edward versus Team Jacob debate of the late 2000s. Team Jeremiah or Team Conrad? Millennial interest in the series has been notable enough to warrant articles from Harper’s Bazaar and Esquire. Senior culture writer for the latter, Henry Wong, details in one piece, “On TikTok … posts about…
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