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Though I\u2019ve gone through the motions of thirtysomething self-deprecation at times, I don\u2019t actually think there\u2019s anything all that wrong with being an adult fan of\u00a0The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/em>. I\u2019ve seen\u00a0all the articles<\/a>\u00a0fretting about why<\/a>\u00a0so many grown-ups<\/a>\u00a0are tuning in to<\/a>\u00a0a show for teenagers<\/a>\u2014full disclosure, I\u00a0wrote<\/em>\u00a0one of them myself<\/a>, though in my defense, it was way back in Season 2, before all you Belly-come-latelies\u2014but the why seems obvious enough to me: It\u2019s a pretty good coming-of-age romance in a TV landscape that is sorely lacking in them. Networks\u00a0used to turn out tons of TV shows about teens\u2019 love lives<\/a>, but, much like\u00a0The Pitt<\/em><\/a> now appears like a revelation for embracing a genre that minted money for decades,\u00a0The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0success is confounding<\/a> only insofar as the streaming era has so thoroughly broken what used to be a predictable medium.<\/p>\n So, yes, I\u2019ve made peace with being a person with a 401(k) who watches this show. What I never wanted to be, though, was a person with a 401(k) who gets mad about anything that happens on\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Summer I Turned Pretty<\/em>. It\u2019s an escape, a frivolity, and a much-needed one, if you judge by the state of the skin around my fingernails<\/a>. You probably know where this is going. This week,\u00a0The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/em>\u00a0aired its series finale on Amazon Prime Video, and I regret to say it has turned me into the thing I most feared: an adult who has allowed a show about a girl named Belly who is in love with a pair of idiot brothers to disturb my mind palace.<\/p>\n After briefly considering staying up until 3 a.m. Wednesday to catch the finale as soon as it went online, I compromised by waking up at the for-me-ungodly hour of 6:45 that morning, and a little over an hour later, I thought that was a wrap on\u00a0TSITP<\/em>. The show\u2019s gastrically monikered main character, whose nickname is short for Isabel (played by Lola Tung), ended up with the older and more emotionally mature of the two brothers, Conrad (Christopher Briney), after the two reunited on a train bound for Brussels from Paris. Back in the U.S., the younger Fisher brother, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno), had gotten over breaking up with Belly on their wedding day by developing the same sort of spontaneous interest in cooking that\u00a0suddenly struck Brooklyn Beckham<\/a>\u00a0a few years ago. He also paired off with another girl, Denise (Isabella Briggs), less because they seemed right for each other than because the show had a B-plot with a different love triangle this season that left her without a romantic prospect, and I guess they both have curly hair and can find common ground over mousse.<\/p>\n Though I wished Conrad and Belly\u2019s final-hour reconciliation had managed to inject more surprise and less contrivance into the inevitable, there\u2019s one thing I was convinced the show nailed: It made a choice, once and for all, that resolved its central\u00a0love triangle<\/a>. In real life, I might advise a girl torn between two brothers to, in addition to seeking ample mental health support, date some other people and spend a few years growing up before so much as considering committing to one of them. But the universe of\u00a0TSITP<\/em>\u00a0was never going to brook such ambiguity, nor should it. In the world of the show, the question of which brother would prevail was a zero-sum game, and now it had been answered: Belly chose Conrad, period. At a time when Hollywood\u2019s addiction to intellectual property guarantees that many stories just keep going indefinitely, much to their detriment, here was one that seemed poised to end decisively and unambiguously.<\/p>\n Joke\u2019s on me, I guess? Midday Wednesday, Prime Video\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that it had greenlit a\u00a0Summer I Turned Pretty<\/em>\u00a0movie. \u201cThere is another big milestone left in Belly\u2019s journey, and I thought only a movie could give it its proper due,\u201d said Jenny Han, the show\u2019s creator and the author of the books on which it\u2019s based. (She will also direct the film. She is\u00a0also<\/em>\u00a0also now sort of my enemy.) Personally, I\u2019m having trouble imagining any path the movie could take that wouldn\u2019t cheapen the so-called ending we just got. Let\u2019s say the movie keeps Conrad and Belly together and it\u2019s about them getting married. The series was defined by a love triangle, so I\u2019m not exactly excited by the prospect of a conflict-less movie in which these two are living their happily ever after\u2014boring and majorly lacking in the yearning that has been so central to the show. But if the movie is about them breaking up or, worse, Belly zigzagging back to the other brother, then what was the point of it all?<\/p>\n I truly think an underdiscussed aspect of the show\u2019s outsize success this season was that it was going to end. I was dumb enough to admire what I thought the show was doing, recognizing that three is the upper limit of television seasons you can wring out of one love triangle. It even seemed a rare improvement on the old model of television: Where TV shows used to hope to get renewed at the end of each season, usually with an eye on staying on the air as long as possible,\u00a0TSITP<\/em>\u2019s creative team could dispense with filler episodes and uncertainty and plan for three seasons, one for each book in the trilogy on which the story is based. Would the show have achieved phenomenon status this summer if it hadn\u2019t been for the audience\u2019s false belief that it was building toward an actual conclusion? People like stories that end! A proper ending suggests a narrative that\u2019s been planned out with care in a way that best serves the characters and their arcs. A surprise movie suggests the cha-ching noise, and poor Lola Tung being held hostage by Amazon Prime for another year, and honestly not much else I\u2019m interested in seeing, though I\u2019m sure\u00a0Liquid I.V.<\/a>\u00a0will be very excited about more sponsorship opportunities.<\/p>\n But there I go, getting all worked up about a show I absolutely should not be getting worked up over.\u00a0The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/em>\u00a0is hardly the first media property to execute this sort of fake-out, and it won\u2019t be the last, because these tactics effectively grab audiences\u2019 attention. I have now calmed down enough to the point that I can admit that it would be kind of nice to see all these chuckleheads again, despite everything, so it\u2019s not as if I won\u2019t be tuning in when this cinematic event eventually happens. All I\u2019m saying is that a nice thing about summer is that it ends, or at least it used to.\u00a0Global warming<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/em>: two absolutely equally oppressive forces that don\u2019t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n