Spoilers ahead. Isabelle “Belly” Conklin has made her choice. For three seasons of The Summer I Turned Pretty, we’ve watched her romantically terrorize the Fisher family by bouncing between brothers Conrad and Jeremiah. And even though she’s been a menace — seriously, no one has wreaked this much havoc on a brotherly bond since fellow walking hazard Joey Potter (honorable mention to Lyla Garrity) — Belly has also been brilliant, passionate, competitive, a loyal friend, and loving daughter and sister. She’s been stubborn, very dumb, manipulative, and made some very ill-advised decisions (so many!), but she’s also been a complex, messy, refreshing, and realistic portrait of a young girl trying to find herself. And unlike Joey and Lyla, she’s not white.
Lola Tung has played Belly with the depth and nuance characters of color often don’t get on teen shows like this. While The Summer I Turned Pretty is still very white, Tung and her TV family (including Sean Kaufman as Belly’s brother Steven and Jackie Chung as mom Laurel) brought a dynamic that felt deeply real and aggressively normal, which, again, for Asian American characters onscreen, this kind of representation is still rare and a welcome change. And it means that Tung’s Belly means a lot to a lot of people. Last weekend at the Emmys, I spoke to Sarah Bock, the 19-year-old who plays Miss Huang on Severance and when I asked her the first time she felt truly seen on TV, she said it was watching Tung on The Summer I Turned Pretty and that she was firmly “Team Belly.” Yes, this character has been polarizing, but I think that’s what makes her great. And in the series finale, Belly’s complexity was on full display. If you are, like Bock and me, less concerned with the love triangle between the Fisher boys (don’t get me wrong, I was still deeply invested) and more interested in watching our girl grow up and choose herself, Season 3 episode 11 was for us.
We now know that The Summer I Turned Pretty is getting a movie to wrap up Belly’s story, but for now, we have an ending. And what an ending it was. Whew. Just so you understand how unwell I am, when Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Belly finally reunite and Taylor Swift’s “Dress” (incidentally, the only Swift song I have in heavy rotation) makes for the most epic needledrop in the show’s history, I made noises no human has ever made before. Briney is so good in that scene, he made me sweat. He was as good as when Joshua Jackson as Pacey Witter counts down to kissing Joey for the second time in Dawson’s Creek Season 3 episode 19, which is truly the highest compliment I can give to the male lead of a teen drama.
Belly is stubborn, very dumb, manipulative, and made some very ill-advised decisions (so many!), but she’s also a complex, messy, refreshing, and realistic portrait of a young girl trying to find herself.
But let’s back up to what led to that steamy scene. When the episode opens, Belly has been in Paris for a year while Conrad was at med school brooding and pining, his two favorite pastimes. He’s got a conference in Brussels so he decides to — finally! — shoot his shot and go to Paris to see her. Before that, on the anniversary of his mom’s death, he sees his little brother Jeremiah and gets his blessing. Well, as much of a blessing that a dude who is hearing that his ex-fiancé is about to reunite with the love of her life aka his brother can give.
When Conrad arrives in Paris, we’re seeing it through his perspective. We already know that Belly has built a life in France; she goes by Isabelle now and has a group of friends, a dream apartment, and a boy named Benito who may or may not be her boyfriend. She’s got a fresh bob and wears lipstick now. Belly is grown up.
To Conrad, she’s still the girl on Cousins beach who was desperately in love with him. We know this because a scene of younger Belly flashes before Conrad’s eyes as he’s taking in Isabelle in Paris. It’s like Belly knows this and since she’s fought so hard to move on, she’s clearly caught off guard by his arrival. And here’s where Tung starts showing off her acting prowess, a muscle we’ve watched her strengthen over three seasons. Tung plays the moment with hesitation and wariness, like she’s just been ripped from REM sleep to an alarm clock playing a song she hasn’t heard in years. There’s familiarity there, but also frustration.
We hear Belly’s interior monologue: what the fuck are you doing? Just play tour guide for a few hours and then send him on his way.
As they play tourists for the day, Belly and Conrad engage in an awkward dance of yearning and apprehension. When Belly takes Conrad to one of her favorite spots in the city, he delivers some of the most romantic lines he’s ever uttered. He says he knew she’d be fine in Paris by referring to Belly as a “feral alley cat,” a nod to what their moms used to call her. He explains by saying, “You’ve always been scrappy. You’ve never been one to back down from a challenge. You are competitive, especially when it comes to competing with yourself. Come on, Paris never stood a chance.” Swoon. There’s nothing more romantic than someone knowing you fully and completely. And that’s how Conrad knows Belly. It’s a pivotal scene not just because it says out loud what we, the audience, already know to be true about Belly, but also because it gives Conrad a moment to gush about his girl. After seasons of him being the standoffish brooding “black cat” to Jeremiah’s golden retriever, Conrad is now a down bad lover boy. And we absolutely love to see it.
After seasons of Conrad being the standoffish brooding “black cat” to Jeremiah’s golden retriever, in Season 3 Conrad is now a down bad lover boy. And we absolutely love to see it.
The episode doesn’t just tell us the ways in which Belly has grown up, it shows us. Aside from looking older with her new haircut, Belly holds herself with more confidence. She’s more relaxed and comfortable in her skin. She speaks a bit lower and with intention. She’s sexy. She seems even more mature than Conrad, the boy she’s always looked up to and, at times, shrunken herself for. Later, when she and Conrad are at her birthday party with her Parisian friends, they are recounting their lore. It makes for a nice rehash narratively, but it’s also realistic. If I were Belly’s friends, I’d definitely want the tea on the wedding she called off to one brother because she was in love with the other. Benito (who, we learn, is definitely not Belly’s boyfriend anymore) calls Conrad out for being the villain of their story. “If anyone was the villain, it was me,” Belly says. It’s a moment of self awareness but it also sets up a direct confrontation of the idea that Belly was anything but a kid making mistakes.
Conrad calls her out for the “villain” comment when they’re walking home through Paris alone. She disagrees: “I came between you and Jere. I broke your family.”
“We all broke it,” Conrad says. “It was not on you to keep our family together. We were kids. We weren’t trying to hurt each other.”
In the online discourse that has ensued during the show’s run — and there has been plenty — Belly gets most of the blame. And she is complicit in hurting Jeremiah, sure, but so is Conrad. And Jeremiah himself isn’t blameless. We’ve all known Conrad was endgame, and so did Jere. She’s loved his brother since they were children. Jeremiah pushed hard to keep Belly close, by trying to dim her light and letting her give up on her dream of going to Paris. He knew she loved his brother, and marrying her was his way of winning the sibling rivalry. That’s not love, it’s insecurity. Belly’s biggest sin was falling in love with two brothers (not ideal!), but could you blame her when their late mom all but brainwashed her to believe she was destined to marry one of them since she was a little girl? If there is a villain of The Summer I Turned Pretty, it’s Susannah. I said what I said.
Belly basically says all of this to Conrad after they have sex, questioning whether he really loves her or if he’s just holding on to the wishes of his dead mother. Conrad refuses to validate this narrative. He pushes back through tears and promises, “If I met you for the first time tonight, I would love you.” First of all, Briney and Tung are acting their asses off in this scene. He’s playing Conrad as obsessed, tortured, and so in love it’s eating him alive and threatening to crawl out of every pore. And she’s playing Belly as assured, strong, and actualized while also desperate, terrified, and clinging to the self she’s constructed instead of merging her old and new halves to create a whole. My heart cracked right in half when Belly breaks up with Conrad (again) and sends him to the train station en route to Brussels.
Who says you can’t choose yourself and choose love?
Jenny Han and co. could have ended it there. Belly could have decided that her saga with the Fisher boys was over, and her life in Paris was enough. She could’ve decided to just be Isabelle, the Parisian baddie who played the field and left Cousins behind. But that’s not our girl. And who says you can’t choose yourself and choose love?
“All this time, I wanted to believe I changed; that I’m not the same girl I was, but I am still her,” Belly’s inner dialogue says. “And was that girl so bad? She followed her heart no matter what. Despite all her mistakes, I have to believe she’s still worthy of love…. I still love her. And I still love him.”
It’s a monologue that is going to go down in teen TV history. Jenny Han, you will always be famous.
I’ll admit that every generation thinks its television shows are better than the next. And while I maintain that I was raised in the golden age of GREAT teen television — in chronological order: Dawson’s Creek, The O.C., One Tree Hill, Friday Night Lights, and Gossip Girl — there are a few recent entries into the canon that are just as deserving of the squeals, the swoons, and the obsessive fandoms the shows that raised me elicited. Along with Mara Brock Akil’s Forever, Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty has earned its place. And that is thanks to, in large part, the beautiful mess that Isabelle “Belly” Conklin made over three seasons. Belly wasn’t perfect, and that made her the perfect teen TV character.
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