I can’t figure out if The Summer I Turned Pretty‘s final season is Bonrad’s love story or Jeremiah’s villain origin story.
If I didn’t know any better, in a world where we could collectively have a bit more fun with this series, this third season would be the perfect launching pad for Jeremiah to crash out and become some supervillain completely!
At the very least, the character should happily make his way to Chicago and start staging for Marcus on The Bear, but alas, that’s all in a girl’s imagination.
Frat Boy Foolery
It’s no secret that the love triangle is one of the most contentious in young adult history.
For reasons that range from the understandable to the positively unhinged and ludicrous, many people despise the youngest Fisher brother, leaving the audience divided.
But this season in particular feels like proof that the writers hate him the most! Seriously, the bias against Jeremiah is so blatant that it teeters between exhausting and comical. It’s a bit lazy, too, but that’s a discussion for another day.
One of the earliest examples of this was when they suddenly started leaning into the notion that Jeremiah was an irresponsible Frat Boy instead of a relatively normal college student.
Fraternities and sororities aren’t exactly my thing, but Greek Life can be a critical part of the college world, and it totally tracks that both he and Taylor would pursue it for different reasons.
For Taylor? Sororities give you access to community and connections, something she’d want to further her chances of ascending into higher workplaces and entering rooms she otherwise wouldn’t have access to as a woman from a working-class background from a single-family home.
Jeremiah, ironically, would have been into fraternities because he’s a social creature who often craves connections and community. Considering his family and friends, it’s understandable why he would.
But he’s also someone who knows that the brotherhood of fraternities is essential for networking. The Fishers are part of a country club (what’s the difference between these two exclusive social factions?).
In a series that practically glamorizes the wealth and privilege of the Fishers, somehow, only half of the Fisher family catches legitimate flak for their privilege. Please don’t ask me how that works.
God Forbid a Co-Ed Catch a Vibe
Having someone like Adam even allude to Jeremiah being foolish for his frat behavior when he’s the same guy who is using his own son’s wedding AT A COUNTRY CLUB for a networking event is rich (in more ways than one).
Then the series slides in that bit about Jeremiah having to repeat a semester because he switched majors and doesn’t have the proper credits. Not that he failed or anything, mind you.
We’re to believe that the kid who meticulously looked over his family’s finances during his final year of high school, when he was helping take care of his mother, or caught an error that half of Adam’s staff overlooked, missed a single email (it’s never a single email!) notifying him of this issue.
But even setting that aside, it’s been particularly bizarre in the TSITP world for them to treat this clerical error and oversight that his advisor should’ve caught TOO as this cardinal sin and a marker of his irresponsibility.
No one in TSITP’s world truly understands how common this issue is, especially when switching majors. Or that the idea of a “super Senior” sounds stupid when it comes to college versus high school.
The series uses these two different times to prompt Adam to berate his son, the latter being the most offensive yet, and bless that kid’s heart, he just took it like a champ.
Or, he buried it deep down, and it’s bound to come to the surface after one too many triggers!
Infidelity! But Make It the Spider Meme!
From there, it just goes downhill. We had the Cabo cheating scandal that was bizarre when we saw that he verbally broke up with Belly, but it still counts as cheating.
I’m not going to split hairs here. Still, it has to be particularly wild for him to process that he’s suddenly the antichrist for infidelity when Steven and Taylor have been happily cheating with no consequence or judgment from anyone else.
Jeremiah’s work as a lifeguard apparently made him a loser because it wasn’t a serious career, but interning with his father also made him a Nepo-Baby!
However, Steven’s position at Adam’s company is partly due to his closeness to the family and his tendency to kiss up to Adam, which isn’t nepotism. Surely that’s a headscratcher for Jeremiah. Hell, it was for me!
Jeremiah, using his own money to purchase an engagement ring he could afford, brought out the privileged takes from pretty much everyone in their circle, which was also bizarre considering they were also pointing out that one of the reasons they shouldn’t get married is because they’re still young, not established, and so forth.
One Lifetime x Four Years + An Engagement = The Apocalypse
No matter what Jeremiah does, Adam still tends to treat him like trash and berate him, in some of the most triggering displays of verbal and emotional abuse, precisely because most of it seems to fly under the radar for literally every other person in their lives or goes unchecked.
Jeremiah’s learned behavior has been to take it, internalize it, and put on a happy face, usually without anyone to mitigate things in the moment.
Apparently, his decision to propose to his girlfriend of four years is the worst decision ever. They really are too young for that, which is why the whole rushed marriage bit is so nonsensical in the first place, but, you know, PLOT!
Given that no one outside of Taylor knows about the Cabo stuff, the strong reactions to this situation apparently serve as an unspoken confirmation that, despite Belly’s active choices, he’s the one who is the problem.
Interestingly, the turning point in Conrad cutting his father off and no longer trying to impress him was finding out that he was having an affair.
Crashout Loading …
Still, because he hasn’t shared this particular nugget with Jeremiah, it has resulted in Jeremiah being on this hamster wheel of trying but failing to get his father’s attention and feel worthy.
He’s not exactly the most pleased about his father dating Kayleigh, even without his knowing their lore, which means when he inevitably finds out the truth, he’s going to feel the rage and maybe even the betrayal that his brother kept yet another significant family issue from him for the umpteenth time.
His supposed best friend, Steven, mostly treats him like an idiot.
Laurel doesn’t really express any interest in Susannah’s other child, which is narratively odd, whether she favors Conrad or not.
Taylor’s expectations of him rest solely on his not being Conrad. Ouch!
Bad Credit? In This Economy? Just Kidding. Cheers, Bro!
Somehow, he has terrible credit, which is particularly bad, despite being common for college-aged kids.
Unfortunately, TSITP often uses this to show he’s immature, because apparently, no one in TSITP knows about the specific predatory practices against college students or lives in this economy.
And the injured former athlete who possibly got a volleyball scholarship and the medical student at Stanford apparently don’t have debt. Bless, y’all.
Anyway, these are all things to apparently justify why Jeremiah is a very bad endgame.
Frankly, I don’t care if he is or isn’t the person who should be with Belly, but the narrative browbeating of this character for being relatively normal is weird as hell.
Not in a world where Chuck Bass, Spike, Ezra Fitz, Damon Salvatore, and Dan Humphrey exist.
Anyway, this is everything we’ve got so far before we’re headed into whatever scenario results in Belly realizing that she doesn’t want to marry him and would like to go back to Conrad.
Betrayal, Treachery, Heartbreak … Perfect Villain Fodder!
Essentially, their impending breakup and her potential reunion with his brother will occur after a four-and-a-half-year relationship.
In the lead-up to this, he intentionally held back, waiting for her to come to him, ensuring that she was actively choosing him.
Now, we’re expecting, and many are even rooting for, Belly to say “Psych!” and head back to Conrad, and we’re also maybe supposed to expect this not to destroy whatever fraternal dynamic the brothers already have irreversibly.
When you consider all of these factors leading up to what may be the end of Jeremiah and Belly, it feels like we’re headed into one of the biggest crashouts in young adult history!
Grief, tragedy, betrayal, abuse, invalidation, gaslighting, browbeating, shameless comparisons, heartbreak, and his biggest insecurities were constantly tossed in his face or validated. Oh, friends, that crashout should be BIBLICAL!
That’s not just the stuff you rebound from with a smile. It’s leaving scars — it’s nearly two decades in the making.
Burn It All Down! Bring Me Chaos!
Hell, I don’t care about an endgame, but a Jeremiah crashout? Oh, it would be totally valid and delicious, spectacular, even! And I would love to see it.
The series perfectly sets up Jeremiah to actually and legitimately be in his Villain Era.
Whatever casual and liberal use of that terminology projected onto him for ridiculous reasons is nothing — child’s play. But there comes a point when one finally succumbs to whatever they’re accused of.
This? This would be totally and wholly justified, valid, and the type of drama I would 100% be here for.
As Team Therapy, I’m not feeling any of the endgames, especially not at this juncture of the series.
Ideally, Jeremiah deserves some healing and therapy because he needs it.
His mother died, he barely got to grieve her, and everyone invalidates or ignores his experience of being with her at her worst.
She was his favorite person, but she only validated him to the extent that he could perform for her and put on a happy face.
And his father is an emotionally abusive narcissist who constantly compares him to his brother.
His friends don’t recognize that he’s a three-dimensional person, and his brother ices him out.
Oh, and the woman he loves may go back to his brother. Suppression is a hell of a thing, but everyone has breaking points, right?
Jeremiah’s position is tailor-made for him to become a villain in someone else’s story. At this point, don’t let this guy go out quietly; deliver the drama.
What can I say? Mama needs a crashout. So please give it to me!
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