Spoiler warning: This article will contain spoilers for The Summer I Turned Pretty season three and My Life with the Walter Boys season two.
The current No. 1 TV shows on both Netflix and Amazon Prime this week have something in common. Any guesses? Without context, could you guess that both are centered around not just any love triangle, but a love triangle directly involving two brothers? Probably not!
A few weeks ago, I tried to convince my mom to watch The Summer I Turned Pretty, citing my obsession with the show as reason enough to watch, but she wasn’t convinced. I then tripped over explaining the plot, trying to tiptoe around the prominent, glaring and suddenly embarrassing main love triangle. I mean, two brothers? Sounds messy, stressful and kind of icky… so why are the shows that rely on this plotline so successful?
The Summer I Turned Pretty made its TV debut on Prime Video in the summer of 2022, based on Jenny Han’s beloved novels of the same title, quickly garnering a massive following and instant renewals due to its success. Starring actress Lola Tung, The Summer I Turned Pretty is set, naturally, across three summers following Isabel (Belly) Conklin as she navigates first love, loss, heartbreak and self-discovery. If only it were as simple as that. Belly gets involved in a complicated love triangle with the Fisher brothers, the brooding Conrad (Chris Briney), whom she’s always had a crush on, and her flirty best friend, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). Throughout the show, Belly flips between the two brothers, ending up with Conrad in season one, only to break up a few months later, before the events of season two, where she ends up with Jeremiah. While there are many more convoluted plotlines that further complicate the plot beyond “girl can’t choose between two brothers,” for the sake of this article, I’ll spare you from recapping all the details that make their relationships even a smidge more digestible.
Similarly, My Life with the Walter Boys is Netflix’s take on the brother-love triangle trope. Released in December of 2023, Walter Boys follows our main girl, Jackie (Nikki Rodriguez), a native New Yorker, as she’s dealing with the abrupt death of both her parents and her sister in a tragic car accident, leaving her orphaned and living with her godmother, Katherine (Sarah Rafferty), in Silver Falls, Colorado. Yikes. As if things couldn’t get worse for poor Jackie, her new home in Silver Falls comes fully adorned with Katherine’s eight kids and two nephews, making for a chaotic move-in and settling experience. Much like Belly, Jackie finds herself involved in a love triangle between the former football star Cole Walter (Noah LaLonde) and the sweet horse-loving Alex Walter (Ashby Gentry). As of season two’s finale, Jackie has yet to fully date the two brothers with no shame; but she has dated Alex and kissed/confessed her love to Cole twice. Oh, and she did that while she was dating Alex so… we like our main girls messy!
Clearly, these shows have garnered massive success, but why have they? Surely the appeal of any love triangle should be enough to ensure a TV show or movie’s success; why did they have to make the characters brothers? Well, for starters, The Summer I Turned Pretty and My Life with the Walter Boys are two of many shows/movies that lean on this trope as their plot — consider The Vampire Diaries (Elena-Damon-Stefan), One Tree Hill (Peyton-Lucas-Nathan) and Little Women (Jo-Amy-Laurie). To quote Reagan Skelly in her article for The Daily Campus: “Shows with this brother trope are almost immediately successful, maybe due to the intensified drama that comes with it, since families are also getting broken up over a relationship between two high schoolers (that never look the age they’re supposed to be portraying).” The drama alone that comes with these sibling-oriented love triangles is enough fuel for a plot that essentially writes itself.
On top of that, The Summer I Turned Pretty and My Life with the Walter Boys rely heavily on tragedy to justify the protagonists’ messy decisions and high-intensity relationships. Jackie is fresh off losing her entire family when she’s thrown into a love triangle, making her vulnerable and susceptible to emotional manipulation. Similarly, Conrad and Jeremiah lose their mother to cancer at the start of season two, justifying Belly and Conrad’s intense breakup, while giving Belly an “in” to help Jeremiah grieve throughout season two, leading to them dating. Now, I know they’re all fictional characters, and I really shouldn’t care this much, but none of these people should be dating — much less in a crazy love triangle — while they’re going through arguably the most complex struggles to go through (losing family).
Reflecting on this trope has also led me to wonder: Does this actually happen in real life? While I’m sure that somewhere, someone on Earth is going through a familial love triangle, I asked some of my friends if they had ever found themselves or know of anyone who has found themself in a romantic situation where they had to pick between siblings. Funnily enough, it’s more common than I thought it was! A little freaky that most of the stories involved twins, but I digress. Maybe the shows are on to something by casting actors who look nothing like each other to play siblings; it takes a little bit of the ick out.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Rolling Stone columnist CT Jones: “No matter who gets picked, they can’t change being related. This means, for one character, choosing the love of their life also means picking a lifetime of extremely awkward holidays, birthdays and get-togethers.” At the end of the day, these shows are just made to entertain and provide us with some drama and fun, and what could be more dramatic and fun than watching two people who are biologically forever in each other’s lives fighting over an iconically messy girl?
Paulina Delgado is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at pmd99@cornell.edu.
