Over the last few years, there have been a significant number of new show releases focusing on teens and young adults that are just begging to be hated on. After watching these shows, one should seriously question the ability of directors and producers to portray people our age in a realistic way.
The show that inspired this article was The Summer I Turned Pretty on Amazon Prime Video. Finally ending after season three in summer 2025, this series was annoyingly vacuous from the beginning. The main character Isabelle Conklin, or Belly, is insufferably one-dimensional. Despite being immature, attention-seeking and self-entitled, she is surprisingly also being fought over by two brothers. Her constant vacillating between Conrad and Jeremiah gets old quickly. Even though I dislike Belly, Conrad is even more unlikable. The way he treats Belly is horrible, and I hate how his behavior was written off since he was grieving and lost. This does not mean I was team Jeremiah. Some of his scenes from the first season were difficult to watch, particularly when he said lines like, “I want to kiss the shit out of you.” He also cheated on Belly and gaslit her, which I found very upsetting. The general premise of a show revolving around a love triangle between brothers was just a bad idea for a series in the first place. Although I have not read the books, my friends who have, say that the show diminishes much of the character depth, making it come off as much shallower. I have been a hater of this show since season one and am sad to report that there is a The Summer I Turned Pretty movie slated to be released next year.
Similar to The Summer I Turned Pretty is My Life with the Walter Boys from Netflix. This was objectively even worse than The Summer I Turned Pretty, and I could not even get through the whole first season. Perhaps it has improved, rewarding those who watched the more recent seasons, but I am doubtful. It is literally based on a Wattpad story, so I should have known the plot would be lacking. This show also centers on a love triangle between a girl and two brothers. To make matters even messier, they are technically her foster brothers — which introduced an unsettling element that is difficult to ignore. The main character, Jackie, has an air of pretentiousness that I could not get past just because she is from a big city. She also dresses like a 40-year-old woman and was largely unrelatable. The other characters were also lacking, such as the love interest Cole, a fake-blonde womanizer that I cannot imagine anyone actually liking. The few episodes I watched of this show were more than enough for me.
Released back in May, Off Campus was another unfortunate young adult show on Amazon Prime Video. This one revolves around the relationship between music major Hannah Wells and hockey star Garrett Graham. While I am a sucker for trashy romance books, this show took only the worst parts of a cringey young adult romance and brought them to life. Garrett was a hard main character to root for. While I appreciated the development of his past throughout the show, I found his switch up from completely ignoring Hannah to having feelings for her in the first episode to be unrealistic and jarring. The way he treats women in general is also hard to get past. It was difficult for me not to cringe at the moments of Hannah singing randomly, and her loser musician crush, Justin, was pathetic. There was also a general lack of development between the two main characters that made their relationship unconvincing. I will give Off Campus some points for having slightly better actors than the other shows I have mentioned so far. However, that is not saying much.
Another dismal show from Amazon Prime Video’s summer offerings is Sterling Point. The dialogue definitely felt more real than the aforementioned other shows, and the casting was on point, but it was again full of outrageous moments of teen angst. The main character, Annie, felt very pick-me and self-absorbed. With yet another love triangle in this show, both love interests were underdeveloped and only there for the plot. Although I do understand that Annie lost her mom, she acts as though she is the only person who has ever felt grief at the loss of a parent. Any sort of character development that took place was highly predictable and unsatisfying. I do not have high hopes for what the second season may bring.
The last show on this list is Crew Girl, recently released on Netflix. Watching this show was like watching a train wreck. Every character felt like an archetype I had seen a thousand times before. The main character, Teagan, was lacking any development; her only character trait was that she was really into rowing. With yet another love triangle, there was more chemistry between the two guys she was interested in than either of them had with her. The side characters felt hastily written and the dialogue stunted. The show really leaned into the fact that Teagan was ‘not like other girls’ because she liked to row, but she felt like every teen girl I had ever watched on screen rolled into one. Crew Girl is definitely the worst show on this list. Let’s hope it does not return for a second season.
Please do not click on any of these shows unless you need something to hate. There are simply better things to spend your time watching.
‘Hater Friday’ runs on Fridays and centers around critiquing media or culture.
Emma Robinson is a member of the Class of 2027 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a staff writer for the Arts & Culture department and can be reached at erobinson@cornellsun.com.
