For three summers now, one of the biggest questions has been, “Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah?” Whether you’re a fan of Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty book trilogy, released in 2009, or a fan of Prime Video’s adaptation since 2022, this simple question still sparks a major discussion amongst teens and millennials alike. But this summer, people moved a chronically online debate offline and brought it to…the football fields?
Back in 2022, the first season of The Summer I Turned Pretty followed the usual binge model everyone had become accustomed to by dropping all seven episodes at once on the popular streaming platform. For season two, the platform released three episodes on the premiere day, followed by the remaining five episodes weekly. Similarly, its third and final season began this year on July 16th by dropping the first two episodes and releasing an episode each week until its long-awaited finale on Wednesday, September 17th. This show is one of the few of its kind to bring back a weekly release schedule. Although not everyone agrees that such a format works with a show like this, it’s the main reason it’s gone so viral this year. Especially on TikTok, where the NFL (or, more aptly, those running the social media accounts of these teams) has been the unlikely culprit feeding into this craze. Of course, final seasons always bring with them more eyes than usual, and the hype of the last season, coupled with the choice to release episodes weekly, was a perfect combination to make TSITP blow up. It’s highly unlikely that TSITP would have become the social media sensation it was if they had released all eleven episodes back in July. Certainly, no one would still talk about it in September. After a couple of days, the massive and burgeoning pile of streaming garbage inevitably would have buried it, no matter how beloved the show is.
Though most NFL TikTok accounts settled on using clips from various games as reaction videos, many brought this discussion to the field and even the locker rooms with playful interviews featuring some players. For instance, the Dallas Cowboys posted a video compilation of the team celebrating together with the caption, “When Conrad finally confesses his love to Belly, and you know the end is near for Jeremiah.” A day later, the account for the Los Angeles Rams shared a video of player Kobie Turner claiming without hesitation, “It’s hard to have a good day when Belly did Conrad like that last night.” ESPN shared a video from the Minnesota Vikings where a handful of their players were asked whether they were “Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah”, with a clueless Brian O’Neill using his Phone-a-Friend lifeline by calling his wife to ask her opinion before echoing her sentiments of being Team Conrad. Meanwhile, Walter Rouse vehemently proclaims for himself Team Conrad because “the moment Jeremiah cheated, he was out the question, like why would you ever pick Jeremiah?”
For weeks, you couldn’t scroll through your “for you page” in socials without seeing at least one video from an NFL team or a major brand weighing in on the same debate (spoiler alert: most of them rightfully proclaimed to be Team Conrad) or reacting to each episode. Though it’s becoming more and more common to see brands interacting with various pop culture moments like this to stay relevant, even if it has nothing to do with the brand itself, the amount of attention this season of TSITP has gotten is notable because it’s also been taking place outside of the limited world on our handheld screens. Notably, Howard Stern admitted on The Howard Stern Show he was Team Conrad, while the Royal Television Society posted a video of David Tennant on X with the caption, “the Tennant family were among the millions tuning into #TheSummerITurnedPretty’s finale last night.”
Even the star of the upcoming Paul Thomas Anderson film, One Battle After Another, Chase Infiniti, featured in a reel on the official Instagram account, mentions the finale while promoting the film. Infiniti addressed Jenny Han directly, saying, “Hi, Jenny…we can’t wait to tune into the season finale of The Summer I Turned Pretty. I have to say that I am Team Conrad,” then she pans to Leonardo DiCaprio, claiming, “and so is he.”
This season is just one example of shows that have benefited from releasing episodes every week, as it allows time for viewers all around the world to digest each new episode, dissect every little detail, and share all of their musings and fan edits on social media as they anxiously await the next episode; thus, the hype train chugs along. The infamous Euphoria Sundays and Succession Sundays on HBO Max had fans live-tweeting their reactions to each episode, making people reminiscent of the days before streaming. Before the overabundance of content for the sake of producing an overabundance of content (and money). They now long for a time when everyone was watching the same thing, i.e., appointment television. For one hour each week, there was a sense of community online again—real-world problems taking a backseat in favor of sharing different versions of Maddy Perez’s iconic “bitch, you better be joking” line that was shared and memed ad nauseam on X and TikTok. Even the line “Rue, when was this?” has somehow become part of people’s vernacular.
These shows garnered so much attention because of this format. It’s the reason they became as big as they did. The Summer I Turned Pretty going viral both online and offline is further proof that not only do people yearn for the weekly release schedule to make a comeback, but streaming services would benefit from it. The binge model proved successful during the COVID-19 pandemic. People had limited entertainment options during lockdowns, but now, this model seems to be slowly losing its previous relevance.
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