It started out as any of my typical elliptical exercise sessions begin. I had just ended one show and was looking for something to pass the time. I had remembered the pretty shimmery underwater cover image for The Summer I Turned Pretty along with the gentle chime of the introductory music. Having loved young adult author Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved trilogy of films, I was intrigued to immerse myself in another one of her teen romantic dramas. What surprised me wasn’t the show—it was my reaction to it.

The story is simple enough: Asian American teen in a love triangle between brothers. The protagonist, Isabel (Belly) Conklin, spends several seasons flip flopping between the two Fisher boys, Conrad—the older moody, sensitive pre-med student—and Jeremiah an easy-natured frat boy often described as a golden retriever boyfriend. While the plot offers some additional layers of emotional complexity—the boys’ mother is diagnosed with cancer in season one—what comes to really reel in viewers is the maturation of these characters from children to early adults as they navigate emotionally tumultuous love lives.

Internet memes abound regarding middle-aged women “obsessing” over Team Conrad and Team Jeremiah in a way that echoes the fervor of Twilight’s Team Edward and Team Jacob two decades ago. Funnier still is the cultural observation that most of these older women are simply waiting for Conrad to enter the scene, completely annoyed when their viewing is interrupted by Jeremiah or tertiary........

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