MANHATTAN — The charming neighborhood sports bar is so packed that none of the people clutching their cocktails and phones can move. Nor would they want to. Their eyes are fixed on the TV screen. Conrad Fisher has just appeared. Everyone screams. He’s not even doing anything; he’s just there.
I’m at a watch party for The Summer I Turned Pretty at Blue Haven in New York City, where they’re playing the penultimate episode of the series on every screen. The young adult romance show airs weekly on Prime Video and is based on beloved books by Jenny Han. It follows Belly Conklin’s journey as a young woman who learns that she’s gotten hot, and how the two longtime family friends she grew up with spending summers at the beach, Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher, have noticed she’s hot too.
Now in its third and final season, the characters are staunchly late-college-aged and making adult decisions about marriage and careers. The stakes are high. I realized that watching the romantic sparring between brothers evoked feelings in me that I’d only ever experienced in the front rows of a game between my college’s football team and its rival: Fourth down, ball on the ten-yard line, no time-outs left, just seconds left in the game. I wanted to scream, and I did, at a sports bar surrounded by a crowd of 95% women in their 20s and 30s.
A spectator sport
This is the first television show that Blue Haven has ever hosted a watch party for, and they started with Season 3. The staff picked The Summer I Turned Pretty because it was fun, emotional, girly and set in the summer. The bar’s manager, Sarah, was down to try it immediately. They just never expected it to blow up like this.
“We’re used to the crowds for sports and all, but this is a different demographic,” Maria, a 27-year-old server, tells me. “The majority of our staff are women, so we’re such a girl group anyway.”
The first watch party only had three tables set up for viewers, who watched in the back room of the bar. Then Maeve, a 27-year-old manager, posted on social media about drink specials the bar created that were named after the characters. Their bespoke menu went viral, and by the next episode, they had to expand viewings to the main room.
People mostly come in small groups of two or three, but file in so tight they mingle with each other. Tables get reserved weeks in advance and the space fills up long before showtime. Maeve says one woman traveled from Brazil with her mom just to come to this watch party.
“This is our home, and we’re essentially inviting people into our living room to watch the show and bond … it’s like one big slumber party watching a TV show,” Maria says before handing me the Conrad cocktail, which was a perfectly moody Manhattan with a cherry.
Maddie, the bar’s 26-year-old social media manager, screens the episodes on Wednesday mornings before their 7:15 p.m. screenings so she knows exactly when to whip out her phone to get the perfect reaction shot on social media. People tend to boo Jeremiah, the younger, frattier, more outgoing brother who dates Belly for several years before getting engaged in the third season.
What team are you on?
I polled dozens of people in the room in search of someone on Team Jeremiah, but I couldn’t find any. He cheated on Belly, though they were “on a break,” which is an indefensible crime in the eyes of the masses. Maria said she commented in his favor in one of the bar’s viral social media post, and it accrued quite a few likes, but if there are any of his defenders in the room with us, they’re silent.
Maria and Maddie both admit that they’ve been Team Jeremiah in the past, though they rebuke him now. He was the better choice in Season 2, they say, because he was emotionally available, consistent and good at loving Belly. But it was never a fair competition because Conrad, whom she dated in Season 2 and harbored a long-term crush on throughout their childhood, was always in the back of her mind.
“Jeremiah was more fun, always smiling and extremely cute. Conrad is always sulking, which is understandable. I love brooding,” Maddie says.
While navigating through the bar, I misheard something that Chanila, who is 28, was telling her friend over nachos, and mistook it as pro-Jeremiah. She quickly corrected me, shouting “No!” over and over again. “I’m Team Conrad! You’d better put in your article that she was adamant about not being Team Jeremiah.”
Her friend, 29-year-old Courtney, says Jeremiah only ever wanted to be with Belly to one-up his brother. They get into a playful screaming match.
“You wouldn’t be with someone for four f***ing years just to one-up your brother! Guys, that’s f***ed up!” Chanila says, addressing the other two women at their table as well.
“But imagine your mom only loved your brother and not you! Psychologically, it might happen,” Courtney retorts.
“No. It isn’t love. It isn’t true!” Chanila insists. “[Conrad] has always loved her, even when he was a kid. [Jeremiah] only loved her when she [hit puberty and] didn’t wear braces and glasses. That’s the f***ing truth.”
Conrad and Belly have it out on the beach in Season 3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty. (Erika Doss/Amazon/MGM Studios/Courtesy Everett Collection)
They go on debating several topics rapid-fire: Who needs to go to therapy, who’s best for Belly, why they love her, who even has the capacity for love and whether they should order fries now or after they’re asked to vacate their table for a party with a reservation.
Across the bar, two filmmakers, 38-year-old Stephanie and 34-year-old Alex, tell me they were drawn to this real-life event for the drama. The binge model of so much of TV these days wasn’t giving them the satisfaction of a slow burn that this show, which comes out weekly, does.
“[The Summer I Turned Pretty] reminds me of Game of Thrones,” Alex says. “Every week [viewers] broke the internet. We need to bring that back.”
They both wish Jeremiah were a little less evil, though, because the love triangle isn’t as compelling as it was in past shows they watched, like The Vampire Diaries.
“He needs to go to therapy … he has mommy issues and associates value with comfort. Belly is his comfort,” Alex says. “I feel like we’re being handed Conrad on a platter.”
Connie baby
Per Google Trends, search interest in “Team Conrad” is more than 1.5 times more than that of “Team Jeremiah.” Jeremiah might be widely hated — I’ve seen multiple TikToks where the show has been edited like a horror movie with Jeremiah as the antagonist — but Conrad is also deeply flawed. He lost Belly because of his inability to express his feelings. Both men are clearly still grieving their mom, who died in Season 2, and they don’t seem to have many friends outside of each other. And yet, to me and to so many other women like me, Conrad is the only viable option. It’s not even close.
“I feel like people who are Team Jeremiah have no critical thinking skills nor media literacy,” Cheren, a 26-year-old who kindly cleared a place for me to stand during the screening, tells me. She read the books as a preteen when they first came out. “I’m a bitch with anxiety. I’m traumatized. I get Conrad. I like a mentally ill man.”
We go deep on this.
“Conrad is a man of action, but Jeremiah’s a guy of talk,” Cheren explains. “Conrad actually shows up when Belly needs him. That’s what I need. You can say you’re there for me all you want, but if you don’t support me, what are you good for? … Everyone needs to learn that lesson.”
Belly and Jeremiah in Season 3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty. (Erika Doss/Amazon/MGM Studios/Courtesy Everett Collection)
I have to be honest: The drama and the romance of this show are fun, but I keep coming back to see what happens to Conrad. He’s played by Christopher Briney, who looks like a young Leonardo DiCaprio, and his face is always wracked with yearning. He’s Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, and despite clearly living through the 2020s, seems to have never made a Hinge profile. He’s only ever loved Belly, but he fumbled her in Season 2, leading him to spend the next several episodes gazing longingly in response to even the slightest mention of her.
I’m so obsessed with Conrad, in fact, I emailed a psychologist to ask why I and so many of my peers are smitten with him. Hannah Paull tells me that his appeal makes sense. In an era in which dating apps make connections feel transactional and immediate, emotional obstacles and slow-burning romances feel luxurious. We’re not used to that suspense or the fantasy of transformative love.
“Brooding characters often project mystery, depth and emotional intensity — qualities that invite young women to imagine they can be the one who gets through to him,” Paull says. “That sense of yearning creates a powerful tension that feels more exciting than easy availability. In contrast, Jeremiah’s openness makes him safer but also less thrilling.”
The yearning is part of the fun. The Summer I Turned Pretty turned it into a phenomenon, and Blue Haven has turned it into a sport.
‘The show that I need now’
The fact that the bar was packed made me worry that I might not be able to hear what was going on during the show, but people were remarkably polite — they weren’t there to discuss, they were there to react with raw emotions. The subtitles onscreen helped, though, and I saw a group of women sitting just outside the window, silently reading what was happening on the TV screens without any sound.
The bar’s staff told me that at past watch parties, the audience is mostly quiet — except when Conrad is onscreen. The biggest response came when he emotionally confessed his love to Belly late at night on the beach, one day before she was supposed to marry Jeremiah. But this was the second-to-last episode of the entire series — plotlines are wrapping up, and I was shocked when some people cheered for Belly’s hookup with her new, Parisian love interest, Benito. At the same time, Conrad’s voice-over read his letters to Belly aloud. Those also got cheers. So did the Taylor Swift song playing in the background of the scene.
“This is the show I wanted when I was 12 years old, but it’s the show that I need now,” Cheren tells me earnestly.
In the books, Belly ultimately ends up with Conrad. Han has said that the series won’t end the same way. Does that mean the internet’s favorite love interest may end up alone, choosing a new life in France over the great romances of her youth?
“I’m ready for something new this summer,” Belly says in the chair of a hairstylist, seemingly unaware that Conrad is on a plane to Paris to see her. Squeals of anxiety filled the sports bar.
Now, I’m even less sure of what I want to happen. I just know I want to watch it all unfold surrounded by women unafraid to release their emotions as if we’re all watching sports.
