Back at it again with a new review! This week covers a very interesting episode, “Love Game”. In this episode, a lot goes on, specifically with Belly’s web of a love life (ugh) and the beloved beach house potentially being taken from the kids forever. Without further ado, here’s a quick recap of the important events before getting down to the nitty-gritty.

As a little refresher, the third episode ends with Conrad having a panic attack after receiving a phone call.

“Love Game” opens with Conrad struggling to breathe as he stands on the beach in front of their house. Turns out the call was from Stanford in which they informed him he had been accepted, which had been Susannah and his dream for as long as he can remember. Steven finds him and tries to comfort him. Despite Steven’s efforts, Conrad can’t help but feel like he’s failing everyone. He feels like he should just go to a different college that is closer to the school his brother Jeremiah plans to go to.

Aunt Julia, Susannah’s sister who wants to sell the beach house, arrives with her child Skye. Skye tries to sympathize with their cousins but none of them want to hear it. Specifically, Conrad is a bit of a bully in this episode.

When the air conditioning suddenly breaks, Julia ushers all of the kids out of the house where they then decide to go to the boardwalk. As much as the two brothers protest Skye tagging along, Belly convinces them to allow Skye to come.

However, once they get to the boardwalk Skye immediately launches into why their mom isn’t a villain which annoys Conrad and Jeremiah. Everyone decides to calm down by playing one of their favorite childhood games, the Great Boardwalk Showdown. They team up in two groups: Belly, Taylor, Skye, Conrad, Jeremiah, and Steven.

After completing a series of different competitions, the group reunites with Cam Cameron, a friend and ex-boyfriend of Belly. At least they’re on good terms, which is not necessarily something she could say about Jeremiah or Conrad.

Later in the game, Conrad makes a side bet with Belly: the loser has to ride the Tower of Terror! This motivates Belly to try harder in the competition, but clearly, she isn’t motivated enough because her team loses and it’s off to the terrifying drop tower.

But, of course, sweet old Jeremiah offers to ride it with her. And throughout the entire way up, he holds her hand and her gaze with those incredibly bright blue eyes.

The gang finally decides it’s time to go back to Cousins, Jeremiah all heart-eyed and Conrad jealous and bitter. Eventually, his spirits are lifted during the car ride home in which Steven says he sees something between Belly and Connie. Unsurprisingly, both Jeremiah and Conrad are still stupidly head over heels in love with Belly and her toxic traits as well (aka playing with their hearts and turning them against each other).
Everyone seems to be in a cheerful mood until they get home and open the door only to see an empty house. Julia had used the day to move quite literally everything to prepare for whoever moved in.

And that wraps up the summary, now what are the opinions on this episode?

To start, Skye is a brand new character! Not even being a part of the book series, it’s easy to guess fans have formed some opinions about them.

Student Ava Anderson says, “I think that Skye is just extremely irrelevant in themself as well as to the plot. The group’s dynamic is completely thrown off when Skye is in the scene. Writing them as this super awkward stereotypical introvert with bad dialogue character doesn’t make any sense in the context of the story.”

Indeed, Skye was written as a very weird and awkward character. This is something that all fans can agree on. Sophomore Hannah Bruce adds to this, saying, “As a character, dialogue and personality wise I did not like them. Their whole character’s personality is just this socially awkward, quirky introvert which makes their scenes pretty hard to sit through.”

Not only are they incredibly embarrassing character who makes all of the scenes they’re in hard to watch, but they also are very inconsiderate about Jeremiah and Conrad’s situation. Instead of being sympathetic about their mom’s death (which would take a toll on someone’s mental health), Skye decided to make things all about how the brothers shouldn’t be so quick to blame their mom for everything.

Ava says, “I think that the things Skye says are always insensitive like their problems are always bigger. For example, saying Susannah wasn’t a saint to the boys who had just lost her.”

Hannah also agrees with this statement, saying, “They never really considered how their cousins would feel after making rude comments about their dead mom which was messed up.”

Not to mention, Skye’s character is just overall cringey. Whoever wrote their lines was not thinking straight. A few examples of their embarrassing dialogue include “I refuse to smile”, “I don’t do high fives”, and of course, “Thank you, puberty!”. It’s understandable to have boundaries (like with the high fives), but to viewers, it just seemed like the show was trying to create a quirky character who’s just so different from the rest.

Moving on from Skye, one question that many have: how did Aunt Julie manage to clear out the entire house in just a few hours? It’s just that everything in that house has been building up for over a decade, and she was able to move everything out of the house in such a short amount of time. Someone was in a hurry!

It also is debatable whether or not Julie sent the group to the boardwalk to move all the furniture. She claimed she wanted them gone because the AC needed to be fixed, but maybe that isn’t the case since she shooed them out so quickly. Who knows?

In addition, here it goes again with the annoying love triangle! While everyone was at the boardwalk, Belly had a flashback about a time she and Conrad were playing a game at the same boardwalk. Conrad wins a prize for Belly in which he gives her a polar bear stuffed animal but Belly says she would’ve preferred a giraffe. In the present, Belly wins a prize at a game and Conrad says she can get another polar bear to which she replies she’s going to get the giraffe. Conrad gets the reference and believes that Belly is completely over him.

It seemed like Conrad was angry with Belly for, well, a really large amount of reasons, but it looks like he still won’t give up on her!

Hanging out has made him fall for her all over again, and Jeremiah as well. At this point, neither of them should even be with Belly. What do they see in her after all she’s put them through? Not to mention her insensitivity with their mom’s death. It looks like several characters don’t understand that losing a parent who has been with them all their life is actually kind of sad and heartbreaking.

Well, that’s all the time there is for this review! Make sure to take all of this into account and decide which team is best: Jeremiah or Conrad. Stick around for next week’s episode for more updates on the mess that is The Summer I Turned Pretty!