There’s no denying that The Summer I Turned Pretty is tonally a very different show in season two than it was in season one, mostly due to Susannah’s passing and the ripple effect that created among her friends and family. Gone are the more lighthearted storylines featuring deb ball fashion montages and Beck trying to get her kids to sit for portraits. Aside from some fun and games at the boardwalk this season and a sweet love scene between Belly and Conrad, it’s been devastating to watch all the in-fighting between the Fisher and Conklin families as well as Aunt Julia’s steadfast determination to sell the beloved beach house.
“In my memories of the first season, there was so much joy in the house,” Rachel Blanchard, who plays Susannah, tells Glamour. “It was really fun to shoot those scenes with everybody. And there weren’t scenes like that this season, obviously, because Susannah’s not around and it’s not in the summer for the most part. It was sad.”
At the end of episode 204, titled “Love Game,” Conrad, Belly, and Jeremiah discover that all the furniture in the house has been removed in what can only be described as a gut punch—to the characters and viewers. Episode 205 (“Love Fool”) picks up with Jeremiah observing that he didn’t think things could get worse after his mother died and Aunt Julia put the house up for sale, but it is. Everything’s gone, even their personal belongings. It’s not just infuriating but violating.
“It was weird,” Chris Briney, who plays Conrad, tells Glamour. “I forgot that’s what we were filming [that day, so when] I walked onto the set, it was empty. I had never seen it like that in our entire first season, plus the four episodes into season two. I was surprised at how much it upset me. I was like, ‘Wait, the couch is usually there, and there’s that little jar I play with when I’m bored and there’s, you know…'”
As a result, one might expect Briney, as well as Lola Tung (“Belly”) and Gavin Casalegno (“Jeremiah”), to say that the house scenes were the most emotionally challenging or difficult to film; but if anything, those scenes and emotions came relatively easy, given how much the house is an extension of the characters and the actors. The harder scenes were ones you might not expect, for reasons either out of their control, or because of the importance placed on them for fans of the book.
