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Photo: Amazon Prime Video
In this episode largely defined by characters asking way too much of each other, what could be more natural or more understandable than Belly, hammered and sobbing, drunk-dialing her mom and begging her to come and “fix it”? She’s just a kid feeling the weight of the world and she needs her mommy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, nobody asks more impossible things than Susannah, even from beyond the grave.
All of these kids, actually, are in desperate need of an adult. I was wrong about Kyra Sedgwick, and Aunt Julia really is selling the house out of spite for her dead sister and her dead sister’s sons. However shitty “Shitmas” was, I am 100 percent positive that this is shittier. In the one flashback to that ill-fated holiday, all the insight we get is Julia being like, “Your mom is such a bitch, Susannah,” and Susannah being like, “Is she really, though?” How very dare she. There simply has to be more to this falling out than that because that is not even in the same neighborhood as rational, and my patience for Julia’s shenanigans is rapidly coming to its end.
Belly can’t change the fact that Julia has already sold the beach house, but she still feels it is her responsibility to preserve that Cousins Beach “magic” because Susannah literally told her it was her responsibility to preserve the Cousins Beach magic. I, an adult with a fully-formed frontal lobe, understand that Susannah probably only meant for Belly not to let grief ruin a place that had always been special to her. Belly, a teenager, takes this charge literally and responds to the crisis with a teenager’s solution: Max out the boys’ emergency Amex at Party City and throw a massive farewell blow-out. It’s “retro” themed so that Belly has a reason to wear Susannah’s old roller skates around the house. Even so, try as she might, Belly cannot fill Susannah’s roller skates, and when the party devolves into fist fights and spray paint and distinctly un-magical teen vomiting, of course, Belly feels like she’s failed Susannah’s spirit somehow.
In the final moments of “Love Fest,” Belly sobs in her voicemail, “Mommy, I need you. I’m at the summer house, Susannah’s house. Except it’s not hers anymore, and everything is going wrong, and the boys may never speak to each other again. Just come, please, okay? Just come and fix it.”
Because Susannah also expected Belly to end up with one of her sons, remember? Except now both boys have fallen in love with her and she’s still trying to choose between them. Belly only just turned pretty, and she’s never appeared more comfortable or confident in her own prettiness than in this episode, but it’s not clear if she’s figured out either the strength or the limits of this power. Not in the way that Taylor clearly has, for example. With the narcissism of the young and newly glowed up, Belly seems to believe that not only is she the root of the tension between Conrad and Jeremiah but that it’s also her God-given duty to prevent, soothe, and solve all of their conflicts. In reality, Con and Jeremiah are fighting about Belly a little bit, but they’re actually fighting about the fact that while Conrad was at school, Jere was the one who was with her all day, every day, as she was dying of cancer. And that is simply not within Belly’s purview.
Perhaps Belly could have handled her relationships with both boys a little more delicately, but I still don’t think that (A) jealousy of each other over Belly would be enough on its own to destroy their relationship or that (B) Belly would have been able to stop their mutual chest-thumping over her anyway. You could argue that Belly shouldn’t keep flirting with Jere in front of Conrad, but when else is she supposed to flirt when Conrad refuses to leave them alone? You could argue that Belly shouldn’t flirt with Con in front of Jeremiah, but I’d counter that she’s not trying to flirt with Conrad at all — he just keeps cornering her to instigate big talks about the relationship he ruined. And you know what? Considering her drunkenness, I don’t think she could have handled that last confrontation with him on the beach any better.
To the tune of Taylor Swift’s “Snow on the Beach” — the second time we’ve heard that song in six episodes, by the way — Con tries to bodily haul Belly away from the ocean and back to the house, which doesn’t go well, obviously. She says, “I thought that we loved each other.” He says, “We did,” and she responds, “I guess not enough.” Honestly, brava. I was really worried this was about to go another way.
But you see why Belly just needs her mom right now. Heck, anybody would need their mom after this day.
Fortunately, while Belly and the boys are still stuck in the love triangle from hell, things are going much smoother for our other teen lovebirds. First, Skye gets their first kiss (ever!) from Cam Cameron, who is an excellent choice for a first kiss. Moving on, Steven has memorized Taylor and Belly’s choreography to “Party In the USA,” which he performs alongside Tay-Tay in the middle of the dance floor because he knows it will make her happy. Plus, he knows her middle name is Madison, which her boyfriend Milo doesn’t, and he doesn’t start fights, which her boyfriend Milo does. Excuse me, now ex-boyfriend Milo. Cue the makeout!
Okay, that’s enough fun stuff. Now we need to wait and see how, exactly, Laurel is going to fix everything. So, good luck to her.
• Pretty much every time Belly cries, but especially when she cries while saying, “Mommy?” All the Emmys for Lola Tung.
• Jeremiah whispering, “You don’t need to hurt yourself to get my attention.” Hey, horniness is a type of emotion, right?
• Kyra Sedgwick basically tells Skye that their cousins don’t actually love them as much as they think because Kyra Sedgwick takes her childhood trauma out on her kid rather than going to therapy, and I just love Skye.
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