Everything hurts, and nothing is okay.

If The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 2 Episode 1 is any indication, this season will hurt a lot. We were treated to an incredibly heavy premiere as we were instantly hit with the news that Susannah has lost her battle with cancer somewhere between where we left things in The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 1 and the present.

And as the glue that kept everyone together, undoubtedly, everything else had fallen apart that year.

The angst-fueled hour wasted no time giving us what should've been the happy results of that season finale before catapulting us into the present-day depressing effects of that day.

Everything changed when Conrad and Belly shared that kiss on the beach.

It was evident how much they loved each other, how precious that moment was for them, and that their feelings were real, and cementing them meant the world to both of them.

They couldn't even contain it when they returned to the cabin and faced a beaming Susannah, eagerly awaiting all the updates on how these two teens she loves with her whole heart found their way to each other.

In that sense, it was a genuine relief that Belly wanted to speak to Jeremiah as soon as they returned. If they couldn't keep things from Susannah with their heart-eyed expression and handholding, there was no way they'd be able to keep things under wraps in front of Jeremiah.

And that moment where Belly did the mature and responsible thing and told him the truth about what happened between her and Conrad was just one of many gut punches in this incredibly heavy and, at times, dreary hour.

It wasn't a surprise that Jeremiah didn't take the news well, and frankly, when he truly expressed himself, acknowledging that he was a distraction until Belly could be with Conrad and mentioning how messed up it was that he was getting this news after founding out about his mom's cancer, one's heart broke for him.

Jeremiah simply radiates happy-go-lucky human golden-retriever energy, and hurting him is like kicking a puppy. But if it wasn't evident by his spat with Belly, he's genuinely in love with her too.

Jeremiah: You kissed my brother.
Belly: I'm sorry. I didn't think that he'd ... we wanted to tell you right away.
Jeremiah: You're already a "we?"

• Permalink: You're already a "we?"

So much of this love triangle emphasizes Belly and Conrad's feelings for one another as we follow the various stages of them fighting them and struggling to acknowledge them.

But what's subtler is the hovering on unrequited love angle when you factor in that Jeremiah was likely head over heels for Belly the same way she's been for Conrad her entire life.

It made it sensible that he could look her in the eyes after what he deemed a betrayal and state that he can't be her best friend.

It was so much unspoken in that angry, hurt outburst. Jer can't just be Belly's friend when he cares about her so much, and there's simply no going back or putting the toothpaste back in the tube, so to speak.

What works well with all the seemingly angsty teen love triangle aspects of this series is how deeply rooted it is in the grander scale of this series, enough so that it doesn't feel juvenile, silly, or without real consequence.

The Summer I Turned Pretty puts respect on teen and first love, doesn't denigrate or downplay it in the least, and succeeds at showcasing how it can genuinely affect everyone around and ties it in with so many other hard points in life that really grounds it.

The stakes are high and dire for more than just Belly during the tense-filled moment and the long-arching effects of how last summer ended.

And combining something that would normally seem inconsequential and small with one of the most devastatingly real and just as human experiences as losing a loved one is how the premiere succeeded in showing how rich a drama it can be.

Jeremiah: I was just the distraction to keep you busy while you waited for Conrad. I'm glad it finally happened for you Belly. Great timing; it's not like my mom has cancer or anything.
Belly: Jer, I didn't want to hurt you; you're one of my best friends.
Jeremiah: No, you don't get to call me that.
Belly: You don't mean that.
Jeremiah: I do...now, can you please get out? Just so you know, he's going to break your heart.

• Permalink: Jer, I didn't want to hurt you; you're one of my best friends.

The premiere plays close to the series' second book, providing the oscillating timeline to build the story and characters.

In some ways, the constant timeline jumping felt like too much while notably important and understandably essential to driving the story.

We didn't have strong enough transitions between the two timelines every time they switched things up, and there were moments where it felt like it disrupted the storytelling rather than worked as a tool to aid it.

Nevertheless, it managed to compound Belly's sadness, the grief strangling her at every turn and weighing her down in life.

We got the early stages of how that impacted her in the flashbacks and saw how she's still struggling in the present.

The distinction between the Belly of last summer and early fall versus now was notable. One of the memorable moments of the first season was when everyone noted how much Belly had changed and matured since the previous summer.

During the premiere, we were privy to that type of shift ourselves in a way that almost felt gut-wrenching. Lola Tung is gorgeous, and she even captured the maturity, the almost world-weariness of Belly presently compared to where she initially left things.

Her scene of crying in the car as she fled the party was especially distinctive in capturing that. It felt like Belly had aged five years in one; she felt more like an adult woman than a teen, as if the character's innocence, light, and naivete from when we first met her had slipped from her fingertips because life happens.

Life comes at you fast, and so does death, grief, trauma, and pain. The Belly we see now wears all of that on her face, carries in her every move, it's heavy in her voice, the profound sadness, and Tung does a remarkable job of portraying all of that.

She lures you in until you are enveloped in Belly's sadness and grief, too. It's the primary reason the hour felt so suffocating and heavy.

Essentially, Susannah's death is that pivotal thing that causes everyone's world to implode and this family they all formed, romance aside, to fracture.

Everyone is broken, and no one knows what to do with all the jagged edges or how to come together again. In death, we truly get a sense of just how much Susannah held her loved ones together.

No matter what happens, we'll always be infinite.

Conrad

• Permalink: No matter what happens, we'll always be infinite.

It makes every shot of Susannah in the past slice deeper. Every second I saw Rachel Blanchard's face, I wanted to cry. I'm so glad we still have the actress this season, even when we know her fate.

She brings such a light to everything, and her scenes with Belly, Laurel, and the boys are heart-piercing. But shockingly, one of the most gutwrenching moments of all was Steven receiving her graduation gift.

It's just like Susannah to have arranged gifts for such a monumental moment. She knew her death would make everyone sad, but she still managed to make them smile and inspire them anyway.

Susannah and Steven's relationship wasn't thoroughly explored as much as Susannah and Belly having their mother-daughter type of moments.

There are times when it feels like the world is happening to you, but remember that you are also happening to the world, so don't wait. Make what you want happen because tomorrow isn't promised, so you better make fucking sure that you are living today.

Steven

• Permalink: There are times when it feels like the world is happening to you, but remember that you are also

And that's why her touching note to him, calling him her sweet boy and leaving him some parting, inspiring words that he turned into a kickass rally cry during his valedictorian speech, felt so powerful and poignant.

It was such an important scene and thing to explore because we knew Susannah would die, and it was easy to think of her death in the context of how it affected Jeremiah, Conrad, Laurel, and Belly. The entire family is grieving her and missing something because she's gone.

For much of the hour, we're focusing on how Belly, essentially losing three people she loves at once, has shattered her life. Susannah was this second mother and confidante she couldn't even imagine her life without.

But because of the fallout from her romantic entanglement with the boys, she essentially lost them, too. We spent most of the hour understanding what transpired between her and Jeremiah and how things fell apart for them when she told him about Conrad.

As much as one can understand why Jeremiah behaved as he did, it doesn't detract from the fact that Belly lost one of her best friends for a year until he finally answered the phone at the end of the hour.

But we're left in the dark about how things went to hell for her and Conrad. Knowing the elder Fisher, he spiraled out of control when his mother died, pushed everyone away, and self-sabotaged.

Knowing that Belly went from at least having late-night chats, moments of sweetness, and by October, sweet kisses with Conrad to brokenhearted by June is painful.

She's all out of sorts. Conrad would've been the last piece she had with Susannah gone and Jeremiah not speaking to her.

But the deep layers of how Susannah's illness and subsequent death upended Belly ultimately unraveled as the hour progressed.

One could sense the strain in her and Steven's relationship as he rotates between clinging to her, likely valuing that he has his sister and knowing that in some ways she's all he has left, to resenting and blaming her for losing his best friends.

He knows that Belly is at the center of the conflict between the Fisher boys, and while it's not fair to him, it's understandable that he blames her for how the love triangle affects his relationship with both boys.

Steven's own grief and loss have him spiraling in different ways. His drunken antics at the party just made you feel sad for him, and it's apparent that he has some reservations about what awaits him in Princeton, leaving things and people behind and whatever inadequacies and hurt have resulted from Taylor and Milo.

I wasn't in Cousins. Conrad and I weren't together, and Susannah was dead. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Belly Voiceover

• Permalink: I wasn't in Cousins. Conrad and I weren't together, and Susannah was dead. Nothing would ever...

Steven is his own mess, too.

As ugly as his and Belly's showdown at that party was, the pain beneath it all was palpable and spoke to so many things as we watched these two siblings trapped in grief and struggling, lashing out at one another in the only way they know how.

One can understand Steven's frustrations when he reminds Belly that she's not the only one who lost Susannah. She's walking around like she lost it all, and she did, but her grief is so insular.

Belly cannot step outside of her own grief and loss to focus on anything else, let alone acknowledge anyone else's. Her grades have slipped; she's no longer bound for an Ivy League college and somehow lost her captaincy on the volleyball team.

She's a shell of herself at school and falls asleep in class. It's troubling but a perfectly sensible reaction to all she's endured.

Belly is slipping through the cracks heartbreakingly, and amid the season revealing all the bits and details that led us to this point, I look forward to our girl learning how to work through her grief and live again instead of simply exist in this dark, lonely, isolated, painful place.

But we get that she's shouldering Steven's hot and cold responses to her because of the love triangle fallout, which can't be the best when she constantly blames herself over both breaking Jer's heart and somehow contributing to Jer's prophetic warning of Conrad breaking hers.

She's battling her first real heartbreak with her first love while mourning Susannah every day. Others in her life seem to go on like everything is fine, and she's just zombie-walking through things trying to get by.

Conrad: Do you want to be with him?
Belly: Being with you is all I ever wanted.

• Permalink: Being with you is all I ever wanted.

And sadly, things between her and Laurel are strained as well. You can tell she resents her mother for spending so much time away from home to help care for Susannah and the boys, not because she didn't want her mother to do that but because Laurel went from being absent while rendering support to completely absent after losing her best friend.

You get the sense that Laurel is there in body but not much else, and Belly and Steven have been fending for themselves a lot since Susannah died. It only adds to how isolated and alone Belly feels these days.

It likely only exacerbates some of the issues the mother and daughter have often had in the first place, and without Susannah there as a buffer, this person who can always bring them together, the chasm between them only seems to grow more pronounced.

We didn't get as much of a glimpse into how Laurel has been doing since all of this, but one can imagine her state and understand how she managed to check out her kids' lives completely.

She also seems to have difficulty even thinking about the boys whenever anyone mentions them. And we learned that she wrote an entire book about Susannah but spent months too trapped in her own pain to want to promote it.

What was interesting was seeing how supportive John was of her and his endearing promise to be her cheerleader, providing her the support Susannah always did, even if he could never fill the void.

Because the truth is that Laurel has essentially lost her soulmate and one person outside of her children who she genuinely, deeply, fully loved, and there's no getting past that for her.

The Susannah and Laurel friendship was one of the most underrated aspects of this series, and I genuinely look forward to the scenes between Blanchard and Jackie Chung, even when it's evident that they'll hurt like hell to watch.

Laurel: She was always my biggest cheerleader. Guess now I have to be my own.
John: I'll wear the skirt, but I draw the line at pom poms.

• Permalink: I'll wear the skirt, but I draw the line at pom poms.

We got our introduction to how Belly is coping with Susannah's loss and how the approach of summer invokes pain and dread more than happiness it used to do.

But there's a new sense of adventure in the works with those final moments. It transitions us into how things are going for Jeremiah and Conrad.

If Conrad bailed on his finals, left school, and isn't speaking to anyone, there's something serious happening. It's just the type of wake-up call this emotionally fragile family needs to set things aside (or maybe deal with them) while addressing a larger issue of ensuring that he's okay.

Because none of them are okay, but everyone has been so wrapped up in their own version of not being fine that they're allowing each other to slip through the cracks.

Despite all the messy things it can bring up, Conrad's disappearance is the exact thing that can bring Belly and Jeremiah together and help them work through some of their issues or at least start to have the necessary conversations.

Life is short enough, and they know that, and they all need each other too much to not be communicating with one another.

I loved Belly's fierceness during those final moments, and this series' neverending ability to set the internet ablaze with its music catalog makes it the premiere pop culture phenomenon it is.

Belly looked determined and like a girl who found a semblance of purpose for the first time in months. Let's do this!

Over to you, Summer I Turned Pretty Fanatics. Was the hour too depressing for you? Are you emotionally prepared for a season of angst and grief? How do you think things will go when Belly and Jeremiah meet up to find Conrad?

Hit the comments below! And stay tuned for more of our The Summer I Turned Pretty Reviews.

Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. She is an insomniac who spends late nights and early mornings binge-watching way too many shows and binge-drinking way too much tea. Her eclectic taste makes her an unpredictable viewer with an appreciation for complex characters, diverse representation, dynamic duos, compelling stories, and guilty pleasures. You'll definitely find her obsessively live-tweeting, waxing poetic, and chatting up fellow Fanatics and readers. Follow her on X.