I was surprised by how much I liked the first season of Cruel Summer. I thought, at best, it would be a mildly entertaining teen mystery show, but it was actually more involved than that and I was pretty captivated by it. Since the show is an anthology series, the second season tackles a completely different story with a new cast of characters. The only thing that remained the same was the storytelling convention. This is not unique to Cruel Summer, but the story is told in split timelines with each episode taking place over the course of one day in 3 separate time periods. It’s not a revolutionary way to tell a story, but I like how it contributes to the questions and the mystery and also how it shows that each beat of the story was plotted from the beginning in order to be able to tell the story in this format. While there are obvious visual indicators (a little overly obvious sometimes) about which timeline you are in, the show actually does a good job of not overly explaining and holding your hand. For a “teen show”, it asks you to do a good amount of work to keep up with the timeline switching and keep the sequence of events straight in your head. Just because it is targeted to teens and/or is about teens, the show doesn’t underestimate the viewers’ intelligence.

Something else I like about Cruel Summer is that it doesn’t show a bunch of people with perfect lives that are then rocked by a crime that sets the whole plot into motion. Instead, you see every character make a series of choices along the way that all end up coming to a breaking point. It’s not out of nowhere, it feels earned. Every character’s choices, big and small, contributed to the end result, and if one person had done one thing differently, it might not have turned out the way it did. To me, that feels more true to life. Things build over time before they break, they don’t just happen. The format of the multiple timelines really helps to emphasize this because you see the choices while already knowing where they lead.

The cast of this show stood out to me and not for their acting (the acting was fine, just not notable). The main character, Megan, is played by an actress named Sadie Stanley. She’s had a few small roles, but I first saw her in a movie I watched for work (that I’m sure no one else saw) called Somewhere in Queens. The reason she stood out to me was because I think she looks exactly like Madelyn Cline who plays Sarah Cameron on Outer Banks. All of that is basically to say that this girl literally has the face for a teen show. Other significant (to me) characters and cast members are Megan’s mom, Debbie, played by KaDee Strickland, Megan’s love interest, Luke, played by Griffin Gluck, and Luke’s dad/Debbie’s love interest, Steve, played by Paul Adelstein. If you don’t know these actors or if you saw them and don’t recognize them, congratulations, you’re probably normal. But if you’re like me, you would realize that they were all on the show Private Practice where KaDee Strickland and Paul Adelstein also played love interests and Griffin Gluck played their child. So Cruel Summer is basically the Private Practice reunion that no one asked for (if you haven’t watched it and feel like being depressed over and over again for 111 episodes then go for it!). And to wrap up this edition of “where do I know that person from?”, Griffin Gluck also played Jennifer Aniston’s son in the movie Just Go With It with Adam Sandler which is really bad but fun to watch. I’ve seen that movie a bunch of times and he is 11 years old in it. He is now 23 in real life and playing 18 on this show and it was a very weird experience for me to see him as an adult.

I think Cruel Summer is surprisingly good and entertaining for what it is. If you like the first season of Riverdale (back when it was good), this has a lot of that vibe with the high school drama but also darker mystery aspect. I also thought it looked at toxic relationships in an interesting way, showing toxic female friendships, toxic male friendships, toxic parent-child relationships, etc. and how those all clash in dangerous ways. The first season also tackled bigger issues with a shockingly insightful and honest take on grooming. If I had to choose, I would probably say I preferred season 1 just because I thought the story was so unique. But I really enjoyed both seasons and watched both in less than a week. If any of this sounds interesting to you, I would definitely check out Cruel Summer as casual, entertaining binge-watch.

P.S. Totally unrelated to the show but everyone should listen to the song “Cruel Summer” by Taylor Swift.

2023 Count: 24 seasons, 40 movies, 1 special