There’s something deeply unfair about the way The Summer I Turned Pretty treats Jeremiah Fisher
There’s something deeply unfair about the way The Summer I Turned Pretty treats Jeremiah Fisher, and I think what frustrates me most is that the show keeps pretending the triangle is balanced when it never really was. Conrad was always the mythology. Jeremiah was the emotional cushioning around it.
And once you notice that, you can’t unsee it.
Because the thing is, Jeremiah is constantly asked to absorb pain gracefully. That’s his role in the family. In the story. In the fandom. He’s expected to smile through rejection, adapt around everybody else’s emotional chaos, stay warm, stay charming, stay understanding, and most importantly, never become inconvenient.
Conrad gets to fall apart. Jeremiah gets told to cope better.
That’s the actual dynamic.
Conrad’s coldness is framed as depth. His withdrawal is framed as grief. His inability to communicate is framed as emotional complexity. The show portrays him like a tragic literary hero. Moody lighting, aching silences, sad eyes, indie music swelling in the background every time he stares into the ocean like he’s carrying the weight of the world.
And I’m sorry, but if Jeremiah behaved the exact same way, people would drag him to hell.
If Jeremiah spent entire seasons hot-and-colding Belly, shutting her out, refusing to communicate, making her decode his feelings constantly, the fandom would call him manipulative and toxic within five business days. But Conrad does it and suddenly everyone’s writing essays about tortured masculinity and avoidant attachment styles.
Meanwhile Jeremiah communicates directly. Messily sometimes, yes. Imperfectly, absolutely. But honestly. He asks for reassurance. He says what he feels. He loves loudly. And somehow the narrative treats that openness as less profound than Conrad’s emotional constipation.
Which is wild when you think about it, because in real life women constantly beg men to communicate emotionally. Jeremiah actually does, and the fandom still punishes him because he doesn’t fit the broody-romantic archetype people are trained to associate with “great love.”
And to be very honest, I think a huge part of the issue starts with the adults.
Because Jeremiah did not grow up in a neutral emotional environment. He grew up in a family where everyone already had assigned roles.
Conrad was the golden child. The serious one. The deep one. The boy everybody protected. The future great love story. Even Susannah framed him that way constantly. Belly and Conrad weren’t treated like two teenagers figuring things out naturally. They were treated like destiny before they even properly understood themselves.
That’s a LOT to put on children.
And Jeremiah always felt like the afterthought in that equation.
Not unloved. That’s important. Susannah clearly adored him. But there’s a difference between loving your child and truly seeing them. Jeremiah was emotionally typecast from the beginning. He was the sunshine boy. The easy one. The adaptable one. The one expected to recover quickly. The one expected not to ruin the mood.
Families do this all the time, by the way. The child who seems emotionally resilient becomes emotional infrastructure for everyone else. Nobody checks on them properly because they assume they’ll bounce back.
And Jeremiah was carrying an insane amount emotionally for someone so young.
His mother is dying.
His father clearly favours his brother.
The girl he loves has always looked at Conrad differently.
The entire emotional atmosphere around him subtly suggests that he should step aside because Conrad and Belly are the “real” love story.
And somehow he’s supposed to process all of that with perfect maturity at seventeen?
Be serious.
Adam Fisher honestly did a number on Jeremiah’s self-worth too, and I don’t think the show interrogates that nearly enough. The favouritism toward Conrad wasn’t subtle. Conrad got respect. Jeremiah got affection when convenient. Those are not the same thing.
One son was treated like the heir.
The other was treated like the entertainer.
That kind of dynamic follows you into adulthood. You can literally SEE Jeremiah craving validation throughout the series. Not just romantically, but fundamentally. He wants to feel chosen. Prioritized. Taken seriously for once instead of emotionally managed.
And then there’s Belly. Ugh.
This is where people get mad because the narrative protects her heavily, but I genuinely think the show lets her off the hook way too often.
Because if you step outside protagonist bias for even five minutes, Belly absolutely benefits from having both brothers emotionally available to her while offering neither clarity for long stretches of time. And what makes it worse is the timing of all of this.
Their mother is dying.
The boys are actively drowning in anticipatory grief, family dysfunction, resentment, identity collapse, fear, sibling rivalry, abandonment issues, all of it. Meanwhile, Belly’s emotional centre of gravity often remains:
Who loves me?
Who do I choose?
Who chooses me back?
Which, okay, she’s young. I get it. Teenagers are self-centred sometimes. But the show romanticises that behaviour instead of interrogating it.
And I’m sorry, but the entitlement around the summer house drove me insane sometimes too. Belly often behaved like Cousins belonged to her emotionally because it represented this magical coming-of-age fantasy in her head. But for Jeremiah and Conrad, that house held actual grief, family history, trauma, instability, and fear.
Especially for Jeremiah.
Because Conrad gets treated like fragile glass whenever he spirals. Everybody adjusts around his pain automatically. But when Jeremiah spirals, suddenly he’s difficult. Jealous. Reactive. Immature.
That’s the core injustice of his character.
People expect emotional perfection from the kid who was never allowed to fully break.
And honestly, I think what makes Jeremiah tragic is that he KNOWS. He’s painfully aware of the Belly-Conrad mythology hanging over him at all times. Imagine being in a relationship where everyone around you subtly acts like your girlfriend’s emotional endgame is somebody else. That would destroy anybody eventually. And his BROTHER AT THAT.
The worst part is that Belly does love him, in her own way. I believe that. But there’s a difference between loving someone and choosing them fully without reservation.
Jeremiah never got that certainty.
There was always an emotional footnote attached to him.
And then the ending just twists the knife further.
Belly gets Paris. Belly gets growth. Belly gets her soulmate ending. Conrad gets the epic romance the narrative was always building toward. Their love story gets framed as transcendent and inevitable and bigger than everything else.
...And Jeremiah?
Jeremiah gets suffering as character development.
That’s why so many people walk away from the story feeling strangely hollow about his ending even if they support Conrad and Belly. Emotionally, the narrative uses Jeremiah constantly. He carries warmth for the show. Ease. Joy. Vulnerability. Accessibility. He keeps the emotional engine running. And then once the soulmate ship activates fully, he starts feeling less like a person and more like collateral damage everyone is expected to politely move past.
Even the infamous cheating storyline honestly feels less like organic character writing and more like the narrative panicking because Jeremiah and Belly had become too believable together. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth, people don’t like admitting:
Jeremiah and Belly often looked more compatible in actual day-to-day life.
Not epic.
Not devastating.
Not soulmate-coded.
Compatible.
They laughed easily. They flirted naturally. There was friendship there. Warmth. Ease. Belly actually relaxed around him sometimes instead of constantly yearning and spiralling and decoding emotional breadcrumbs.
But teen dramas are addicted to the idea that suffering equals depth. Longing equals destiny. Turmoil equals true love.
So Conrad wins because the story was built around mythology.
Jeremiah loses because he represented something emotionally real.
And honestly? The fandom judges Jeremiah with adult moral standards while excusing everybody else through emotional framing. Belly hurts people too. Conrad hurts people too. Repeatedly. But Jeremiah becomes “the problem” because his reactions are visible instead of poetic.
The boy loses his mother at seventeen.
Loses emotional stability.
Loses his brother for periods of time.
Loses the girl he loves.
And still somehow gets framed like he’s the one who needed to handle things better than everyone else.
It’s ridiculous.
Jeremiah deserved somebody who chose him first. Fully. Without comparison. Without destiny hanging over his head. Without constantly feeling like he was competing against a love story the entire universe had already decided was more important than him.