Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Cruel Summer’ On Freeform, About A Teenager’s Transformation From Nerd To Popular To Hated In The Span Of Two Years

When we see a new way of telling a story on a TV show, we’re always skeptical. Is it just a gimmick, or has this showrunner and his/her team found a way to break open the usual storytelling formats and do something different? The new Freeform drama Cruel Summer definitely has a unique storytelling method, going back and forth between the same calendar point in three different years. But does it work?

CRUEL SUMMER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We hear a modem sound, then a computer screen type-out that says the events that unfold in this series take place on “approximately June 21st of 1993, 1994, and 1995.”

The Gist: In 1993, Jeanette Turner (Chiara Aurelia) is awakened on her 15th birthday by her father Greg (Michael Landes), mother Cindy (Sarah Drew) and older brother Derek (Barrett Carnahan). It’s a bit of a dorky tradition that the Turners have on her birthday. She’s a sweet kid, with wavy hair, glasses and braces, and she just wants to spend time with her buddies Mallory Higgins (Harley Quinn Smith) and Vincent Fuller (Allius Barnes) at the mall.

In 1994, Jeanette is woken up on her 16th birthday by her boyfriend, Jamie Henson (Froy Gutierrez). She looks like she’s “blossomed,” wearing makeup and contacts and looking like the popular kid she now is.

In 1995, Jeanette is woken up on her 17th birthday by her father, but not very sweetly. “Your lawyer’s here,” he says. She’s now chopped her hair off and looks completely depressed. Her lawyer is there to advise her on her upcoming trial.

Fifteen-year-old Jeanette, in the mall with Vincent and Mallory, spies popular classmate Kate Wallis (Olivia Holt) with her buddies. She starts to talk to Kate when her boyfriend Jamie (gulp!) arrives. A year later, we see her at the roller rink with those same friends and Jamie, having seemingly abandoned Mallory and Vincent. Oh, and we also find out that Kate disappeared in the previous year.

Seventeen year-old Jeanette snarks off to Greg’s bartender girlfriend Ashley (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut) — yes, her mom isn’t in the picture anymore — drinks while she watches news footage from both Kate’s 1993 disappearance then reports about herself in 1994, and tells her lawyer that she’s “the most hated person in the country.” She throws a shake at someone who calls her a “psycho” while she’s out driving.

Fifteen year old Jeanette and her friends, who has a list of things that she and her friends need to do while they’re teenagers, decide to “borrow” the keys to a house Greg has just sold, but their little bit of “breaking and entering” is interrupted when Jeanette sees the new owner of the house, Martin Harris (Blake Lee), who will be the vice principal at her high school in the fall.

Sixteen-year-old Jeanette, riding high after essentially taking over Kate’s life, gets shocking news that makes all of it fall apart, which we find out when seventeen-year-old, depressed Jeanette looks at the news footage from that time period.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The time-hopping in Cruel Summer is so hyper that it reminds us of the time-jumpy plot of Firefly Lane, but with the darkness of a teen drama like Pretty Little Liars.

Our Take: Cruel Summer, created by Bert V. Royal (Easy A), has Jessica Biel among its executive producers, and the show has the feel of The Sinner and Limetown, the other two series she’s produced; mysteries abound and the audience is left to guess and try to keep things straight. The execution here, though, isn’t as cohesive as we would want and it frustrated us at every turn.

The idea is intriguing: In the span of basically two years, Jeanette goes from sweet nerd to popular to hated. And we give credit to Aurelia for playing all three versions of Jeanette well. It’s not just the hairstyles and makeup that help the audience distinguish among the three Jeanettes; Aurelia does a good job of morphing Jeanette through all of those modes. You see evidence of the sweet, nerdy kid in the other two versions, but they’re mostly three completely different people, and Aurelia’s performance helps that along.

The issue we have with the first episode is that it doesn’t have confidence in its time-jumping format. Royal and his writers spend the first 40 minutes of the episode doing all it can to avoid telling us what happened to Kate, why things have changed with Jeanette’s family and why Jeanette abandoned Mallory and Vincent and basically took over Kate’s life after she disappeared. It was frustrating but at least it engaged us, even if that engagement consisted mostly of confusion about who was what in which time period.

But then, in the last five minutes, the episode tells us pretty much everything we need to know about this mystery. It’s all via the news footage that Jeanette has so obsessively recorded, and has obviously watched repeatedly. We don’t want to spoil it for you, but we were even more frustrated that we were handed most of the answers via this method than we were with being kept in the dark during the first 40 minutes.

The eight episodes of Cruel Summer are supposed to take place during that June 21st time period in each year. How will they squeeze 8 episodes out of these three days, you ask? By giving each episode a different point of view, of course! So, if the first episode left you scratching your head, then we’re not sure if the rest of the first season, which will repeat scenes from different perspectives like we’re going over the Zapruder film, will fill in the blanks for you or feel as disjointed as Arrested Development‘s comeback season, which used a similar storytelling method to the jeers of most of its fans.

We appreciate Cruel Summer‘s ambition; we’re just not sure if the execution will do its ambition justice.

Sex and Skin: Jeanette tells her new friends that she had sex with Jamie. That’s about it.

Parting Shot: Seventeen year old Jeanette watches news footage where someone tells her to “rot in hell”, then turns it off as Garbage’s “Stupid Girl” plays in the background.

Sleeper Star: Harley Quinn Smith is pretty darn good as Mallory. She’s at turns serious and funny, especially when it comes to how her friendship with Jeanette fizzled (Vince still holds a candle for her, so he’ll come to Jeanette’s defense). It stands to reason that Kevin Smith’s daughter would have comedic timing, right?

Most Pilot-y Line: While the “We’re In the ’90s!” soundtrack is a bit obvious and grating, we have to also cite a thrown punch that is a bit jarring and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense out of context.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite our reservations, we’re definitely intrigued by how Cruel Summer will fill in the blanks of their story, given the storytelling limitations Royal and his writers have put on themselves. We’re just not sure how well that will play out.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Cruel Summer On Freeform