Drama
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Based on novel by Jenny Han, this series follows the complex love life of Belly, a young girl caught between two boys who are childhood friends as she joins the world of debutantes.
What happens when you move five super-immature, young adults into a house together? Well, you get super immature and very adult-rated content.
Samir, Billie, Issa, Anton and Paul Baker are five best friends all living together in Samir’s childhood home. Some of them have jobs; some of them don’t. Half of them are sleeping together. And none of them really seem to know what they’re doing in life.
Blame the economy. Blame the government. Blame the older generations who made it impossible for Gen Z to succeed. But these kids (because I can’t in good conscience call them adults when I personally know people their age who definitely have a firmer grip on reality and adulthood) really have a lot to figure out.
Now on to the content issues.
Sex is pretty much the B-plot of every episode of FX’s Adults. For instance, several episodes focus on Billie’s relationship with her high school journalism teacher. Later, after breaking up with the guy, she decides to have a three-way with a married couple, even though the husband expressly tells her that he’s not comfortable with it.
We see partial depictions of a few of those scenes. But when they aren’t on camera, they’re described in vivid detail later on. Pantomiming sex is common, too. At various points we see different characters’ bare rear ends (usually as the, ahem, butt of some joke). There is also a noticeable, sexually charged focus on the bodies of female characters in both dress and in speech.
Most members of this household expresses some sort of sexual fluidity (which is how they describe it) as well. Anton is gay and often dresses effeminately. Billie, as I mentioned above, sleeps with a married couple. Issa and Paul Baker are together, but Paul Baker likes Anton, too. And in the season closer, those two men actually marry (and kiss) so that Paul Baker, who is Canadian, can stay in the country.
Illegal immigration aside—and they all admit that a fake green-card marriage is illegal—the group also engages in heavy drinking and drug use, including marijuana, cocaine and “shrooms.” And they sometimes provide these substances to minors, too.
Abortion and suicide also find their way into the narrative mix. Issa volunteers to house an out-of-state teenage girl seeking an abortion. And several episodes make jokes out of the topic of suicide.
And this probably comes as no shock given the TV-MA rating and slew of content issues already listed, but language includes everything up to and including the f-word.
Believe it or not, that’s not even all the content issues with this show. But that is where I’m gonna stop. I think it pretty much goes without saying that Adults shouldn’t be watched by anyone who isn’t an adult. Actually, not even then.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Samir’s inability to “adult” causes problems when the house’s water heater breaks. Meanwhile, the group tries to use another person’s trauma to get ahead in their own goals.
The group is disturbed when they catch a man masturbating on a public subway car. Issa tries to deter the man by angrily doing the same thing to herself (claiming she’s been doing this since she was 7), but it only eggs him on. Paul Baker asserts that the man must be having a mental health crisis.
After learning a guy they know was sexually assaulted at work, Issa tries to use their friendship to make herself more popular. And Billie manipulates the public outrage about the incident to try to get a promotion at work. Other members of the group mock the guy, saying he looks like the type of person who would be targeted.
After hearing a random statistic about men who don’t realize they’ve committed sexual harassment, Samir begins interrogating all his ex-girlfriends to make sure he never crossed a line. He learns that he once slept with a woman who was too drunk to give consent. He apologizes profusely, but she assures him that she isn’t upset and even makes a joke about it.
A woman says she’s tired of sexual-assault victims going public since it makes it harder for her to have casual sex. She then makes out with Samir, trying to get him to do abusive things while having sex, such as spitting on her.
Issa claims to be a “sex worker,” since she performs on the pornographic site OnlyFans. A woman asks her roommates if her boyfriend can move in with them, arguing it’s fine because he stays at their house every night anyways. Couples kiss. Some women wear revealing tops. Someone says a picture of a guy as a baby makes him look “gay.”
People drink at a party. We don’t see it onscreen, but we hear about cocaine and marijuana use as well.
Someone jokes about suicide. Billie’s boss has a bit of an ageist attitude toward her. We hear a woman popped a pimple on her friend’s rear end. People talk about horoscopes and astrological signs. People lie.
There are 14 f-words and 12 s-words. We also hear “a–” and “b–ch.” There’s a crude term for the female anatomy. God’s name is abused about 20 times. Someone makes a crude hand gesture.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Based on novel by Jenny Han, this series follows the complex love life of Belly, a young girl caught between two boys who are childhood friends as she joins the world of debutantes.
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