Cruel Summer Review: Happy Birthday, Jeanette Turner (Season 1 Episode 1)

Cruel Summer Season 1 Episode 1, “Happy Birthday, Jeanette Turner,” isn’t reinventing the wheel when it comes to TV shows experimenting with time in their structures. But it does capture attention differently than other shows that use the same devices. 

We only watch about one scene at a time during 1993, 1994, and 1995 throughout the episode.

Time jumps and leaps backward naturally create gaps in our minds, but Cruel Summer‘s structure means that the time changes happen so fast it’s harder to connect the dots than usual.

This is a strength in a psychological thriller/mystery. The whole point is to keep us guessing. 

It’s frustrating and entertaining at once. Before we know the whole story of any show, the characters draw us in. Most stories make it clear who we are rooting for.

I don’t know who I can love on Cruel Summer, and as someone who is drawn to characters first and forever as I watch a series, that makes it hard to confess my love for the story right away. 

I like it a lot so far, and I root for Jeanette whenever possible. It’s nice to believe that the inner, innocent dork in us is our true self. 

Chiara Aurelia has the most difficult job on the entire cast. Everyone else definitely changes within three years, but she essentially has to play three completely different characters on every episode. 

She’s convincing in every role — dorky Jeanette, popular Jeanette, and emo Jeanette.

Plus, it’s clear that dorky Jeanette in 1993 yearns for Kate’s life. I just have so many questions about how she got to be popular Jeanette. Is it that easy these days to replace the queen bee in school? 

Kate is perfectly nice. So, I’m not sure that Jeanette would have to keep the fact that she’s being held captive in a basement a secret in order to keep living the popular life in 1994. 

If I were Kate, I’d be forever grateful to the girl who helped set me free from my captor’s basement. Grateful enough to be her BFFL, honestly. 

Then again, Jeanette is dating Jamie in 1994 — a boyfriend alone is a lot to lose for a 15 or 16-year-old. Cruel Summer also suggests that Jamie is happier with Jeanette than he was with Kate, adding to the mystery of it all. 

A small part of me is rooting for Jamie and Jeanette until he punches her in the face the day Kate is found. He blindly believes Kate at that moment, which is arguably understandable. But violence is never the answer. 

Kate being alive and accusatory is the catalyst to the whole plot. But the biggest void on Cruel Summer exists somewhere in mid-1994 right now.

It’s hard to picture Jeanette as being so calculated and cold that she would see Kate in Martin’s basement and leave her there to die — even though we know what Jeanette’s life is like by 1995. 

What she says to her lawyer makes sense. It’s easier to picture the National Enquirer running a story about Jeanette being a demon worshipper than it is to digest the idea that Jeanette left Kate for dead.

Then again, there is something more creepy than innocent about how much Jeanette seems to want Kate’s life. 

She’s not obsessive in the mall scene in 1993 with Mallory and Vincent, but there is more than a hint of desperation in the whole incident.

Can’t you just say hi, Jeanette? Wanting Kate to know it’s your birthday is a little bit extra.

Cruel Summer is difficult to write about because I have more questions than anything. The one that persists in a nagging whisper at the back of my mind is this — where is Cindy Turner in 1995? 

We can guess she’s separated from Greg at the very least, but that doesn’t answer the question.

If she’s abandoned Jeanette, it’s not surprising, sadly. But I want to know if she has run out of town and formed a drug habit at the mere thought that her daughter would ruin Kate Wallis’s life. 

(Side note: Sarah Drew as Aurelia’s mother is brilliant casting. 1993 Aurelia is the spitting image of Hannah Rogers in Everwood in the early aughts.) 

Cruel Summer has had my attention since someone made the brilliant decision to change its original title to a Taylor Swift song, whether that is intentional or not.

It is more likely named for the Bananarama song of the same name released in 1984. (Ace of Base covered the song in 1998, but no version fits into Cruel Summer‘s timeline.)   

It could falter at any moment depending on how it answers some of my many questions. For now, it’s intriguing and enjoyable. 

But I’m still a girl sitting in front of her TV asking Cruel Summer to tell me who to love, so it’s going to be a wild ride. 

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Cruel Summer airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on Freeform.

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