Unlike so many other ill-fated stabs at the anthology format, the second season of Cruel Summer counts on some rather distinct storytelling techniques, including frequent jumps between three different timelines. Each period is separated by mere months yet signifies a huge shift in the lives of its protagonists—often with the help of unmistakable fashion makeovers and ostentatious color filters. The result is another kitschy season of the Bert V. Royal series that’s nevertheless rewarding for its ambitious, unpredictable thrills.
The show’s first timeline is set in the summer of 1999, with studious 17-year-old Megan Landry (Sadie Stanley) dismayed at her mother Debbie’s (KaDee Strickland) decision to host exchange student Isabella LaRue (Lexi Underwood), who was born in the United States but spent most of her life abroad. The new girl’s mysterious, globe-trotting history couldn’t be further removed from that of Megan, who’s from a small lake town in Washington and who’s determined to give Isabella the cold shoulder no matter how personable and ingratiating she may be.
The second timeline, shot in desaturated tones, is set the following winter and shows how Megan’s resolve faded, with her and Isabella seen in an inseparable, sisterly relationship. The third timeline, though, finds Megan alone in the summer of 2000, having adopted a greasy, goth-hacker getup that befits the scenes’ Matrix-esque green tint. We’re meant to wonder what could possibly have caused such a dramatic shift, before the series introduces a sex tape involving the girls’ mutual crush, Luke (Griffin Gluck), and a corpse that washes ashore.
It takes time to get on the wavelength of Cruel Summer, which is especially goofy in the way that it calls attention to certain period details, from chunky technology to the crumminess of digital video, and uses obvious needle drops like “Genie in a Bottle”—and this despite how modern everything else feels. Nineties slang is awkwardly sprinkled in throughout, with the actors making multiple attempts to land a plausible exclamation of “As if!”
Camp is perhaps not quite what Cruel Summer is going for, but the resulting episodes are loaded with winks of dramatic irony and match-cut transitions between time periods that are by and large charming. The characters love to state plans for the future that drip with ominous portent: In one scene, Isabella jokes to Megan that she’ll stuff her in a suitcase—a line that takes on hilarious new layers of meaning given the audience’s knowledge of Isabella’s obsessive tendencies and the overall story’s shades of The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Yet even at its silliest, the series never sacrifices momentum or the sincerity of its drama. Cruel Summer’s ability to juggle so much information across so many timelines remains impressive, with its central tragedy lending intrigue to both its leadup and its aftermath as the police and lawyers get involved. What the series doesn’t quite manage is to flesh out all of its peripheral characters and ideas, with the supporting cast and the details of the various settings often getting the bare minimum of focus that their role in the ongoing plot requires. Rumblings of class disparity in particular seem to come and go as the story demands, with the series never quite selling a sense of financial precarity amid its love triangles and dramatic secrets.
Yet even without every angle coming fully into focus, the bulk of Cruel Summer hardly dulls in terms of pure entertainment value. Instead, it comes across more like the rare TV series that has more ideas than can be covered within the allotted episodes, constantly sprinkling breadcrumbs of new information while reveling in various red herrings and cliffhangers. Thrilling and cheesy in equal measure, Cruel Summer breezes toward its finish as a particularly well-oiled drama.
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