Alisha Dempsey

I’ve been watching The Summer I Turned Pretty recently, and constantly find myself at my wit’s end with the Fisher Brothers. I want to scream at the telly ‘JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER’ or ‘TELL HER THE TRUTH’, the both of them completely reserved and unwilling to discuss their issues (at least until the first half of the second series, I’ve only got that far).

I find I do this with a lot of media and stories I consume, whether books, films, or TV shows; I think because I’m a pretty open book, I don’t really have an issue telling someone if they’ve bugged me, or if I like/love them, especially when I know doing so could fix a problem. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t always been this way – it took a lot of work in my late teens and early twenties to realise I can, in fact, just tell people what I’m thinking. The embarrassment of any consequences never seems to be as bad as the regret of not having told them. I mean, in 2020 I bit the bullet and wrote a letter to my ex apologising for being an emotionally stunted and stubborn dick in the past, and now we’re engaged; it really does work out for the better some times, and even if it doesn’t, you’ve cleared your conscience and gotten closure. 

Anyway, I do think about the whole ‘JUST TALK TO THEM’ far too often.
If Conrad had just told Belly he loved her, she wouldn’t have kissed Jeremiah.
If Will had been open with Lou about his decisions before she got to know him, it might’ve saved her the ache of having to see him die whilst she was still in love with him.
Hell, if Cinderella had told Prince Charming her name he would’ve never had to trawl around the kingdom asking random women to try on shoes (don’t get me started on the fact he was asking every woman and her dog despite not looking a THING like the woman he supposedly fell in love with).
The list is endless, and I’m sure you can apply your own examples to it. 

When you sit and think about it though, there’d be no story without it. The ‘Happily Ever Afters’ would come far too soon, and you wouldn’t get to experience the emotional turmoil that the characters are going through, you wouldn’t be rooting for your favourite couples to be together in the end, because the end would come fifteen minutes after the opening credits and you’d be sat scrolling on your phone again. 

In a way, I have to remind myself that all the ‘JUST TALK TO THEM’s was that period in my life that I was learning to suck it up and deal with my emotions. It was my character development, and if I didn’t have some of the horrible feelings and thoughts I did back then, I wouldn’t be as well-adjusted as I believe I am now. You need to go through all the crap and the screaming at the telly to make the end satisfying and worth it. 

tldr; next time you find yourself shouting at the little moving people on your telly screen, ask yourself first if you’d be able to follow your own advice.