Time never stands still in this ‘Cruel Summer’
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line — that’s both a handy thing to know and something “Cruel Summer” ignores completely.
Instead, the show, of which Jessica Biel is an executive producer, takes the long way around to tell the story of the mystery of a teenage girl’s abduction, and the possible involvement of another girl. It’s tempting to say it’s more complicated than that, and it kind of is — on purpose. Sometimes that’s fun, sometimes it’s maddening. Always, it’s odd and keeps you guessing, which isn’t the worst thing in the world for a crime story.
Most of the action, we’re told at the outset of each episode (at least the two
How to watch ‘Cruel Summer’
provided by critics) takes place on June 26 of 1993, 1994 and 1995. Viewers quickly learn how things will work with a birthday wake-up scene from each year that opens the first episode.
What to expect in the Freeform series ‘Cruel Summer’
In 1993, Jeanette (Chiara Aurelia) is awakened by her father Greg (Michael Landes) in an annual ritual. Things are different in 1994 — Jeanette has lost
her glasses and braces and a boy (!) wakes her up. In 1995, things are dark. Literally. The scene is shot more darkly, and Greg wakes Jeanette (now with chopped dark hair and a scowl) not with a sweet happy birthday, but with the announcement that “Your lawyer is here.” “Which one?” Jeanette replies. OK then.
A lot can change in three years, especially when you’re in high school. Especially this high school. Especially for Jeanette. In 1993, she’s a self-described nerd. In 1994, she’s popular and running with the in-crowd. In 1995, she is, as she puts it, the most-hated person in the nation.
Spoilers? Nah. There’s nothing here you can’t learn in the trailer. But secrets abound.
The first episode charts, however circuitously, Jeanette’s evolution, if you can call it that. The story bounces back and forth between the three years, revealing information bit by bit. Never too much — this is a series, not a movie, so details are meted out with care.
Helpfully, Jeanette looks so different from year to year that you always know what year you’re seeing.
In 1993, she and her friends Vince (Allius Barnes) and Mallory (Harley Quinn Smith) head for the mall. While they’re goofing around trying to talk Vince out of dragging them to see “Jurassic Park” yet another time, Jeanette spots Kate (Olivia Holt). Awkward and unsure of herself, Jeanette giggles a greeting and tell Kate it’s her birthday.
Kate kind of, sort of, knows who Jeanette is and wishes her a happy birthday.
Then things change. Kate goes missing (again, information you can glean from the trailer). How? Why? And what happens that makes, thanks to national newsmagazine interviews, Jeanette public enemy No. 1?
Patience is a virtue. That’s another handy thing to know, and something “Cruel Summer” requires.
Andrea Anders offers a welcome bit of scenery chewing
The second episode deals with Kate’s story. She’s perched firmly atop the school’s social heap, with a dream boyfriend (Froy Gutierrez) and an overbearing, gold-digging mother (Andrea Anders, in a bright spot of scenery chewing). The episode is centered around an annual garden party, the shallow, knowyour-place kind of thing Kate’s mom lives for.
Naturally, she gives a speech every year. And each year it’s starkly different, because of what’s going on with Kate. It’s the bookend to Jeanette’s birthday morning wake-up call.
However mildly annoying the time shifts can be as they build up, they’re necessary. If it were told in a linear fashion, one suspects — again, there’s a lot we don’t know after two episodes — there wouldn’t be a lot to the story. This keeps it more interesting. There’s just so much of it.
That’s one last thing that’s good to know: moderation in all things. But moderation is not the point of a show like “Cruel Summer.”