‘Every Year After’ review: Amazon’s latest attempt to recapture the magic of ‘The Summer I Turned into a Beauty’ drowns in its own romantic misery

Imagine that you are talking to your saddest friend, the one who simply… I cannot Getting over her ex-husband. A decade later, this breakup has become her entire personality—the only thing she seems to think about or want to talk about, the one event she blames for everything from her ill-advised relationships to her frequent panic attacks to her somehow boring job.

Now imagine that the person you’re talking to is not your friend, but a complete stranger, and an imaginary one at that—which gives you absolutely no reason to politely listen as she cries back to her misery, let alone accompany her as she thrusts herself into his orbit once again.

This, at least initially, is the viewing experience Every year afterAmazon’s latest addition to its YA-ish drama catalog. So, because of her heartbreak, she forgets to sell the romantic fantasy that would make her worthwhile in the first place, she basically works to make sure she gets it back. The summer she turned beautiful Easier said than done.

Although creators Amy Harris (Carrie Diary(And Leila Gerstein)Hart Dixie) Their series was based on Carly Fortune’s best-selling novel Every summer afterits plot feels like a hodgepodge of worn-out elements from other modern romances.

Our somber heroine is Percy Fraser (Sadie Soverall), a 28-year-old obituary writer who grew up spending summers lakeside in a small Canadian town, but hasn’t returned since her contentious breakup with Sam Florrick (Matt Cornett), the boy next door. Then news arrives of the death of Sue (Elisha Cuthbert), mother of Sam, older brother Charlie (Michael Bradway) and almost second mother to Percy. Despite suffering intense anxiety at the mere thought of Barry’s Bay, where her best friend Chantal (Aurora Perrineau) has been recruited to take a week off work and accompany her, Percy decides to attend the memorial service.

From there, the season’s eight hours cut between Percy’s week in the city — where she vacillates between trying to avoid Sam, now a doctor, and finding any excuse to get close to him — and all the summers she’s spent there in the past. The relationship between the two leads is most charming in their early teenage years, when they are linked platonic through horror films, friendship bracelets and swimming in the lake – not least because Juliet Hook, who plays young Percy, possesses a sweetness and lightness that is lacking in Soverall’s always lively performance.

But the march of time is inevitable, and so are teenage hormones. When Hawk and Blue Clarke are replaced by Soverall and Cornett, around age 15 or episode three, they spend less time playing in the sun and more time playing with each other’s hearts – almost but not quite confessing their feelings, trying to make each other jealous and meeting and breaking up again and again, in front of an endlessly patient audience of their friends and family.

In fairness to Every year afterthere’s something about portraying teenage love as all-consuming that borders on narcissism — let her who didn’t break out from a friend to hook up with a cute boy (something the show eventually calls Percy) throw the first stone. The self-involvement becomes less forgivable when the two continue this behavior into adulthood, spending almost the entire week of Sue’s anniversary crying about how much they want to be together but can’t for boring reasons, almost going out but not, and complaining about it all to anyone within earshot.

It would be one thing if Every year after They were self-aware enough to call this toxicity for what it was — that was Hulu’s secret sauce Tell me liesanother romantic drama about two ex-lovers who can’t leave each other alone. But the melancholy pop soundtrack (Gracie Abrams, Lana Del Rey, Noah Cyrus) and many longing glances suggest we’re supposed to find all of this deeply moving, not exhausting.

Meanwhile, weighed down by immature clichés and some truly woeful attempts at depth (“All I wanted was to be a cardiologist so I could fix people’s hearts, but after all the studying, I finally realized that you can’t really save someone from heartbreak,” says Sam, a grown man), neither Suffral nor Cornette can muster any compelling semblance of character, let alone any compelling enough sparks to make us yearn on their side.

It comes as both a relief and a conviction Every year after That the show is endearingly endearing when it focuses on anyone but its two stars. Perrino is eventually able to shed the ungrateful best friend role when workaholic Chantal starts hanging out with Jordi (Joseph Chiu), a laid-back but thoughtful hotelier who may be the only truly nice person in a town full of lovable idiots. Abigail Quinn gets off to a rocky start as Percy’s gruff ex-boyfriend, but eventually matures into a real bright spot when Delilah’s marital problems get their own funny and sad subplot.

Even Cuthbert gets some lovely moments in intermittent flashbacks, as she helps the lonely young Percy get through her first menstrual period or her first grief. Why Sue seems to be the only parent in town (Percy barely appears at all) is one of many logical questions that remains unanswered. but Every year after Full of undercooked details that are only thrown in as an excuse to bring would-be lovers back together or take them back together, only to be discarded when they are no longer needed for that purpose. Sue is the only unlucky one who had to die for this.