Walters vs Fishers
is my life with the walter boys actually better than the summer i turned pretty?
Dare I say it! My Life With the Walter Boys may actually be a far more cohesive and well told story than The Summer I Turned Pretty…
Before you lock me up over this take, hear me out.
Anyone who has read the original The Summer I Turned Pretty (TSTIP) books, knows that the tv adaptation makes frequent and significant changes to its original source material. These changes are not just to build upon the original story, but frankly to take what is the bare bones of a story, and make it into something compelling. I assumed My Life With the Walter Boys (MLWTWB) was doing much of the same, until I went ahead and picked up My Life With the Walter Boys: A Wattpad Original. Colour me surprised when I realised that within the pages of MLWTWB lies a shockingly concise, well structured, and well rounded story.
Before I get into it, a very short and sweet crash course on the source material of these tv adaptations:
‼ SPOILERS AHEAD ‼
The Summer I Turned Pretty (TSTIP)
A-Plot: Isabel (Belly) Conklin has been in love with her family friend Conrad her whole life. One summer, romance finally blooms between the two and they date for a few months before breaking up. A few months later, Belly begins dating Conrad’s brother Jeremiah, who she gets engaged to after only a few months of dating. That wedding gets called off (for many reasons, one of which being that Jeremiah cheats) and eventually, many years later (in the epilogue), she marries Conrad.
B-Plot: Susannah, the mother of Conrad and Jeremiah, suffers from cancer and dies in the second book. The books loosely explore themes of grief as the characters grapple with having lost Susannah; primarily the romantic relationships between Belly and the brothers are complicated by their grief.
My Life With the The Walter Boys (MLWTWB)
A-Plot: Jackie, a rich New York City girl, is sent to live with 12 boys on a ranch in Colorado where she engages in a short lived love triangle between two brothers, Cole and Alex. Jackie is drawn to Cole, despite his bad boy streak, but decides to date Alex, in part because he is the safe choice. Jackie and Alex break things off amicably as they realise they were both dating each other for the wrong reasons. Cole and Jackie spend the second book on again, off again until they do eventually end up together.
B-Plot: Jackie has moved to Colorado following the death of her entire family: her mother, father, and sister. The books explore her grief and healing, and her relationship with Cole and Alex is complicated by these feelings, alongside her integration into their family.
MLWTWB understands its core premise in a way TSTIP just doesn’t— in both book and tv forms.
The premise of dating two brothers is inherently messy and a little bizarre, but therein lies what is, or what should be, the strength of both series. The premise comes with enough built in tension to sustain a story: romantic and familial conflict, obvious emotional intensity and yearning, a sense of forbidden love, the list could go on.
MLWTWB has a strong understanding of the story it's trying to tell. The romance plot is well constructed and compelling, the familial tension and tension between brothers is central to the story, and its large cast of characters are all surprisingly well fleshed out. The main issue with MLWTWB as a story, is its ending and second book, which cuts off the ‘which brother should Jackie choose’ tension off too quickly and too neatly. The tv adaptation seems thus far to have a strong grip on how to remedy this, and how to add other elements to further flesh out the story.
The problem on the whole with TSTIP, is that it misunderstands the premise of its own story. The books under deliver on the core elements of romance and of familial tension, and its characters are all painfully underwritten. Unfortunately, the tv adaptation has overcorrected the original (inescapable) underwriting and strayed a little too far from its original premise.
In the TSTIP books, we get very little interaction at all, let alone romantic moments, between the endgame couple, Belly and Conrad. The actual time where they date is off page, occurring primarily in the time gap between books one and two. Then their reunion and wedding occurs, once again, almost entirely off page, in the epilogue of book three. TSTIP relies heavily on telling, not showing its reader that these characters are in love.
MLWTWB, while overall more cliche, actually has a love story within its pages. We see Jackie and her endgame pick, Cole build a friendship and a romance. The majority of the book is, as it should be, the two characters falling in love, behaving messy and jealous, denying themselves and then pining from afar. Jackie and Cole are well rounded characters, if a little heavily reliant on character archetypes, whose motivations we can clearly understand.
MLWTWB has to add very little to its tv adaptation in order to make their love story convincing. When they do add brand new scenes, like Cole fixing the broken teacup, it works in line with what we already know about these characters. It’s an enhancement to the original story, not a rewrite.
What MLWTWB is clearly changing/ going to change in season two, is to create more tension regarding which brother Jackie should choose, and create more taboo around her choosing Cole having broken up with Alex on bad terms. This is a great example of the adaptation having a grounded understanding of its story being a ‘which brother’ love triangle, and choosing to develop that further.
In TSTIP’s adaptation, we get astronomically more scenes between Belly and Conrad, and Belly and Jeremiah, which thankfully bolsters the romantic tension of the series into something compelling. However, the addition of more Belly and Conrad scenes specifically, in combination with heavy rewrites on the source material, is revelatory of the original problem of underwriting. The love triangle just isn’t love triangle-ing.1
The most telling change from page to screen regarding underwriting, is just how much character assassination the tv show has to do to Jeremiah. Aside from his complete season three lobotomy; where were meant to believe that the same (rich) boy who handled the finances and paperwork of his dying mother at 17 is suddenly, at the big age of 21, irresponsible enough to get into credit card debt because he wanted to buy Bruins tickets… the show also has to hand over Jeremiah’s childhood flashback scenes, like teaching Belly how to ride a bike, to Conrad.
While this is clearly irritating for Jeremiah fans, it is also indicative of the fact that Conrad was not a particularly believable love interest for Belly in the first place. I say this as someone who is fully Team Conrad, but truly book Conrad is just some brooding guy who barely interacts with Belly, and habitually confesses his love only to retract his confessions every time.
Then we overcorrect in the tv show, to a compassionate, but emotionally repressed Conrad who goes to therapy, and is working on himself, yet still after four years is in love with Belly… or really an idealised version of the 17 year old Belly he dated. The moment you put the story under a little scrutiny, it begins to fall apart. Conrad simply isn’t written, or adapted, to be a convincing enough romantic lead— though Christopher Briney does a great job at making us think he is.2
The other symptom of overcorrecting and not having a good grip on the story it's trying to tell is Conrad and Jeremiah’s relationship. TSTIP again under delivers on its core premise. What should be a central tension of the story, two brothers having their relationship crumble because of a love interest, is null with Jeremiah and Conrad, who behave like two guys who kind of know each other.
While there is clearly an attempt to remedy this in the tv show, it is brushed to the side in favour of of fixing other underwriting issues. Namely, every single side character who is completely nonexistent and personality-less in the books, and now needs to have their own B-Plot, Taylor and Steven (yay), or C-Plot, Taylor and Lucina (boooo).
The irrelevant side plot is something most adaptations fall prey to, and MLWTWB is no exception. The addition of the Will and Haley storyline is mind numbingly boring, but fleshing out Erin as a character, and giving Katherine and George a more central role in the story are strong choices. The main thing is that, unlike in TSTIP, none of these additional storylines detract from the two main tensions of the story, the romance, and the relationship between the brothers.
In TSTIP’s adaptation, they have the opportunity to build on Conrad and Jeremiah’s relationship, but don’t. We have no reason to believe that they have ever had a good relationship, nor do they want one for any other reason than a detached sense of familial obligation.
In both the book and the tv adaptation, we open on Jeremiah and Conrad at a tense moment in their relationship, but are given no window into what their relationship looked like before that. Conrad and Jeremiah have underlying sources of tension that are very easy to read between the lines to glean, and the two occasionally do go head to head, but for the most part, the two barely interact on page or on screen. As a reader, or viewer, there is no reason for you to be invested in their reconciliation.
On the other hand, we have Cole and Alex, who actually behave like brothers, and are clearly hurt by the rift in their relationship. The two physically fight and argue repeatedly. They fluctuate (as real brothers would) between actively being malicious towards each other and physically fighting, to arguing and trying fruitlessly to reconcile.
Even their characterisation, Cole played football, and Alex is a nerdy gamer, while cliche, gives them clear reasons for being at odds. Not to mention, MLWTWB also successfully gives each of the other twelve (ten in the tv adaptation) siblings fully realised personalities and satisfying emotional arcs, Jackie and Parker’s being a favourite of mine. As a reader and a viewer, you’re invested in the two brothers relationship and in Jackie’s ability to date the brother that is right for her without creating conflict within the Walter family unit.
Essentially what I’m saying is, if you write a book where the premise is a girl dating two brothers, your premise requires you to have the central tensions of your story be the romance and the brotherly relationship. Your story is beholden to that, if you stray too far, or neglect a certain aspect, you lose the impact of the original story.
In trying to execute this, these two books series have essentially the opposite problem. MLWTWB tells us everything we need to know, but in wanting to wrap everything up in a satisfying way, sacrifices the aspect of a ‘which brother’ romance, that should be messy and chaotic.
While TSTIP leaves you to fill so many blanks it's sometimes more of a story outline than a novel. The story is incredibly messy and therefore sort of addicting, but in the end is not very well constructed.3
In adaptation form, MLWTWB benefits from having source material with strong storytelling, sound narrative structure, and fully realised characters to build off. MLWTWB knows what its story is, and knows how to deliver it. TSTIP has tried to patch its storytelling gaps by building way too much off what is at the end of the day, an undeniably shaky foundation. While it makes for entertaining television, it does not make for an overall cohesive story.
ta da!
Okay! That was my somewhat unplanned return to substack! Happy tstip ep. 8 eve to everyone!
If you made it this far, here is a bonus, incredibly subjective reason why I think MLWTWB is a more successful story than TSTIP:
TSTIP and MLWTWB are tonally very different. TSTIP writes itself like a drama, and the adaptation is focused on bringing that out of the original source material. TSTIP takes itself a little too seriously, which is not a crime, but in my opinion takes a little bit of the fun out of what should be a silly and outlandish premise. It makes it feel genuinely really dramatic that all of this relationship drama is tearing apart what is left of the incredibly dysfunctional Fisher family.
MLWTWB is a rompy teen romance, and it knows and respects that about its own story. It’s a little trashy because it's supposed to be, and that works in its favour. It doesn’t bother itself too much with the fact that it is objectively weird that Jackie is integrating herself into this family and calling everyone but Cole and Alex her new brothers. She can have her cake and eat it too, and you know what, why not.
I also have things to say on both series' exploration of grief, but that might be an essay of its own… maybe for when tstip is over.
Which admittedly it didn’t in the books either, because the moment Jeremiah cheated we all knew it was over for him as the endgame pick. I would also argue as a side note that having him cheat was a little bit of a lazy writing excuse to make Jeremiah the bad guy…
Not to mention the fact that the sound track of the show does a lot of emotional heavy lifting.
In all honesty, I think that the underwriting of TSTIP is what makes it a good breeding ground for fandom, which I love. It allows for a multitude of interpretations of the relationship when you read between the lines, but that still doesn’t mean that the actual story on the page is well written.
Never thought about it this way but LOVED this
I didn’t know these were books, or that they were both so wildly fucked up