For Heated Rivalry fans who are missing the “cottage,” Prime Video welcomes Gen Z back with a new young adult romance show set in the Muskoka region.
Released on Aug. 5, Sterling Point finally captures what teenage shows have been trying to capture for years … Gen Z humour.
While romance shows are taking over the internet, with The Summer I Turned Pretty and Off Campus, Prime has dominated in terms of understanding what makes the internet click. What seems like a classic love triangle show packs a deep familial punch with a sweet reflection on sisterhood. The story follows New York City darling 17-year-old Annie, whose life turns upside down after her estranged grandpa dies, leaving her on an island in Muskoka Region called Sterling Point.
Fans on the internet have praised Sterling Point for its dialogue, stating that it feels true to a real teenager’s speech — unpolished, awkward, and genuine, with slang use that doesn’t feel forced when using colloquial words like “tweaking” and “dip.”
This is reflective of Megan Park, the director of the show, and of the actors themselves, as a lot of lines were improvised, and actors were given free license to add their own spin to the script.
As Park states in an interview with Rolling Stone, “The moment you try to start making it [cool], it already feels dated and weird…you pass [things] over to the actor who is young and they can kind of infuse that life into it in a way that never was on the page.”
The relatability of Sterling Point isn’t just its use of slang, but the way it depicts debriefs between female friends about sex, family, love, and everything in between. As women watching the show, there’s something so identifiable about the quickness of speech, the overuse of the word ‘like,’ the rapid hand motions, the emotional intelligence, and the transparent self-reflectivity.
As well, there’s a club scene that is infused with relatability, as the two women, Annie and a family friend, sing, dance, complain about insecurities, talk for hours in the bathroom, and promise to make plans with utter sincerity that are forgotten when the next day rolls around. It’s easy to laugh, knowing many of us have done some — or let’s be honest —all these things at a night out to Stages or Dollar Beers.
The age of the “teenagers” is slightly confusing, as most of the show’s 15 to 17 year-olds are chain smoking cigarettes and don’t have a parent figure in sight. It’s easy to watch these young characters figure life out while imagining you’re seeing university age experiences reflected.
While the picturesque setting celebrates Ontario’s beauty, that location adds a bonus — the lack of phone use is apparent and explained plainly with lack of service. Muskoka creates the perfect setting for phones to be out of view and still be realistic, opening doors to a story that feels unbelievably real and a script that kicks inauthenticity to the curb.
Where many shows have been critiqued for cringe-worthy dialogue that attempts to capture the vernacular of young people and falls short, like Riverdale and Ginny and Georgia, Sterling Point succeeds, making it easy to forget you’re even watching a show and rendering the love triangle the least interesting part.
Tags
Amazon Prime, television series
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to eic@queensjournal.ca.