Teen Drama ‘Sterling Point’ Is the Best Kind of Lazy-Summer Throwback

Plenty of classic teen-drama tropes come into play. Not only does Annie get caught in a love triangle, but her two suitors each represent opposing factions of the community: townies and summer people. Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie) is a hard-working, year-round resident, and Rory (Daniel Quinn Toye) a rich New York acquaintance whose family has a luxurious vacation home nearby. As also tends to be the case in stories aimed at teens, the young characters are remarkably autonomous. But creator and co-showrunner Megan Park, whose films The Fallout and My Old Ass displayed deep insight into the inner lives of young women, isn’t mindlessly mimicking the mini-adults of Euphoria and Gossip Girl. (Sterling Point shares co-showrunners with the latter series, in Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, which goes to show how conscious a choice its divergence from its millennial predecessors must be.) Like Annie, most of these characters have been forced by their parents to fend for themselves, emotionally if not quite literally. One of the most charming performances in a show that has many of them comes from Bo Bragason as Oona, a bubbly lesbian flirt whose mom has jetted off to India, leaving her in charge of her little sister (Mabel Strachan) and their houseboat.