Sterling Point premiered August 5 on Prime Video.
By Greg Wheeler
Between The Summer I Turned Pretty, Off Campus, and the ongoing Your Fault franchise, Amazon has been carving out a pretty significant chunk of the teen drama audience for itself. The latest show hoping to make a splash is Sterling Point, a glossy teen drama with a sizable twist at its center.
The story revolves around 17-year-old twins Annie and Connor, who have been raised in New York City by their adoptive father, Steven. Annie has big dreams of attending business school, while Connor is perfectly happy enjoying a string of hookups and antagonizing his sister whenever he gets the chance, as any good sibling does!
However, when Annie fails to get into business school and the family receives a letter from their estranged grandfather, Gordon, everything changes. It turns out he has bequeathed the twins a lake island in the middle of Canada called Sterling Point. With the island set to pass into their care when they turn 18, Annie and Connor immediately butt heads over exactly what they should do with it.
Annie eventually flies out to visit Sterling Point, although this is less of a scouting mission and more of an opportunity to uncover the truth about her past. With unanswered questions surrounding her mother and plenty of secrets hidden across the island (not the Lost variety, guys, but character-driven ones!), Annie quickly bites off more than she can chew.
I won’t reveal much more, but the major turning point comes when Annie meets Ramona. As the connection between them becomes more apparent, the story opens up and promises plenty of drama to follow.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a teen drama without an ensemble of characters to flesh out the cast. Sterling Point absolutely revels in its clichés here, including a tepid love triangle involving Annie’s old middle school friend Rory and the artistic, perpetually mopey Ellis.
The love triangle is treated as a major part of the opening episodes, complete with all the usual genre trappings. Expect misunderstandings, jealous glances, romantic tension, and both boys competing for Annie’s attention, along with the obligatory moments when someone spots the girl they like kissing somebody else.
It is all very perfunctory, but the biggest issue is that Annie has absolutely no chemistry with Rory.
Rory is a complete charisma vacuum, and it is genuinely difficult to understand what Annie sees in him. Ellis fares slightly better, but he plays into the sensitive “nice guy” persona so heavily that his puppy-dog expressions and endless mopey scenes become tiresome before long.
Surrounding this love triangle is another subplot involving Ramona and her best friend, Oona. There is some good material here, but the series never ventures far enough into genuinely dramatic territory.
The rest of the cast does not fare much better either. Connor receives a half-hearted character arc about realizing how much he cares for Annie, only for the show to almost completely disregard that development and sideline Connor as the quippy, silly side character.
Meanwhile, supporting characters such as Sully (who I personally really liked) are given almost nothing to do beyond throwing affirmations and platitudes at the two leading ladies about how incredible they are. The trouble is that the series rarely does enough to actually show us why.
At one point, for example, Annie is horrified after behaving impulsively toward another character and tells Ramona that she has never done anything like that before. However, the first episode literally sees Annie pack her belongings on a whim and fly to Sterling Point.
These sorts of contradictions crop up frequently, and they are compounded by some genuinely sloppy writing. One particularly irritating plot point in Episode 2 leans heavily into the misunderstanding trope. Now, misunderstandings are part and parcel of the teen drama genre, but when something this seismic could be resolved with a two-minute conversation, it’s hard to justify its inclusion.
None of this is helped by the wildly inconsistent tone and writing. The series regularly swings between Marvel-esque quips and jokes before suddenly demanding that we take its melodramatic revelations completely seriously.
At one point, Oona discovers something genuinely devastating and begins questioning whether she is going to regret her actions. Yet, literally two minutes later, she is joking around about a Jeep and driving on the left-hand side of the road.
Sterling Point also has a problem with the artificial way it manufactures drama. It feels as though the series wants to have its cake and eat it too, embracing the feel-good atmosphere of friends hanging out together over the summer while simultaneously fracturing those same relationships through enormous secrets and betrayals. Then, those same characters resolve their issues relatively quickly, and the show returns to its feel-good tone until the next bombshell revelation.
The series rarely balances those two sides well, although there are a few genuinely outstanding moments, including the ending of Episode 4 and some of the drama that unfolds later in the season.
Given that the opening episodes seem designed to focus on the future of the island and the complications surrounding its ownership, it is surprising how quickly much of that is pushed aside in favor of soapy romantic shenanigans.
That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem by itself, but the shallow character writing and simplistic way the dramatic beats are either resolved or reignited make the series far more frustrating than it needs to be.
There are still a few things to enjoy, though. The soundtrack is genuinely good, the Canadian scenery gives the series an appealing summery atmosphere, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan is comfortably the standout performer in the cast.
However, Morgan plays his character incredibly straight, bringing a haunted, guilt-ridden intensity that almost feels like it belongs in a completely different series. While the younger cast members are encouraged to camp things up and deliver constant one-liners, Morgan appears to have wandered in from a much heavier family drama.
Sterling Point is not terrible, but it is not a particularly good series either. This feels like one of those series designed for viewers to leave playing in the background while they scroll through social media. There is nowhere near enough romantic messiness or frustration to make it as addictive as The Summer I Turned Pretty, while the romance is far too tepid to compete with the sizzling chemistry found in Off Campus.
Instead, Sterling Point is a glossy but frustrating teen drama that struggles to establish its own identity, ultimately becoming lost in a sea of stronger and far more appealing alternatives.
I give Sterling Point a C.
