To All the Boys: Always and Forever

I have nineteen minutes to write this post before my self-imposed off tech time because I am a mess and haven’t had a consistent schedule this week. Let’s do this.

If you know me, you know that I am a huge fan of the teen romance as a genre and have been since before I was even technically a teen (early exposure to The Princess Diaries and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants will do that to a kid). I think there is something inherently appealing about the time in your life when emotions are at their most heightened, and it makes for good stories. I also believe that amongst the great diversity of experiences in this world, the most overlap happens in high school. A lot of high schools are basically the same, and a lot of high school experiences are basically the same.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, based on the novel of the same name by Jenny Han, dropped on Netflix in spring of 2018 and took teen romcom lovers the world over by storm. It centers Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor), who has a habit of writing love letters to her crushes with no intention of sending them. Her little sister, Kitty (Anna Cathcart), takes it upon herself to send those letters to the aforementioned crushes, and romcom havoc ensues when one recipient, Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo) proposes that he and Lara Jean pretend to date to make his ex-girlfriend jealous. They start fake dating, and if you know anything about the fake lovers trope, you know how this movie ends.

This spawned a successful sequel, which is more or less irrelevant to the third and final film in the series, To All the Boys: Always and Forever, which is the topic of today’s post. The movie picks up towards the end of the characters’ senior year, and Lara Jean and Peter have big plans to attend Stanford together. A wrench gets thrown into the plans when Lara Jean does not get admitted and ultimately decides to attend NYU, and the couple has to figure out how they want to navigate impending adulthood separately.

There were a lot of things I really enjoyed about this movie. Like the prior two, the costume and production design were fun and characteristic and made a cohesive world for the actors to play in. The supporting cast is full of strong players, including Cathcart, Madeleine Arthur as Christine (Lara Jean’s very cool best friend), and of course, John Corbett (who you may remember as Aidan in Sex and the City or Ian in My Big Fat Greek Wedding) as Dr. Covey, Lara Jean’s dad. Led by Condor and Centineo, who have had off-the-charts chemistry since movie number one, there were so many delightful moments and funny and heartwarming scenes, from the opening Covey family trip to Seoul to the Peter and LJ date nights to the senior trip to New York City.

One sequence that was particularly lovely was the entire high school prom night sequence, which made me really nostalgic for wearing fancy clothes and dancing, but nonetheless was really lovely. After prom, LJ invites Peter up to her room, and she begins to try and undress him, although the two have not had sex before. Peter senses that something is off and tries to get the bottom of the situation. Lara Jean confides that she wants to feel close to him because she’s nervous about their impending long distance relationship. Peter, in a star high school boyfriend move, shuts it down and tells her that being insecure is not a good reason to have sex with someone. Ultimately, he decides to break up with her instead of waiting for things to fall apart while they’re in college.

This all makes sense. I was on board for this narrative. It happens. However, later in the film, Peter comes back and says he’s confident they can make it work. They get back together and decide that they’re not like other young couples and they can make long distance work. The film ends with Lara Jean moving into her dorm room in New York and pinning a picture of Peter to her cork board.

I’m sorry, but no. I love romantic comedies, I love teen movies, I love them even when they’re trope-y and unrealistic, but I have to draw the line somewhere, and apparently my line in the sand is implying that high school couples can make long distance work. I can count on one hand, nay, one finger, the number of couples I know who survived four years of long distance, and they’re literally married now.

A big part of Lara Jean’s arc in the third film is her being upset that she and Peter don’t have a traditional romcom story. She says they don’t have a meet cute (and I’m sorry, but a fake lovers to real lovers story is a meet cute, it just is), an anniversary, or a song. In real life, most couples don’t have a meet cute, a lot of modern couples don’t have anniversaries because their relationships started under ambiguous circumstances, and I don’t know about the song thing but that’s a minor and solvable problem. However, in the movie, Peter reveals that they did have a meet cute in sixth grade, Lara Jean just didn’t remember it, and he ultimately concedes to a song that she picked out even though he wasn’t there when she first heard it. Why? Why did they do this? They could have taken the opportunity to achieve meta-romcom-commentary and have LJ and Peter find strength in their relationship through other ways rather than retrofit them into romcom boxes because Lara Jean wants too.

FURTHER MORE, and here is where I get worked up, they could have continued to subvert the romcom genre by choosing to show what a healthy and positive breakup can look like. Hear me out. Instead of having a dramatic breakup followed by reconciliation, there could have been a scene a la Ted and Alexis from Schitt’s Creek where they sit down, realize their futures are incompatible, acknowledge the good they’ve brought into each other’s lives, and choose to go their separate ways as independent human beings who are grateful to each other but no longer tied together. Is this a realistic choice high school students make? No. Is anything else about this franchise realistic? Also no! It’s a movie!

Could you imagine being a high school senior watching this movie, relating to Lara Jean being torn between her boyfriend and her own personal, academic, and professional growth, and watching her truly put herself first in every single way? How empowering would that be?!?!?! Media in general, but specifically teen media, does not have many examples of healthy breakups. Breakups usually occur because one party does something particularly egregious or unforgivable, and that’s just not always the case in real life. Relationships end for lots of reasons, and going to different colleges is a very common one. And I think that narrative deserved a place in a prominent teen romcom. Maybe I’m losing the light in my eye, but I think it would have been a much better ending.

Okay so this took half an hour instead of twenty minutes, but I’m glad I got it all out into the ether. I watched this three days ago and it’s been eating me alive ever since. So, what do you think? Do you think I’m dead inside and that romcoms should always have happy endings, or do you think that sometimes it’s worth showing a happy ending that doesn’t include a man? I would appreciate a hearty debate about this topic at your earliest convenience.