Reading · You Need to Watch This!

Readers of my Substack know that I’m a romance enthusiast. When I’m not writing my debut workplace romance, So This Is Happening (Empress Editions, Feb. 2027), or moderating a monthly romance book club for a New England library, I’m usually reading romance or watching it.

Which is why it should come as no surprise that I’m covering the hottest onscreen young adult romance series to hit Prime (and our boob tubes, period) since the iconic, Sabrina-esque The Summer I Turned Pretty. Like that breakout hit, Off Campus is leaving plenty of middle-aged women swooning.

Here to help analyze the Off Campus phenomenon is parenting writer and hilarious funny woman, Charlotte Stephens, author of the highly successful and unforgettable Baby Brain, in which she goes deep on the experience of nurturing and bringing into the world well-rounded, loving, and exceptional humans—otherwise known as children.

A special thank you to Charlotte for her vulnerability, her authenticity, and her uncanny ability to get straight to the heart of it in our conversation on this show. She doesn’t avoid difficult topics, but confronts them boldly and in her signature voice, elevates messy into an art form, which is no easy feat.

Diving head first, right in, like the puck bunnies we are…Keep in mind this is a hockey romance and the term “puck bunnies” is a real thing:👇

Giphy Credit: The ultimate hockey show, the Canadian comedy, Letterkenny, for expanding hockey cultural awareness.

The more apt question might be: how do we get turned off? Seriously, please put your advice for moving on in the comments because ~~I need to know~~ I’m doing research for a friend.

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Off Campus is explosive, packed with fierce storylines, sexy scenes, and perhaps most improbably—and yet sexiest of all—men who talk about their feelings.

The plot centers around hockey culture, but not in an aggressively gross way. Garrett, the team’s star player, and most of his hockey teammates are actually pretty sensitive and thoughtful guys. Hannah, the female lead, is a musician attending the university on scholarship and is delightfully cast.

Garrett, who goes by his last name mostly, which is Graham, is looking to become a stronger student of philosophy and needs Hannah's help. Hannah, meanwhile, is trying to get the attention of another musician on campus. Naturally, the two strike a deal and agree to fake date, in what romance-land affectionately refers to as the "fake dating" trope. And as with the fake-dating arc, real feelings develop, because wouldn’t you know it, that’s kinda a thing.

The ensemble provides a fun, light counterbalance to some of the show’s heavier themes, including sexual assault and domestic abuse.

Charlotte: I was telling my friends the other day that literally the only “news” I consume is celebrity gossip and pop culture updates—so I knew this show was coming quite a bit before it was released, and was intrigued by how everyone was describing it.
When it finally dropped, I watched the trailer and knew I’d have to avoid it because it had all the markers of something I’d end up binging... which is exactly what happened. I lasted just under a month, and then I started watching on a Monday night and took the next day off work to watch. I set my own hours so that’s not as dramatic a gesture as it sounds, but still.
I am a sucker for rom coms featuring men who emote really well with their eyes, which is obviously the case for Off Campus. Give me a guy looking at a girl like he can’t live without her and I am SOLD!

Beth: After binging this series—because it was a foregone conclusion that I would watch the minute it appeared in my Prime queue, no questions asked—I went back and watched everything Off Campus lead actor Belmont Cameli has been in. So yes, you could say he’s compelling. As far as male romantic heroes go, he’s what we call in the romance literary worlds, an all-green-flags situation.

Along for the Ride (2022), currently streaming on Netflix and adapted from Sarah Dessen’s novel of the same name, is absolutely worth your time. Like Off Campus, Cameli plays a young heartthrob carrying the weight of a traumatic past. It’s through his relationship with the more introverted and sensitive Auden (Emma Pasarow) that he begins to heal.

So, you know, not too different thematically from Hannah (Ella Bright) and Garrett Graham in Off Campus.

Charlotte: Overall, I think it’s a really fun, cute show with dark themes that are handled respectfully. I can see how that translates well across age groups. I can’t speak for the younger women other than to say I imagine the hot guys and the inspirational girls help with viewing numbers, but for the older crowd (I’m 37, so I think I fall into the “older” viewer camp. Editorial Note from Beth: Um, 48 here, so definitely not.) I think there are a few different things going on:
He’s Got Bette Davis Eyes: The emotive eyes get me every time. I watched Office Romance just before Off Campus, which is a very different vibe but Brett Goldstein was all eyes in that, too, and I loved it. Didn’t love the movie so much, but the EYES! I think the feeling that brings up is ageless, it’s just so tender and lovely and I just love love, so for me personally I think I’ll always be drawn to things like this, regardless of how old I get. Nobody Wants This had this going for it, too. Adam Brody is great at the old eye acting. Just going to sit here and think about who else emotes well via eye contact now, aren’t I?
I’m making this weird. I’ll move on. (Beth: Yes, but it’s a fair point. I call it the puppy dog eyes. But could be a cat too per Puss in Boots.)

Upright Hot Dudes: As a mum of boys, I think it’s likely there are women my age watching and just enjoying seeing some positive male teens on screen. Gives me hope for their future, though I will say it’s a bit odd at times watching a raunchy show whilst thinking “I hope my boys treat girls this well.” (Beth: Yes, but also so valid. I feel this with every part of my being.) Especially when things like mutual masturbation are going down… There are lots of positive depictions of girlhood out there so I don’t know if this hits so much for the girl mums. (Beth: It does!). I also have a girl, and I didn’t have the same sort of thoughts about her with it really, but the poor lads are all being tarred with Adolescence, so maybe the hot jocks of ice hockey will curry them some favour.
Gen Zs: It’s interesting to see how younger generations do things.
Nostalgia: It’s nice to watch young people fall in love and remember what it was like to be young. I don’t exactly feel old myself, but I’m definitely not a teen falling in love for the first time, you know?

Our lovely leading couple: Hannah and Garrett

Beth: As a teen mother—wait, no, that’s not right. As a mother of teens—the positive representations of male intimacy, consent, and young men openly talking about relationships and about how to be thoughtful, attentive partners is what really resonated with me.

To me, that’s everything.

I think it’s similar to why so many middle-aged women gravitate toward Heated Rivalry. Yes, there’s undeniable chemistry, but there’s also tenderness, emotional intimacy, yearning, tension, and questions of identity. Those themes transcend age demographics.

Admittedly, I fast-forwarded through some of the more explicit scenes. The show is considerably more graphic than your average YA romance, but that was simply a personal choice based on my own comfort level. That said, Off Campus has all the ingredients of a blockbuster young adult romance series in spades.

Chef’s kiss. Just one note, which I’ll get to later on…

Charlotte:

Logan: I think you can tell immediately that he has the hots for Hannah, but I feel like he doesn’t really overstep with it and although there’s a bit of flirting and a bit of sulking, he does ultimately put his friend first, which I don’t think we would have seen in teen dramas for our generation.
Allie (etc): I loved Allie but mostly I loved her hair—great fringe. I actually liked every character, I think. Which is interesting, there’s usually someone that stands out as a villain, but not this time. Maybe Allie’s ex, saying that—I didn’t love that guy. Oh! And the baby faced guy Allie hooked up with at the end, he looked like a toddler and I didn’t understand why we were supposed to think he was sexy. He was absolutely not sexy. I’m on a roll now but also the musician Hannah initially fancied… Just, no. Ew.

Beth: It’s more fun to talk about characters we hate. Allie’s ex tops that list. He’s so bland that I don’t want to waste words on him. The guy who plays Dean’s rival and Allie’s “pass” whom she hooks up with to convince herself she’s not falling for Dean, and who is sure to have a bigger role next season, is the actor who plays James Marsden’s son, Jeremy, in Paradise. His Off Campus character is the worst, ALL red flags, right down to his Lacoste V-neck sweater. But he might also be a plausible romantic rival to Dean when it comes to Allie and surprise us all, thereby making him the best. They aren’t mutually exclusive in romance. In fact the best characters are a little of both. And at the very least, his inconvenient presence on and off the ice will make Dean have it step it up a notch if he wants to hold onto his hockey position and Allie.

Charlotte: Scene wise, I’m sorry if it’s crude to go straight to this, but the mutual masturbation scene was a big highlight. I loved that whole sequence, and again I think I need to say it’s just not what we would have seen in something made for millennials as teens. We had (and I’m about to go down an American Pie rabbit hole here) Jim filming Nadia and sending it to the whole school, and Stifler shagging anything that moved whilst having only one brain cell—this was what was normal for us.
By comparison, we have this show (Off Campus) in which one of the creative kids asks one of the jocks to help her orgasm, and instead of just jackhammering her he’s asking his friend for advice… And that friend’s advice isn’t “here Kevin, here’s a secret book from the library about oral sex, passed down through generations,” it’s “she has to trust you.”
It felt almost revolutionary to watch this—to witness a male character soul searching over such a thing, to the point that I spent the whole time waiting for the other shoe to drop—for Graham to do something awful to lose Hannah’s trust. But it doesn’t happen! Instead, we are treated to a show of vulnerability and endless compassion on Graham’s end, and then we get to the orgasm giving and he spends the whole time doing the eyes at this girl and making sure she knows she’s safe and not pressuring her or making her feel broken or bad and I’m sorry, but where was that when we were younger? If we’d had this sort of stuff as teens, #MeToo might have been less of a movement

Beth: Along those lines, the best scene was the lead-up to that sex scene at the gym (the memorable “weight room” scene) with Dean, Allie’s love interest, advising Graham (Garrett) about how to satisfy Hannah. Dean is on the surface a stereotypically hot jock, but he’s crafted with a lot more nuance and dimension to allow for a much more interesting character! (Note from Charlotte: I am also very much Team Dean.)

Beth: We know Off Campus season two is going to be Allie and Dean focused which works because they are the bonafide Season One breakouts. If I had one note for Season One is we were given way too much Allie and Dean romance and not enough teasing of things to come. I’m excited to explore their love, but could have had a sprinkling of it and not like an avalanche. A little goes a long way. Though I’m not sure if that saying is applicable to these two very loud personalities.

Charlotte: I love Allie and Dean. I think they’re great together. I agree though, I don’t know how they’ll be able to do a whole season on them as I feel like we’re sort of already at the point where it’s obvious they’ll end up together? I’m excited to see, though, Dean was one of the more surprising characters, so whatever they do, I’m here for it!

Did you watch this show?
Did you enjoy it?
What storylines do you hope for in S2? S3?
If you’re not partaking in Off Campus, what are you currently watching?

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