Sterling Point Summer, Episode 2

Helloooo Darlings of Dames Nation!

As promised, I’m back with a recap of Sterling Point’s second episode, “She’s Giving Single & Bi”. If you missed out on the recapping schedule, you can read Episode 1 right here, and Episode 3 will hit your inbox on Wednesday. I’ll be publishing the remaining five recaps on Wednesdays. The first three are free for everyone to read and share and comment upon; the last five will be paywalled. You’ll be getting regular weekly issues, too. This week: tunes for the end of summer (including a playlist, of course).

The first episode of Sterling Point made it easy to be on Annie’s side. Not getting into the Wharton summer program; being firmly Not Invited along for the ride with her gaydar-pinging but not officially out boyfriend Oliver on his trip to Thailand; finding out the maternal grandfather she never knew a) was dead and b) had left Annie and her fraternal twin Connor his cottage and entire island in Lake Muskoka; learning that her late mother had brought her and Connor to the cottage and had intended to divorce their father prior to her death — it’s all been a lot. Plus, Annie seems like a decent person, and is game enough to embrace and try to overcome her cluelessness about cottage life.

The second episode throws a lil’ bucket of freezing water on all of that by placing us in what is fundamentally a very short horror film. A teen girl jetskis her way to Gordon’s cottage and grows increasingly disturbed as she finds more and more evidence of another person’s presence there. How long has this person been there? What the hell is going on? And now this…person arrives and has the gall to ask who she, the girl, is. Who is she? Who is she? How dare this stranger with the bathroom full of skincare and schmancy suitcases even ask that question? “Who are you? What the fuck are you doing in my grandfather’s cottage?! HELLO?!” Rude, and 100% reasonable.

Annie’s BS about this being an Airbnb does not fly with the pissed-off girl, who is plainly the her Gordon referred to in his last letter to Annie. The girl first tells Annie she won’t press charges if Annie leaves immediately, then hurls Annie’s luggage down the front steps after one too many personal questions about her mom. She can’t stand hearing Annie cry on the porch, though, and reveals herself as fundamentally a softie, grudgingly allowing Annie to sleep on the couch, provided she leaves in the morning (and, once Annie reveals that her mom is dead, sharing that her name is Ramona). The one thing I don’t understand in this entire sequence is that Ramona starts, but seems not to finish making or even eating a perfectly good box of Kraft Dinner (aka Kraft macaroni and cheese).

Doing her best to honor Ramona’s insistence that she be gone once Ramona returns from whatever errands she plans to run, Annie hops from one kettle of fish (navigating her luggage through the woods to the marina) to another (borrowing a canoe to attempt to row herself back to the mainland). Of course, this can’t possibly end well, and doesn’t, as the wake from a passing boat jostles the canoe enough that Annie drops her oar, then capsizes the whole thing, including her luggage trying to recover it. Just a whole bunch of classic fish out of water (though she is literally in the water, now that I think about it) stuff going on here, capped with getting rescued by Rory, who happens to be out for a ride on his jet ski, and takes her back to his cottage. Whew!

We’ve already seen how capable Ella Rubin is with Megan Park’s dialogue, which is no mean feat; that rat-a-tat cadence can sound clunky coming out of some actors’ mouths. This canoe scene showcases her gift for physical comedy, as one annoyance builds to a crisis, and then a mild catastrophe. Her “everything’s going to plan!” is the episode’s first perfect punchline delivery.1

Ramona bumps into Joe in Port Carling and catches up with him very briefly. It seems as though her M.O. is the conversational hit-and-run, so she can say that she’s seen and spoken with him, but evade deeper questions and anything resembling a situation where she might feel truly vulnerable. She firmly declines his offer of an open door any time she needs it.

For their part, the Marina Crew of Sully, Ellis, Oona, and Maple can’t believe Ramona is finally back and are thrilled to see her. What does the Marina Crew do? As far as I can tell, they mostly roll around like a bowl of puppies and yell whooooooooo while zipping around the lake to intermittently clean clients’ boats. Sign me up, honestly, that sounds like a perfect summer job.

Oona shows that for all her usual flirtatiousness, she’s really observant and caring, as she pushes through Ramona’s breezy defensive shell to make sure she knows how sorry she is that Ramona had to go through caring for Gordon in his last illness on her own. The two share some weed and Ramona insists that she’s taking care of herself just fine, thank you very much. Gordon set her up with what she needs, and she knows she’s inherited the cottage and island. No problem! (She is plainly a minor, though. She’s younger than Annie and Connor, who haven’t turned 18 yet, so who is taking care of her, legally speaking, since Gordon’s death?)

At Rory’s place, Annie is wearing a beautiful white lace dress belonging to Denise (it’s Chanel, from their Spring/Summer 2023 collection, according to a Reel by the very knowledgeable and helpful Instagrammer @oliviaslayne). He’s correctly complimentary about how lovely she looks and invites her to help herself to some cell phone reception courtesy of their Starlink.

As Connor, Keen Ruffalo threatens to steal every scene he’s in, even when he’s the only person on screen, as is the case when we find him enjoying a bubble bath at home, wondering aloud if he wants to add a farm-fresh egg to the order he’s putting together on his phone. When faced with a pleasing option, “Eh, why not?” is the official motto of Connor Jacobson.

Connor is first annoyed with Annie for calling, then very curious about the new details of their family history and their island, immediately wondering aloud about the possibility of shooting the 9th season of White Lotus there. After a bit of further business about Oliver coming out publicly with a little rainbow flag on his Instagram profile, I feel like I’ve reached my personal recommended daily allowance of Connor.

Ramona is resisting all attempts to entice her into the water with Oona and Sully – but in fairness, lounging up on the rock above them enhances her ability to gaze longingly at Oona. Like Oona, Ellis isn’t angry with Ramona, and is mainly concerned with her well-being, asking if she had anyone with her when Gordon was dying. Friends from school? A girlfriend, maybe? It seems as though Ramona has been struck by the sharp, lonely side of the double-edged sword that is cussed independence.

No time to dwell, though, because she has to rev into mild horror/jealousy mode when her friends all assure her that Airbnb Annie is not a creepy squatter, just, according to Oona, “really sweet and kind, and like, beautiful. I think you’d really like her, she’s really cute”. Maple chimes in with her own musings that Annie could be “a teenage real estate agent who’s trying to trick you into selling the island to the Four Seasons”2 although she allows that Annie “could be forty and just have an incredible skincare routine.” (Maple is not wrong; remember “those are my creams”?)

Ramona’s Spidey sense is screaming and she immediately insists on racing back to her cottage to make sure Annie is gone and that she hasn’t stolen anything. Ellis and Oona share an exchange that provides more evidence supporting my hypothesis that Ramona is an emotional hedgehog: indiscriminately prickly and spiny on the outside to protect her very tender underbelly of feelings.

Oona: what’s UP with her?

Ellis: I don’t know, it’s Ramona

Whoops, Oona was supposed to be at her catering job 40 mins ago! On their way out the door so Ellis can drop her off at Rory’s place, Ramona is thoroughly weirded out when she notices that Annie took a picture of her mom when she left. This is not prickly, but entirely fair: in Ramona’s shoes, I, too, would think that’s very very weird!

At the chill gathering chez Rory, Annie presses Denise for more info on her parents. It turns out that Annie and Connor are the last people in all of the five boroughs of New York not to know about her parents’ divorce. Apparently everyone knew, “because your dad came back from Muskoka with two children and no wife.” Goldie had brought them to her summertime happy place and just never went home, choosing to stay up there even when Steven flew up. No time for more intel, though, because Denise spots her lawyer puking in the shrimp cocktail, lol. Just as well, because what Denise has already shared has sent Annie into an anxiety attack. Rory clocks it and whisks her to the dock so she can get some air and enjoy some vagus nerve regulation courtesy of dipping their feet in the brisk lake water.

Their little heart to heart at this point nearly has me in tears, as Annie manages to gulp in some air while she acknowledges for the first time just how badly it hurts that her mother is dead and that she knew so little about her.

Rory: It’s so scary to feel untethered. What’s making you feel that way?

Annie: Being here is making me realize how little I think about my mom

Rory: Well, you’re thinking about her now

This sweet lad is so emotionally intelligent! I can excuse his 90s boy band-ass hair!

In the kitchen, Oona is whining about being relegated to prep work back in the kitchen, when Sully fixes her with a loving glare to point out that she constantly gets him in trouble when they work events together “because you get all the married women to make out with you, and my moms said we can’t have that anymore.” Oona very grudgingly allows that she sometimes initiates that age-inappropriate smooching. Self-awareness, I guess!

Oona spots Annie from the kitchen and is then promptly fired for (almost! and completely accidentally!) stabbing one of Sully’s moms. Not that it fazes her in the slightest, of course, and going back to the marina makes it possible for her to bump into Ellis and Ramona and mention having seen Annie at the party. At this point Ramona absolutely loses it and insists on getting to the bottom of what’s up with Annie, because she stole a photo of Goldie from the house and that’s just too weird to bear.

This results in a big both/and situation: it’s very annoying to watch Ramona have such a short fuse over and over. Further, Ellis is correct that she should slow down as she speeds the boat towards Rory’s cottage. At the same time, who could stay measured and calm if a total stranger seemed to break into your house and stole a picture of your late mother.

Ramona yells a litany of furious questions at Annie – Why did you lie? Why do you know my grandfather’s name? I would love for you to explain why you broke into my cottage and stole a picture of my dead mother! – until Annie draws her up short with an equally loud “Because she’s my mother, too!” Annie doesn’t understand what’s going on, but thinks she and Ramona could be sisters. Ramona orders her into the boat, and off they go.

Rory: That girl’s not gonna kill her, right?
Oona: No. [beat] No. [another beat] I’m almost positive that’s a no. [To Ellis] Is there a small part of you that isn’t sure Ramona won’t kill her?
Ellis: Yeah.

On the boat, Annie gives Ramona the rundown, including Goldie’s death from cancer when she and Connor were two and Gordon’s request that she find Ramona. All of this is new information for Ramona, whose processing of it is still ongoing when she declares, with a mean, jealous expression on her face, that since Annie is adopted, they’re not related, not sisters. Annie should go back to New York, ASAP and forever. This knocked the wind out of me; Ramona could not have said something more cruel to Annie if she tried. This is the killing blow she’s been winding up to ever since they met.

Each of the girls returns to her respective corner to lick wounds and process everything they’ve learned so far. Ellis fills Annie in on some more details about Ramona, who is entirely alone in the world now that Gordon has died. She doesn’t even know who her dad was, apart from him being a random tourist. People are complicated, and Annie should stick around to get the answers to as many of her outstanding questions as possible.

Unlike Annie and Connor, who received their Gordon letters through his lawyer, Ramona found hers in Gordon’s briefcase. (Has his lawyer not gotten in touch with her? Is she ducking the lawyer’s calls?) Oona totally understands why Ramona doesn’t want to read the last letter she’ll ever receive from her grandfather. The finality of it is crushing. Just as painful, but more promising: Ramona confides that she doesn’t want to accept Annie as her sibling, because Annie didn’t even know Goldie, but as Oona points out, neither did Ramona.

Stay tuned for Episode 3 on Wednesday!