‘Sterling Point’ Did Something Very Rare: It Gave Us a Love Triangle With No Red Flags

There are teen dramas that try to portray Gen Z, and then there are those that really seem to speak its language. And for the record: Sterling Point definitely belongs to the second category. From the romantic dynamic to the dialogue, as well as characters who are anything but perfect, the new series manages to build a world that feels lived-in and not simply written at a desk. And after watching the entire season, one thing has become increasingly clear: We may have found the teen drama of the summer.How rare is it to find a teen drama where both options in the love triangle are actually excellent choices? Usually, we know exactly how it works: There’s the seemingly perfect golden boy who is hiding something, and the tormented bad boy who inevitably wins over the protagonist. Sterling Point, however, decides to complicate our lives. Because while watching the series, we keep expecting Rory to turn into the classic spoiled rich kid destined sooner or later to treat Annie badly or sabotage her and Ellis. But that doesn't happen.Rory proves to be sensitive, sweet, and generous, and when one of his friends makes fun of Ellis, he doesn't try to take advantage of it; he does everything he can to show Annie that those are not his ideas or his values. Even when he offers to put her in touch with a friend of his father's at Wharton, he does it without expecting anything in return. His only “crime,” if we want to call it that, is having managed to win over certain parts of Annie that, at that point in her life, she wasn't putting first.And then there are Annie and Ellis, who work just as well. Ellis is caring, sweet, super cute, and has a completely different kind of connection with Annie. Their most intimate scenes are among the most beautiful of the season and, yes, the kiss in the closet was simply incredible.The interesting thing is that Sterling Point doesn't build the triangle by pitting the “right” guy against the “wrong” one: Both have bright sides, but also secrets and imperfections. And I also find it rather interesting that, in the end, Annie chooses the golden boy instead of the classic bad boy (although let's remember that in this series they are both great guys). It's an almost countercultural choice for the genre, especially at a time when teen dramas seem to have convinced us that, in order to be an interesting romantic interest, a character must necessarily be problematic.Add Cosmopolitan as a preferred source in your Google search results.Use your Google account to add this to your settings.Another aspect makes Sterling Point so effective: the way its characters speak. The series truly manages to capture the way Gen Z communicates, without feeling like an adult-written version of how 17-year-olds are supposed to talk. The dialogue isn't always perfect, people interrupt each other, stumble over their words, say “like,” change their minds while they're speaking. And it's precisely that imperfection that makes them believable, authentic to viewers their own age and beyond.The best example is probably the moment when Annie tells Ramona her only memory of her mother. What we have in front of us isn't a perfectly constructed monologue, full of poetic phrases and already-processed thoughts. Annie searches for the words, pieces together her memory, and as she speaks, she almost understands what she's feeling along with us. It's exactly the way we would expect a 17-year-old to tell something so personal. The scene becomes poetic precisely because it isn't trying to be.And the same goes for the slang. You can sense that the actors were given room to improvise, change some lines, and add their own natural way of speaking. It doesn't feel like someone simply took a slang word they heard on TikTok and randomly shoved it into the script. Connor, in particular, is a perfect example to help you understand the concept: he basically spends the entire series firing off jokes one after another, and it's impossible not to laugh. Kieran, who plays him, has said he improvised a huge number of those lines, and you can tell.Sterling Point doesn't try to tell us how Gen Z should talk or behave, it simply lets them be. And the same goes for Annie's triangle. Because in life, we don't necessarily choose between a “right” person and a “wrong” person. We can fall in love with or feel attracted to completely different people, for completely different reasons. Sometimes it doesn't depend on who the best partner is in absolute terms, but on who we are and what we need at that exact moment in our lives.So, team Rory or team Ellis? After this season, maybe, team both. We'd probably need a second season to finally be able to decide.