Pop Culture Happy Hour - Sterling Point and What’s Making Us Happy

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

The buzzy fantastic new TV drama Sterling Point has it all. A mysterious inheritance. A teen love triangle. Secrets and lies that echo across generations. The Prime Video series has twists, turns, and heart. You won’t want to miss it. Want more Gen Z drama? Check out these episodes: ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ has drama, romance and the music of Taylor SwiftGen Z awkwardly transitions into 'Adults''I Love LA' reinforces our love for Rachel SennottConnect with Pop Culture Happy Hour:Letterboxd / FacebookOur weekly newsletterSupport public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You are listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, the podcast that keeps you plugged in to the latest, greatest, and sometimes not so greatest in pop culture. Now, if you love pop culture and you're not following the show yet, we are recommending that you fix that post-haste by following Pop Culture Happy Hour on your favorite podcast app. At the core of this show, I was just mashing that play-next episode button. The way I didn't with the summer I turned pretty. A mysterious inheritance, a teen love triangle, secrets and lies that echo across generations, the TV drama Sterling Point has it all, so it's no surprise that it's already become a word-of-mouth sensation. I'm Stephen Thompson. Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is NPR music reporter Isabella Gomes-Sarmiento. Hey, Isabella.

Hi, Stephen. Thanks for having me. It is a pleasure. Also with us is former host of Slate's Internet Culture Podcast, I see Y. Why Am I and former pop culture happy hour producer, Candice Lim. Hey, Candice. Hello. So great to see you again. So the first eight episode season of Sterling Point dropped on Amazon Prime about a month ago. And it's been a major hit ever since. In its first episode, we meet a high-strung teenager named Annie. She's played by Ella Rubin and her twin brother. They've been raised in New York by their single dad, played by Jay Duplas. They soon learn that the kids have inherited a remote Canadian.

and tourist destination from their estranged grandfather. And that revelation leads Annie to head to Canada in search of more information about her family. It turns out there are many secrets to unpack. As Annie makes new friends, gets pulled into a love triangle, connects with the sister she didn't know she had, and imagines the life and family she'd been denied. Sterling Point was created by Megan Park. Her film My Old Ass beautifully covered similar coming-of-age terrain. Sterling Point is streaming now on Prime Video.

and we should note that Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Candice Lim, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of Sterling Point? Oh, man. I was really excited for this show because I really loved my old ass, Megan Parks movie. Oh, me too. That's the one with Aubrey Plaza, Maisie Stella. Maisie, who, by the way, currently in The End of Oak Street playing Anne Hathaway's daughter.

She is. Who else played Anne Hathaway's daughter, Ella Rubin and the idea of you? You know who was born to play Anne Hathaway's daughter? Other than the people who were actually born to Anne Hathaway, Ella Rubin. Exactly. Anyway, my old ass ripped me to shreds. It also took place in Muscoca, kind of the hottest place of the year, I must say. And it had very similar themes of, like, queerness and coming of age and, like, leaving the only place

you've ever known, death, grief, the big five. But I do think that film is very similar to this show. I think it is very successful in doing that. I really think that Megan Park has like a really strong voice. I see her as this Y.A. Greta Gerwig because she came from like the secret life of the American teenager. And now she's pivoted to directing and writing. And she just brings out something like so natural within her younger actors. It's very like Greta directing Sershia, Ronan and Lady Bird.

And I think it works and it translates. And I did really endear myself to this show. Some may say it has too much, which it does. but in that way it catches all. And it really can appeal to you in any format. So I love. All right. How about you, Issa?

Well, I will say I'm also Team Megan Park. I loved my old ass. I agree with everything you guys just said about that film. And I think here she manages to take so many of those similar approaches to writing teen girl characters that feel relatable but complicated and flawed and are just wonderful to watch and follow. I felt like I was really, really captivated, particularly by the characters of Annie and Ramona and their relationship to each other. I don't think we get to see stories of sisterhood and

of, you know, female friendship developed quite this way very often in YA shows. And that was really the big hook for me. I am one of those people who think there was maybe a lot going on here, maybe a bit too much, but I'm excited for the second season. And overall, I think it was a really fun viewing experience. Yeah. And we should note, Sterling Point has been renewed for a second season. It has been a hit. But Issa alluded to my one issue with a show that I really otherwise loved, which is this show is doing in eight episodes, what I think it really wanted to do in 13. And as such, it feels like it's rushing through some of these revelations. It is doing kind of two or three seasons worth of work in one season. And as such, characters' motivations can feel like they're shifting at kind of a

breakneck speed. At the same time, boy, first of all, obviously I am also part of the chorus of people who loved Megan Parks' work in My Old Ass. That film is such a gift. If you have not seen it, if you're interested in this show and you haven't seen it, like run, don't walk to catch up with it. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous movie. And like that movie, this show has such an innate understanding of and interest in the inner lives of young women. And it really gets at that in beautiful ways. It lets a lot of these relationships breathe. I think because of how rushed it feels, because it's kind of breaknecking, particularly

through the last couple episodes of the season, I think there are some kind of wings of this cast that go a little narratively undernourished. characters who kind of only exist as devices. I wasn't as captivated by this love triangle as I think the show... You were getting flashbacks to Connie Baby. You said, not again. Not again. No, no.

This is not the same thing as Connie Baby. Okay, okay. For those who have not seen the summer I turned pretty, the summer I turned pretty is so obsessed with a very stupid love triangle, and I did not care which of these dumb boys she might wind up picking. This show is much better than the samurai turned pretty. Its music budget is substantial. But I think that the love triangle here feels a little watery and a little under felt and a little perfunctory.

But at the core of this show, I was just mashing that play next episode button the way I didn't with the summer I turned pretty. Yeah, I think that this show is good. And I think part of it's because it has a lot of skeletons. from like, I'm going to bring it up, Gossip Girl. And that era of teen show, which I think is kind of hallmarked by a few things. First off, the people who created Gossip Girl are on this show as like executive producers. So maybe there's some lineage there. But I think for me, I know a YA show is YA as hell because one, like you said, music budget's

so insane. It feels like they were given a $1 billion iTunes gift card. I mean, I couldn't believe they got maggots for brains as the very first needle drop of the pilot. By Olivia Rodriguez. Yep. I was also shocked. I was like, am I mishearing? Is that Olivia?

Literally. Yeah. Both Olivia's Olivia Dean pops up here too. Yes. Exactly. And I mean, like, when you think about the Gossip Girl era and like the CW show of it all, they were discovering so many acts at that time. But they also were kind of loading up that music budget and that cue sheet. I think the second thing is that a teen show kind of always has to have too much going on.

And maybe the difference is that in streaming, we're getting all of the episodes at once. Whereas with Gossip Girl, it's maybe 20. episodes week, week, week, week, week, and they're really good at hitting the cliffhanger button. And I think that is kind of the reason why, you know, I definitely feel like this show is a bit of an elevated, Y-A show, of kind of like, even if I get a little bored towards that last part of the episode, someone drops a secret dad, oh, someone drops a secret sibling, oh,

and I'm just kind of like, wow, you got me, you got me. I agree. I mean, as a devout One Tree Hill viewer growing up, I think that, you know, this show manages to pull off the sort of twist and turns in a much more elegant way, while I think also just investing more in, like you said, Stephen, the inner lives of its characters. I did find Connor, played by Keene Ruffalo. Surprise. He looked like Joe Kiery to me. And then I was like, oh, my God, this is Mark Ruffalo's son.

Same. He looked so much like Joe Kiery. I'm like, I know he's the son of Mark Ruffalo, but he looks like the brother of Joe Kiery. A hundred percent. Exactly. Or like Cooper Raff. I was like, he's reminding me of other people whose work I enjoy. Yeah.

He was very funny. but I found his character to be so removed from everything that was happening and just a little bit underdeveloped as comic relief. And likewise with the Love Triangle, I felt like one of the storylines, like I think we got so much Rory and Annie and there was just like a lot more exposition there of like their background together and I'm getting to know each other at this face on their lives. Whereas it felt very lopsided with the Annie and Ellis. I feel like I'm like, what am I missing? Like what was happening that we didn't see here to get to this point? Right. It's a lot of meaningful looks.

And I think the fact that she meets Ellis first does a lot of heavy lifting because you, the viewer, are immediately shipping them like everybody on this show. They're very beautiful. And so you're like, well, obviously, that's a love interest. But meaningful looks are doing a lot of heavy lifting in that side of the love triangle. And I just feel like we learned a lot more about Rory as a character where I kept being like, I'm not supposed to root for this guy, but I know him more than I know the other one. Right. So it was a little bit confusing. Yeah.

Wait, just checking in, are you guys team Roy? No, I'm team Ellis. Okay. I'm team. But I'm also always team porcée no los neither. Yes, that's me. I'm team. I don't need her to find love this summer.

You're team girl boss. That's right. You're team Annie. Which, by the way, I kind of love that Annie also. At the end of the season, there is this question of like, wait, are you finishing high school? Are you going to college? No. Okay.

Okay. Zoom school it is. Well, and also all these 17-year-olds are. inevitably played by 25-year-old actors, but that's a whole other thing. But we mentioned Ramona in passing. Now, Ramona is Annie's kind of secret sister. She's played by Amelie Hufferly. She's the source of kind of a lot of the conflict here, right? Like, she's a little blunter, more direct, but she is more conflict-oriented. And I think this character is really well-acted, but she is such a narrative device in that she is part of what kind of sends this

show racing from plot point to plot point in ways that I found really frustrating. I would agree with that. I mean, I think I kept chalking it up to she is the 16-year-old who has been left to her own devices for much of her life and is kind of 100% driven by impulses because there are literally no adults in her life to direct her otherwise. But I wanted more time with Ramona. I think she was such a fascinating character. And I agree.

I think the performance was spectacular. But it was just moments where I'm like, Ramona, comes in, there's a storm of things that are happening, Ramona storms out, and then we're back to the love triangle. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, can we go back to Ramona for like half an episode? So I would agree with that. Yeah. It's interesting because I think you're right. I'm trying to ask myself if there is another character like Ramona in current modern day television, especially for this YAA audience, because I mean, the very off-the-bat thing about her is that she's quite rebellious. She's quite independent. Very impulsive. Right. And when Megan Park made this

show. She gave an interview talking about how like she kind of wanted to make a show about teens who had to deal with adult problems. And I think Ramona is absolutely the vessel for that. I mean, a big theme of this show is adoption. And Ramona was raised by her grandfather. And along with the narrative of adoption, there's also this kind of narrative of abandonment and just kind of being like a child left to your own devices. And I think there are a lot of shows kind of of the like Disney Channel era that kind of take a fun twist all that of like, oh, yeah, like, what if you were a child with no adult supervision, think of how much fun you could have? Oh, sure. I almost think the show turns the dial the other way of, like, imagine if you were abandoned by everything you ever knew, and you were really, truly alone.

Like, what does that sound and feel and smell like? And I will say this, I think the entire show, I felt bad for Ramona. Oh, yeah. Oh, me too. Absolutely. I felt a lot of sympathy and pity toward her. And yet, she is the type of person where if you tried to hug her, she would punch you. Right. And I think what I also. wanted to say about her acting is that something that I was very curious about with the show, something that I like about it, is that Annie and Ramona

specifically, they do these scenes where it almost seems like the writers gave them like bullet points of what to hit and they just went and they just improvise. And Ella Rubin did say that there was a lot of improvisation on set, but I think that's probably why

teens of this target demo love this show. It's because that's how they talk to each other. It's scattered. It's haphazard. It's cross talk. It's jumping all the way over here and like all of a sudden being like, hey, by the way, I think my mom had a fair also. Do you want a braid? And it's just like, I think this is kind of the way that they are processing things and talking things out. And in a way, it's kind of like, oh, like, I don't think I've seen that before, especially in like network teen shows really probably can't afford to just like have it go so fast. And I like that. I like that. And I don't know

if any other cast could pull it off this well. I agree completely. And I happen to watch this show with closed captioning on. Good. In part because there's a lot of pitter-pat dialogue. You know, Ella Rubin talks very fast. And I was noticing at admiring how much the dialogue that you're hearing differed from the dialogue in the close captioning just from the addition of a lot of likes and you knows and just little speech patterns that are like the way people talk.

Instead of the way a lot of TV characters are written, where they're delivering monologues that feel like they were written by somebody else. And these performances, I think, are excellent, which is one of the things that elevates this show. But I think the writing also, it's a mixture of very naturalistic writing. And I think, like you're saying, Candace, a certain level of improvisation that makes this show, unlike, say, gossip girl, which is very scripty. This show felt lived in in a way that I really admired. Agree. And I do think to your point, Candace, I think so many Disney, Nickelodeon and just Y.A. shows, One Tree. Hill Gossip Girl rely on these tropes of like these teenagers behaving like adults.

And I think in this show we really see the consequences of Ramona in particular being failed by the adults in her life over and over. And I think like I just want to acknowledge the like parent trap level of unreasonable decision making on behalf of the adults on this show. Yes. Where it's like in what world did anybody agree to this for 18 or 16 years or however long it's been since these children were split up? Not since home alone.

Exactly. Have children been so forced to deal with the negligence of their parents? Exactly. And I think the show gives it the weight that it deserves in a way that so often this genre does not. Yeah. And I think one thing that this show has that has room for further development is some of the relationships involving the adults. You're getting a lot of echoes of bad decisions made by the young people of a previous generation and how those can reverberate into the lives of the adults. into the lives of their children.

And I think part of what makes this such a compelling coming-of-age story is that they're, like, forced to suddenly contend with the youthful idiocy of their parents that has kind of calcified over the course of the last 20 or so years. And I think the fact that the parents have such feet of clay but are in their own bumbling, stumbling way trying to do right, is part of what made this such a compelling story. Yeah. No, there's definitely something there that I haven't thought about, which is the fact that, like, something I do really like about this show is that, you know, this island is very remote. They don't have self-service. It is technologically very bare bones, but that does not mean they are politically or culturally conservative or behind, right? Like, there are multiple queer characters. There are multiple storylines that are not about coming out. They're about after that. They're about what if my best friend and I, you know, are in love with each other, what does that mean? And I think what it's bringing up for me is this idea that so many teenagers

shows with like very modern storylines like that. They always kind of put the barrier as the parents of like, I grew up in a conservative family. My dad is the pastor of footloose, something like that. Sure. And I like that Megan Park kind of breaks down that wall to still say like, okay, but even if your parents hit every checkmark of the perfect like the liberal 2026 parent, there are still repercussions and there are still consequences of their youth that have now kind of trapped themselves on an island, for example. And there are generations both above and below that deal with that. And I kind of think it's interesting that, you know, for example, episode seven was directed by Andrew On, who directed Fire Island, one of my favorite movies of all time.

And I kind of wonder if the show is asking that question and answering that question or if it's almost kind of saying like, no, like everyone kind of deals with the generation that they inherited yet also weren't prepared to inherit. And where does that leave us, you know, just putting that out there? Absolutely. And I gotta say, you know, for any of my like little structural quibbles about this show or like, oh, it's rushed or this character's underwritten, I got to the end of the eighth episode and I was like, more show. Where show? I know. I know. I know. So ready for season two already. Agree. And I hope that season two does contain some more of that relationship between parent and child. I feel like there's this really great moment between Ella Rubin's character, Annie, and her dad and sort of contending with how their family, how their family, how. as or has not confronted the grief of not having a mom. And I hope we get to see some more of that in season two. I think it is also just a really powerful way of looking at coming of age

and of confronting absences in your life that may be up until that point you have normalized. I'm excited to see where the show takes that in the second season. Absolutely. Agree completely. Up next, what is making us happy this week? Welcome back. If you are not following Pop Culture Happy Hour yet, hit that follow button on your preferred podcast. app and stay plugged in on all things PCHH, including what's making us happy each week.

Speaking of which, Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, let's start with you. What's making you happy this week, buddy? Well, this week I have started to feel a chill in the New York City air in the morning. We are beginning to transition, perhaps, from summer to fall. And I'm leaning into summer by listening to an album that came out at the end of May. It's by the Spanish Venezuelan group Santa Marta. The album is called La Eskina Mas Violenta. And it's this kind of amalgamation of folkloric, Afro-Venezuelan rhythms, electronic production.

There's some rapping. There's some really beautiful harmonizing. It's this very eclectic mix of the sort of old and new influences bridging, you know, both sides of the Atlantic. It's just bursting with energy. The song Mar Carribe in particular, which is like an ode to Caribbean culture, is when I keep coming back to. That's the song Mar Carribe by the band Santa Marta off of their new album, La Skina Mascuolenta. Nice. Thank you, Issa. I'm in D.C. It's going to be a bayou toilet well into September. So you can cling to summer all you want. I'm ready to crunch some leaves. All right. Candice Lim, what do you got? So what's making me happy is season two of adults. Okay. So I came on this show to talk about season one. And I was a bit.

lukewarm on it. I did not like it as much as overcompensating or I love L.A. And then a few months ago, I saw people on Twitter like discovering adults for the first time. And I was like, okay, I have time. I have distance. Let's do a rewatch. And I was like, whoa, it's hitting a lot harder. Season two just came out. I'm telling you right now it's good. It had an industry succession bump or something. Like every episode is funny. Every episode has a meme. It is definitely Anton's season. And that's Owen Thiel. And we just have everything from like, what if your housemate had a secret straight guy friend group?

Or like, what if your dental school girlfriend decided to become a K-pop store? Or what if Jake Shane was 20? Like, we're really asking the big questions tonight and it is working. The show is working and I love it. So that's season two of adults. All eight episodes are streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus. Nice. Thank you.

Candice Lim. So, from 2016 to 2020, the great and good John Moe hosted an essential podcast called The Hilarious World of Depression. He wrote a memoir with that same title. And for about three and a half years, that podcast featured interviews with comedians, other entertainers, in which they spoke frankly about depression and mental health in general. That show won awards. It helped a lot of people. It was absolutely, as I said, essential.

But it ended more than five years ago. And John Moe went on to start other shows like Depression Mode, the Sleep Aid podcast Sleeping with Celebrities, which I also highly recommend if you ever struggle to sleep. Both Glenn Weldon and Linda Holmes have appeared on that show, and I'm bitterly jealous of that fact. Anyway, John Moe has just reacquired and rebooted the hilarious world of depression. And ironically, I am very happy about that fact. This guy puts so much kindness and decency into the world. He's helped a ton of people. And now a show that never should have ended is back in the world with its first episode in years.

That is the hilarious world of depression back at last on a podcast provider near you. And that is what is making me happy this week. That brings us to the end of our show. Candice Lim, Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Lenin Sherry.

and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Audio engineering was performed by Sina LaFredo, and Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. If you're not already following the show, do that right now. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next week.