#conelly

The Summer I Turned Pretty characters as Taylor Swift’s teenage love triangle → Belly Conklin as ‘betty’

We see her as Judy’s closest friend in some episodes. Yes, she is a bit quirky and eccentric, but I think she is one of the most realistic too.

Why? Because it is hard to keep friends forever (I really don’t want to sound like Sadmantha, but there will always be only a handful that will be often close to you and the rest comes and goes) and when you are a single parent (or a parent nontheless) you cannot keep track with everybody you cared about. And there are only a few that really stick to the end with you in real life. It was already hinted in episode, that when they were younger, they weren’t that close, but still rather good friends. But they grew closer, when they grew older. Especially shown as she was the only person that showed up to Reggies birthday party in the flashback episode. Thats some dedication.

And she is never played up to a foil to Reggie or her Mom, which is rarely the case for characters that fall in this pattern as they often get the role of such a foil (looking at Andy DeMayo in Steven Universe in one of the weakest episodes of this show). She is the eccentric woman that is helpful to Judy whenever possible and thats also important.

And she also lightens the human world a bit with her antics and actions. The crab dip scene and the knife scene were awesome and she seems more easygoing than Judy herself, which is also important for the show.

So cheers to Kathy, keep being yourself.