Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Forever Summer: Hamptons’ on Amazon Prime Video, A New Rich Kid Reality Show In The Spirit Of ‘Laguna Beach’

If you’ve been missing a good old fashioned teen reality show that gives you insight into the lives of the rich and famous, look no further than the new Prime Video series Forever Summer: Hamptons. While it comes from a long line of similar shows, the series is centering Gen Z in a show like this for the first time. So is it worth streaming?

FOREVER SUMMER: HAMPTONS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Beautiful beaches with clear blue water, yachts, and young kids partying it up adorn the screen.

The Gist: A group of high schoolers and college students are home for the summer and reuniting after a long school year. Most of the cast are natives from the West Hampton region of New York who are working summer jobs and spending ample time at the beach. Things get a bit shaken up when a city kid arrives for the summer and tries to become part of the group.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This show is a clear descendent of Laguna Beach, which put the idea of following wealthy high schoolers around on the map.

Our Take: There’s not much about this series that we haven’t already seen before in previous iterations of the high school reality show. That’s a detriment to show, which focuses on Gen Z (the characters actually use “cheugy” in a sentence) and could have used the time to feature a more diverse and more interesting set of characters than what we’ve seen in past shows like this.

The show is very white save for two characters of color, and the rich kid attitude of some of the characters can make for some entertainment drama but ultimately doesn’t sit as well in the more diverse world we’re living in. Further, the drama feels stale — the main conflict of the series is whether Ilan, the city kid, will fit into the local scene and it’s obvious that there will be some macho fights over the girls he’s interested in who are tethered to their local boyfriend.

The one character with a potentially interesting storyline is Habtamu — a Black adoptee — but his initial impression on the series reads as a bit immature. He is, after all, the youngest kid on the show, but he doesn’t necessarily seem interested in doing anything other than chasing and making weird comments about girls. Unpacking his heritage or identity would add some depth to the series, but it doesn’t seem likely that it will go there.

All in all, the show recycles a lot of what shows like Laguna Beach did back in the day. And while there’s nothing wrong with rehashing what works, it doesn’t feel like this series is saying anything new. Centering on wealthy teens also seems a bit out of touch with today’s world…after all, if we wanted to see the exact same shows from 15 years ago, we would just turn on reruns.

Sex and Skin: Nothing yet, though I’m sure there will be some references to hookups in the remainder of the season.

Parting Shot: Emelye and Reid go out of their way to tell Emelye’s boyfriend Hunter that the new kid on the block Ilan was spreading rumors about them fighting after the bonfire. Hunter classlessly promises to make Ilan “swallow his teeth” if he steps out of line.

Sleeper Star: Ilan from the city is actually quite charming, even in somewhat of a douchey way. The locals aren’t exactly inviting, but he stands tall in the face of it all.

Most Pilot-y Line: Avery serves as the introductory voice to the series and quickly distinguishes that the two factions that will be at war are the local Hamptonites and the “citiots,” referring to the NYC residents who flock to the island enclave during the summer.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There was an opportunity to highlight new conflicts in the young generation, but the series rehashes a lot of what we’ve already seen in these types of shows.

Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, Teen Vogue, Paste Magazine, and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.