‘Sterling Point’ Review: Megan Park’s Teen Drama Is a Delightful Summer Escape — and Honest Where It Counts

The writer and director behind "My Old Ass" sticks close to home for her first TV series, about a 17-year-old New Yorker who inherits an island in Canada — where her secret sister awaits.

When you’re making an eight-hour season of television, as opposed to a 90-minute movie, it must feel like you need a lot of plot to sustain all that extra time. But TV thrives on characters, and great characters tend to generate stories simply by being thrown into the right (or wrong) situations.

Megan Park’s first ongoing series, Amazon Prime Video‘s “Sterling Point,” has great characters — the rare breed of grounded, emotionally honest teens who are neither annoyingly under-developed or unbelievably overgrown. Her lively cast, led by a buoyant Ella Rubin, bounce off each other in a remote, gorgeous, lakeside setting on which the show’s entire story pivots.

So it’s easy to forgive the latest YA drama from producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (“The O.C.,” “Gossip Girl”) for getting lost, from time to time, amid its excessive plots. What matters the most is what’s handled the best, and what matters less gets in the way without causing any fatal falls.

Annie (Rubin) is a type-A overachiever. When she wakes up in her ritzy Brooklyn brownstone and orders her noise machine to turn itself off, there’s a flicker of annoyance when her clear command is inexplicably ignored — not because she’s an angry person (far from it). She just has a system. A good system. A proven system. So why isn’t it working?

That flash of frustration bursts into a soul-consuming inferno when her life plan goes up in flames a few hours later. She’s rejected from the summer business program (don’t you dare call it a “camp”) she applied for, leaving her dreams of attending an Ivy League college in unguarded peril and the three months before her senior year in high school dispiritingly empty — what’s a workaholic to do without work to be done?

Sometimes — as Annie would certainly never say herself — the universe provides. That very day, her aggressively carefree twin brother Connor (Keen Ruffalo, who’s Mark Ruffalo’s son) gets a phone call from an attorney notifying the siblings their estranged grandfather has died and he’s included them in his will. Steven (Jay Duplass), their father, is irritated by the news (it’s not his father, but his late wife’s) and doesn’t bat an eye when his kids are told they’re the new owners of a parcel of land in Canada. He even confiscates the deceased’s letters written to Annie and Connor and locks it up in a safe.

So, naturally driven to discover their dad’s secrets (and find out what, exactly, she now owns in Canada), Annie steals her letter back and sets off for Toronto. Once there, she finds her new house littered with nuts gathered by an infestation of squirrels, as well as one sister, Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle), who had no idea Annie existed either.

On top of the curiosity-spiking genealogy of an American family that now includes secret sisters (Annie and Ramona), fraternal twins (Annie and Connor), and two dead Canadians (their grandfather and mother, who grew up in the lakeside town where Ramona lives), there’s also mysterious local figures like Joe (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who runs a boat rental and maintenance service, and his son, Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie). The dad is the classic quiet, haunted type, while his son seems like an honest, hard-working kid, but he keeps scamming customers for reasons that aren’t immediately clear. Part-time residents aren’t much more straightforward, like Rory (Daniel Quinn-Toye), who knows Annie from New York but now surrounds himself with douchey friends that double as giant red flags.

Who can help Annie sort out the past her father has been hiding from her is easy to identify, and putting the pieces together wouldn’t take more than one frank conversation with a couple of key players — but hey, this is a teen drama, Annie has three months to kill, and no one is in a rush to find out when there are so many charming locals floating through town.

Oona (Bo Bragason) is Ramona’s best friend and a fun-loving free spirit, as eager to “teach” Annie to drive a boat by letting her spin aimlessly in circles as she is to spend her days on the hunt for Kaia Gerber, who she once spotted vacationing nearby (perhaps to celebrate the release of her new TV show?). Sully (Nikko Angelo Hinayo) is a perpetually positive aspiring chef who loves to supply pals with fancy treats. Maple (Mabel Strachan) is Oona’s little sister, a theater kid completely and mercifully devoid of theater kid energy.

When the gang gets together, Park lets her fantasy run wild. “Sterling Point” is like what “Lord of the Flies” would be with proper furnishings and a hint of optimism. These kids have their run of the island, and there’s ample sun and boats, booze and pot, old friends and new ones at the ready whenever Annie’s journey of self-discovery gets too heavy. (There’s also no cell service, which gives the series an escapist throwback quality without stripping it of any authenticity.) She’s even got two boys fighting over her (albeit quite politely, even too politely) and can form insta-bonds with everyone she meets.

Rubin’s performance helps us buy into the fairy tale. Although the ease with which she connects with strangers betrays the impression of a young woman who’s spent her entire adolescence with her face buried in textbooks, she compensates with kindness and curiosity. She defaults to good manners if she feels awkward and often leads with self-deprecating humor — a cool girl who doesn’t know she’s cool, and thus understandably irresistible to her straight male peers (plus Oona, who hits on her until she realizes it’s going nowhere).

Annie is easy to root for and a fine foil to Ramona, who’s brash and defensive until you work past those fronts. Fans of Park’s last movie, “My Old Ass,” will recognize the big and little sisters’ dynamic, just as they’ll savor the natural, clever dialogue that colors an already vivid drama. (There’s even a key scene where Annie shares a meaningful moment with a ghost.)

Even when the storylines don’t cohere or their structuring hinders certain character beats, “Sterling Point” is so rich with feeling it’s hard to care. Park excels at articulating the importance and immediacy of youth, when bonds carry an extra intensity that makes breaking them feel bigger than life. Even if the drama seems contrived to viewers who’ve seen a dozen (or a hundred) teen shows already, it’s real to these characters, and their feelings dwarf any skepticism.

Park’s previous movies may be more potent, but her first TV show provides hours and hours of fun for an end-of-summer vacation well-spent.

Grade: B-

“Sterling Point” premieres Wednesday, August 5 on Amazon Prime Video. All eight episodes will be released at once.