Sterling Point Recap Season 1 Episode 5 ‘I’m Not a Shots Girl Either’
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There was this hilarious and moving scene between Ramona and Maple, after Maple stormed into Gordon’s cottage declaring that she hated Oona. Oona had just told Maple that their mother might not return for Maple’s talent show. The scene was staged to look like a therapy session, with Ramona sitting on the chair that Annie bought for her, looking like a therapist, and Maple lying on the couch fuming, a patient in crisis. Ramona identified the emotion Maple was feeling as rage. ‘It’s better to make friends with it, welcome it into your heart. It’s only gonna get worse as you age.’ Word.
Later, the two of them worked through their rage by throwing plates, bottles, glasses, and whatever else they could break against the cottage’s stone wall. As they cleaned up, and with their emotions now calmer, Ramona wondered out loud if every emotion was like hanger, where the anger was truly just hunger. ‘Am I actually mad right now, or am I maybe a little sad?’ Ramona was a good therapist. It was also notable that she roused herself from her bed where she had been processing how her birth directly led to her mother’s death, because Maple needed her.
This sense of loss has hovered over the show from the beginning, and it was not about the loss of the person that actually died and set the story on its course, Gordon. Rather, it was this loss of innocence, of the sense of security that you, a teen, a kid, could trust the grownups around you. Annie and Connor’s father lied to them their whole lives. Their mother was not with them when she died; she gave birth to another man’s child, on an island that neither Annie nor Connor knew about until Gordon’s death. Annie struggled with who she could have been had Goldie lived and been a mother to her. To Annie, Goldie was this untouchable idea, whose blood she could only feel through Ramona.
Then there was Oona, who had a mother, alive and well and communicating via postcards as she chased her own happiness half a world away. Given how Oona and her friends looked after Maple, it was probably not such a bad thing that their mother stayed away.
It was Maple who brought Oona and Ramona back together, and they dropped her off at camp like the responsible older teens that they were. Back at Gordon’s cottage, Ramona apologised for her behaviour at movie night, and she asked Oona not to push her away. Oona was heartbreakingly vulnerable as she told Ramona, ‘You are the best thing in my life and I don’t wanna risk losing you.’ Ramona pulled her into a passionate kiss.
Ramona has been struggling, both with her heartbreak over Oona, and having to process what Annie told her about Goldie. She told Annie she did not want any more bomb drops, but Ellis had more coming. He saw paperwork at his father’s office that indicated that Gordon asked Joe to become Ramona’s guardian before he died. With both Ellis and Annie suspecting that Joe could be Ramona’s father, Ellis took the tape Joe borrowed from Annie and listened to it. Annie had only listened to one side of the tape; Ellis made sure to listen to both. Goldie made the back recording whilst she was pregnant with Ramona. Based on what Ellis heard, he was convinced that Joe was indeed Ramona’s father. Ramona did not come to the party Connor threw for his and Annie’s 18th birthday, which was why Ellis had not been able to talk to her yet, but he left the tape and a note that said, ‘Tell her’ at his father’s office, referring either to his mother Kate or to Ramona.
Annie hated birthdays whilst Connor loved them, and so Connor planned a birthday party that he specified was for himself alone, though he did ask Sully to add Annie’s name in smaller font to the birthday cake. Connor looked bummed when it was time to bring out the cake and he learned that Annie had left with Rory. Denise came to cheer him up with a unique birthday gift, paperwork containing an offer to purchase the island when he was ready to sell. It was to Denise that Connor shared something he kept from Annie and their father, that he got into a summer program in UCLA because he was apparently a ‘genius coder’ but that he did not go, aware as he was that it would probably bother Annie, who did not get into the Wharton summer program she was dying to attend. Denise quoted Rory and told Connor not to stand on his knees just to make someone feel taller. This is good advice for everyone.
Rory, who looked bothered when he heard that Connor was planning a birthday party for himself, asked to take out Anna for her birthday. They went to a club, where they ran into a couple they knew from New York, Clem and Travis. They ended up partying hard, with Annie drinking shots and smoking. Rory eventually told Annie the truth about his hand – There was a kid who played far better than he did, he could not handle it, and so he asked his cousin to break his hand. Now, he could no longer do what he loved, but at least he did not lose to the other kid. There was a lot of self loathing and self recrimination coming off Rory which Annie interrupted with a kiss. They returned to what looked like Rory’s house, where they had sex. Annie lied when Rory asked if she has had sex before, and said yes. I don’t really have a team on this love triangle of Annie, Ellis, and Rory. I simply appreciate that they both treat her well, and, as far as first times go, Annie’s first time with Rory looked fine.
Many of the shows I watched in the wayward days of my youth – Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Merlin, The Vampire Diaries – tended to have a supernatural component to them. Emotions were often processed via a big bad. Sterling Point is movingly human, an invitation – and perhaps, in this dizzyingly fast moving world, even permission – to stop and simply feel. What the youth has is time, and Sterling Point slows down – with a canoe ride, a moment on a balcony, a quiet corner inside a club, a look, quickly masked, of disappointment and the breaking of a heart.
Rating: A-
Strays
🏚️Connor tried to dissuade Annie from telling Ramona about Goldie’s death. He pointed out that there were things about their biological parents Annie would not want to know about. Annie said that was different, their biological parents were not their parents; Goldie actually wanted Ramona.
🏚️I really liked Annie asking ‘Are you okay?’ to both Ramona and Ellis, after they had to process two separate revelations.
🏚️When Annie tried to talk to Ramona again, Ramona told her sleeping was how she dealt with things, not talking. Annie accepted that, and it was a nice little detail that Annie picked up the dirty dishes off Ramona’s bedside table. She had been eating on her bed the last few days, and Annie’s simple gesture of support was to clean up for her.
🏚️Rory apologised to Annie about Lincoln, and said he would apologise to Ellis as well. Lincoln was the jerk, but as Rory correctly pointed out, he could have done more.
🏚️Ellis restored a canoe and Annie was his first passenger.
🏚️Ellis’s birthday gift for Annie was a drawing of the two of them on a canoe. Rory arrived, interrupting their moment, and immediately went to hug Annie. That look on Ellis’s face was, ouch. Annie gave Ellis a hug before she left.
Episode Title: I’m Not a Shots Girl Either
Episode Writer: Jared Frieder
Episode Director: Megan Park
Original Release Date: August 5, 2026