One mom skipped her son’s all-day soccer tournament to watch it. Another sneaked in episodes between conference calls at her corporate desk job. Elisabeth, a 48-year-old mom of two who lives in Westport, Connecticut, told me she has a group chat dedicated to the show called “Elderly & Obsessed,” where they talk about how the show reignited their sex drives and how frying a turkey is always a bad idea (IYKYK).
Warning to children and needy husbands everywhere: If your mother or wife is missing this summer, she’s likely off watching Off Campus. The college romance series centered around an ice hockey team and the women who love them is the third most popular Prime Video debut ever (the show is based off Elle Kennedy’s young-adult romance novels). And it’s taken millennial moms by storm. This isn’t the first time that a bunch of 30- and 40-year-old women have gone wild for a teen romance tale—it was only last September that the final episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty aired and I spotted a grown woman in New York City sporting a “Team Conrad” T-shirt.
There’s a different sort of rabidness to Off Campus’s fan base, though. Yes, our hearts ached for the love triangle in The Summer I Turned Pretty (two brothers, Conrad and Jeremiah, pining for the same childhood friend—imagine the drama!). But the Summer I Turned Pretty boys were narrow-shouldered, effeminate Gen Zers with floppy hair. When their emotions got too heavy, they ran away.
The Off Campus actors are unabashedly men. There’s a feral quality to the show: The boobs are big and the abs are, well, hard. And while the script isn’t necessarily Emmy-worthy, that’s not the point. In one scene, the lead, star hockey player Garrett Graham, played by Belmont Cameli, finds out he’s playing against the guy who raped his girlfriend years ago, and he pummels him. Appropriate? No. But sort of hot.
