Off Campus on prime: when the adaptation beats the book

Blog readers will remember my heavily tempered excitement when I learned that we'd be seeing Off Campus on Prime, How would they manage to maintain the integrity of Elle’s characters without leaving in too much stale sexism? Well, I am here to say that that adaptation anxiety has been well and truly put to bed. FYI: this is going to involve heavy book and adaptation spoilers. You have been warned! But before I go any further, lets make a few things clear...

No. 1: have a lot of love for Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus Series. She really captured what it’s like being a new adult, and they’re full of absolutely brilliant ideas (like THAT Garrett and Hannah sex scene – a creative pivot, empowerment AND vulnerability – phenomenal writing!). There’s magic in them there books: that’s why they became so successful and, by extension, why Prime adapted them in the first place.

No. 2 I am OK with change. The Deal has some rough edges that could do with polishing, providing that those brilliant ideas are preserved. This adaptation felt really slick, but also full of heart. So many of the changes made so much coherent sense; I could literally imagine the characters living rent-free in that writing room and saying things like, “Let that off-limits thing go babes – it's toxic-sexy, but the character you’ve written me into wouldn’t do that...” 

A Quick Recap:

The Deal is the first in a series of hockey college romances set in Briar University. It focuses on Hannah Wells (songstress supreme with a dark past and a crush on the gorgeous Justin Cole) and Garrett (hockey jock and nepo baby with an abusive father). What starts off as fake dating so that Hannah can get Justin’s attention in exchange for tutoring (so Garrett can make the draft) blossoms into a friendship, and then something more. Alongside this romance, expect all the classic aspects of college life: changing friendship dynamics, found family, academic pressures, shifting parent relationships dynamics... all that jazz.

Without further ado, here are controversial changes I loved!

Hannah kisses Logan instead of Dean

Hear me out!... Hannah and Logan have met; he remembers mending her car – maybe he’s been crushing on her for a while... Then Garret bumps into her in class, and suddenly Mr No-Relationship-Guy is dating her?!

Hannah and Logan’s kiss contributes to the complexity in Logan and Garrett’s best friendship – without Garrett’s lofty connections and privileged background, there’s an awful lot riding on hockey for Logan. From Logan's perspective, Hannah is just something else Garrett feels entitled to and doesn't value properly.

Hannah kissing Dean just isn't as interesting in terms of his relationship to either Hannah or Garrett.

Justin: football jock no More

Rather than a sporty boy with little in common with Hannah at all, the adaptation turns Justin into a frontman and songwriter. To be honest, it’s not the sea change it looks like; I came to view Justin as a sort of collage of Hannah’s ex (the boy in the band she struggled to connect with) and Justin in the books (fake-deep and image-obsessed), combined with some of the tension of Hannah’s showcase partner (well, mostly just in the sense of a musical partnership not quite working out). Book-Justin didn't make a whole lot of sense to me as Hannah's love interest... but screen-Hannah being drawn to someone apparently so musically self-expressive? I can totally get behind that.

I loved seeing the implications of Hannah and Justin's creative intimacy on what’s ostensibly an “opposites attract" love story between a jock and a music nerd. What if your super-smart girl is seduced by another man’s mind?! Garrett was more than a little jealous of Justin and Hannah’s musical connection in the first few episodes. Am I detecting... a trope subversion? Picking apart those romance tropes is one of Elle Kennedy’s superpowers, so this change honestly feels so in the spirit of the books!

Hannah: finding her voice

In the book, the impact of Hannah's past trauma mostly shows up in her social life (and sexual relationships). In the adaptation, we find Hannah at a slightly different place: she isn’t a terrified recluse heavily reliant on her bestie, but she still has strict rules of engagement with the college social scene, and she still wants to, ahem, find her climax. 

However, the book doesn’t really explore the impact of Hannah’s past experiences on her art. Watching Hannah reconnect to her lyricism as she becomes less guarded was a really lovely strand of her healing. (As a side note, it is Very Cool Indeed to see the holistic impacts of sexual assault receiving such careful treatment in a romance for young adults.)

However, I sort of struggled a bit with the penultimate episode, when Hannah’s past really comes to the fore. I could understand Hannah seeing the repercussions of Garrett’s violence as just another example of how her past can harm the people she loves, but I’m not sure why she came to the rink in the first place – it was positioned as a vulnerable choice, but it didn’t feel like that; it felt like Hannah putting Garrett first at the expense of taking care of herself. The assault itself made total sense as a callback and escalation of Garrett's anger during the dinner scene and as a pivot point for him finding agency and redefining his relationship to hockey, his dad, and the violent parts of his physicality and masculinity. But with that in mind, I felt confused and a bit angry when he drove off without Hannah. Sure, it set up the convo with her parents later on, but leaving Hannah alone at the rink with her beaten-up rapist and his loved ones to then bike it home in the dark was a dick move, and made so little sense given how protective Garrett is towards the women in his life.

DeanAllie stealing the show

We’re going semester by semester rather than book by book, so incorporating the next couple as a B plot makes sense. I also think that the chemistry between Dean and Allie is brilliant. I love the blend of fun, sexy attraction combined with genuinely sweet crushing from Dean. The lightness in their storyline provided a nice counterbalance to what could be a pretty heavy mutual healing storyline with Garrett and Hannah.

Where did the misogyny go?

We left the maid outfits, prostitute jokes and having Garrett instigate the “hands-off” policy in the book, and that’s for the best. I appreciated that Garrett’s ex-situationship Sadie got her apology – it was tastefully done, and it made sense with Garrett’s experiences with disappointment and his burgeoning empathy for others.

I’m not sure I fully bought the shows’ reclaiming of the “puck bunny" term – the ethics of capitalising on sexism as a woman is a whole separate can of worms! But I appreciate that those hockey fans are tactical experts who can skate like demons. They also make an effort to include Hannah – rather than tearing one another down for either trying to fit a particular feminine standard or ignoring it altogether (not my favorite aspect of the books!). It wouldn’t make sense to have a show devoid of sexism – because, again, it is a real thing! However, the adaptation definitely felt more self-aware.

TLDR: The Louisa Levvy and Gina Fattore dream team did NOT disappoint!

I loved the book, but this adaptation might just take the biscuit. The changes felt intentional and considered; they often drew out parts of the book that were really great and made them more like themselves. They were also meticulously tracked across the narrative and characters so that the changes felt seamless.

And speaking of seamless transitions...

if you love a fake dating to real love sports story, look no further than The Game

Anna Talanova is a tennis star navigating a breakup and the press junket. Adam is an electronics entrepreneur struggling with cash flow. Adam’s friend Janus sets him up as Anna’s emergency boyfriend stand-in, and the two realise this could be the start of a pretty neat trade: Her glossy image is a “marketing dream” for Adam’s startup; he can act as a buffer between Anna and overenthusiastic fans and beady-eyed journalists. The two begin to develop genuine feelings but, a la Garrett and Hannah, continue to fall back on that transactional "deal" and struggle to renegotiate those boundaries as their very real feelings begin to develop.

Buy The Game Here!

How did you feel about the show? Let me know in the comments!

Love, Eve x