Netflix’s YA romantic comedy Along for the Ride follows a young woman, Auden West, chasing a lost childhood. She is a straight-A student and the offspring of a couple of highly esteemed yet socially inept academics. So, instead of grabbing a summer job that will help shape her future, she spends her last summer before college in the beachside town of Colby with her father and his new wife, Heidi, and their new baby.
Auden is a lot like her father in a way. She is socially awkward and tends to put her foot in her mouth without thinking of others’ feelings. Auden is an insomniac and feels like an outcast. She goes to read Secrets of the Flesh on the local docks at one-thirty in the morning. Having never seen a true-crime show or Bill Hader making Keith Morrison’s impression, she keeps going out there because she runs into Eli.
Eventually, he gets up the nerve to talk to her and invites her to a secret pie shop in the back of a laundromat (really). Both have secrets and like each other, but let their friendship bloom while looking for their second chances.
Auden’s secret is that she cannot ride a bike. Eli’s secret is that his best friend died when they were hit by a drunk driver heading home from a competition. When Audin helps him escape his social hibernation, he tries to help her ride a bike, but she gets mad at him. Why? because she is still going through her hurt feelings from her parents’ divorce. Her father’s leaving Heidi and the daughter has brought up buried resentment.
They fight, do not talk for a while, but make up after Auden watches him in a bike competition for the first time. When they meet later, they apologize, and Eli finally breaks down, crying, and sharing with Auden how much he misses his best friend, starting the closure process.
The final scenes show Eli in a tux waiting the following day at Auden’s home, where she finally slept through the night. Eli wants to give her the prom night she never went to. Of course, she never brought the dress from home, so what is the point? Eli says, “Right, it’s a shame you didn’t bring that dress to Colby with you,” and gives her a look that he always does when she knows she is lying. She smiles and says, “Give me ten minutes.”
Now, she comes out of her house ten minutes later in full makeup and her hair done. Being married for ten years, I know that it is humanly impossible, but we ignore it, as Eli arranges a prom night with all her new friends from Colby on the beach. The movie ends with Auden and her friend Maggie from Colby, who are college students together. She reads a postcard from Eli, who is traveling on the circuit again. She leaves it on the windowsill, and they both head off to class.
