Recently, I was watching a campy high school sitcom (I’ll leave it to you to guess which) when my friend and I began a discussion over the great number of actors and actresses much too old to convince any audience member that they had freshly underwent the brutal age of puberty. I pitched the kitschy idea that if I ever produced a high school sitcom, I’d cast one or two actors of noticeable middle age against the rest of an appropriately aged ensemble, and never address it in the series.
My dreams were ruined the next day when Pen15 appeared in my Hulu lineup. Similar to my one-off pitch, Pen15 follows two women, Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, into the hellish landscape of pubescent nightmares: middle school. The catch is that Maya and Anna, who play younger versions of themselves, are grown women playing middle schoolers among a cast of IRL middle schoolers. A hilarious twist, the two women are so convincing in their roles that I often forgot they weren’t twelve or thirteen. Every time I remembered the actresses’ ages, I was thrown into another fit of laughter. The show is so saturated with situational comedy, so tapped into the hilarity of middle school awkwardness, it holds its weight against other big-name TV comedies. It is, as its been described, “middle school as it really happened.”
I’m pretty sure #PEN15 is just someone sharing surveillance footage of my 7th grade experience.
— Dea Lunae (@SolLucet0mnibus) February 12, 2019
This “middle school as it really happened” approach is not only what brings the show its best comedy, but also what gifts the show a level of emotional sincerity lacking in other shows depicting adolescence, like Netflix’s Sex Education or the CW’s campy hit Riverdale. Maya and Anna’s adventures will ring true for any viewer, remembering their middle school best friend and their own struggle to fit-in.
Viewers who spent their teen years in the 2000s will relate especially to Pen15’s quirky protagonists as they navigate the cultural scope unearthed at the turn of the century. Viewers have already been tweeting about the anxiety-stirring throwback to dial-up internet and AOL.
Despite the inevitable weirdness that arises when adults play middle schoolers (I simply could not watch the masturbation episode and I’d rather not watch a kid makeout with an adult ever, ever again (even in concept—the children are replaced with adult body doubles)), this is Awkwardness TV’s big break and The Lonely Island’s latest hit. The show’s success really stems from Maya and Anna, who are arguably the best female duo since Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. It is worth mentioning, too, that the young actors (Taj Cross, Sami Rappoport and Brady Allen, among others) in the show also boast convincing performances, perhaps because they are living out their roles off screen. Pen15 and Bo Burnham’s 2018 debut Eighth Grade should have casting agents wondering why they haven’t been recruiting young actors to play young people all along.
Pen15 has it all. It’s crude, sweet, uncomfortable and everything in-between.
This show might truly trick you into joining the Pen15 club.
Image Credit: Alex Lombardi