If you were in Middle School during the late 90s/early 2000s, I suspect you have already heard of Hulu’s spectacular coming of age comedy Pen15 (and if not, well, watch it). The show’s first season aired on the streaming service in 2019 and was a delightful mix of the silly, the gross, and the nostalgic. Series creators and stars Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle (who are 33 years old in real life) play 13 year old fictionalized versions of themselves alongside actual teen actors*, navigating the minefield that is Middle School.
*For those worried about having adults acting alongside children, everything is on the up and up. The child actors are hilarious and universally strong actors, and any romantic moments (and there are some) that include kissing or more are handled by adult stand-ins.
There’s a lot I could talk about in the series – the great writing, the committed performances, the deep emotional heart that beats at the center of it all, but the one thing I kept coming back to upon completing a binge of the second season (which is currently streaming seven episodes on Hulu) was the universality of the story. Middle School is, particularly for girls, a complicated experience. There’s the onslaught of hormones, dating, cliques, and fighting to maintain friendships while the landscape of who’s cool and who’s not changes on a daily basis. Kids constantly feel like they are alone in what they are experiencing, are convinced their parents just cannot understand what they are going through, and are terrified to say or do the wrong thing lest they become the ostracized party of the week. It’s awful. And Pen15 manages to hit on each of those deeply emotional and difficult subjects, mining them for comedy while never losing sight of how traumatic things can be for kids then and adults now as they relive these moments through Maya, Anna, and their friends and foes.
The show’s second season certainly hits on the inherent comedy of seventh grade life, but it also adds additional nuance by getting into some of the darker elements of that time in a young person’s life. From the sting of finding yourself duped and potentially dumped by a friend (the dreaded three-way phone call with one person hiding on mute happens in season two and had me in a cold sweat as I relived some of my own past trauma with that trick) to taking out everything on your mom because she “just doesn’t understand!” (again, more Middle School flashbacks on my end there as well). And that doesn’t even get into the constant “dating” churn of Middle School or the fear of discovering that you might not be as straight as you once thought (for the youngins watching – remember that back in 2000, being out was far less prevalent than nowadays, and we were only a few years removed from Ellen DeGeneres’ coming out and well into the massive backlash she faced for her efforts).
Delving further into the realm of drama makes Pen15 into an even better show than it was in its first season. The characters are richer, Konkle and Erskine get a chance to stretch their acting muscles a bit more, and it allows the audience to care more about seemingly insignificant moments as we see the deeper impact on characters we’ve grown to love. Oh, and then there’s the two episode arc of the school play that is a perfect encapsulation of what it is like to both perform in a school play and work on the tech crew. I was dying with laughter.
All-in-all, season two of Pen15 is well worth your time. The writing is sharp, the acting solid, and the season arcs hit home with how true to life they are. When you’re 13 years old, you think that you are the only person going through the confusion of friendship alliances and the complex emotions of your day-to-day life. Hell, when you’re an adult and you look back on those years, you often can’t help but assume the same. But what Pen15 makes crystal clear is that we all went through the same things. It was a struggle for everyone. But now that we have (hopefully) grown up, we can look back and cringe together while we heal. And laugh.
-
Acting
-
Writing
-
Direction
