The final season of Pen15 is a slap in the throat

Pin15 makes me sweat. Much of the show’s comedy relies on dramatic irony that – especially against a middle school background, a time most of us would rather forget – can make watching incredibly difficult. And terrible television has always been a challenge for me, as dramatic irony often comes at the expense of marginalized characters. But in the hands of Pin15 Creators and leading actresses Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, these tools become tools to help audiences understand the real emotional turmoil of the 1920s and how these challenges relate to race and gender.

It is clear the two have honed their knack for using those stressful middle school scenarios to tell moving, relevant stories. The second half of the series’ second season, which was released several months after episodes 1 through 8, is as daring as ever in its exploration of the tween girl world. (Which is why it’s very disappointing that the show won’t have a third season.) In his final episodes, Pin15 continues to have high highs and deep lows, with the comedy being bitterly funny and the heartbreak being incredibly poignant – building on the excellent foundations of season one and working on serious subjects.

The focus of the show is of course the friendship between Maya and Anna and their mutual dependency. Each of these new experiences leaves traces in their friendship, challenges their casual intimacy and teaches them new ways to support one another. Anna juggles her parents’ emotional lives – and she takes on adult chores like unpacking while her parents divorce and everyone tries to convince her to live with them full-time. She becomes increasingly anxious, which is compounded by the family tragedy. At the same time, Maya receives an unexpected diagnosis that explains her outbursts and emotional dysregulation, but struggles with drug adjustments. Together they walk through dance floors, bad teachers, a funeral, and terrible high school friends.

Image: Hulu

The show has always felt like a personal assault because it cleverly captures how the rather different, very specific experiences of Maya and Anna nonetheless contain kernels of universal truth. This is especially true of the way the show deals with Maya’s Asian-American identity in these episodes, adding nuances to the subtext put in season one. In the first season Maya learned of racism and had to throw up traumatically. It’s funny because it’s an unexpected reaction at the moment of posting. But it’s also painful and exhausting as it led me on that path and left me in what felt like vomiting.

The episode “Shadow” of this second season shows how race can subsume a person’s identity – it makes someone exotic or ostracized, never accepted as a whole or as an individual. As a result, Maya’s younger Japanese family friend, Ume, comes to visit. The two fight because neither speaks the other’s language. Maya takes Ume to school and expects to be bullied – instead, the class is obsessed with her, touching her hair and reaching for her tamagotchi. But Maya doesn’t understand that Ume is being objectified and instead gets enraged, jealous and screams, “Why is Japanese special to her and not to me?”

There is a lot of misunderstanding from the episode. Maya is too young to distinguish between objectification and worship. She decides to become Ume’s translator – but the subtitles reveal that she only really knows a few Japanese words. Her attempts, some of which are just random mouth noises, mostly confuse Ume. Still, the show never suppresses the speaking of foreign languages. Instead, it draws humor from a rite of passage for a multiracial child who has never learned to speak his or her mother tongue but has done her best. When Ume and Maya finally break down and embrace, the viewer reaps the benefits of the subtitles while Ume explains how much she hated being touched, objectified, and crowded in.

Image: Hulu

Meanwhile, Anna has taken a peacemaker position between her parents – and no decision is ever right. The low points are devastating: Anna distances herself on a dance floor and has a panic attack. But the show also delivers hyperbolic horror humor, as Anna develops more and more of a hero complex during a history lesson on the Holocaust, complete with existential crises over whether God exists. In a classically immature school assignment in which the children present what they would bring with them if they were “taken by the Nazis”, Anna brings a cartridge case and says she would use it to “kill Hitler”.

Where much of the comedy’s relationship to discomfort revolves around the idea of ​​being “transgressive” or “edgy” Pin15‘s discomfort usually forces the viewer to face social expectations and gender-specific standards. And these scenes, traumatically funny as they are, are always based on their truthfulness. Seeing Maya caught with her “stash” masturbating on the bathroom floor could make you crawl out of your skin. But comedic shows and movies have also been making uncomfortable jokes about boys for years – who are startling and exploitative. And it’s worth noting that Erskine and Konkle are both in their thirties, playing teenage versions of themselves and not putting real young actors into harmful scenarios.

Both have spoken in interviews that certain uncomfortable things are based on real experiences they had at that age: Erskine mentioned that she masturbated while she was in middle school; Konkle described their first kiss as “the alien who pierced my throat”. In Pin15

Sex drives are a punch line, but not at the expense of the characters. Instead, they are a commentary on this phase of life where each new impulse is loud and confusing. Whether it’s the first period or the first kiss Pin15 normalizes these private experiences by showing them on screen, and reaffirms the rewards of female friendship as Maya finds silent solidarity with her best friend.

In the final episodes, the show deals with the heavier, traumatic issue of coercion and the power difference between middle school girls and high school boys. Maya’s “friend” asks her to do a physical act that makes her uncomfortable; Since she doesn’t want to appear “uncool”, she agrees. These scenes are lacking in humor and are the hardest to see. It is made even more choppy by the fact that those traumatic moments don’t get the kind of unboxing or resolution they really deserve. It feels a lot like there are too many ideas, too much flooring to cope with in the limited space. The happier end to the season feels very abrupt in this context, especially when previous episodes allowed so much room for one-off comedic parts – like slow dancing between your crush and your best friend or stealing back an expensive bat mitzvah gift from the wealthy girl who was unimpressed by it.

Image: Hulu

Even so, these episodes cement Pin15‘s commitment to the meaning of the inner lives of young girls – grappling with the difficult truths of adolescence rather than portraying young girls as flat concepts. Capturing tweenhood on screen is not an easy task, not least because this phase of life lies in a development policy gray area in which many of us did not know how to make good decisions. These are the stories of Erskine and Konkle, told honestly and directly, and to some extent, casting calumny can feel like judgment too. Asking for a clear solution could force the conclusion of a stage in life where this just doesn’t exist – and overall, the open exploration of the girlhood on the show is incredibly valuable.

We made mistakes when we were 12 and 13. We were also disempowered and often taken advantage of, and that wasn’t our fault. It’s terrifying to watch, but we deserve our experiences to be legitimized instead of making them small and shameful. Pin15 is a fun and painful reminder of it.