MTV’s ‘Awkward’ season 5, episode 16 review: Are Jenna and Tamara friends again?

Given just how much time “Awkward” loves to dwell on romantic relationships, we rather enjoyed one aspect about Tuesday’s new installment: It actually put the focus on something else important in the friendship between Jenna and Tamara.

At the start of the half-hour, it was clear that these two were still on the rocks, and despite Jenna getting her hired for IdeaBin’s social-media department, it didn’t really change much. Instead, she was being as vapid and frustrating as always, though Jenna hadn’t tried to meet her halfway very much, either. While it was nice to see the two become friends once more in the closing minutes of the episode, it is still rather easy to be frustrated with the final sentiment of it all here: Tamara only turned to her and apologized when she realized she bit off more than she could chew at work, and it was only when she was weak and vulnerable that she reached out an arm.

Elsewhere in this episode, we found great amusement in Sadie’s attempts to use Jake in order to get Tamara jealous, while Matty and Jenna’s mom taking a summer-school German class together (why?) did help to raise some questions regarding why he hasn’t just tried to repair the relationship between the two yet. That’s why he made the phone call, but Jenna was too busy enjoying her repaired friendship with Tamra to notice.

Think of this episode as a solid foundation to what’s coming up the rest of the season … even if some of it is pretty obvious right now. (How are Jenna and Matty not ending up together?) Grade: B-.

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