MTV’s ‘Awkward’ season 5, episode 20 review: Babysitting brings Matty, Jenna closer together

After spending so many years in high school, you have to appreciate “Awkward” trying to do things in a little bit more of an adult manner.

On this past episode of the show, they ironically did that with a story about something in babysitting that is widely though of as a job mostly for teenagers. In an effort to prove something to her mother, she offers to babysit her little sister Morgan, and in the process she also learns just how hard it is, and sometimes, how valuable it is to have help from an unusual source in Matty. It turns out that he’s spent some time around kids over the past year, which would’ve been something she knew had she bothered to ask. He was able to calm the kid down, and while nothing is a-okay at present, him staying the night and helping proved to be a key step to improving their friendship.

Was it thoroughly entertaining in the process? We’d at least call it fun, though this was not the show’s funniest episode to date. There were a few more laughs in Lissa realizing in the subplot that she really didn’t want to just be a Palos Hills mom, after all.

The big criticism you can offer is roughly the same thing that we stated about this episode previously, and that is whether or not you can really buy Matty wanting anything to do with her ever again after the Idea Bin piece went viral. It takes a lot of forgiveness for something like this to happen, and he may be more forgiving than most.

Overall, this was a fun, necessary episode of the show that could be a building block for Jenna and Matty having a future again. We do wish that the show would just leave them together for a while if this is their final endgame, but we’ll take what we can get for now. Episode Grade: B.