MTV’s ‘Awkward’ season 5, episode 21 review: The same mistake
There were some fantastic, very-fun moments at the center of Tuesday night’s new episode of “Awkward.” Take, for example, Lissa being so overprotective of her ex Jake that she wanted to confront Ophelia over him, only for her to be turned around in the process. Also, Matty getting really drunk and blowing up his German exam, which led to both Jenna’s mom being furious with him and also him ending his relationship / whatever-that-was with Sully.
Then, there were a few moments that were striking and very real, such as Tamara finally realizing that she has to pay the piper, or pay the credit card companies for her massive amounts of debt she accrued over the course of the summer. What we saw from her in the end was her going to pretty desperate lengths and hiring herself out. Is she becoming an escort? The episode didn’t really tip its hand, but it can’t be good, whatever it is.
Also, Sadie refusing to help bail out Tamara was pretty sad, but we don’t know how anyone can be that shocked by this given that this is who this character is. It is important for Tamara to have a fall from grace, mostly because the character has become so unbelievable at times that she needs humility. Granted, we don’t want to see her ending up in various hotel rooms, either.
Now, back to Jenna, who started to have things go really well in her relationship with Luke, even to the point that they were living together and were reasonably happy. Sure, they squabbled over messiness and little things, but that’s a sign of nesting! The show played this well. The weak point of the episode comes with Jenna showing that she learned nothing from her previous Idea Bin article, writing an expose about her secret relationship after she and Luke decided to finally go public. How she thought that “going public” = her writing a lengthy post about it was somewhat appalling, given that Luke had hidden his relationship with her from his boss in order to protect the two of them. Maybe we’re meant to see this as a sign of self-sabotage, but even then, it’d make more sense for her to make another mistake than to consciously do the one thing that almost severed her friendship with Matty for good just episodes ago.
It’s a shame this twist happened, because the Tamara storyline was really juicy this week and we find all things Lissa rather entertaining at present. Unfortunately, we just can’t get aboard the “Jenna writes another article” ride so soon after the first mistake. Even silly comedy has to have better storytelling rules. Grade: C.