MTV’s ‘Awkward’ season 5, episodes 11 & 12 review: Matty, Jenna’s leap forward

At its core, “Awkward” is a story about the will-they-or-won’t-they of it all between Jenna and Matty. Therefore, how could you expect anything different from its midseason finale than an admission that Jenna’s plan to stay together with the man she loved did not go according to plan?

We knew that at least following graduation and on the drive up to Berkeley, the two made all the promises in the world to keep things going. They didn’t want to make sacrifices for the sake of being with each other career-wise, which is probably the right thing for 18-year olds to do. If they broke up, it may be a natural part of life for two young adults on opposite sides of the country. Then again, maybe it depends in part on how they broke up versus the simple fact that they did.

The show did not surprise us with this big “reveal” at the end, but they couldn’t. Who thought that Jenna and Matty would be together and happy when the second half of the season picks up one year later? There’s not much of a story if there was.

Still, Monday’s one-hour finale was a celebration of nostalgia, fun, and other great things about the show. Jake and Tamara had a brief moment, Sadie tried to make things right with Sergio, and there were jokes aplenty about how dysfunctional this graduating class really was. We get the sense at the end that every one of these characters wants to move forward, but they are still struggling with parts of their past. It may not have been as cynical of a graduation episode as what we would’ve had during the early years of the show, but we still enjoyed it more than most of this season. Grade: B.

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