In ‘PEN15,’ two women play themselves at 13 and it’s not just another nostalgia trip
Middle school – that’s where the real stuff is kept, isn’t it? Some of us talk about our college memories in a certain way and high school memories in another way, but the true test is to see what you can get someone to tell you about the lingering nightmare of being 13. Anyone who claims it was a breeze is no friend of mine.
Hulu’s “PEN15” (premiering Friday) is a cleverly envisioned and tenderly executed 10-episode dramedy about two girls in seventh grade. It joins a crowded hallway of pubescent realism and comic treatments of late, seen in such varied projects as Bo Burnham’s film “Eighth Grade,” which was highly praised for its excruciating accuracy, and Netflix’s hilariously frank animated series “Big Mouth,” where middle-schoolers are tempted and tormented by personal hormone monsters.
What these projects have in common is a new-fashioned empathy, delivered in a much stronger dose than was previously found in classic (and sometimes crueler) tales of adolescence. Everything that used to be funny about puberty and middle-school drama is still humorously ripe and awkward, but today’s storytellers seem to have tapped a fresh vein of understanding. They’re building on the work of the greats – Judy Blume, John Hughes and “Freaks and Geeks.”
Created by Maya Erskine, Anna Konkle and Sam Zvibleman, “PEN15” (the title refers to an ancient middle-school Sharpie prank) stars Erskine and Konkle, who are both 31, as iterations of themselves at 13 – and it’s quite a transformation, achieved with bashfully hunched shoulders, gawky expressions, a mouthful of braces (for Konkle) and an unfortunate bowl-style haircut and retainer (for Erskine).
We meet Anna and Maya the first day of seventh grade in August 2000, where they have pinky-sworn to shed their grammar-school childishness and experience the fresh start of middle school together: first kisses, first dances, first boyfriends, first cigarettes, first periods. They are inseparable – or so they think.
The big innovation in “PEN15” is that Anna and Maya’s peers are all played by actual kids, and it’s remarkable to see how Erskine and Konkle blend so easily among them, without the show becoming a prolonged stunt. As actors and storytellers, the women are fully committed to resurrecting every self-absorbed tick and teardrop of being ordinary 13-year-olds. “PEN15” is not a sendup so much as a deeply felt and utterly convincing homage to the girls they used to be. (Watching the series, it’s surprising to learn that Konkle and Erskine did not actually grow up together; they met as experimental theater majors at NYU.)
Maya and Anna do not survive the first day of school unscathed; Maya is deemed “UGIS” (Ugliest Girl in School) by a group of boys; the sneering superiority of the popular girls is just salt in the wounds. Even with its meticulously entertaining Y2K period details (dial-up AOL chat rooms; Backstreet Boys angst on the radio; the scandalous glimpse of a pink thong peeking above a waistband), “PEN15” isn’t exactly charting new territory when it comes to middle-school pecking order.
But the show does exhibit a resolute fearlessness on the matter of adolescent female sexuality, depicting Anna and Maya’s first encounters with French kisses and masturbation in ways that are neither shocking nor restrained. Philip Roth’s sexually frustrated Portnoy has been complaining for 50 years on behalf of boys-to-men, begetting every male-centric teen fantasy that came after, from “Porky’s” to “Weird Science” to “American Pie.” Yet we somehow still treat the story of a girl’s sexual awakening as a deadly serious subject, instead of as the unpredictable, multisensory weather system that “PEN15” gives us here.
The girls can be distracted by the way one boy walks into the cafeteria or by noticing the downy fuzz on the nape of another boy’s neck during a P.E. class. What law says these observations can’t also be funny? “PEN15” finds better stories (and great laughs) by letting its girls be as naturally gross and curious and confused as its boys.
Maya takes more risks than Anna and pays a higher price when her foibles end in humiliation. Because her looks strongly favor those of her Japanese mother, she also experiences the casual racism that further fuels the self-loathing that comes with adolescence. Anna, whose parents fight constantly, tugs nervously at the twin tendrils of blond hair she styles to hang in her face, attracting the attentions of Brendan (Brady Allen), a boy who is half her height but twice as confident.
“PEN15’s” theme of friendship is almost deceptively simple: The only sure way for Maya and Anna to survive middle school is to stick together, even when their bond is routinely tested. They argue with and annoy one another; the powerful selfishness of puberty can sometimes cause one to abandon the other in a fog of hormonal impulse. Erskine and Konkle are hunting for those moments of betrayal and rage that can flare up between best friends in seventh grade, perhaps to point out how similarly fraught adult friendships can be.
“I know you’re just, like, over me,” Anna whispers to Maya, after a nighttime excursion that finds them tempted by beer and boys and a party where other kids start making out.
“I’m, like, obviously never over you,” Maya says, hugging her friend.
And I’m, like, smitten by what Erskine and Konkle (and their colleagues and cast mates) are trying to accomplish here. They’re not merely on a nostalgia trip. They’re mining for gold.