Season Two of Hulu's middle school comedy 'Pen15' is just as off-the-wall funny, but more emotionally complex too. Alan Sepinwall's review
Unsurprisingly, the actresses’ adulthood becomes most palpable in scenes involving the girls’ dawning sexuality and/or romantic complications with boys played by their much younger co-stars. One of the girls gets cast in a school play where she may have to make out with a boy onstage; the tension over whether this will, or should, happen starts to take on a meta layer.
The new season’s humor level definitely takes a hit thanks to its more convincing heroines. A lot of scenes from the first season were funny almost entirely due to the unmistakable fact that these were grown women very much not acting their age.
The trade-off is worth it, though, because the new episodes feel deeper and more emotionally complex thanwas even at its Season One peak: the ninth episode, “Anna Ishii-Peters,” where Maya grew jealous of how her mom seemed to like Anna more than her own daughter. “Anna Ishii-Peters” was almost startling in how clear, insightful, and occasionally sad it was relative to the juvenile antics the girls had been up to in earlier installments. In the new season,goes to that same place more regularly.
The new season is a bit more serialized, with one arc involving the arrival of new girl Maura , who attempts to turn this longtime duo into a trio, while another places Anna and Maya on opposite sides of the cast/crew divide for the school play. The girls fight, pull away from each other, and reconnect in ways that feel smart and true and at times incredibly sweet.
The greater tonal ambition for the new season is paired with a greater technical ambition. There are shots done as tributes to
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