TV Review: Awkward. 5×22 “Home Again, Home Again”

Luke kicks off the episode on a good note for us by saying, “You shouldn’t have written that article without consulting me, Jenna, that was a violation of trust.” So we’re all on the same page, by “good” I mean “wildly hypocritical.” This leads to a fight where Jenna suggests that Luke would sleep with Lizzie to smooth things over. Luke tells Jenna to grow up and they go their separate ways for the episode’s duration.

While basking in the glory of her parents’ house, Jenna receives an invite for a Camp Pookah alumni event. Remember the beginning of the show, when Matty and Jenna were hooking up secretly at summer camp? Simpler, better times. Matty and Jenna reunite at the event and immediately divulge their current love life woes; Matty his breakup with Sully, Jenna her fight with Luke. They decide to get drunk on peppermint schnapps together and play Truth or Truth. At first they ask questions like “Why do you have a dreamcatcher?” and “What was with the side braid?” but move on to judging each other’s past ex’s . I’m judging them too, especially when Jenna calls Douchebag Colin “hot”. Eventually the confessions get more serious; Jenna is always the first person Matty wants to tell when something happens in his life, whether good or bad, while Jenna considers Matty to be home.

Turns out Matty informed Luke as to Jenna’s whereabouts. Luke admits that while nothing happened with Lizzie, he did want to leave the opportunity open for his career. He apologizes and explains that the Dean of SCU wants to interview Jenna because Luke sent him some of Jenna’s writing samples.

It appears that the sparkle of working at the country club is wearing down for Jake, as his manager bitches him out every time he tries to make a change to the club. He ends up creating a great video for Lissa’s atonercize class, inspiring Lissa to observe, “God, think of what Jesus could have done if he had YouTube!” Lissa is very impressed with the quality of Jake’s video, prompting Jake to think that his future may lie elsewhere.

Tamara is making strides toward fixing her debt problems. Ostensibly we’re supposed to believe that Tamara’s pep talk is preparing her for some sort of escort/prostitution business, but that is far too obvious and ridiculous for an MTV comedy. Tamara is working as a professional bridesmaid. Turns out her ex-fiance Adam is one of the groomsmen, and as the two of them are prepping the newlyweds’ bed Tamara explains her situation with Patrick. Adam’s not particularly surprised that she’s lying to him about having money. He asks her if there’s a reason she constantly lies to dudes–maybe she thinks she isn’t enough for them. Things to think about.

Sadie’s storyline is a very obvious lesson. She brings Tamara a coffee, but Tamara is furious with her for not caring about her debt issues. “Say what you want about Jenna, she would never treat me like this,” Tamara says. As explored last week, I think it’s ridiculous that Tamara thinks Sadie should be sharing this burden. Could she be slightly more sympathetic? YES. Is it her problem? NOPE. Jenna has proved that she’s a horrible friend over and over, let’s not rewrite history now. She proceeds to accept the coffee, but not Sadie’s apology. That’s shitty in itself, but okay.

Sadie interrupts Lissa’s atonercize class because she wants to get smoothies and complain about what happened with Tamara. Lissa uses her newfound feminist soul to tell Sadie off, comparing her to the patriarchy (no, Awkward., no) and defend her atonercize classes. To the people who write Awkward.: please stop using feminism as a punchline–the show would be a lot better if you added some feminist nuance.

Sadie’s last stop of the night is Sergio’s food truck, where she interrupts a conversation between him and his “friends.” She insults them with general hipster shit talking and the two guys leave, saying they’ll maybe catch Sergio in September. Sergio is furious–those friends were actually investors interested in the food truck. He’s had enough of Sadie’s attitude and breaks up with her again.

Though there were some lackluster aspects (specifically their treatment of friendship and feminism), this episode of Awkward. was surprisingly self-aware about the characters. They addressed some of Sadie’s worst behavior, held an honest conversation between Matty and Jenna, and discussed Tamara’s issues head on. Why this had to wait until the penultimate episode, we’ll never know.